CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

4 February 2008

Implementation Investments

Tait Electronics Slashes Time To Market For New 2-Way Portable Radio Using PTC® Product Development System

PTC announced that Tait Electronics Limited, a leading provider of advanced voice and data radio communications solutions, used the PTC Product Development System (PDS) including Pro/ENGINEER® to design and develop its TP8100 series 2-way hand portable radios. Using PTC software, the new radios were designed, developed and delivered to the market in just under 20 weeks, a reduction of more than 60 weeks from previous new product introductions.

Tait Electronics Limited began as a small company in 1969 and has grown to over 1,000 staff dispersed around the globe. Over the years, Tait has evolved into a successful multinational organization. With up to 100,000 custom units being manufactured each year, Tait required a PLM system that would allow for the equipment design to be adaptable to meet unique customer requirements and delivered to the market in the shortest time possible.

Tait Electronics focused its attention on the benefits that concurrent engineering with simultaneous tooling development could deliver. Due to intense time-to-market pressures, Tait knew it was imperative to identify problems up-front in order to avoid the late-stage tooling changes that slow a product’s market launch, increase costs and diminish quality. Using the PTC PDS, Tait’s design teams worked on product development in parallel with the tooling teams and was able to ensure its product design and tooling were complete at the same time. This allowed Tait to deliver the TP8100 series 2-way hand portable radios to market in just under 20 weeks.

“Tait Electronics continues to be successful because we develop world-class mobile radio equipment designed to address specialized customer requirements,” said Greg Kendall, principal mechanical design engineer, Tait Electronics Ltd. “PTC has a well-proven record in the electronics and high tech industry with its product development technology. The PTC PDS enables us to continually be proactive in developing the next generation of radio communications equipment and we look forward to continue working with them.”

A PTC customer for 15 years, Tait Electronics implemented several key components of the PTC PDS beginning with Pro/ENGINEER, PTC’s integrated CAD/CAM/CAE software, largely due to its ability to support concurrent engineering. Tait plans to introduce Windchill, which operates seamlessly with Pro/ENGINEER, to improve access to product development and project management information across the enterprise and its suppliers. Through a virtual workspace, Windchill enables Tait to keep its development teams and suppliers aligned and on-track to foster real-time group collaboration. For its specialized mold assembly creation, Tait is using Pro/ENGINEER to work in parallel with product development in order to reduce the need for redesign and eliminate the costs associated with rework.

“The window of opportunity for new product launches is now measured in weeks instead of months, and the margins for error are razor thin,” said Chad Hawkinson, vice president, product strategy, electronics, PTC. “We have 20 years of experience helping companies like Tait implement a product development system that connects engineers, suppliers, manufacturing partners and customers across the entire product lifecycle to minimize these challenges. We are happy to provide Tait with the product development technology that enables them to develop next-generation radio communications equipment.”

 

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