CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
15 March 2006
Implementation Investments
ELCAN Optical Has Clear Vision for PLM with SofTech ProductCenter
SofTech, Inc. announced that its ProductCenterT PLM (product lifecycle management) solution is successfully in use at ELCAN Optical Technologies® to support the company's development and production of leading precision optical and electronic solutions for the defense, medical, industrial, commercial and entertainment markets. ProductCenter replaced a legacy product data management solution and was in production at ELCAN in just eight weeks.
During an Executive Leadership Workshop, ELCAN's rapid growth was identified as a 'burning platform'; one that could burn out of control if not managed properly. Growth was obviously a good problem to have but ELCAN had the forethought to know it needed to manage it correctly without adding staff. Dedicated to continuous improvement and using techniques from the Raytheon Six SigmaT approach, ELCAN followed a six step process to guide it through an assessment of its current business processes and to put into operation improvements that would support its growth.
One of the first areas targeted was the Configuration Management Office (CMO). Resources were assembled to document existing CM processes in detail. "We 'stapled' ourselves to every CM process, identifying duplicate or undue efforts, how each piece of paper was handled, signed off, and moved throughout the organization," explains Gunter Schmidt, ELCAN Manager of Product Quality. "It was a very revealing undertaking."
"Once we had our hands around the problem and new processes defined, we benchmarked PDM/PLM solutions to help us automate new, leaner workflows, with the ultimate goal to reduce release cycles and costs by 50%," adds Schmidt. After a rigorous review, ELCAN narrowed the companies down, eventually selecting SofTech, Inc. as its PLM solution provider. Three things stood out that gave ELCAN confidence about SofTech and its ProductCenter PLM solution.
First, SofTech offered a wide spectrum of direct ProductCenter integrations to popular CAD solutions, including AutoCAD, as well as Autodesk Inventor, Mechanical Desktop, Pro/Engineer, SolidWorks, and others. This made it especially useful for mixed-CAD environments, whether inherent within a company or for collaborating with customers, suppliers, or partners like ELCAN.
The second factor was ProductCenter's low cost of ownership. "ProductCenter was cost competitive, with a flexible licensing model, and required minimal admin support," adds Schmidt. "ProductCenter's flexible data modeling and workflow also let us mold ProductCenter to our business, without compromise, so we didn't need a lot of programmers and expense to make this happen. It also supported more stringent data access and security controls in compliance with International Trade and Arms Regulations (ITAR), critical to us as a military supplier."
The third factor influencing ELCAN's selection was SofTech's personnel; their knowledge and dedication. SofTech stood out with a solid history of customer success and extremely quick implementations. "SofTech personnel worked very closely with us during a pilot of ProductCenter to prove it in our environment beforehand, minimizing our risk," Schmidt relays.
This is an abbreviated case study on ELCAN's use of ProductCenter. For the complete case study visit the SofTech Web site at http://www.softech.com .
About ELCAN Optical Technologies
ELCAN Optical Technologies is a fully integrated provider of precision optical and electronic solutions for industrial, medical, defense and commercial customers.
With a legacy spanning 150 years in the design and fabrication of fine optics ELCAN's founding companies include Ernst Leitz (Germany) and Texas Instruments (U.S.A). ELCAN today is part of The Raytheon company with 1100 employees and 450, 000 square feet of manufacturing operations in Midland, Ontario, Richardson, Texas and Malaga, Spain.
In addition to its role as a manufacturer and supplier of quality opto-electronic products, ELCAN provides design and engineering services to assist customers in co-engineering performance solutions, manufacturing efficiencies and superior design approaches to applied optics.
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