The DELMIAWorks Sales tools allow the automation of the quote to sales order and generation of the work order, without continuously pushing them to the design and engineering teams. Allowing the design team to focus on new products, solving ECR’s and continuous improvement tasks, not creating sales configurations.

About this Sales Configuration On-Demand Webinar

TriMech’s Systems Architect, Rob Hauser, provides an overview of the Sales tools available within the DELMIAWorks ERP / MES solution.

• The capabilities of DELMIAWorks
• Overview of DELMIAWorks Sales Quoting and Estimating Module
• How you can improve productivity

Uncover how their transition from their home-grown system to IQMS (now DELMIAWorks) EnterpriseIQ providing real-time data accuracy to everyone in the company, from the shop floor to the top floor, in a single reliable database.

Top Die Casting Company is a “one-stop-shop” for aluminum die castings and plastic-injected moldings. Top Die is ISO certified and a preferred supplier for a wide base of customers, including markets such as consumer products; industrial; filtration; heavy vehicles; hydraulics; electronics; appliances; and more.

Single-Source ERP System Best Fit for Quality Driven Die Casting Company

Top Die Casting Company understands the value of quality delivered at a competitive price, on time, every time. As a leading domestic, full-service provider of aluminum die castings and plastic-injected moldings, Top Die Casting serves an array of high-profile customers in both consumer and industrial markets. Founded in 1977, Top Die Casting has a long history of providing unequalled product quality and customer service, and is driven to “be the best in the business by doing things right the first time.”

Over the years, Top Die Casting has grown sales from $1.5 million to over $40 million by offering consistent quality and a “one-stop-shop” from design to packaged part. But while company growth has been steady, and quality output a mainstay, Top Die Casting was hindered in the past by an outdated, home-grown enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, and needed to update their internal IT system.

“Our old system had limitations that wasted a lot of valuable time,” explained Jeff Colson, application engineer at Top Die Casting. “People spent more time trying to figure out how to make things happen in spite of the system than they did focusing on the actual process of making quality parts.”

Housed in an older-style database that used index sequential files, the company’s previous system was inherently slow, especially when 20 or more people were using it. What’s more, the system had evolved through several different in-house programmers and stages of company growth that involved the transfer of system files from a DOS format to Windows. But with each system iteration, critical information such as production history and employee data was lost.

“We got to a certain point where sticking with the old system was no longer a viable option,” said Colson. “The information was in one database, but extracting it was difficult unless you were a programmer. We had to manually sketch out data just to see where we stood on things, and even then the data could be outdated or simply incorrect.”

To solve this issue, Top Die Casting sought a single-source, centralized ERP system that could provide real-time data accuracy to everyone in the company, from the shop floor to the top floor. The company established a team of key people who had the most detailed knowledge of the old system and fully understood what was necessary for its replacement. The team considered carefully what the company needed, from accounting and customer service to quality management and real-time production control. After reviewing a number of ERP systems, they found the best match in EnterpriseIQ by IQMS.

“We got to a certain point where sticking with the old system was no longer a viable option”

— Jeff COLSON, Application Engineer

Time Savings a Clear Benefit with Centralized ERP Solution

“EnterpriseIQ won out over the other systems because it keeps everything central in a single, reliable database,” said Colson. “Some of the other systems we considered used more than one database for functions such as scanning, which seemed clunky. With EnterpriseIQ we did not have to cross over several systems to put things together. Now that the system is up and running, it’s clear that the centralized format also delivers advantages in eliminating non-value added activities in all departments.”

Like many other companies its size, Top Die Casting operates lean without the benefit of large numbers of employees to track and analyze data. According to Colson the biggest asset of having EnterpriseIQ in place is the time it affords key employees, like Nancy Hyser, the company’s quality manager.

Along with two other employees, Hyser was responsible within the old system for tracking inventory, which Top Die Casting holds for its customers. Additionally, Hyser was tasked with manually inputting time card data from jobs run the previous day. This meant the company was always operating a day behind, and Hyser spent most of her time trying to keep pace with data entry.

“EnterpriseIQ lets people focus on their jobs rather than the mundane tasks that can drag down quality operations,” said Hyser. “We used to have only one or two people who knew where inventory was. This often delayed deliveries and increased our holding costs. Now EnterpriseIQ keeps track of our inventory to the very last detail, so we aren’t hassled by trying to chase down a customer’s supply or rectify our counts against data that isn’t in the system yet.”

Top Die Casting relies on EnterpriseIQ’s ease of use and access to information to make it is easy for anyone in the company to call up data anytime, anywhere, whether they are working on the shop floor or in an executive meeting. With direct access to all ERP related information, Top Die Casting has eliminated redundant data entry, costly errors, and time lags in shipping.

“EnterpriseIQ delivers incredible time savings by putting the same real-time information at the fingertips of all our employees,” said Hyser.

“The system increases our visibility and improves our reaction time by pushing data to those who need it. This has gone a long way in improving internal communications and has allowed us to turn our focus back to the things that matter, like delivering quality parts to our customers on time.”

— Nancy Hyser, Quality Manager

RealTime Accountability, Real-Time Results

After running EnterpriseIQ alongside the old system for a brief period of time, the company went live with immediate results.

“EnterpriseIQ is user-friendly and easy to navigate, so the switch over was simple and everyone adapted quickly,” said Colson. “We shipped and invoiced parts the same day we went live with no problems. It was like the IQMS system had always been in place.”

Because EnterpriseIQ is a single database solution, written, developed and supported only by IQMS, Top Die Casting has found the system to be cohesive across its multiple facilities and entire supply chain.

Top Die Casting uses core ERP functionality such as AR, AP, Inventory Management, and Customer Service modules as well as enhanced functionality such as Quality, Wireless Warehouse Management, eCommerce, and RealTime Production Monitoring. By supporting machine management in real-time, EnterpriseIQ allows the company to track all aspects of production immediately as parts are being made. The system automatically applies real-time data to the shop orders, and updates the ERP modules with the schedule and finished product counts, giving Top Die Casting a truer picture of what they can deliver to their customers and detailed costs of those deliveries.

“We like that EnterpriseIQ lets us see in real-time what is happening at all of our plants,” said Hyser. “This level of accountability is a big thing for our customers. With RealTime Production Monitoring we’ve improved efficiency and productivity and are more responsive to customer needs.”

In fact, according to Hyser, RealTime Production Monitoring has been instrumental in Top Die Casting’s ability to win new customer accounts: “RealTime Production Monitoring is the wow factor that impresses potential customers,” she said. “When they see that EnterpriseIQ lets us take the pulse of the shop floor in the instant their parts are being made, it’s a big selling point. They typically don’t see that capability with our competitors or even within their own plants.”

Empowers Culture of Continuous Improvement

EnterpriseIQ and RealTime Production Monitoring have also helped Top Die Casting drive a cultural shift at every level of the company. In the past, two or three people acted as key business drivers whom others looked to for direction, now everyone – across multiple departments – can pitch in and do their part because they have the information to produce quality work.

With the historical and real-time data EnterpriseIQ provides, Top Die Casting operates a bonus system that empowers the company’s shop floor operators to work more efficiently. This allows the company to develop a culture of continuous improvement that could not have been considered using the previous system.

“It’s the shop floor aspect, combined with the core ERP, and the fact that EnterpriseIQ is made for manufacturers that gives IQMS an edge over other ERP systems,” said Hyser. “EnterpriseIQ with RealTimeProduction Monitoring lets our operators see in easy-to-understand color coding whether their machine is running lean. Whereas before they might not have known there was a problem until it was too late, now they can stop problems before they occur. With EnterpriseIQ everyone is accountable, and the effort they put forth reflects that.”

Focused on Future Manufacturing Success

Top Die Casting consistently wins business over its competition by adhering to strict quality standards and exceeding expectations every time. EnterpriseIQ by IQMS has been instrumental in that effort by giving the company business and plant management software designed specifically to help manufacturers run more effectively and more profitably. Yet for all the many benefits Top Die Casting has obtained since implementing the system, Colson noted there is more to come.

“We are always expanding on what we have because there is so much available in EnterpriseIQ,” he said. “Our customers constantly make new demands of us, and with EnterpriseIQ we can meet those requests without hesitation. With EnterpriseIQ we can focus on the future and our ambition to succeed instead of spending time trying to force our ERP system to comply.”

Running DELMIAWORKS manufacturing ERP system delivered via Hosted Managed Services (HMS) provides Ventura Manufacturing the most economical system architecture for greater scalability and efficiency as well as to attain disaster recovery goals.

Ventura is an award-winning semi-automated assembly and production company that serves the automotive, office furniture, education seating, and molding and assembly of optical silicone industries globally. Headquartered in Zeeland, Michigan, the company has multiple plants in Zeeland in addition to plants in Budaörs, Hungary, Saltillo, Mexico and Shanghai, China.

As demand for Ventura’s services grew and the company began attracting customers worldwide, it was apparent the dependency on a single ERP system on-premise in Zeeland, Michigan was becoming an impediment to faster growth. “Relying on a single system to manage our global plants was proving to be a huge scale challenge,” said Joel Boyles, IT Team Lead at Ventura Manufacturing. Ventura’s customer base is globally-based and to serve them as responsively and effectively as possible, Ventura made the decision to open new production plants in Hungary and Shanghai, China.

Overcoming the Challenges of Improving Speed and Scale

With eight plants globally running from a single ERP instance on a server in Zeeland, Michigan, the IT team faced the challenges of scaling their systems to support the global growth fueling their company’s expansion. The IT Teams at Ventura prides itself on offering live support to any plant, anywhere in the world that needs help, anytime.

“When we just had the plants in Mexico and Hungary, our existing staff could scale to support the calls coming from plants for help with their IT systems and take care of ERP related tasks,” Joel said. When the Shanghai, China facility went online, Ventura was reaching the limits of scale and speed with their IT teams and the system running on-premise in Zeeland.

As demands increased on the system, so did concerns over Availability and Disaster Recovery Objectives the IT Team had defined. Two metrics that are of specific interest to Ventura’s IT team are the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). IT defined the RTO goal as 8 hours and the RPO as 15 minutes, achievable on a 24/7 basis.

To accomplish these goals, Ventura would need to create an entirely new system platform that could scale more efficiently with their growing business. The new platform would also need to increase the speed of system updates, which had been a problematic area in the past for the single system to complete.

Joel Boyles, IT Team Lead, says the challenges of scalability and disaster recovery are what drove the urgency for Ventura to decide that Hosted Managed Services (HMS) from DELMIAWORKS was the best possible solution. “Plant system updates including MRP were taking at least 2 hours per plant, which translated into our IT teams having 24/7 shifts in our Zeeland-based IT offices,” Joel said. “Clearly we had to redefine our system architecture for greater scalability and speed.”

Ventura chose DELMIAWORKS’ EnterpriseIQ delivered via Hosted Managed Services (HMS) because it was the most economical and fastest option for solving the system performance challenges and attaining the disaster recovery goals the company has. Under the DELMIAWORKS HMS purchase option, software licenses are owned in perpetuity by Ventura and hardware and platform software is provided by the DELMIAWORKS data center. DELMIAWORKS is managing the Ventura systems today in a secure data center environment. Ventura’s IT team can gain access to key system metrics and key performance indicators anytime via any browser-enabled laptop, tablet or smartphone.

“Clearly, we had to redefine our system architecture for greater scalability and speed.”
— Joel BOYLES, IT Team Lead

How Ventura Defined A Global Roadmap To Greater Speed And Reliability with Hosted Managed Services

Like many manufacturers, Ventura initially ran their operations using QuickBooks and Microsoft Excel, then transitioned to a single enterprise system to operate all production plants. That’s often the first phase of many manufacturer’s IT roadmap as the demands to scale to support greater production capacity in multiple locations forces the need for a new system architecture. Ventura’s infrastructure had reached the end of its life.

Supporting the Shanghai, China facility was just one of the new functional requirements, as are the RPO and RTO goals. “The combination of the staffing requirements and time it took to run reports supporting production operations showed our process and systems would have to change for us to keep up with the growth,” Joel said. The next stage in the Ventura IT roadmap was the adoption of Hosted Managed Services.

“By choosing the HMS option we were able to accomplish a lifecycle upgrade to newer, more powerful servers that took corporate-wide MRP runs down from 2 hours to 8 minutes”

In running a consolidated MRP company wide to support all facilities Ventura had to find a 2-hour quiet time to do the MRP run. They had originally done this at night, but once the brought the Shanghai plant online, they no longer had a 2-hour quiet time. With several plants and the need to run MRP daily once at the corporate level, transitioning to the Cloud-based Hosted Managed Services also reduced the time it took to run reports, in some circumstances by 50%” The graphic below shows the locations of Ventura’s plant locations globally.

Lessons Learned

The greater scalability and speed Ventura has today is enabling the company to expand into entirely new areas of business on a global scale. “Our new system enables us to define custom Bills of Materials and schedule production in the plant that is the closest to the customer,” Joel said.

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is also a core aspect of their system requirements. On average, Ventura receives 1,000 EDI transactions a day. A key aspect of the new systems’ scalability is the need to provide greater expansion for EDI transaction support. Joel says that this is already beginning to scale up.

Joel says that Ventura considered several different options and stayed with DELMIAWORKS. “We wanted to know best practices in our area of manufacturing, and the DELMIAWORKS team was supportive and responsive to my requests for assistance as we completed the implementation,” Joel commented. DELMIAWORKS provides a 24-hour hotline during the implementation, an Atlassian instance including planning tools, and a global team available to answer questions at any time.

“It was the DELMIAWORKS expertise on the topic that drove the value. That, and the manufacturing knowledgeable engineers I worked with at DELMIAWORKS”

Products are used in diverse industries including automotive, medical, food packaging, computer, electronic, electrical, appliance and aerospace.

Goals

• Transition from 2D to 3D Solid Modeling
• Provide faster, more complete designs to increase product value
• Handle more complex and unique projects

SOLIDWORKS Progressive Die

Tool and Die Results

• Evaluated and selected SOLIDWORKS over Creo, Solid Edge and AutoDesk Inventor for product value, translation capabilities, ease of use, user interface, functionality and shorter learning curve
• Initially replaced 2D AutoCAD with CADKEY then purchased SOLIDWORKS 3D Design Software
• Purchasing decision resulted in faster, consistent and more complete designs
• Improved fit and functionality of finished components enhanced product quality
• Significantly benefited from SOLIDWORKS’ ability to translate customer files from other CAD software, as well as send native format CAD data to different plant equipment
• Accurately performed geometry translations
• Solid Modeling provided better information to shop floor employees resulting in better machining processes, less scrap and fewer machining errors (reduced to small percentage).  Increased product efficiencies as well as increased product value were other resulting benefits
• Completed more complex and unique projects previously unable to undertake
• Improved customer communication and feedback with use of SOLIDWORKS eDrawings (included in SOLIDWORKS Basic Package)
• Utilized designers time more efficiently by cutting down out-of-office time by approximately 50% (using SOLIDWORKS eDrawings)
• Also implemented 3DQuickPress (SOLIDWORKS fully integrated add-on for Progressive Die Design)
• Reduced initial design layout time by 50% to 75% by utilizing 3DQuickPress and automated Unfold and Strip Layout features.
• Substantially reduced design time and shortened manufacturing and assembly time using 3DQuickPress.
• Decreased design errors to a very small percentage (using 3DQuickPress)
• Generated fast strip development (layouts) during quoting process as well as provided more accurate customer quotes (3DQuickPress)

According to Ivan Zuccolin, manager of corporate die cast tooling at the Centennial division, the company’s move to 3D solid modeling in 2006 created the opportunity to implement a product data management (PDM) system. “We transitioned from a 3D wireframe package to the SOLIDWORKS® 3D CAD system and almost simultaneously evaluated available PDM solutions,” Zuccolin recalls. “We not only needed a revision control application, but also wanted a solution for controlling workflow by automatically moving a design document from one stage to the next.”

Burlington consulted with TriMech, its SOLIDWORKS reseller, on PDM solutions, and implemented SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional software at its Centennial and Burlington divisions in concert with SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD software. Burlington chose SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional because it is easy to use, provides valuable PDM capabilities for the price, integrates fully with SOLIDWORKS, and is simple to install. “We wanted something quick, easy, and fully integrated with SOLIDWORKS, and SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional provided the functionality we needed within our budget,” Zuccolin explains.

“We had SOLIDWORKS up and running in a month and implemented SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional within a week.”

Ensuring the correct revisions for die cast tooling

Since implementing SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional, Burlington no longer experiences any of the design revision, file confusion, and incorrect data problems it encountered using Windows® folders to manage design data. “Before we installed SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional, the largest source of complaints was someone realizing they had the wrong file, design revision, or drawing,” Zuccolin points out. “Our designers had to make a local copy of a file and then save it with a different file name. Some designers had different naming conventions and used their own ‘flavor.’ With many files bouncing back and forth, knowing the correct file revision was a messy process.

“We used to operate on the honor system to maintain revision control, relying on our designers to determine the right revision. With SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional, we can police the system to such an extent that we simply cannot make these kinds of mistakes. There are no disputes over who changed, deleted, or overwrote a file, because the system controls revisions and can completely trace user interactions and revisions.”

Saving time, eliminating errors

SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional helps Burlington save time above and beyond the productivity boost generated by SOLIDWORKS CAD software, while eliminating costly design errors. Instead of searching through a folder system to drill down to a particular piece of design data, users can now use references within SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional to locate files almost instantaneously. Because the system tracks, manages, and secures all design data, Burlington is weeding out errors that once had to be resolved through costly rework.

“In the past, we had to deal with a lot of misaligned bolt holes, which resulted in considerable amounts of rework during production,” Zuccolin says. “Now, our design data is more accurate and reliable. When we do need to make a design change, it’s much faster. We had two designers go head-to-head on the same project: one used SOLIDWORKS and SOLIDWORKS PDM, and the other used our previous 3D wireframe application. When we asked each of them to make a design change, the designer using SOLIDWORKS PDM was able to complete the change in about a third of the time it took the other designer.”

Component from tooling

Boosting productivity with workflow automation

Burlington realizes additional benefits with SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional through the establishment of automated workflows. In addition to securing and managing all of Burlington’s design data, including drawings, models, STEP files, translations, and mold-flow analysis reports, SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional organizes and automates the sequence of process steps, reviews, and approvals required to take a tool design from inception through production.

A customer request for a design change illustrates this workflow automation. “A sales representative receives a customer request for a design change,” Zuccolin explains. “He goes into the vault and requests the change, which initiates a workflow. I then receive an automatically generated email to schedule the work. After making the change, I bump the state to feasible, and the sales representative gets an automatically generated email to quote. The system guides the organization through every step of the process, and generates emails automatically when necessary.”

A tier 1 supplier to the automotive industry, Litens invented the first mass-supplied automatic tensioner/single belt accessory drive 30 years ago and has maintained its market leadership position by continuously developing innovative products that solve vehicle performance and noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) challenges.

Litens Automotive Group Transmission System design

Serving a wide customer base, the company enjoys a majority market share, including all major international original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). According to Dr. Steve Jia, Chief Engineer, CAE Technologies and Materials Engineering, development of Litens products requires the design of sophisticated assemblies with complex contact relationships. “The nature of our products makes modeling and virtual product development very challenging,” Dr. Jia says.

Litens began using the SOLIDWORKS® 3D CAD system in 1998 to facilitate 3D design modeling but needed a robust yet intuitive finite element analysis (FEA) solution for simulating, validating, and optimizing product performance.

“Our work demands an analysis solution that can handle complicated contact analysis easily, quickly, and effectively,” Dr. Jia explains. “Litens products are generally small in physical size but involve assemblies with very complicated contact relationships between components.

“As we design products, we need to be able to run a range of simulation studies—from complicated contact finite element analysis to design optimization, sensitivity, motion analysis, and fatigue studies,” Dr. Jia adds. “We needed an FEA solution that can not only handle all of these types of analyses, but also produce accurate results right away. That solution is SOLIDWORKS Simulation Premium.”

Litens chose SOLIDWORKS Simulation Premium software because it’s intuitive, provides single-window integration inside SOLIDWORKS CAD software, and includes a complete range of analysis capabilities.

“The beauty of SOLIDWORKS Simulation Premium software is that it offers a robust mesher, a fast solver, and the ability to handle very large assembly simulations with very complicated contact situations easily,” Dr. Jia says. “We’ve realized outstanding ROI (return on investment) with SOLIDWORKS Simulation Premium and rely on the software for our daily work.”

Industry’s Best CAD/CAE Integration

Using SOLIDWORKS Simulation Premium software, Litens engineers can conduct very complicated contact analyses—as well as kinematics, dynamics, fatigue, displacement, and thermal simulations—directly within the SOLIDWORKS design environment. This capability enables Litens engineers to quickly apply simulation results as they design, which saves time and allows engineers to optimize designs early in the process.

“Time is the critical factor, and with the fast solver in SOLIDWORKS Simulation Premium software, we can solve a full-assembly contact analysis in a couple of hours. Who else can do that? When you consider the time and prototyping costs that virtual product development using CAE helps us save, it amounts to millions of dollars each year.”

— Dr. Steve Jia, Chief Engineer, CAE Technologies and Materials Engineering

“SOLIDWORKS Simulation Premium provides the best integration of CAD and CAE tools among all the CAE software that we have tested,” Dr. Jia notes. “There’s no need to import or export geometry. Single mouse-click switching between a fully functional CAD environment and a fully functional CAE platform makes the CAD/CAE integration perfectly smooth, truly efficient, and really easy.

“Having access to CAD and simulation tools in a single-window environment is extremely powerful and very cost-effective,” Dr. Jia continues. “For example, we can apply the force vectors generated by SOLIDWORKS Motion rigid-body kinematics analyses as loads directly to our complex contact problems. And because the software is so intuitive and easy to use, we can train new engineers on how to use the tool more rapidly than with any other analysis package.”

Fast solving of complicated contact problems

In addition to saving time due to CAD integration, Litens engineers can solve even the extremely complex contact problems in a matter of hours as opposed to the days such problems can take in other analysis systems. The combination of the software’s fast and robust solver and complete CAD/CAE integration helps Litens speed up its Transmission System Design process.

Litens Automotive Group engineers perform a wide range of part and assembly analyses, including complicated contact, stress, displacement, dynamics, kinematics, fatigue, and thermal analyses.

Reducing expensive transmission system design prototype iterations

By using SOLIDWORKS Simulation Premium software to conduct simulations as an integral part of the design process, Litens has reduced prototyping iterations and associated costs from the development of all of its products. “Our goal is to reduce and minimize the number of physical tests.” Dr. Jia explains. “Physical testing will be used only for design verification, to fulfill customer requests, to validate CAE predictions, and address situations for which CAE is not applicable or available.”

“As a CAE professional, I understand just how truly cost-effective SOLIDWORKS Simulation Premium is. The solution gives us incredible value because it’s very robust and efficient for solving the engineering challenges that we face every day.”

— Dr. Steve Jia, Chief Engineer, CAE Technologies and Materials Engineering