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Sanden Corporation
Real-Time Response to Unexpected Change
"Frequent design changes and short-term development cycles are major issues for vending machine design. We require a 3D CAD system that is intuitive to use and can respond to frequent and unexpected design changes. CoCreate OneSpace Modeling, with its Dynamic Modeling technology, is the best solution for us."
Mr. Yutaka Kenmochi, Group Leader, Information System Group, Akagi Plant, Sanden
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High-quality, well-made designs bring rewards in every industry. For Sanden, that reward amounts to holding the largest combined market share across the U.S., European, and Japanese markets.
In Japan, vending machines number one for every 23 people, highest per capita in the world. So machines must stand out and deliver top-notch service. Sanden creates those machines, working with clients to meet custom specifications for each product.
How do Sanden engineers do it? Quick teamwork and adaptive technologies. In the past, the company used 2D CAD, with a small amount of 3D CAD for analysis. However, the design environment failed more sophisticated projects. "When assemblies reached 3,000 parts, the data became overwhelming," says Mr. Yutaka Kenmochi, Group Leader, Information System Group, Akagi Plant, Sanden. "Nobody could understand it except the designer who originally created it."
On top of that, finding interferences in a stack of 2D drawings proved nearly impossible. "Often, we found errors only after creating physical prototypes," says Mr. Kenmochi. Sanden realized that a more efficient process existed. They decided to solve the problem by moving to a full 3D product development environment.
Sanden recognized there were a variety of 3D CAD systems to choose from, however only CoCreate's history-free approach of Dynamic Modeling™ offered the advantages they were looking for. "Frequent design changes and short-term development cycles are major issues for vending machine design. We require a 3D CAD system that is intuitive to use and can respond to frequent and unexpected design changes. CoCreate OneSpace Modeling, with its Dynamic Modeling technology, is the best solution for us," says Mr. Kenmochi. With history-free modeling, Sanden moves toward leaner development processes.
For example, OneSpace Modeling supports:
Speed & flexibility Dynamic Modeling allows designers to easily transform a core platform design into new products, allowing Sanden to rapidly expand their product offering.
Responsive to change Design changes occur frequently as a result of new information or changing customer requirements. Dynamic Modeling allows unexpected change to be made both easily and late into development
True team design Design Bottlenecks disappear when multiple designers can work together to develop a new product, and any designer can quickly make changes to a model — regardless of who originally created the design
Quick and Powerful Model Management
Sanden also needed a data management product so engineers could reuse existing designs within new products. Plus, it needed an easy way to manage and interact with the thousands of parts that make up a vending machine. For this task they deployed OneSpace Model Manager.
Designers quickly populated the database with more than 4,000 common parts. Now, all the company designs reside in one place that anyone can reach. Plus, OneSpace Model Manager orchestrates permissions and access so teams can work simultaneously on a product without overwriting each other. OneSpace Model Manager quickly proved essential to team design.
Unlocking the Power of 3D
Virtual prototyping in the lifelike world of 3D has always drawn 2D users to 3D CAD. "Virtual prototyping enables us to resolve issues before the product becomes real. With development cycles getting shorter and shorter we can't afford to find errors after creating physical prototypes and pushing designs to the production line," says Mr. Kenmochi. But 3D design data has another significant advantage over 2D — you can use it for parallel design tasks (such as analysis) and downstream departments. Sanden’s Akagi Plant reuses a rich 3D master model for thermal and strength analysis, harness design, and design reviews for quality validation. Plus, Sanden creates manufacturing and service documentation, such as assembly drawings, process specifications, and service manuals, directly from the models.
Quick Training
CoCreate's product suite is also highly attractive due to the speed at which it is learned by new users. Within only 4 days, new Sanden users are trained to design in 3D using OneSpace Modeling and manage the development process with OneSpace Model Manager.
As Mr. Kenmochi emphasized, "Once you learn the basics of OneSpace Modeling, you are free to do whatever you want. There is no need for individual tutoring from there on."
Working with Outside Partners
Like many companies, Sanden's development process includes outside partners that require timely access to design information. When sharing large assembly data in the past, the Sanden team used to break the design into small batches, each sent individually and then reassembled by the partner. Unproductive time spent breaking data apart only to reassemble it represented a significant labor loss.
So, Sanden implemented CoCreate OneSpace.net to help better connect people and data.
Not only did OneSpace.net help transfer large data sets, but it also provided added security by encrypting confidential design information as it crossed company firewalls.
"Being able to eliminate the inefficiencies of sharing design data was an important step," Mr. Kenmochi says. "This keeps designers focused on creating a great product rather than collateral tasks that don’t add value." By leveraging CoCreate's complete product suite Sanden has created a platform for collaborative product development, an essential component for the product lifecycle management (PLM) process.
Company Profile
Sanden Corporation is a global enterprise with multiple businesses in Japan and more than 20 countries. The Akagi Plant produces 35% of Sanden Group's total sales and is Sanden's biggest manufacturing center for the Japanese domestic market. Products produced at this major development and manufacturing location include household central heating and ventilation systems, beverage vending machines, and freezer/refrigerated showcases.
For more information, please visit: www.sanden.com.
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