Cadalyst - October 2007 - (Page 45)

plmstrategies Figure 1. Screen capture of Arena to illustrate how a supervisor might identify excess and obsolescence materials. prone, compliance-conscious era of global manufacturing, making sure you’re using parts and components from only prequalified sources is important. “You don’t want one of your engineers switching to a new source because the supplier gave him a nice polo shirt as a present,” Lamoreux said with a chuckle.” Because ColdWatt has set up the PLM system where no parts from an unknown source can be introduced into a CAD drawing, a polo shirt isn’t about to sway any engineers. “Any parts that go into our item master must be from the list of approved parts. They have to first go through an engineering change order,” Lamoreux added. includes operational arms in Germany, Ireland, England, the United States, the Netherlands, India, and Brazil. The facilities in Frankfurt, Germany; Cork, Ireland; Skippack, Pennsylvania; and Coimbatore, India hold together approximately 25 CAD stations. Having a small army of engineers in various international locations can be a blessing and a curse. The good news is that you have a large talent pool to draw from; the bad news is that you have a large talent pool to manage. Previously, each location had its own document management system. “So every time someone made a change to a common component, we e-mailed one another to keep all the document management systems up to date,” said Walsh. “We didn’t have good control over what went in and out of our design library. The workflow functionality wasn’t really there.” Take, for example, a project for which the design was done in the United States and the production was in India. When the U.S. staff left at the end of the day, they’d check the completed CAD drawing into the library, ready for machining. But those in India didn’t realize the file was there. Production didn’t begin until the U.S. staff returned to work and formally submitted the file to the Indian office. Grow Fast, Stay Lean Two years ago, when ColdWatt opened its doors, it had one customer and one product. “We now have about 15 products, many more in development, and 10 customers,” Lamoreux said. “But we’ve added only about 10% more to our staff.” That’s because of the scalability of the on-demand business model of its PLM vendor, Arena Solutions, Lamoreux revealed. “As your company grows and you add more projects, you could end up adding more people and layers of administration people to make sure the employees are doing what they should be doing,” he reasoned. To avoid this, Lamoreux implemented the PLM system before he went into production. His proactive PLM adoption helps ColdWatt sidestep the kind of data-migration headaches that plague many other businesses that are forced to adopt a PLM system midstream. Lamoreux does not have an IT staff to manage; ColdWatt’s IT is outsourced. The service provider manages the company’s e-mail and remote servers. The Continental Juggle Brian Walsh, IT manager for SchuF, described his employer as “a family-owned business.” It’s a bit of an understatement. The corporate family of this custom valve supplier 45 www.cadalyst.com | cadalyst | October 2007 http://www.cadopia.com http://www.cadopia.com http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - October 2007

Contents Editor's Window Cad Central Tech Trends: First-Hand Architecture in Second Life Rev It Up — Graphics Cards Pack Power for Today’s Hottest Designs TurboCAD Pro 14 — 3D Modeling Software SimEnterprise R2 — Design Simulation Software CADopia 6.2 SP3 Professional Edition — 2D and 3D Modeling Software Cad Manager: Programming Resources for CAD Managers MCAD Modeling: Customer Service Horror Stories PLM Strategies: Manufacturing Across Time Zones AEC in Focus: Digital-Asset Management in AEC/O Cad Cartoon Issue Indexes Cadfidential

Cadalyst - October 2007

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