CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
11 October 2012
Implementation Investments
KIRCHHOFF Automotive starts with a Bang
KIRCHHOFF Automotive has gone live with its CIM DATABASE-based PLM solution in Germany, France, Poland, Portugal and China. The solution integrates all the company's core applications and is based on CONTACT's collaboration solutions for the innovative process and product lifecycle management (PLM). The new PLM applications are currently being used by more than 400 employees across all departments at six locations. These include not only development, quality assurance, project management and simulation/calculation but also areas such as production, controlling, procurement, sales and maintenance. And it is intended that the circle of users increase significantly: KIRCHHOFF Automotive is planning on adding other locations, expanding project management functionality and implementing automated product data exchange with customers and suppliers.
KIRCHHOFF Automotive is a long-standing, global company with headquarters in Iserlohn and Attendorn and has been owned by the same family for four generations. The Automotive division, with approximately 7,800 employees in Europe, Asia and North America, is one of the leading providers of complex metal and hybrid structures for car bodies and chassis. As development partner to the automotive industry, the company supplies, for example, bumper systems, seat frames and cross members. The introduction of the PLM solution was launched with a large-scale data migration involving around 37,000 projects, 62,000 articles and 2,200,000 documents, including almost 300,000 CATIA and NX models and drawings.
The company is now using CONTACT Workspaces, including the extraction of 2D data to a neutral format, for managing CAD data. Document management is performed using the CIM DATABASE integrations provided for MS Office and the e-mail systems Microsoft Outlook and Notes. The central PLM components also include change and project management as well as the synchronization of articles and changes with SAP®. Furthermore, CONTACT's Enterprise Search ensures that information can be retrieved quickly from the entire database.
With the sales database in CIM DATABASE, KIRCHHOFF Automotive has also implemented a prognosis system that enables sales and profits for future business years to be calculated. The input information (e.g. number of units reported by OEMs and production periods) is supplied by IHS Automotive, the key figures for the calculation are provided by the PLM platform. The platform also provides reporting tools for the graphical representation of the results, which can be filtered according to different criteria and which sales uses for quotation processing and management for strategic planning.
It was not only the high level of cooperation within the PLM team that contributed to the success of the rollout but also the open communication of the company's objectives for the introduction of the PLM solution, which was achieved with the support of management. "This PLM project has the same strategic importance to KIRCHHOFF Automotive as the introduction of the SAP system," stressed Dr. Thorsten Gaitzsch, Executive Vice President Sales & Technical Development, at the kick-off event.
Accordingly, KIRCHHOFF Automotive is not only planning on connecting other locations to the new PLM platform but also further expanding it. Today, the automotive systems supplier is already organizing the data and processes across the entire course of all projects, whether internal or external, with Project Office. The CONTACT solution is currently being used to manage tasks, open issues and project documentation. In the future, it is intended that use also be made of its quality gate and controlling functions. Moreover, a key element of expansion planning is product data exchange with end-to-end process chains for the automated sending and receiving of data between customers and suppliers in conjunction with the solutions from Trubiquity.
The investment in product lifecycle management is one of the strategic measures with which KIRCHHOFF Automotive is securing its continued growth. In the last financial year, the company topped its strong pre-crisis sales figures, with the automotive division exhibiting the highest rate of growth, namely 9.8 percent, and achieving sales of 970 million euros. Overall, the KIRCHHOFF Group, which with FAUN Umwelttechnik, MOBILITY and WITTE Werkzeuge employs over 10,000 people, generated sales of 1.35 billion euros in 2011.
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