Customer Story

ROKI Drives Speed and Efficiency with Aras’ Low-Code Platform

“I discovered that about 50 to 60% could be done in-house with Aras Innovator’s low-code platform.”

YOSHIHIKO KURITA, DESIGN CONTROL SECTION INSTRUCTOR, ROKI
roki logo
Headquarters
Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan
Size
5,500 employees
Established
1958
Industry
Automotive and Residential Parts Manufacturing

Before Aras: Challenges

  • Management of multiple CAD systems: ROKI’s CAD systems were not unified, hindering effective management of various data types for each unique client.
  • Design waste due to poor searchability: ROKI’s global product development teams often struggled to locate designs or unique parts and had to duplicate existing designs unnecessarily.
  • High costs of outsourcing CAD administration support: ROKI needed to outsource vendor support to resolve most of its internal users’ functional improvement requests.

After Aras: Outcomes

  • Centralized CAD management: Improved information sharing across different CAD projects and streamlined global product development.
  • Improved design, product, and model searchability: Faster and easier access to part or design information increased production speed and efficiency while minimizing design waste.
  • Increased CAD self-administration capacity: Increased production efficiency and reduced outsourcing costs from higher in-house fulfillment of users’ functional improvement requests.

Explore This Story

    ROKI uses Aras’ low-code platform to bring CAD in-house, resolving administration challenges and accelerating team performance.

    Founded in 1958 as Toyo Roki Mfg. Co., Ltd. and renamed ROKI Co., Ltd. in 2008, ROKI is a leading manufacturer of state-of-the-art filtration products. Since its inception, ROKI has prioritized the development of high-quality filtration products, including automotive parts like air cleaners, intake manifolds, power steering fluid filters, carbon canisters, automatic transmission fluid strainers, engine oil filters, fuel filters, and residential air and water purifiers.

    With product development teams distributed globally across Japan, India, Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, and the US, ROKI needed a product lifecycle management (PLM) strategy to support the people, processes, and technology at these sites and maintain the highest product quality.

    Pain Points

    ROKI manages unique design data for the products it supplies to each of its large auto and residential customers. However, these different CAD systems were not unified, making it extremely difficult to use previous assets to streamline new developments, even when the final products were similar.

    It was also challenging for ROKI’s global product development teams to manage design versions prepared for its customers. The CAD files needed to be converted to standard, easily shareable formats—but these conversions often compromised the original historical data. Specific departments (such as production) could not access CAD systems and only received information after it was printed and distributed to them. As a result, it was difficult to ensure version consistency over time. Additionally, the poor searchability of the CAD database meant teams at global production sites often couldn’t find the specific information they needed, leading to slow-downs.

    Teams at the global production sites also faced difficulties finding the specific information they needed at different project phases (like part or model numbers), which impacted their workload and overall efficiency. If certain parts could not be located, product development needed to redesign them as replacements for the untraceable ones, resulting in design waste.

    When ROKI decided to transition CAD administration management to be done internally instead of being done by an external vendor, it only had three months to do so. It was nearly impossible because the CAD administration proficiency level required for that task in C or JavaScript takes hundreds of learning hours. Internal users were already growing frustrated with the wait times for their unresolved support issues.

    “My programming experience was only at the level of high school or college classes, and I had no work experience in programming. Excel was about the only IT tool I could use, and I was worried that [the transition] was beyond my capability.”

    YOSHIHIKO KURITA, DESIGN CONTROL SECTION INSTRUCTOR, ROKI

    ROKI’s PLM Requirements

    When ROKI began the search for a PLM platform, the team was looking for one that could:

    • Centrally manage unique CAD data from multiple systems
    • Streamline development operations for the company’s product lineup
    • Offer a scalable subscription model that minimizes the initial investment
    • Facilitate the transfer of CAD and PLM administration from an external vendor to in-house teams within only three months

    ROKI was also keen to adopt a low-code PLM platform that offered quick training to ensure teams would be up to speed on CAD administration within months, minimizing user frustration from lengthy wait times.

    Aras Innovator was the standout solution in ROKI’s comparison of multiple PLM platforms that could manage data from various CAD systems. Its subscription model was the most favorable, and it could minimize the learning curve required to administer CAD in-house effectively.

    ROKI’s Successes with Aras Innovator

    Aras Innovator provided the low-code, flexible PLM platform ROKI needed to connect its cross-functional product development teams, innovate faster, and satisfy customers’ needs.

    Aras Innovator’s PLM platform made it easy for ROKI’s global product development teams to centralize their CAD data and effectively share design information for different projects, streamlining version management across multiple CAD systems. The departments that previously didn’t operate with CAD systems could then access information on demand without painstaking format conversions.

    Aras’ low-code platform also enabled agile development of fit-for-purpose functions tailored to internal users’ needs, helping internal operations and development teams collaborate more productively. Both teams could now align on the vision behind the functions they developed and how best to meet those workflow requirements with an understanding of user-specific needs.

    “Aras Innovator, which enables function development with low code, can implement many user requirements with a small amount of code. The low-code development method could be learned in just the free initial training.”

    YOSHIHIKO KURITA, DESIGN CONTROL SECTION INSTRUCTOR, ROKI

    ROKI has since used Aras Innovator to digitize the approval of design drawings and eliminate the need to approve them via paper-based documents, improving design traceability. Previously, only the individuals directly involved in the approval could track authorization progress, making it difficult to identify bottlenecks. Now, teams can visualize progress status in Aras Innovator, regardless of location or department.

    Results

    Aras Innovator enabled ROKI to centralize the management of diverse CAD data for each of its unique global customers, minimizing redundancies while standardizing their workflows. The improved product searchability features in Aras’ PLM platform have improved workload efficiency for global product development teams, allowing faster information sharing and avoiding unnecessary design duplication.

    ROKI previously needed to outsource CAD administration support to resolve internal users’ functional improvement requests. Today, it can self-administer 50 to 60% of them using Aras’ low-code platform, often within hours. Aras Innovator also helped ROKI evaluate its capacity to complete development tasks internally or outsource them based on their complexity and the demand of the tasks at hand. As such, ROKI has expanded the scope of in-house production and improved convenience and productivity.

    “When it is difficult to envision specific requests for a functional improvement, we first try to create a rough draft with low code and then align each other’s vision. This enables us to not only develop functions that meet the requirements but also to pick up needs users were not aware of.”

    YOSHIHIKO KURITA, DESIGN CONTROL SECTION INSTRUCTOR, ROKI

    In the future, ROKI plans to migrate its existing internal systems to Aras Innovator and leverage the platform’s flexibility to systemize the management of material characteristics currently in Excel spreadsheets. Doing so will help ROKI remain competitive in the global marketplace and continuously provide high-quality products to its customers.

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