Customer Story

How Dräger Migrated to an Open, Integrated, and Cloud-Based PLM Platform

Customer Story – Dräger
Size
16,000+ employees
Industry
Medical

Challenge

  • Medical and safety divisions were using different instances of Oracle’s Agile e6
  • High customization with Agile e6 made the system fragile and costly to update

Solution

  • Migrate to a single product lifecycle management (PLM) platform for both divisions with Aras Innovator
  • Migrate to the cloud for better data management, scalability, and security on its digital transformation journey

Improvements

  • Decreased IT costs since Dräger no longer maintains its infrastructure and no longer has to operate two systems
  • Digitized document-heavy processes for faster, more transparent processes
  • High customization capabilities without added costs since Dräger’s Aras subscription includes upgrades

Explore This Story

    Since the mid-1990s, Dräger’s medical and safety divisions have used Oracle’s Agile e6 for product data management—but in two separate instances. On its digital transformation journey, Dräger migrated its operations to Aras Innovator (and the cloud) to ensure robust security, better scalability, higher performance, and IT cost savings.

    “We’re taking a huge step forward in authoring systems, with end users’ workplaces running in the cloud… When the mechanical designer launches his CAD system, he connects to the cloud server via Citrix. The presentation of only the CAD data is streamed, which has enormous advantages in terms of the amount of data to be transferred and also in terms of data security and know-how protection. It also eliminates the need for data replication.“

    Dr. Hanns Schulz-Mirbach, Head of Competence Center Product Lifecycle Management (IT) at Dräger

    Pain Points

    Drägerwerk AG & Co. KGaA was founded in Lübeck, Germany, in 1889 and operates globally today. Dräger manufactures medical and safety products such as anesthesia workstations and ventilators for hospitals, respiratory protection, and gas meters for fire and mine rescue.

    Since the mid-1990s, Dräger’s medical and safety divisions had been using Oracle’s Agile e6 for product data management — but as two separate instances with different connections and authoring systems. For example, the mechanical design engineers in the medical technology division predominantly worked with the CAD system SolidWorks, while their colleagues in safety technology used PTC Creo. In addition, both divisions used AutoCAD, Mentor Allegro, E-Plan ECAD systems, and various software development tools. This led to a lot of unnecessary complexity.

    While this model worked for a time, Dräger increasingly found that Oracle couldn’t meet its technical requirements. For example, Dräger provided infrastructure, resulting in significant costs and problems connecting foreign locations and data replication. Plus, after years of customization, Dräger’s Oracle e6 system had become so inflexible that updates were expensive and time-consuming.

    Dräger knew it needed a new solution to achieve better security, more effortless scalability, higher performance, and savings in IT costs.

    PLM Requirements

    Dräger decided to source a single PLM platform for both divisions. For Dräger, scalability and customization were vital. It needed a PLM platform that could easily integrate with other applications and configure to customer-specific processes without requiring pricey updates.
    Dräger also decided to move to the cloud for better control of data storage. This was imperative for Dräger because the company manufactures safety-related products for the military sector, where the product data must not leave the respective country.

    • A unified PLM platform that meets both medical and safety division needs
    • Multi-CAx capability
    • Customizable, without additional cost or long lead times
    • Control of data storage to accommodate country-specific regulations

    Successes with Aras Innovator

    Dräger chose Aras to support its evolving technology requirements during the digital transformation journey, partly due to Aras Innovator’s ability to integrate with other applications and ease of upgrades. Aras upgrades are included in the cost of Dräger’s subscription and are guaranteed regardless of the amount of customization.

    Dräger conducted its migration journey to Aras and the cloud in phases. First, Dräger provided existing functionality from its Oracle Agile e6 platform.

    The company then worked with Aras to generate Electronic Design History Files (EDHF), which are critical for the approval of medical technology products. Previously, it was a paper-based documentation process, but this workflow can now be executed and stored in an audit-proof record in Aras Innovator.

    The EDHF process went live after just six months, and users quickly created records for all new projects in Aras Innovator. This is much faster and gives the project managers a better overview of the projects’ statuses and any missing deliverables. Dräger will also scan and migrate paper archives to the platform to ensure all documents are available electronically.

    Results: A Unified System for Medical and Safety Divisions

    Since switching to Aras, Dräger has seen IT costs decrease significantly because the company no longer has to maintain its infrastructure and operate two systems. Having all development-related data in one system also makes it easier to synchronize the data used in medical and safety technology, which previously had been costly.

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