The Swedish producer of harvester heads for forestry machines, SP Maskiner AB, has been able to create customized manuals in half the time with innovative solutions from SOLIDWORKS. “Now one employee instead of two can do the work”, says factory manager Benny Granath.
SP Maskiner creates customized parts catalogues and manuals for its tailor-made forestry harvester heads. The company wanted to streamline the production of manuals and spare part catalogues making it less labor-intensive, involving fewer working hours. The ultimate goal to enhance the documentation quality by eliminating possible sources of errors in the preparation process.
Now one can do the work
To make this happen, they partnered up with PLM Group to implement some new software solutions from SOLIDWORKS.
“Now one employee instead of two can do the work, which means that we annually save one man-year by using the solution for the automatic generation of our aftermarket documentation and we bring more value to our customers“, says factory manager Benny Granath, SP Maskiner.
New ways to customize with SOLIDWORKS
CATALOGcreator gathers information from the SP Maskiner ERP system and combines them with 3D files and other technical information from SOLIDWORKS Composer. The 3D files in SOLIDWORKS Composer are generated in SOLIDWORKS and controlled by SOLIDWORKS Enterprise PDM. They are constantly updated when changes are made to the 3D models of the machines in SOLIDWORKS.
Now they can save both information for customers manuals that can be reused, as well as shop orders directly in the ERP system.
“This ensures that the customer always orders the correct spare parts.” explains Benny Granath.
Automated workflows that flow
“Our customers get flawless documentation, custom made for their unique machines, in exactly the format they want, whether it is paper based, on CD-ROM, online via our company web, or any combination of the three,” says factory manager Benny Granath, SP Maskiner.
According to Benny, it took a while before all the routines were in place but after the whole workflow was automated, there were a lot fewer potential sources of error, resulting in a much higher quality of our documentation.
Products: SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD, SOLIDWORKS PDM, SOLIDWORKS Composer, CATALOGcreator