UK inkjet technology company streamlines collaborative engineering process, speeds time-to-market
Westford, MA — September 16, 2004 — Xaar, an inkjet solutions provider and printhead manufacturer, said it has selected software from product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions provider MatrixOne to accelerate product development and time-to-market by better managing time and resources among engineers, external suppliers, key development partners and customers.
The MatrixOne PLM environment will initially be rolled-out to Xaar's engineering teams in the United Kingdom and Sweden. The implementation was based on a board-level decision to develop products on a secure, collaborative platform and provide an enhanced service to Xaar's blue-chip customers, including consumer products producer Agfa.
Xaar said it expects to deploy the system within four months and realize a return on investment (ROI) within nine months.
Rob Welford, director of Engineering at Xaar, who championed the adoption of MatrixOne's PLM solution, explained that, given the large volume of design files generated by Xaar's engineers as a result of the company's increasing product portfolio, it became imperative that they have the tools they need to manage information effectively.
"With MatrixOne's PLM process in place, Xaar's engineers, key development partners and worldwide sales engineers can now track and maintain any number of design revisions and reduce the time it takes to communicate changes from one week to a minute, allowing them to focus on design and not design management," he said.
Welford added that the deployment was prompted by the results of a time-recording study undertaken by engineering staff at both Xaar's Cambridge and Sweden offices. "This provided us with a detailed insight into the daily workings of our engineers and identified the opportunities to streamline the amount of time and resources dedicated to each task," he explained.
"PLM has the power to change the way a company works," commented Andy Kofoid, vice president of EMEA for MatrixOne. "With MatrixOne's technology, Xaar can implement the necessary process changes to streamline production and design, yielding results in terms of cost-savings and productivity."
