OREANDA-NEWS. NEC Corporation today announced the launch of Obbligato III R4.1, the latest version of its Obbligato III Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software, which consolidates the management of product technology data such as design drawings, specifications and bills of material (BOM).

Obbligato III R4.1 manages not only existing BOM for part types and quantities, but also bills of process (BOP) for manufacturing processes, equipment used and others, thereby promoting the sharing and succession of process charts, operating instructions and other manufacturing knowledge.

Furthermore, consolidating the management of BOM and BOP enables the influence of specification changes and faults to be identified promptly, not only with respect to parts, but also with respect to processes and equipment, and to be addressed in a timely manner. Ensuring the consistency of manufacturing quality (monozukuri) expedites the start-up of new global manufacturing sites and contributes to the transfer of production. Moreover, the continual improvement of BOP to optimize aspects such as production line configuration and equipment setup requirements by analyzing disparities between BOP and real time output from sensors using the Internet of Things (IoT) maximizes the performance of manufacturing sites.

In addition, NEC has added new management functions in order to comply with the United States Code of Federal Regulations "21 CFR Part 820," pertaining to the quality of systems, as established by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for medical device manufacturers.

"With many companies managing BOP with paper or Excel files, and with the retirement of many industrial engineers, the sharing and succession of manufacturing knowledge is a major challenge," said Toshikazu Fukuoka, General Manager, Manufacturing and Process Industries Systems Development Division, NEC Corporation. "Obbligato III's enhancements respond to this challenge by helping to maintain consistency of manufacturing quality on a global scale with the standardization of BOP."