When a product-driven company wants to continuously improve its processes and cultivate a level of excellence, it can be challenging to maintain a product pipeline that will support these high standards. This was the case for Kyocera Unimerco, a manufacturer of high-quality precision cutting tools. As the company embarked on its digital transformation journey and looked to modernize more of its manufacturing technologies, it noticed that its product data management (PDM) system wasn’t keeping up.

This situation is common in product-driven businesses. Many organizations adopt a centralized PDM system as they begin digitizing operations but later realize their chosen platform can’t keep pace with continued modernization efforts. It’s common to see legacy PDM systems become inflexible and difficult to update over time. As a result, the older technology can’t properly work alongside modernized workflows, and teams find themselves filling in the gaps with lots of manual work. Ultimately, the outdated system leads to operational slowdowns, increases human errors, and becomes a significant roadblock to future growth.

Kyocera experienced the above, so its team searched for a better solution. As the manufacturing company’s journey demonstrates, leveraging a product lifecycle management (PLM) solution that prioritizes flexibility, customizability, compatibility with existing systems, and traceability sets the stage for success — both in the present and future.

The roadblocks of a legacy PDM solution

Over time, Kyocera’s legacy solution became difficult to use alongside its other evolving processes. It posed problems such as:

  • No centralized view of product change histories, making it challenging for teams to collaborate on product quality and improvements
  • Difficulty in updating the solution due to complexity and incompatibility with the rest of the team’s systems
  • No streamlined processes for reviewing product design requirements, forcing teams to manually perform lengthy reviews
  • Human errors introduced throughout the documentation, collaboration, and control processes due to extensive manual efforts throughout the product lifecycle

Because the team’s existing PDM lacked the full context needed to truly centralize and improve the product development lifecycle, the team struggled to uphold meticulous standards in creating each of its products and moving forward with digital transformation initiatives. The team knew that they needed a product lifecycle management (PLM) to complete the picture with a true, end-to-end view of their entire process.

3 ways Kyocera uses Aras Innovator as a springboard to success

Kyocera turned to Aras Innovator® to begin a new PLM journey. The team focused on the following initiatives within the Aras Innovator platform:

Customized configuration

The Kyocera team used Aras Innovator to build a unique instance that worked for its multi-step production process. By turning to a solution with flexibility rather than piecing together out-of-the-box modules, the team unlocked the freedom to make its PLM match its existing processes rather than the opposite.

“The best thing about Aras is the ability to create whatever you can imagine. It is totally configurable. And that is the entire value of the platform. It is easy to configure and build new functionality. If you can imagine it, you can build it.” – Claus Skallerup, IT Director at Kyocera Unimerco

Additionally, the team can seamlessly update its custom Aras Innovator platform, which is designed for easy customization and updating.

Visibility and traceability

The team also leverages Aras Innovator to get a full view of its entire lifecycle and associated product data. Kyocera mainly wanted to improve the visibility of product data for its sales team and created a custom module that could do so. Today, the sales team can access RFPs, customer requirements, and other statistics whenever they need them, improving productivity and sales pipelines.

Change management and version control

Kyocera also uses Aras Innovator to streamline change management throughout the product lifecycle. Because of the complete digital thread displayed in Aras Innovator, team members across departments can access the platform and see updated product data in real time. When a company can see the end-to-end view of the entire product lifecycle, it can better stay in step with compliance requirements, enable cross-team collaboration, and identify areas for growth and further innovation.

A foundation for maximizing product data and powering innovation

With a strong infrastructure of end-to-end product data traceability and flexibility, Kyocera can move confidently into the future. The business plans to enable an advanced digital twin down the road, further improving its product data management and collaboration capabilities.

Read the full case study to learn more about Kyocera’s successes with Aras Innovator.

 

Related:
Aras Innovator Aras PLM change management data product lifecycle management
Category:
Aras Insights Customer Stories Digital Engineering Digital Thread