Swegon ILTO Oy, a Finnish company has achieved significant cost savings in both development and production by using SOLIDWORKS PDM as a solution for data management.
The challenge
Swegon ILTO Oy was founded in 1980. Since 2007, the company has been a subsidiary of the Swedish Swegon group. The company has 67 employees of which seven are working in R&D. Swegon ILTO Oy develops and manufactures the industry’s broadest selection of air handling systems for use in private homes.
The solution
PDM delivers total control with vast amounts of product data
Using SOLIDWORKS PDM to manage all product-related data, Finnish company Swegon ILTO Oy has achieved significant cost savings in both development and production. This implementation has also improved product quality notably.
With the introduction of PDM from PLM Group, Swegon ILTO Oy has structured and streamlined its workflows in both the development of new products and updating of existing products. The implementation of the PDM software means that the development process around new products, as well as production preparation, has become significantly faster. The PDM solution has created a complete overview and control with both actual and legacy development data and ensures that the drawings used in production are always are the most recent and correct revisions.
Swegon ILTO is a subsidiary of the Swedish Swegon group and produces air handling systems and kitchen extractor hoods, in particular for the Finnish and Scandinavian markets. The products are marketed under the Swegon Casa brand and the company currently has the widest product range in the Scandinavian marketplace for air handling systems for use in private homes.
Since 2005 Swegon ILTO has used SOLIDWORKS to design its products and solutions and the company today is using four SOLIDWORKS Professional licenses. Right after the implementation of the 3D CAD software the company began contemplating the introduction of a PDM system to ensure better management and control of its CAD models, drawings, and other design data. Last year this lead to the acquirement of SOLIDWORKS PDM from PLM Group.
From frustration to innovation
“Earlier our engineers on average spent one hour per day searching and verifying that our existing data was correct. This was mainly due to poor revision handling and lack of data management tools and it was one of the key reasons for implementing SOLIDWORKS PDM,” explains mechanical engineer Sarita Keppola, Swegon ILTO: “With the PDM Software, our product designers are now able to search, find and verify old data much faster focusing instead on the real innovation that makes our products even more competitive. Another major benefit is that the PDM software makes us able to reuse existing components and solutions since they are easily retrievable.”
Sarita Keppola explains that Swegon ILTO also experienced problems in the production departments due to wrong revisions of production drawings. Using ROI calculations the company estimated that the annual costs of rework and scrap were approximately 15.000 Euros. The automated approval processes and workflows within the PDM software now ensure that outdated drawings automatically are replaced with the latest revisions.
PDM saves time and money
Since the founding of Swegon ILTO in 1980, the company has created a vast amount of design data and files combined with a very broad portfolio of different products. The company experienced growing problems managing the different versions of 3D models, drawings and data while trying to make sure that the right versions were used. All this while at the same time properly keeping track of the effects of design changes to all the products.
The introduction of SOLIDWORKS PDM has resulted in an effective overview and management of the vital development data, explains Sarita Keppola: “We have saved a lot of time and subsequently money since implementing the PDM software. Using the software, we have together with PLM Group created a structure that ensures that every engineer and designer knows exactly where to search, find and save relevant data. The quality of our products has also been increased since there is no longer any doubt about which version of models, drawings and data should be used,” she explains: “Seen from the product designers’ point of view, reuse of components has become much easier no matter if it concerns components, parts, solutions or design details, because it is easy for them to retrieve all the relevant data from our PDM database.”
Painless PDM implementation
The past five years the R&D department at Swegon ILTO has focused strongly on modularizing and streamlining its designs and the use of both proprietary and purchased components, explains Sarita Keppola: “We had quite a lot of legacy data and it has been quite a big task to enter them into the PDM database, but when we made the decision to introduce the PDM software, we immediately started preparing the implementation through a review of our older CAD models and drawings. The preparation of the data meant that the actual implementation of the system and creation of automated workflows together with PLM Group went smoothly,” she says.
She also emphasizes that the user-friendliness of the PDM software has meant that Swegon ILTOs engineers and designers have easily been able to get accustomed to working with the software in daily life.
The success
- Significant reduction of development time, due to the structuring of R&D data and streamlining of workflows
- Cost savings in R&D
- Possibility for reuse of components, parts, and solutions
- Freeing up time for more productive design work
- Reduced problems in manufacturing due to wrong production drawings
- Better product quality