During our recent 3DEXPERIENCE FORUM, Bob Deragisch, Director of IT Services at Parker-Hannifin, spoke with Dassault Systèmes contributor Louis Columbus about the long standing and productive partnership between the two companies. Parker-Hannifin is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of motion and control technologies across a wide array of aerospace and industrial markets. The company owns 290 manufacturing plants, and operates in 50 countries with approximately 56,000 employees. To say that the scope and complexity of Parker-Hannifin is massive would be an understatement.
As Deragisch says,“if you’ve flown on a commercial airliner it flew because of Parker-Hannifin products.”
Dassault Systèmes and Parker-Hannifin have had a long standing partnership since 1984 beginning with the use of CATIA 3D design software on a mainframe, then expanding into additional applications including ENOVIA for collaborative innovation and Product Lifecycle Management. Fast forward to the partnership today, and (at the time of this interview) the FAA was in the process of approving Parker-Hannifin’s first metal 3D printed part for its aerospace customers. While additive manufacturing has been in use for more than 25 years, only recently has additive manufacturing for metal been approved for use in a production environment.
Today, Parker-Hannifin uses Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE platform to explore these new possibilities in the metal additive manufacturing revolution and the move into a generative design methodology that the platform is helping to drive.
Deragisch shared that, “Generative design is an answer to a dream we’ve had for the better part of 25 years, and that is to turn the process around. Stop going from design to analysis and actually have analysis drive the design, to look at the things that we need from a fit and form perspective and have the analysis actually determine what that part should look like – then use CAD to clean up the design.” Deragisch continued, “How can we now design for additive? And not just keep printing designs that we’ve been doing for the last 50 years?”
The 3DEXPERIENCE platform is helping Parker Hannifin move from design to manufacturing at a level of scale and speed they couldn’t accomplish before.
According to Deragisch, generative design goes beyond the software. “One of the things that Dassault Systèmes is providing on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform today is the ability to have an internal marketplace, so we don’t have to necessarily install a printer in every one of our facilities but we can share those printers across facilities based on scheduling and work load and how many units of each type that we need to produce.”
As Parker-Hannifin looks to the future, it’s clear to see that it’s an exciting time for the company as conventional processes are being left behind and new methodologies enabled by the 3DEXPERIENCE platform are driving innovation and quality for the company.
Deragisch ends, “My son is airline pilot, I want to make sure that he can leave every day go to work, fly the plane and get home and see my grandkids so, we want to make sure that it happens correctly. Safety is obviously number one but in order to be able to do that safety you have to have quality.”
To learn more, watch the full interview
Meaghan holds her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY. Prior to Dassault Systèmes, she worked as regional marketing manager and occasional freelance script writer. She has a passion for writing, education, nature, science, and technology. She is currently pursuing her dual MBA/MSM from Suffolk University in Boston.