| When Russ Woodmansee joined Hammerhead Systems as vice president of Operations, the challenge was clear. Hammerhead Systems, an aggregation and interworking solution manufacturer for telecommunications companies, was shipping products with as many as 40 bills of materials (BOMs) for a single shippable item. With 2,000 individual parts per BOM and the entire process managed in Excel, Russ’s manufacturing process would be in constant risk. If manufacturing received an outdated BOM due to bad versioning in Excel it could mean huge costs on the order of tens of thousands of dollars of unbudgeted expenses, precious, unscheduled time pushing products later to market, and a tremendous amount of scrap and rework to fix the errors. And, that doesn’t account the cost of disappointing customers in the process. |
| In the world of hardware development and manufacturing, the bill of materials (BOM) is a critical product information record for both the engineering and manufacturing teams. Traditionally—and still in many companies today—BOMs have been created and updated in Excel spreadsheets, and communicated to internal teams, outsourced manufacturers and suppliers via email, phone, or fax. This home grown approach to BOM management, which continues to take a costly toll on companies’ product development processes, hadn’t blown up at Hammerhead, but Woodmansee knew it was a matter of time and acted early to make changes. |
| “We have one bill of material (BOM) for each blade and a typical box might contain 40 blades. You can imagine the complexity. Managing this with Excel and Word to track product changes and generate sales orders wasn’t working—in fact, it was clearly a big risk, leaving too many windows open for miscommunication and errors. We needed a better way to carefully control our BOMs and specifications,” said Woodmansee. |
| In addition, using Excel as a tracking method got in the way of company success in other ways. To compete effectively and win business at the tier one telecommunications level it was imperative they alleviate that risk. “Excel doesn’t sound that great in a presentation to a tier one telecommunications company—especially not when they’re evaluating whether you’re a reasonable risk as a vendor. We needed to mature our systems and have a presence our customers could have confidence in,” said Woodmansee. “Our replacement for Excel needed to help us communicate more effectively, prevent errors in our development process, reduce operations downtime, and ultimately improve our time to market. We had to prove these capabilities to our customers.” |
| Hammerhead set out to find a solution. It evaluated several product lifecycle management (PLM) options, understanding the value of having a single product record that controls all the moving pieces of the product development process as it changes. |
| It wasn’t until they were introduced to Arena PLM that it all came together. Arena’s software-as-a-service (or on-demand) delivery model offered the company significant benefits over traditional software. Through the SaaS model, Hammerhead could get up to speed with full PLM functionality in a matter of weeks, versus months or years and new users and functionality could be added in minutes versus weeks. With no IT resources to devote to PLM and the company’s hectic start up environment, SaaS also offered them more in terms of innovation–delivered to the company in the way of upgrades that required no IT intervention whatsoever—and protection. As a small- to medium-sized business (SMB), they couldn’t come close to matching the financial-grade security and regular data back-ups performed Arena offered. |
| By adopting Arena PLM, Hammerhead was able to focus resources more intently on innovation and meeting customer needs, versus solving problems instigated by inefficient processes. Since the transition, Hammerhead has been virtually eliminated human error from its product development process, increased collaboration and greatly improved its efficiency, so products come out right the first time and they win the valuable business of leading telecommunications service providers worldwide. |
| Hammerhead isn’t alone - compressed product lifecycles, geographically dispersed project teams, cost pressures, outsourced partnerships, and stringent regulatory requirements challenge many SMBs who are still trying to manage their product development processes using Excel. The rise of on-demand PLM solutions like Arena PLM have given these manufacturers PLM capabilities in a way that best meets their needs. |
| Integration with Key Systems |
| Hammerhead adopted Expandable ERP a couple years after putting Arena PLM in place. The company wanted to improve upon its process of planning with spreadsheets and then manually transferring information to the purchasing group. Hammerhead’s adoption of was partially based on the tight integration Expandable has with Arena PLM. |
| “When people think ERP, they have concerns about the cost, thinking it might be hundreds of thousands of dollars. But what you find is that a lot of that money gets spent on services, support and consultants. By choosing Expandable ERP and Arena PLM we didn’t have any of those major expenditures,” said Woodmansee. “It was as if the combination came out of a wrapper working seamlessly.” |
| “Desktop software is inadequate for enterprise-level activities. Not only does it make the process painful, but the results typically are painful too,” said Craig Livingston, chief executive officer at Arena Solutions. |
| For additional information about how integrated Arena PLM and Expandable ERP solutions can help companies more effectively manage their design through manufacturing processes, you are invited to tune into a replay of the recent webinar co-hosted by Expandable and Arena Solutions, entitled “Moving from Office to Enterprise Software: From Investment to Results” and download the full case study featuring Hammerhead’s experience using Arena PLM and Expandable software together |
For more information visit us here: http://www.arenasolutions.com/hammerhead. |
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