Faymonville, a manufacturer of trailers for special-purpose and heavy-duty trucking, relies on CIM DATABASE PLM to validate its product portfolio strategy. The company is therefore not only replacing its existing TDM system but also establishing new PLM apps like mBOM Manager, to provide optimal support for the product creation process from development through to production. Faymonville has been using CIM DATABASE PLM for an initial product series since the middle of 2014 and is now expanding rollout.
Faymonville AG, which is headquartered in Luxembourg, exports approximately 40% of its trailers to countries outside Europe. In 2014, the corporate group introduced CIM DATABASE at four locations in order to strengthen its market position. The PLM system from CONTACT Software will replace the existing team data management solution and enable configure-to-order processes that will provide comprehensive support for Faymonville's strategic corporate objectives with regard to the new product platforms.
CIM DATABASE PLM is already being used for the modular MAX Trailer system. Faymonville thus provides a product series with cost-optimized modules and a maximum number of common parts that customers can use to put together their own custom trailer solution using the online configurator. The PLM system uses this data to generate the corresponding orders, including manufacturing bills of materials and production documents. The manufacturing BOMs are managed via the new mBOM Manager for CIM DATABASE; other PLM applications control data management for E³series (ECAD) and SolidWorks (MCAD) and the management of MS Office documents.
In 2015, Faymonville will gradually switch its other product series to the new PLM platform and roll out the CIM DATABASE modules for variant management and engineering change management (ECM). The new CombiMAX low-loader system, which won the coveted Trailer Innovation Award 2015 at the IAA in Hanover, will soon go live.
The aim of establishing end-to-end engineering-to-order processes, the greater reuse of existing designs and efficient variant and change management is to optimize the company's core business. Faymonville specializes in the one-off production of custom transport solutions that go well beyond what is generally available and can handle payloads ranging from 20 to 2,000 tons.
"This individuality ensures our company a strong and stable presence on the market," says Guy Fickers, Technical Director at Faymonville. "CIM DATABASE PLM opens up new ways for us to master the large number of variants and product complexity."