Aras Drives Performance in Product Lifecycle Processes

• Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
• Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Database Management & Storage
• Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms

• Automotive
• Consumer Goods
• Pharmaceuticals

• Business Operation
• Product Research & Development
• Quality Assurance

• System Integration
• Training

Launching innovative new products on time while ensuring quality and profitability targets are achieved is critical in any industry. Businesses must contend with increasingly narrow windows of opportunity in the marketplace, intensifying competition, growing compliance complexity, cost pressures, and shorter development cycles—while also striving to improve quality. With so much at stake, industry-leading companies like the Freudenberg Group are continually seeking to improve new product introduction, quality compliance, and risk management in order to satisfy customers and achieve profitable growth. Several years ago, executives at Freudenberg recognized that the $7 billion company’s competitive success hinged on achieving better visibility and improved collaboration across its global facilities.

Freudenberg-NOK is a North American subsidiary of the Freudenberg Group, a global tier 1 automotive supplier. The company designs and produces several hundred new components each year for automotive original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers including General Motors, Ford, and Nissan. Freudenberg-NOK is part of a $7 billion company that operates across various industries, including high-tech, consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, and automotive. The company is committed to improving new product introduction, quality compliance, and risk management to satisfy customers and achieve profitable growth. Freudenberg-NOK recognized the need for better visibility and improved collaboration across its global facilities to maintain its competitive edge.

Freudenberg found an effective solution in the Aras Innovator enterprise open source software suite from Aras Corporation. Built entirely on the Microsoft .NET Framework, Aras Innovator automates new product introduction, advanced product quality planning (APQP), and enterprise product lifecycle management for product-based companies of all sizes in a wide range of industries. Aras Innovator employs a model-based, service-oriented architecture (SOA) with XML Web services technology to achieve unmatched flexibility so companies can quickly deploy and easily adapt the enterprise software solutions to their unique business needs. Aras provides enterprise-class support, consulting, and training services to help organizations achieve business results. Project teams use Aras Innovator to collaborate on deliverables, track program costs, and manage project risks. Change management workflows coordinate activities, and document management capabilities provide Web-based access to files and important information to provide all stakeholders with a single version of the truth about the project’s status. Aras Innovator’s failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) functionality helps identify and mitigate potential risks, and corrective and preventative actions (CAPA) with closed-loop action items ensure issues are resolved.

• Freudenberg-NOK has deployed a new product development process that maps the APQP requirements to the company’s own competitive practices.
• Project-related information is now consolidated in a single system and can be viewed over the Web from anywhere in the world.
• Project leaders compile their plans and assign specific activities to team members, with associated tasks and deliverable due dates displayed in a checklist format within Aras Innovator.

• Freudenberg-NOK created a scorecard in Aras Innovator that measures new product introduction on 13 key performance indicators (KPIs).
• The scorecard gauges customer satisfaction and plant launch performance across five dimensions: quality, readiness, timeliness, service, and profitability.