Using NX CAD to reduce development time by 50 percent

Addressing design challenges

Nan Fong Mold is a Taiwanese-based company and has produced high-end plastic injection molds since 1981. The company has built a reputation for its high-quality products, which it now exports to over 20 countries globally. Nan Fong Mold built its business around a philosophy containing four major pillars: honesty, quality, innovation and specialty. Nan Fong Mold focuses on continually upgrading its technical ability, striving to implement advanced digitalization strategies to ensure product quality remains high while optimizing development costs and maintaining lower prices for customers.

Nan Fong Mold reached out to Wisdom Engineering Services (Wisdom Engineering), to help them use NX™ CAD software to address design challenges and improve design quality. NX is part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services. Wisdom Engineering earned recognition as a Siemens Expert Partner. Siemens Digital Industries Software recognizes partners that demonstrate expertise in its solutions. These Siemens Expert Partners are validated by customers and Siemens for demonstrating their business and technical acumen.

Designers at Nan Fong Mold had extensive experience with 3D design programs, but the software itself was proving to be inefficient. The design team built 3D models slowly through curves created along points, resulting in wasted time in the mold design process. Nan Fong Mold’s clients started to request a wider range of mold shapes, with greater demand for design adjustments.

The combination of inefficient 3D design software and the growing demand was placing a heavy burden on the design team, exacerbated by client demands for shorter turnaround times. With high-quality requirements, Nan Fong Mold found it difficult to hire more staff and began looking for alternative software to help the team adapt quickly to change requests and produce more varied designs.

Wisdom Engineering provides custom development

Nan Fong Mold approached Wisdom Engineering, which has experience providing custom development for customers in the mold industry. These tailored developments allow customers to quickly generate bill-of-materials (BOMs) of their mold parts and 2D engineering drawings, helping to eliminate tedious and error-prone manual steps.

Wisdom Engineering began an in-depth consultation with Nan Fong Mold, where the two companies identified potential areas for improvement and created an implementation plan to use NX CAD software. The goal was to reduce the design time for each mold. The team used the solid and feature modeling capabilities of NX CAD to ensure drawing instructions were accurate and intuitive, making it easier to train new personnel on how to use the software.NX CAD also has excellent surfacing functions, which allowed designers to implement more detailed appearance designs on all molds to improve product quality.

Using NX CAD also helped Nan Fong Mold with its rattan-patterned furniture molds. “Using the powerful surface function of NX CAD helped the team better present the rattan shape on the furniture,” says Lin Yi-Hsiang, executive assistant to the chairperson of Nan Fong Mold.

Nan Fong Mold’s customers provide the company with model concepts, which designers then use to develop molds that match the requirements. Using the synchronous modeling functions of NX CAD allow users to quickly modify the parameter-free diagram files provided by customers, allowing them to make design changes. The software is also highly compatible with various file types, simplifying communication with upstream and downstream manufacturers.

Using NX CAD helps reduce design time

The company found that using NX CAD helped the design team in various ways. “Using NX CAD enables parameter-free design changes, which is much easier and more time-saving than other software,” says Yi-Hsiang. Wisdom Engineering also helped the company customize the NX CAD program to output 2D engineering drawings and quickly complete BOMs to reduce the error rate. Using NX CAD helped reduce BOM construction time from two days to 10 minutes.

“Using Wisdom’s customized programs has reduced manual parts counting and drawing time. This has decreased problems, such as parts procurement errors or processing errors caused by incorrect document information, and improved information flow accuracy,” says Yi-Hsiang.

Initially, the team created 2D drawings that were prone to misreading or incorrect dimensioning, but Wisdom used NX CAD to customize the program to create and automate 2D engineering drawings. This helped Nan Fong Mold reduce the errors that occurred via traditional preparation.

“Using NX CAD and Wisdom’s secondary development program reduces the customer delivery time and decreases the workload of personnel,” says Yi-Hsiang.

Nan Fong Mold found that NX CAD was a more intuitive piece of 3D computer-aided design (CAD) software than the program its designers had been using. The simpler drawing instructions helped the design team reduce development time by 50 percent. Even as orders increased, the company met demands without increasing the number of staff, helping to keep operating costs on target. NX CAD verification features also helped the company improve the design quality, which helped Nan Fong Mold win a long-term order with a large international furniture company.