Energy sector manufacturer deploys PLM solution from Product Sight to improve customer responsiveness
Bellevue, WA — May 26, 2004 — Energy sector manufacturer Rexnord Industries has deployed a product lifecycle management from Product Sight as part of an initiative to cut its design-to-order processing time and improve customer responsiveness.
Headquartered in Milwaukee, Rexnord manufactures mechanical power transmission and conveying components for customers in such sectors as food and beverage processing, mining and quarrying, pulp and paper products, and construction equipment and hydrocarbon processing.
The company is using the Product Sight Lifecycle Environment (PSLE) - SyncroSpec Pipeline module to slash the time needed to release design-to-order (DTO) products in its FlatTop Chain Group from customer specification to manufacturing. With PSLE, Rexnord has been able to implement a fully Web-based build-to-order process across its entire organization, according to Product Sight.
Rexnord uses online documents to capture the options and parameters that define each customer-specific design order. Then a DTO action item drives completion of the necessary design-to-order activities. Automated workflow tracking and escalation policies, enabled by PSLE Pipeline, eliminate much of the time delay spent waiting for a qualified person to start each task.
"Our immediate goal was to radically streamline the process from customer specifications to manufacturing release," said Peter Ensch, Rexnord's director of engineering. "Product Sight helped us beat our initial improvement targets with a rapid deployment and minimal distraction to our core engineering personnel."
Ensch said that the PSLE deployment would give the company improved customer responsiveness and make Rexnord more competitive, helping the company to win more orders while lowering its costs.
Product Sight said that PSLE's data-driven configuration facilitated the process of matching Rexnord's product lifecycle procedures for their design-to-order products. Product Sight deployment service staff hosted the online configuration environment that allowed Rexnord engineering process experts to review and revise system configuration parameters.
Then, after three days of onsite deployment and training, Rexnord's staff ran the new Web-based design-to-order process in parallel with the existing paper process for two weeks. This Rexnord design-to-order process is now entirely Web-based, and hundreds of orders have been released to manufacturing in one day or less.
Chris Plier, lead product designer at Rexnord, said he was pleased with the flexibility of the Product Sight Lifecycle Environment configuration. "We were able to quickly deploy and make configuration changes based on feedback from a process improvement focus group that targeted our design-to-order process," Plier said.
In addition, Plier said that PSLE Pipeline is helping Rexnord's continuous improvement efforts by allowing the company to quickly identify, track and improve critical process steps. "This is allowing us to respond to our customers' needs faster and more accurately," he said.
