Paperless design to production, is it possible?

Every company, including mine, would love to avoid spending time and money producing drawings. Company management wants to simply be able to send out a model and have their product made off of it. This would be a dream come true for many companies. The question is how would this be done?

If I have a simple machined bracket that I’ve designed I can easily export the file out, and be fairly confident that my supplier will be able to read the file accurately. I can also produce a generic document that I would email to my supplier with the exported model data. This generic document can contain many of my product requirements such as material specifications, heat treat condition, tolerance, general surface finishes, edge breaks and any other generic requirements I need. Sounds easy enough, but how do I get this done?

Before my design goes to my supplier I have multiple steps my product has to go through, analysis, approvals, product evaluations, . . . Once I receive my product from my supplier I will need to at least be able to verify my product. What is I don’t have a CNC CMM, or a optical compotator that can handle digital files for comparison. How can I reliably verify my product?

From what I’ve seen so far in Creo and other CAD packages, there is no way to export the vast amount of data that would be required to reliably produce a product. What if I needed a specific feature to be ground to a specific surface finish, and plated with a specific process in accordance with a specific industry specification. I don’t even think I can add that definition to the model, and if I can, how will my supplier be able to see it?

So, here are my questions, can it be done? How do you handle this request from your management? Do you think the CAD tools are capable of doing this? Can it truly save time and money?

I’d love to hear your ideas and thoughts about what I’ve tried to describe here.