Customer Story

Kubota Improves Global Team Collaboration Using Aras

Using Aras, Kubota resolved inefficiencies in its documentation processes and improved interdepartmental collaboration across the manufacturing lifecycle.

Kubota
Size
52,000+ employees
Industry
Industrial and Consumer Machinery Manufacturing

Challenges

  • Gaps in institutional knowledge transfer: Kubota needed to establish processes to transfer institutional knowledge from its most experienced engineers, who were approaching retirement, to less experienced ones, who were being onboarded.
  • Poor document searchability: Non-standardized processes for paper and electronic documentation made it time-consuming for team members outside the design department to search design documents for specific information.
  • Siloed data management: Kubota’s design teams developed individualized problem-solving methodologies and did not share progress on design projects widely, making workload management difficult.

Outcomes

  • Increased information visibility: Regardless of their global location, internal users can access design data on demand via features like product data management (PDM), which supports the documentation of institutional knowledge.
  • Improved document searchability: Centralized management of digitally standardized documents, simplified keyword and full-text searches, decreasing the time spent conducting them.
  • Effective workload management: Standardized electronic documentation made it easier for design teams to collaborate on projects, allowing managers to track progress and allocate resources based on team members’ workloads.

Explore This Story

    “When researching the cases of other companies in order to select a PLM system, I learned through the case of Kawasaki Heavy Industries that they use Aras Innovator to flexibly customize and support their operations. It was hard to find a package that fits our business perfectly, but the ability to customize was an important selection criterion and was the number one reason we finally decided to deploy Aras Innovator.”

    – KATSUYOSHI MIYACHI, DIRECTOR OF DPI PROMOTION OFFICE OF THE MECHANICAL RESEARCH OPERATIONS DEPARTMENT

    Founded in 1890 in Osaka, Japan, Kubota Corporation manufactures machinery and other products for industrial and consumer use. Kubota’s leadership believes food, water, and the environment are interdependent contributors to human well-being. However, these three segments face challenges due to global transformation. Kubota aims to develop innovative, superior products that help stabilize food production, improve reliable water supply, and protect the environment.

    The company’s product lineup includes heavy-duty equipment (such as tractors, utility vehicles, and pumps) and the materials that power this equipment (such as cracking coils and reformer tubes). Although Kubota had built extensive internal engineering expertise to propel its growth globally, it needed a reliable, centralized data management system to streamline global expansion, meet customers’ diverse but unique needs, and quickly bring various product lines to market.

    Kubota saw an opportunity to implement a product lifecycle management (PLM) solution and increase technical data visibility across global engineering teams, improve CAD design traceability, and enable teams at various stages of the manufacturing lifecycle to collaborate better on complex projects.

    Pain Points

    Kubota was poised for a phase of rapid global growth. The company had expanded its foundry operations to meet diverse customer demands, expanded its product variations, and opened multiple overseas facilities. Ensuring every piece of the business was accelerating rather than hindering Kubota’s growth was critical to success, and the company’s manufacturing and product lifecycle management processes were quickly identified as areas for improvement.

    First and foremost, internal knowledge transfer was slowing down the business without an established process in place. The team needed a way to transfer vital institutional knowledge from its most experienced engineers (many of whom were nearing retirement) to recently onboarded employees with less experience. This was especially critical for the company’s future growth since the younger engineers would, in short order, be tasked with taking up the mantle of driving growth from their more senior counterparts.

    Compounding this challenge was the design department’s lack of standardized data management practices. The company used mostly paper-based processes to document technical information, making it burdensome for other team members to find specific information without painstakingly searching individual binders. When electronic versions were available, searching for information was still time-consuming (typically requiring hours) because the searches could only be conducted by a document’s filename, not its contents.

    A lack of standardized data management meant data-handling was often centered around individuals versus the team or company as a whole. Individuals developed independent problem-solving methodologies and did not share progress on design work with the broader team, creating difficulties for team leads in effectively managing workloads. While these concerns could be resolved by centralizing data management, it would be unrealistic to do so via a top-down implementation—especially where Kubota’s complex, diverse agricultural machinery design data was involved.

    Kubota needed a PLM solution that was flexible enough to allow customizable, low-starting-cost, centralized data management. The solution could be implemented gradually while gathering feedback from external IT consultants to determine whether it succeeded.

    Kubota’s PLM Requirements

    Kubota needed a PLM solution that provided:

    • Better, on-demand visualization of technical data across engineering teams
    • Transfer of institutional knowledge and expertise between teams and facilities
    • Standardized processes for documenting technical information
    • Electronic, paperless documentation to improve product traceability
    • Collaborative information-sharing processes between technical teams

    With this type of PLM solution in place, Kubota’s business units could customize data management to their unique needs while managing their time and resources more efficiently—ultimately supporting, rather than hindering, the company’s rapid global expansion.

    “We are aiming to create a system that can be shared and utilized throughout the company rather than personalizing the management of information related to design and development.”

    – KATSUYOSHI MIYACHI, DIRECTOR OF DPI PROMOTION OFFICE OF THE MECHANICAL RESEARCH OPERATIONS DEPARTMENT

    Kubota’s Successes with Aras Innovator

    While searching for flexible PLM solutions, Kubota learned that Kawasaki Heavy Industries, another Japanese mobility, energy, and industrial equipment manufacturer, used Aras Innovator to customize its operations flexibly. Kubota had faced difficulties finding a PLM package that was well-suited to their unique business needs. Aras’ platform provided the customization capabilities they needed to manage documentation and project operations across domestic and overseas sites.

    For instance, Aras Innovator helped Kubota meet a wide range of requirements by customizing document attributes, project and document association, overseas information transfer approvals, and search dialogs. By increasing interdepartmental visibility into changes to such project-critical information, Kubota’s global teams could share information more effectively.

    Kubota started its Aras Innovator implementation by centrally managing data prepared by the technical design department for delivery to customers as drawings. Aras enabled the creation of a digitally standardized format that could be applied to all documents to improve content searchability via keywords and full-text searches.

    Results

    Since its implementation at Kubota, Aras Innovator has been used by roughly 1,000 designers across the company’s mechanical design disciplines in facilities in Japan, Thailand, Europe, and the US. Alongside PLM, Kubota also introduced product data management (PDM) to manage 3D CAD designs, which are precursors for drawing deliverables. In the future, Kubota plans to link its 3D design management to Aras Innovator.

    Kubota invested considerable time and resources in determining which digital standardization rules (such as folder structure or naming conventions) would best apply to its operations and support centralized data management, and the investment paid off. Team members spent less time on document searches and their managers better supervised their teams’ workload distribution.

    With the help of Aras Innovator, Kubota is also reconstructing its Engineering Bill of Materials (EBOM) in-house to enable better collaboration between procurement, manufacturing, marketing, and other operational teams and the design department. Peripheral departments like business promotion that weren’t previously connected to the PLM can now access information much quicker to complete tasks. Kubota plans to use Aras Innovator to expand its paperless initiative throughout the engineering division, helping these teams improve their documentation processes to innovate successfully.

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