PLM throughout: Lean engineering environment spurs innovative high-tech machinery
By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 10/3/2007 9:32:00 AM
Optima Group says it will use CoCreate OneSpace Model Manager on a worldwide basis, coupled with its SAP enterprise system for an integrated product life-cycle management (PLM) environment.
The Optima Group makes sophisticated packaging equipment for pharmaceutical, consumer, and nonwoven goods; and engages more than 1,000 employees in Germany, the U.S., Japan, Mexico, Italy, Brazil, France, Korea, and the U.K.
To further innovate its portfolio of high-tech machinery, Optima Group relies on expert engineers and 250 seats of CoCreate OneSpace Modeling.
Optima originally chose OneSpace Modeling over a traditional history-based 3D CAD system because OneSpace Modeling can handle large components assemblies made up of 50,000 parts or more—typical for an Optima project. CoCreate's Dynamic Modeling based approach to product design also offers the flexibility Optima requires to meet short time-to-market needs.
"Our customers often request changes very late in the design process," says Jochen Schaile, CAD Manager at Optima. "With the Dynamic Modeling based approach, any designer can pick up any project and go straight to work making those changes. You don't have to know anything about how a design started out to take it any direction you need to go. With OneSpace Modeling, our engineers are free to look forward without bogging down in the history of a design, or being bound by designs that don't fit the bill."
Optima is capping off its PLM environment with OneSpace Model Manager, CoCreate's data management product. With engineers working around the clock and around the world, the company needs to know that anyone can easily find, load, work on, and store large files without fear of overwriting or using outdated material. With OneSpace Model Manager, product development is centrally managed and information flows effortlessly throughout the company.
The Optima design environment exemplifies CoCreate's third-generation approach to PLM. It leverages existing IT investments and integrates product development with both upstream and downstream systems to create a lean business process and optimal enterprise management.
"Our product development environment must be integrated within our organization," says Schaile. "We won't sacrifice time or effort on incompatible systems. Rather, we let the seamless integration between product development and manufacturing systems work for us to automate exchanges in the PLM process."
