Dometic GmbH
Closer to Customers through Lean Development

"In order to stay a step ahead of the competition, we need to become more cost-effective and respond to our customers’ needs even quicker."

Volker Müller, Development Manager at Dometic GmbH in Siegen, Germany

The Complete Story

Numerous customer-specific projects

Mounting competitive pressure from the USA and countries in Eastern Europe is an important challenge facing the German subsidiary of Dometic: “We need to become more cost-effective and respond to our customers’ needs even quicker,” says Development Manager Volker Müller. “In order to stand out from the competition, recreational vehicle manufacturers are increasingly demanding refrigerators with individually designed doors that blend in with the interior decoration of their motor homes and campers. The number of these types of customer-specific projects has multiplied in recent years.”

Customers regularly attend trade shows expecting to be amazed by the latest innovations. Dometic recently exhibited the first model in its new 8 Series, which will be launched on the market next year. Key innovations include the plastic housing that has push-in components to avoid the need for screws, making it much quicker and more cost-efficient to insulate and assemble.

Consistent through to the production facilities

Without a powerful PLM solution, the technical office would not have been able to develop a new generation of products in less than two years, while at the same time dealing with a growing number of customer-specific design adaptations. “We are already receiving change requests from customers for the new series of appliances,” relates Torsten Glieden, Designer and CAD System Administrator. “Now it takes us about five months to develop a new door to the pilot-lot or first-run stage and to source the injection-molded tool. Five years ago it would have taken us twice as long.”

Product developers have been working with the 3D OneSpace Modeling system from CoCreate since the beginning of 2002 and now use it to design production facilities, devices, and smaller punching tools and forming die. The developers manage their models, drawings, and other documents using the integrated data management solution from CoCreate, where they can control the release process and make the released data electronically accessible to other departments. This is soon to be replaced by CoCreate’s OneSpace Model Manager software and integrated with the ERP system so that staff in the assembly plant can directly access the released drawings in the PDM database.

Unlike other CAD systems that Torsten Glieden has worked with in the past, OneSpace Modeling is simple to learn and is extremely easy to operate. “You can modify components any way you like to try out different versions. In spite of this, it is still significantly quicker in the design process.” Dynamic modeling is a significant advantage when developing completely new component groups, such as the new plastic housing for the 8 Series, because you can separate parts regardless of their original design purpose and parametric relationships and then merge them together with other parts. Designers are namely confronted with the task of piecing together the housing in the various dimensions using as few components as possible.

Accelerated development process

The use of 3D not only speeds up the design phase, but also shortens the entire development process, as the developers can research and remedy any component collisions on screen. In addition, the 3D data can be used to rapidly generate sample and prototype parts. Dometic recently purchased its own 3D plotter to process the STL data from OneSpace Modeling. “The speed with which we can now manufacture prototypes has drastically reduced the amount of reworking required until the pilot lot,” reassures Glieden.

Further time and cost savings can also be made during the development process, as the CAD manager expects improved integration between design and technical documentation departments. The idea behind this is to streamline this process by using visualization software that enables technical documentation employees to read and process the 3D data directly. In the future, the software could also be used to produce assembly instructions from the 3D data. “Our aim is to use 3D data as consistently as possible throughout the process,” underlines development manager Müller.

In order for 3D data to be used consistently throughout a process, there must be increased communication across company boundaries. Dometic must actively increase communication not only with its clients in the motor home sector. As the number of plastic parts increases, so too does the volume of data exchanged with external tool suppliers, which are no longer necessarily based locally, but often as far away as China. However, communication with these suppliers is still carried out by exchanging STEP data or screenshots and not by using the collaboration functions that are available.

Although the streamlining potential of the CoCreate solution has not yet been fully exhausted for lean product development, it is clear that gains have already been achieved in terms of productivity. The production time for development projects has halved on average, meaning that designers can realize twice as many projects than they could five years ago but with the same workforce. Integrated data management relieves designers of tiresome routine duties, allowing them to focus more closely on their creative tasks. This has a positive effect on the company’s rate of innovation as its refrigerators increasingly develop into high-tech products.

Company Profile

With a global workforce of 4,400 employees and an annual turnover of €750 million, Dometic is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of silent refrigerators and other comfort products for motor homes, campers, motor boats and sailing yachts. At the site in Siegen, Germany, where Dometic employs a workforce of nearly 500, the company also manufactures refrigerators for hotel rooms, hospitals and offices, and produces wine cellars.

For more information, please visit: www.dometic.com.

Dometic is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of silent refrigerators and other comfort products for motor homes, campers, motor boats and sailing yachts.