Download PDF
Case Studies > Structural Concepts Corporation Achieves Enterprise PLM Success

Structural Concepts Corporation Achieves Enterprise PLM Success

Technology Category
  • Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
  • Functional Applications - Product Lifecycle Management Systems (PLM)
Applicable Industries
  • Food & Beverage
  • Retail
Applicable Functions
  • Product Research & Development
  • Quality Assurance
Services
  • Software Design & Engineering Services
  • System Integration
The Challenge
Several years ago, Structural Concepts' growth began to accelerate, causing business processes to experience difficulties. The company was becoming a victim of its own success, with a lack of visibility into ongoing client projects adversely affecting its ability to meet customer deadline commitments. Additionally, the engineering lead time for new orders was increasingly being challenged by competitors. Executives realized the need to transform the engineer-to-order development into a configuration-oriented process based on platforms to streamline the new business proposal estimation, quoting, and engineering required.
About The Customer
Structural Concepts Corporation is a US-based company located in Michigan with over 30 years of expertise in designing and building innovative temperature-controlled display cases. The company is a leader in providing foodservice, supermarket, and convenience store operators such as Starbucks, Wal*Mart, Hilton Hotels, and Safeway with specialized products designed to merchandise grab 'n go products, bakery, deli, floral, produce, and other specialty foods and perishables. Structural Concepts achieves a competitive advantage by delivering display case solutions specifically configured to a customer’s unique needs, with the highest level of quality and customer service. The market is highly competitive, and its customers are large companies with stringent demands that include many product requirements. In fact, 80% of Structural Concepts’ orders require customer-specific custom engineering.
The Solution
To address these challenges, Structural Concepts implemented the Aras Innovator® solution suite for enterprise Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). This included a product configuration proposal process for faster, more accurate quoting, customer requirements and product specification management, new product program management with executive dashboards for the NPDI process, engineering bill of materials (BOM) and product structure for configuration control, document and file control with online change management workflows, and pre-production manufacturing process planning. The solution enabled enterprise-wide collaboration across engineering, marketing, quality, and operations. Structural Concepts now uses the Aras Innovator open-source software solution suite for enterprise PLM to manage the New Product Development & Introduction (NPDI) processes, achieving better visibility and shorter development cycle times.
Operational Impact
  • Since implementing the Aras Innovator solution suite, Structural Concepts has experienced significant improvements in both top-line revenues and bottom-line profitability.
  • NPDI lead time has been reduced by nearly 50%, and order-to-delivery throughput has increased by 40%, allowing the company to increase market share.
  • Productivity has increased by 67%, supporting a customer project order throughput flow volume increase to over 500 per year with the same staffing levels, translating into savings of $675,000 to date.
Quantitative Benefit
  • 32% increase in revenues over 2 years.
  • NPDI productivity increase of 67% for over $675,000 ROI to date.
  • 50% reduction in new product lead time.

Related Case Studies.

Contact us

Let's talk!

* Required
* Required
* Required
* Invalid email address
By submitting this form, you agree that IoT ONE may contact you with insights and marketing messaging.
No thanks, I don't want to receive any marketing emails from IoT ONE.
Submit

Thank you for your message!
We will contact you soon.