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Adept Engineering Document Management Helps Construction Equipment Manufacturer Guntert & Zimmerman Compete for Big Projects and Enter New Markets
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Managing both complex machinery design and their ECOs
One of G&Z’s unique value-added engineering services is 3D modeling, which helps them ensure fit and accurately conveys concepts to their customers. Adept plays a big role in supporting this effort.
“Adept makes us more productive by managing all of our parts and assemblies,” says Dahlinger. “In many cases, we may have several different overlapping areas of a machine. We need to find and open these files without worrying that other people might be working on the same area. Adept completely eliminates this problem.”
“We also have engineering projects that use existing AutoCAD drawings for details or production and SolidWorks for creating part models,” notes Dahlinger. “We don’t generally create another detailed drawing, but instead have a model of the part in SolidWorks and retain the detail of that drawing in AutoCAD. In Adept, we can find the AutoCAD DWG file and the SolidWorks assembly file since they both have the same part number reference.”
In more recent product development projects, all the company’s new designs are created in SolidWorks and legacy designs and products are in AutoCAD. “Right now we have a hybrid model—meaning that a SolidWorks assembly may have AutoCAD components in it. Adept lets us preserve, manage, and view all the parent/child relationships between our 3D and 2D files,” says Dahlinger. “It also lets us create relationships between PDFs of our detail drawings and our 3D model,” adds Delev.
Besides engineering, there are people in manufacturing who take advantage of the workflow created in Adept. “We went a step further and designed a workflow that tracks our Excel-based engineering change orders,” explains Delev. “Now people can electronically view and mark up drawings, fill out an ECO form, and then assign it to one of the product engineers for review and assignment to a detailer for further action, if necessary.”
PLM, no thank you
In the midst of the recent economic downturn, G&Z is streamlining their processes even further. They wanted to eliminate double entry of data by automating their parts cataloging. They asked the Synergis Software development team to create a program that tied together the part information from SolidWorks with their ERP database.
“We had been doing a similar process with AutoCAD for years, but with SolidWorks, it's a lot more complex to implement,” describes Dahlinger. “The program automatically populates our bills of materials in SolidWorks drawings with data from our ERP system. “It searches the ERP database for the part number and then pushes the metadata from the ERP system through Adept into the SolidWorks model. From there, we create a drawing and a bill of material.”
Dahlinger elaborates, “To close the loop, we export the bill of material information from the SolidWorks assembly into a text file, which we then import into our ERP database to generate the bill of material for that same assembly part number.”
“In our earlier system, we had to transfer data from our ERP system to SolidWorks line by line, which was hugely inefficient,” states Delev. “Now we can transfer data on a full SolidWorks assembly and its components.”
“At one point, we looked at PLM but the overhead and administrative cost to implement and run a system like that was too much for us,” comments Dahlinger. “So instead, we use Adept for our engineering document management and the custom programming to tie our design data to our ERP system. This solution really meets all our needs.”
“Of course, if we didn't have Adept at all, we would probably all give up and go home,” laughs Dahlinger. “I don't understand how people can work in an environment like ours without the systems we use. I'm sure that when compared to a system of spreadsheets and manual data entry, we're probably two or three times faster with Adept.”
Adept makes it possible to work in the office – from home
From day one of using Adept, Dahlinger has been leveraging it to connect with remote users.
“We have an engineer-designer in Texas who has an Adept seat and works from home,” states Dahlinger. “He connects remotely to our database and does everything we do here in the office.
Because of Adept, G&Z is able to build a virtual team of external contractors, which reduces overhead and helps Dahlinger get work done quickly. “For example, Iovtcho might design a part and create the model in SolidWorks,” explains Dahlinger. “He will assign the model to the detailer—wherever they may be—either locally here in the office or out of state or offshore. They do the detailing with our drawing templates, then use Adept to sign the completed drawings in or assign them for approval with our workflow. We couldn’t work this way if we didn’t have Adept.”
Going Electronic All the Way
After three or more years of using Adept, Dahlinger developed a plan to get all the company’s hard copy drawing documents in storage –dating back from the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s— into electronic format and then into Adept. They started out by deleting any hard copy AutoCAD drawings that were already saved electronically. Then they transported all the remaining hand drawn copies to an off-site storage facility. Now, whenever they need an old drawing, they call the storage facility and ask for a scanned version which is available the same day or overnight. Engineering gets a PDF file to review and if it looks good, they sign it into Adept and instruct the storage facility to throw away the hard copy drawing.
“As we get the PDF files, we add the customer name, title block information and job numbers to Adept’s database,” says Dahlinger. “We’re close to having all our archive data easily accessible in Adept.”
Dahlinger concludes, “When you have a product like Adept, you get used to it and don’t always appreciate it. But given our company size, without Adept, it would be difficult, if not impossible to work as productively and efficiently as we do now.”
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