Leveraging a collaborative CAD environment to improve design efficiency and reduce project time by 30 percent

Switching to a new solution

Founded in 2010, Slovakia-based SKARTEK S.R.O. (SKARTEK) designs and engineers automated production lines, robotic workstations, welding cells, conveyors, grippers and camera systems for industries like automotive, aerospace, railway, construction and electronics. The company, which consists of engineers, an on-site industrial manufacturing facility and a research laboratory, offers solutions to improve customer production times, product quality and maintenance processes.

From project management to mechanical design to manufacturing, SKARTEK needed a way to manage all its processes in a way that could support its continued growth. Although the company had originally had a computer-aided design (CAD) and data management software solution, it needed a platform that could overcome performance issues and support its end-to-end solutions offering.

For this, SKARTEK leveraged Solid Edge® software and Teamcenter® software, which are part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services.

“We decided to transition from SolidWorks to Solid Edge software with Teamcenter integration,” says Christophe Payon, cofounder and executive manager at SKARTEK. “Solid Edge is a more stable and comprehensive platform, ensuring everyone at SKARTEK is on the same page during the design and development process.”

SKARTEK designs and engineers automated production lines, robotic workstations, welding cells and more for a variety of industries.

For this transition, SKARTEK received assistance from Siemens Digital Industries Software partner SOVA Digital. “SOVA Digital audited our processes and presented us with some options for how we could address our challenges and improve our company with Siemens solutions,” says Payon. “Our first challenge was our dissatisfaction with our existing CAD system. Our second challenge involved codeveloping a patent, requiring us to update our processes with a focus on unique machine designs. And the third was to streamline communication between our design and manufacturing departments.”

“We knew from the beginning that our role was crucial for the success of the whole project,” says Lubomir Calko, sales manager at SOVA Digital. “We had to analyze SKARTEK’s entire design and development processes to create an optimal solution to help them easily adopt the Siemens software.”

Together, the SKARTEK and SOVA Digital teams agreed on a solution. Specifically, the SOVA Digital team programmed two custom software utilities for Teamcenter, which automated SKARTEK’s routine work, saving time and increasing efficiency.

Christophe Payon is SKARTEK’s cofounder and executive manager.

Unlocking new efficiencies throughout the design process

Integrating Solid Edge with Teamcenter software enables users to improve the quality of their product development process by streamlining their CAD data management and creating a single environment for mechanical and electrical design, simulation, manufacturing and more.

By standardizing its design workflows using this comprehensive and end-to-end platform, the SKARTEK team unlocked new efficiencies in many areas of its operations, from quoting projects to streamlining manufacturing. Overall, SKARTEK was able to reduce project time by 30 percent using Teamcenter and 10 to 15 percent using Solid Edge.

Quoting projects and resource planning Using Teamcenter enabled SKARTEK to quote and assign jobs more efficiently. “As soon as a new job comes in, we immediately set it up in Teamcenter,” says Payon. “From there, we assign engineering resources to it, and everyone sees what they need to work on.”

Leveraging Teamcenter also made it easy for design engineers to draw on past projects during the quoting and early-stage design processes. Although every job is unique, engineers can reuse elements of existing designs, which serve as automation building blocks. “Using Teamcenter has made it easy for us to manage our processes and hand designs over to the mechanical engineers once it’s time to proceed with a project,” says Payon.

Securing information As a small company that works with customers around the world, it was imperative for SKARTEK to implement a software solution that secures its information and intellectual property. Using Teamcenter, SKARTEK has optimized and increased the internal safety of customer information.

Designing and engineering concurrently Standardizing its workflows within Solid Edge enabled SKARTEK’s engineers to work in parallel on various design aspects. “Now, we can develop the mechatronics and controls in parallel with the mechanical side,” says Payon. “When there’s a change in one aspect of the design, the software dynamically tracks, manages and updates the design for everyone, ensuring we’re all working on the latest version.” This is because Teamcenter includes integrated revision management, automatically creating and tracking new revisions of Solid Edge parts, assemblies and drawings.

Communicating internally and externally Prior to implementing Solid Edge and Teamcenter, communication among the SKARTEK team was often difficult due to various siloed, disjointed systems. Now, the company’s automation engineers are looped into projects much earlier in the design process. “This capability provides much-needed visibility into the mechanical systems that ultimately affect the automation design,” says Payon.

This solution facilitates communication within SKARTEK and improves its ability to communicate with customers. This is because, with Teamcenter, organizations can share 2D drawings, 3D CAD models, bill-of-materials (BOM) and other assets with external stakeholders, ensuring everything is accurate and on track.

Streamlining manufacturing SKARTEK’s strategy is to do everything in-house, which is a big reason the company switched to Solid Edge. Using Solid Edge enables the company to export models into various formats as soon as a part or assembly is ready, accelerating the manufacturing process.

SKARTEK’s on-site industrial manufacturing facility.

Securing a patent with Solid Edge

In addition to improving the capabilities listed above, by leveraging Solid Edge and Teamcenter, SKARTEK has facilitated the patent for a new product developed with a Tier 1 automotive supplier. This patent is for an industrial tool to clip in plastic parts, enabling automotive manufacturers to better balance their lines.

To design this new product, the company went through five prototypes and tests. “This iterative design and testing cycle would have been difficult to manage without Teamcenter,” says Payon. “Using this software helped us coordinate and manage all the data from the tests and then feed that information back into the design without any errors.”

Payon adds that he is satisfied with SKARTEK’s collaboration with SOVA Digital for getting up and running with Solid Edge. “Not only did SOVA Digital provide tremendous value in helping us identify areas of improvement, but the team provided us with daily support when it came to installing, improving and fine-tuning our dedicated Siemens solution,” says Payon.

SKARTEK went through five prototypes and tests for the new tool, and using the Siemens solutions streamlined managing the iterative design and testing cycle.

Planning for the future

Thanks to its successful results from using Solid Edge and Teamcenter, SKARTEK plans on ramping up its use of Siemens software. In particular, SKARTEK is currently testing the Mechatronics Concept Designer™ software, which is also part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform, a functional modeling tool that provides a common language for the mechanical, electrical and automation disciplines, enabling users to quickly create and vali- date design concepts.

“Our job is always to manufacture something new,” says Payon. “We’re starting from a blank piece of paper, and leveraging Solid Edge and Teamcenter has been a game-changer in that process. We’re excited to see where else Siemens takes us.”