Pushing for total transformation

“The main challenge was that the tools we were using were not integrated,” says Assaad Hani, business analyst, who leads the “Go Lean, Go Digital, Go Global” project. “In other words, every department was working on its own. That means critical data would not always get transferred the right way. Often, we were moving data with spreadsheets, which makes version control difficult.”

For example, if someone on the manufacturing team pulled an older version of a product design by mistake, it would create a great deal of rework. Without a unified way to control design and manufacturing information, coordination across teams was not running at optimal efficiency.

Technica International’s transformation began early in 2020 when the company acquired a wide range of solutions from Autodesk, including the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection. After several months of experience, the company is starting to realize the return on its investment.

“We chose Autodesk because it is a very well-known and trusted brand,” Hani says. “When we looked at the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection, we realized it could connect all of our processes. It covered all our needs and everything was already integrated. We didn’t have to do anything to bring in AutoCAD Electrical, for example, because it was already integrated with Inventor. Everything has been easy to implement and very user-friendly.”

Ultimately, Technica International went with Autodesk over other compelling competitive offerings because of the complete package that they were receiving. “The service and support with Autodesk is great,” Hani says. “We didn’t realize that right away. But if you send a request or a claim ticket, you get a response within 24 hours. We like it very much.”

Another example of the impact of an integrated solution set comes when the electrical engineering team specifies controls, sensors, and electrical panels for the system. Previously, the mechanical and electrical teams worked in separate silos, which made it difficult to keep up with changes. If the electrical team added components to a panel, the mechanical team might not have the right cabling in place to support it. Now both teams are working from the same 3D layout in Inventor.

Integration makes workflow automation much simpler too. Technica International used to optimize equipment layout predominantly with calculations done manually in spreadsheets that were set up with customized formulas. This meant every time the layout changed, the spreadsheet had to be modified accordingly to get new calculations. Now they pull the data into AutoCAD directly from Autodesk Process Analysis 360 automatically.

“Using integrated solutions like the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection allows us to reduce our design time by half,” Hani says. “We’re not repeating work, which is a big time savings. If we have standard projects that use components from the library, we can minimize engineering time as well. On top of that, we’re eliminating the risk of losing time correcting errors because we’re all using accurate data.”

Making collaboration easier extends to Technica International’s customers as well. The company started using Shared Views during the pandemic lockdown, which allowed engineering teams to work from home without any loss of productivity. They quickly realized this tool could solve the familiar challenge of sharing very large design files with customers.

To improve productivity on the shop floor, Technica International is taking advantage of the iLogic tools within Autodesk Inventor to streamline the transition from engineering to manufacturing. In the prior workflow, manufacturing managers had to write out instructions for operators manually, such as how to cut certain profiles of sheet metal or how many bends to incorporate. Now these instructions are extracted automatically from the 3D model using iLogic rules.

“We created a library of all our standard components in Autodesk AutoCAD,” says Eliane Jeitani, Electrical Design Engineer. “It includes all of the specifications as well as links to the panel layouts and the individual 3D components in Inventor. We have all the information about any component at our fingertips and we can extract a large array of reports and bills of materials from it. We are aiming to reach the point where our electrical drawings are created automatically, with the click of a button.”