CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
2 December 2008
Implementation Investments
Japan’s Saito Die&Mold Factory Reduces Manufacturing Cycle Time by 60% Using PTC Product Development System
PTC announced that Saito Die&Mold Factory has selected the PTC® Product Development System, including Pro/ENGINEER® and Windchill® as their engineering and data management solutions to improve productivity and to transfer craftsmanship to the next generation of Saito engineers.
Saito Die&Mold Factory, a 30-employee mold manufacturer founded in 1955, is highly respected, particularly for their automotive part tooling and their exceptional craftsmanship developed throughout the company’s history.
The company deployed PTC’s Pro/ENGINEER 3D CAD software to integrate its mold-manufacturing expertise with PTC’s cutting-edge technology. Pro/ENGINEER has enabled Saito Die&Mold Factory to reduce its manufacturing cycle by over 60 percent. Now engineers can exchange native Pro/ENGINEER data with their customers, reducing the time for design changes from several days to a few hours. Also, the precision of the cast parts is so high that no modification is necessary when the parts are assembled. These improvements in efficiency have helped Saito Die&Mold Factory shorten their time-to-market.
With Pro/ENGINEER as the main engineering tool for the Saito Die&Mold Factory design team, the amount of product data that users generate has increased. The deployment of PTC’s Windchill data management solution has helped the team to better understand design concepts and to progress, enabling them to start procurement processes early and reduce their overall design cycle. Windchill has also helped the Saito team improve its data sharing environment for a integration of manufacturing and customers, and also enabled the team to move from paper-based to environmentally friendly paperless manufacturing instructions and other documents.
In addition, the company now uses Windchill as a tool to capture the knowledge of its engineers and designers — know-how previously managed by each individual engineer — enabling Saito to transfer its knowledge to its next-generation engineers.
“We cannot transfer every detail of each engineer’s craftsmanship through the digital data, but what we can do is transfer their knowledge and know-how,” says Mr. Kiyoshi Saito, president, Saito Die&Mold Factory. “Windchill helps veteran and junior engineers access the same information. This is exactly the system we were looking for in order for us to survive in the market. We will continue integrating long-accumulated engineering know-how and the state-of-the-art software technology to achieve a quality level that is considered the world’s highest and even support future market requirements,” explained Mr. Saito.
“We are very pleased that Saito Die&Mold Factory, a company with a long, well-respected history, selected Pro/ENGINEER and Windchill as their PLM solution,” says Mr. Kimio Inoue, president, PTC Japan. “The recent severe market conditions have impacted many industries, which is why PTC provides scalable solutions to meet the increasingly advanced needs of our customers. PTC will continue supporting Saito Die&Mold Factory on productivity improvements, as well as craftsmanship transfers.”
Pro/ENGINEER models created by Saito Die&Mold Factory engineers:
Sample model for trial mold machining
http://www.ptcjapan.jp/pr/saito/trial_mold_machining.html
Mold assembly - Cylinder block core mold
http://www.ptcjapan.jp/pr/saito/cylinder_block_core_mold.html
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