Picture the following scene –

The manufacturing engineers are sitting in their cubicles, minding their own business. They may even be thinking that everything is currently under control. All of a sudden, without any previous warning or communication, they get an e-mail or phone call which casually mentions that a new product design has just been completed and need to be manufactured ASAP. And sorry we forget to tell you about this earlier.
Chaos ensues. The manufacturing engineers are saying things like - "Why couldn’t we get some warning about this new product?!", "There's no way we can make this as-is, we have to make some design changes!", and "I wish we could have been involved in the design!"
Does this scenario sound at all familiar? Has this ever happened to your manufacturing engineering group?

Throwing it over the wall
If so, then perhaps you have a nice sized wall between the design and manufacturing engineering groups. And I’m not talking about a color-neutral cubicle wall. I mean a figurative wall that product engineering throws completed designs over to manufacturing engineering with little or no coordination. Once the design is thrown over the wall, manufacturing then has to scramble and figure out what needs to be changed. Instead of being proactive, they are forced to be reactive.

Breaking down the wall
Unfortunately, such walls are pretty common and the problem only gets worse when the wall is 10,000 miles wide (as in the distance from the US to China). How can one break-down this wall? Well, organizational and procedural changes can certainly help, but it can only go so far if design and manufacturing engineering are using separate systems and databases. And that’s where Windchill MPMLink comes in. As an optional, integral part of Windchill, Windchill MPMLink gives manufacturing engineers new development tools plus a direct, integral window to all engineering designs. Thus, as the design engineer creates the product, the manufacturing engineer can use the same designs to create manufacturing process plans, build up the manufacturing Bill of Material (mBOM), and put together the graphical work instructions to guide the shop-floor assembly.

Learn more about Windchill MPMLink here.
And good luck breaking down your walls