|
|
The
Challenge
Sub-Zero Freezer Company, Inc. and Wolf Appliance Company,
Inc., an affiliated Wisconsin-based manufacturer of kitchen
appliances, were posed with a common documentation control
issue that often plagues manufacturing companies.
How can we get the right info to the right people at the right
time, and in the most efficient manner?
Getting part prints to their employees, whether they work
in Engineering, Purchasing, Sales or on the shop floor, had
become a real challenge at Sub-Zero.
“Whenever I ask the group, ‘Who needs prints?’
Everybody’s hands shoot up because they don’t
want to take the time to run the prints themselves, or they
have other particular needs. For example, Procurement requires
relatively small file formats that they can email to people,”
explained Design Documentation Supervisor (Wolf Appliance)
Mike McKinney.
McKinney estimated that he was pushing out about seven copies
of each print just one year ago. Engineering Systems Manager
(Sub-Zero and Wolf Appliance), Jason Lindgren, added that
their employees – both locally and at remote facilities
– were experiencing difficulty accessing needed prints
with the system they currently had in place.
“For example,” said Lindgren, “People in
the Operations Group just need to reference prints, maybe
print them off, and take them over to the machines they’re
working on to build the parts.”
McKinney and Lindgren focused their efforts on finding a remedy
for this bottleneck in their process.
The
Solution
InFlow Technology, Sub-Zero’s SmarTeam sales and support
partner, recommend that McKinney and Lindgren consider supplementing
their SmarTeam PLM system with Connexus, a data publishing
tool.
“PLM / PDM systems are focused on managing and tracking
product data.” Said Rod Levin, President of InFlow Technology.
“To get the most out of this data it must be easily
accessible to everyone in the organization who needs it.”
McKinney said he noticed an immediate improvement from his
perspective.
“Every time I release an ECO from design, I simply group
all of the drawings together by ECO number, pick them all
at once, hit one button and it publishes it out to the Connexus
server. Now anybody in the company can go in and open up a
PDF file format very rapidly.”
Lindgren touted InFlow as a trusted technology advisor and
true business partner for having recommended the SmarTeam-with-Connexus
solution. He said that using Connexus has helped them better
control the various situations that involve their part prints.
“Maybe it’s a purchase part, or maybe the supply
chain needs to review it and send it out for quotes. Perhaps
it’s a fab part and somebody in manufacturing-engineering
needs to review the print to determine if there will be any
issues with programming machines on the floor to punch out
these parts,” Lindgren explained. “Connexus has
proven to be a very good, user-friendly tool to help control
these issues.”
Summary
& Metrics
- 40% improvement with accessing prints
quickly and easily, both locally and at remote sites
- The elimination of prints being pushed
out, from 7 prints to 0
- ECO administrative release time (filing,
folding, preparing paper archives) and average of four hours
a week, eliminated
- Well-received acceptance company-wide
of the neutral, PDF file format used
|
