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PLM That Connects People, Processes and Data: How Autodesk and Cadline helped Brigade Electronics Achieve Project Efficiency

PLM That Connects People, Processes and Data: How Autodesk and Cadline helped Brigade Electronics Achieve Project Efficiency

Customer challenge

Many of the company’s projects start with a new idea – the need, for example, for a sensor system capable of predicting future collisions and enabling the user to take action to avoid them. To make this process as efficient as possible, Brigade Electronics is focused on streamlining operational procedures and working practices. It identified the need to both enhance visibility over live projects and to restructure its new product introduction (NPI) process. At the same time, it wanted to move away from siloed, linear ways of working to reduce project delays, improve supply chain collaboration and more accurately meet customer delivery dates. In doing all this, Brigade Electronics was also looking to reduce manual working and eliminate tasks that did not contribute to core business goals.

Project goals

To help it address these challenges, standardise critical business processes and tailor workflows to its needs, Brigade Electronics decided to implement Autodesk Fusion Lifecyle, now Autodesk Fusion 360 Manage, a product lifecycle management (PLM) platform that connects people, processes and data across departments and geographies. Autodesk sold the product and took the lead on the implementation, before handing the account over to its platinum partner, Cadline, because of the Solution Provider's skillset and capability in PLM solutions delivery. Ryan Bates, PLM Systems Developer and Technical Administrator, said: “We were recommended Cadline by Autodesk and were immediately impressed with their service, support and knowledge of the Autodesk software. It was therefore an intuitive choice to work with them on this project.”

Solution

Cadline focused on using Autodesk Fusion 360 Manage to digitise processes ranging from item and bills of materials management to change management, and from documentation management to snagging and problem reporting. It concentrated on restructuring the whole NPI process to give Brigade Electronics enhanced visibility and control, enabling the company’s leadership teams to ensure any issues were identified and resolved quickly, project milestones were met and costs minimised. Cadline has has gone further by developing a bespoke approach that supports data sharing across the organisation and beyond. As Cadline’s commercial director, Scott Woolven, explains: “We have written a piece of bespoke code which sits around the system, so when a project is released, it gathers the right files for the right people and puts them into the right locations. And then all those people are notified so everyone has access to the correct version of the data at the right time.”

Business outcome

The work done by Cadline has reduced engineering hours spent on projects, freeing up engineers to add value in other parts of the business and enabling it to achieve a rapid return on its investment. The new approach has largely eliminated manual keying and manual entry into other systems and, partly as result of this, errors and delays in project delivery to customers. It can also share data with its engineering team which the design software solution, Autodesk AutoCAD LT ® for engineering drawings. According to Ryan Bates: “We are impressed with how customisable Fusion 360 Manage is. With other comparable systems, if you want something customised, it is either not possible or you have to book a day of integration with an engineer. With Fusion 360 Manage, you have the capability to do workflows but if you want to add scripting or emails you can do that too. That flexibility is a key benefit to us in much of the work we do today”.

Conclusion

The company now has solid and reliable product, project and business information, which is held within the system but can be made available to those stakeholders who need it when they need it. Brigade Electronics is happy with the success it has achieved in using Fusion 360 Manage to streamline operational processes. It currently has more than 50 users of the software across multiple departments. The company expects adoption levels to ramp up still further over the coming months and years as more and more stakeholders see the benefits. Today, Brigade Electronics has several new projects in progress, including one aimed at improving meeting management which involves migrating data about supplier meetings and from supplier issues logs into the Autodesk system. Over time, Brigade Electronics is confident about extending the approach across its whole project ecosystem.

Project summary

    Duration & delivery

  • 25
  • 2020-09-01

    Autodesk solutions

  • Fusion 360 Manage
  • Fusion Lifecycle

    Services provided

  • Custom Application Development
  • Collaboration & Productivity
  • Workflow Documentation
  • System Architecture
  • System & Software Maintenance
  • Business Process Assessment & Documentation
  • System Integration
  • System Implementation
  • Configuration & Deployment
  • Technical Support
  • Product Activation & Onboarding
  • Product Training

    Customer industry

  • Design
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