How Rocket TruFusion Enterprises Windchill And Teamcenter Plugins Are Driving Productivity In Manufacturing
July 20, 2022
Global manufacturing companies operating within expansive ecosystems (e.g., automotive, aerospace, defense or hi-tech) are vulnerable to slowed flows of raw materials and finished goods, which can substantially disrupt manufacturing workflows and multi-tier collaboration. Supply chain collaboration starts early in the product development lifecycle before manufacturing even begins. New Product Development (NPD) of complex products, from ideation through detailed design and manufacturing, requires the participation of multiple internal and external stakeholders, including supply chain partners – all essential to producing on-time product launches.
Prolonged staff shortages due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Product Design Data Exchange (PDX) mandates for suppliers that work with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) can further exacerbate manufacturing supply chain operations. These obstacles have magnified the inefficiencies of manual PDX methodologies:
- labor-intensive
- time-consuming
- vulnerable to mistakes
- expensive
In turn, this has led product designers, engineers and purchasing leaders to explore automated solutions.
Rocket TRUfusion Enterprise: Driving Manufacturing Productivity via Automation
To meet deadlines and comply with mandates, suppliers must improve PDX efficiency while simultaneously reducing employee workloads and business risks. The answer is found by leveraging innovative software that tightly integrates with Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and CAD, AND automates manual tasks to save time and eliminate errors.
Using Rocket® TRUfusion Enterprise in conjunction with leading PLM and CAD systems—such as Windchill, Teamcenter, CATIA, Creo and NX—suppliers create an integrated end-to-end automated PDX operation within their PLM system. TRUfusion Enterprise automates PDX processes, with CAD and related documents as the input, and orchestrates all the steps necessary to meet specific OEM mandates. This automation allows employees to work on more value-driven tasks without worrying about compliance failures, interoperability issues or subsequent corrective actions. PLM data extraction/importation, file checking, file renaming, translation, compression and encryption, set up on a partner-by-partner basis, is handled automatically by TRUfusion Enterprise.
Case Study: Magna Roof Systems, A Leading Automotive Tier-1 Supplier
Magna Roof Systems, a leading automotive tier-1 supplier with 1,150 employees across four countries, uses Siemens Teamcenter PLM to manage its product design data and operational workflows.
In 2020, Magna, one of the first customers to use Rocket TRUfusion Enterprise to facilitate PDX process automation, approached Rocket to review the TRUfusion Enterprise and Teamcenter integrated solution. They quickly realized the benefits of integrating the two systems. The trust, familiarity and positive experiences fostered during the initial TRUfusion Enterprise deployment made Magna’s decision to implement the TRUfusion Enterprise with Teamcenter integration a no brainer.
Magna’s transition to using TRUfusion Enterprise integrated with their instance of Teamcenter was disruption free, allowing the company to conduct business as usual. The TRUfusion Enterprise Teamcenter Plugin gave Magna’s designers the power to seamlessly initiate and execute PDX transactions while ensuring compliance with OEM mandates. Magna provided accurate, secure and easily accessible product design data to its clients faster than ever before. Plus, receiving OEM product design data allowed Magna to automatically and properly manage the data using Teamcenter.
TRUfusion Enterprise and the Teamcenter plugin streamlined Magna’s entire PDX process, reducing employee workloads, improving product design data accuracy and saving time and money.
To see how Magna was able to simplify and improve its PDX process using TRUfusion Enterprise, read the full Magna Roof Systems Case Study, or learn more about Rocket TRUfusion Enterprise by clicking here.
