Organization experts at the North Pole
The holiday season is in full swing and the North Pole is bustling with activity. The elves are working nonstop making toys and Santa Claus is making his final preparations before delivering presents across the globe. This season was shaping up to be like all the others following the status quo and having Santa’s workshop deal with the typical, yearly woes that come from trying to rapidly produce all these toys for everyone on the nice list. However, Mr. Claus recently consulted with his trusted technology advisor, TriMech, to talk through some consistent challenges that were plaguing the workshop. Through the conversations between the North Pole teams and the TriMech teams, we came to the conclusion that SOLIDWORKS PDM was the missing piece that would make the holiday ramp-up go from an arduous task to something streamlined, efficient, and most importantly, more automated.
Challenges with Collaboration
The first challenge that Santa brought up was that it was hard for his elves to work together efficiently stemming from two major places: not being able to track what had been done to a given toy accurately and not knowing when there was a newer version that was made by someone else. SOLIDWORKS PDM easily solves both causes of the Claus collaboration woes. Firstly, every time a file is checked into the PDM Vault or pushed through a workflow, a historical step is recorded. Not only does the action get tracked (such as Checked In) but so does the User, Date/Time, and even the Comment left by the user. This ensures full traceability for a toy which is especially useful for when the North Pole is audited for compliance.
SOLIDWORKS PDM History Dialog
The question then remains: How do other users know there is a newer version of a file out there? SOLIDWORKS PDM provides visual feedback to the elves interacting with the files within the vault. This takes place in either File Explorer on the Version tab or inside the PDM Task Pane within SOLIDWORKS. The SOLIDWORKS user will be able to see graphically in red that their assembly is using an outdated version of the file and quickly “Get Latest” to pull all the changes to their machine.
Following the Approval Chain
The second challenge that was brought to our attention was that sometimes the more mischievous elves would try to sneak an unapproved toy down to production without a head elf ever seeing it or signing off on it. In an uncontrolled and unregulated system, the only checks and balances are the fear of being reported back to Santa. However, with SOLIDWORKS PDM the North Pole can have customized workflows that the files in the vault are required to flow through before being released. Since the workflows can be customized, the elves can have a more stringent approval flow that requires the Head Elf and other key players’ approval while the Naughty or Nice list can just make sure Santa is always checking it twice.
SOLIDWORKS PDM Engineering Workflow
The workflows can make sure that all new toys land as a “Work In Process” and require someone else to approve before they get Released. Additionally, the states and transitions can be restricted to only certain groups to make sure that Jingle and Jangle still can’t sneak one by the Head Elves.
Producing the Right Revision
The final challenge Santa discussed with us is that occasionally the production elves will make a toy from previous years because they couldn’t easily find the newest approved drawing. He couldn’t possibly deliver an old version of a toy and if this happened, he would need to stop production to verify none made it onto his sleigh, costing plenty of valuable time. We know that SOLIDWORKS PDM tracks the history of files and makes it incredibly easy to grab the latest revision, but what if we want a single location where production can go to get those latest files? We shared with Santa that many clients like to have a specific “Production” Folder in their PDM Vault so that non-engineering staff don’t have to wade through the many project folders just to find a PDF of a drawing. It’s also possible to have SOLIDWORKS PDM automatically generate derivative files and place them in a specified directory during a workflow transition. For the vault spun up at the North Pole, the workflow was customized such that on approval of a toy STEP files were generated and put into the production folder.
SOLIDWORKS PDM File References
For the production elves, they know that all of their necessary files will be exported to this folder and can be notified when a new file lands here. What’s even better is that without having to download a file they can make sure of the built-in eDrawings Previewer to look at a given file and even show what other project files it might be referencing.
Thanks to SOLIDWORKS PDM, Santa and his Elves were able to streamline their toy production and reduce the number of costly errors running through the Workshop. With all the time and effort saved, Mr. and Mrs. Claus are going to be able to enjoy a few more cups of hot chocolate before embarking on his yearly journey.
Whether you run a similar toy production facility or work on any other team using SOLIDWORKS for design, then reach out to TriMech today to learn more about how SOLIDWORKS PDM can improve processes and reduce your engineering headaches.
