CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
May 2007
Implementation Investments
Fouress Engineering Implements WRENCH CPD
Fouress Engineering India Ltd. is the flagship company of the FOURESS GROUP of companies and commenced operations in 1962 with the manufacture of carbon steel industrial valves at Thane. Growing markets, shifts in production and the demand for a vast range of products and the latest technology has further led to the setting up of 8 other plants within India namely at Bangalore, Aurangabad, Chennai and Baroda.
A recent internal study at Fouress showed that 90% of products designed over the last year 3 years could have been built much faster from existing products (assuming that existing product information was available easily).
Need for data reusability and knowledge management
Fouress decided to implement a drawing and document archival system which would store all their existing drawings/documents in a centralized location. However, when WRENCH CPD demonstrated a much more advanced product configuration functionality which went beyond mere data storage, they realized that not only could they drastically reduce cycle time but also greatly improve productivity, monitor work online, and ensure 100% quality across all groups.
Knowledge management: Challenges and Expectations
To get the most out of their software investment, Fouress first conducted a poll across each group to identify specific challenges and user expectations. The response showed bottlenecks like:
Poor visibility to status of orders under design and manufacturing
Poor visibility to status of Advance Procurement
Preparing documents for ISO audit
Inter Office Communications
Clarifications requested causes delay
Design and production groups were concerned about issues like:
Re-usability of existing designs
Standardisation in Parts
Inter office communication
Inter Office Communications
Percolation of Order Status to concerned depts
Inter Office Communications
Affectivity of document revisions on WIP/Pipeline orders
Preparing documents for ISO audit
The following user expectations emerged when evaluating various document/data management packages on the market today:
Design department should acknowledge all enquiries received automatically
Process of DE preparation should be faster
Marketing department able to search available standard designs and old proposals without depending on Design Department.
Status of orders under processing should be visible online
Enhanced document management, as per ISO
Standardisation of Parts - Sector wise and Application wise
Able to retrieve parts/Documents based on attributes defined on each types
Reduce time for custom designing, by allowing to re-use old designs and BOMs
Archival for proposal design estimates
Inter office communications and collaborative use of documents by different departments
Why WRENCH CPD?
Given the depth and complexity of the requirements, Fouress began looking at solutions in the market that offered varying degrees of document management and data archiving, but were unable to find a perfect match until they were approached by WRENCH.
Fouress senior management, including Mrs.Smitha Shetty (MD) and Mr.Manjumdar (JMD), evaluated WRENCH-CPD in detail by sending a team to visit WRENCH reference site at TIDC (Murugappa group). The team was able to see firsthand how WRENCH-CPD works in real-life conditions, and how it integrates with Oracle-Ebusiness.
Benefits
WRENCH-CPD is now being used as a front end to Oracle-Ebusiness for creation of parts, BOM and for handling the change management process with integration to the 2D\3D CAD software. This prevents any possibility of human error during exchange of information between Engineering departments and commercial department. Fouress's engineers can now look through existing product data and its variants before creating a new product, which has greatly reduced engineering cycle time and work effort.
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