Case Study
How Wiremold prospers in spite of changing business conditions
The Wiremold Company
The integrated management of product and process knowledge empowers Wiremold to seize new business opportunities and compete against newcomers to its industry
- With competitors entering the industry and putting pressure on prices, Wiremold needed a fast and flexible development process for innovative products.
Managing wires for almost 100 years
The Wiremold Company designs and manufactures wire and cable management solutions, including perimeter raceway, infloor, overhead, open space and furniture systems. These are the products that keep electrical and communications wires integrated into the environment, for a neater appearance in schools, retail businesses, warehouses, factories and so on. When you see attractive wire or cable raceways in your office, chances are it’s a Wiremold product. Wiremold manufactured its first raceway in 1916, and that product is still on the market. But today, the company faces a number of business challenges that its founders didn’t have to deal with.
Wiremold used to have this market mostly to itself. But as the challenges of wire management soared with the increased use of computers and other electronic devices, competitors have entered the arena. The market has become increasingly price competitive, and Wiremold has looked to develop ways to lower costs in all areas of the company. The company has also been working to develop new markets that were previously unexplored.
Working in a managed development environment
Wiremold revamped its product development process to address these challenges. The new process is built on NX as the digital product development foundation, and all product data and process knowledge is controlled within a secure managed development environment. Here’s how it works. New products and tooling are designed as 3D models in NX. Wiremold has put a lot of effort into customizing NX to automate tooling design. For example, using NX’s user-defined features and NX WAVE templates, the company has made it possible for product geometry to automatically drive much of the design of the die. The next step is to do the same for product design, customizing NX to automate much of the process. Even now, however, the use of NX “out of the box” brings benefits to product design. For example, the company needs about half as many physical prototypes as it did in the past, due to the superior visualization made possible by 3D models.
Wiremold has adopted the master model approach in which 3D models drive all downstream processes. This speeds product development by eliminating redundant data entry and by eliminating many errors. But Wiremold has taken this concept a step further. They use an integrated management development environment as the repository for the 3D product information. “People can search and find what they need quickly,” explains Gary Munch, a design engineer and CAD administrator at Wiremold. “Everything they’ve ever done is inside the managed repository. Tool designers can re-use tools and check out tools and see what was done in the past. They’re not forced to find prints that may not have been filed correctly.”
New environment helps Wiremold compete
The managed development environment extends these benefits to the shop floor as well. Wiremold has workstations on the shop floor that allow tool makers to quickly find drawings. “They can view the drawings within the managed environment instead of needing a paper copy or opening NX,” says Munch. “Currently we are doing this in the tool room, but we also plan to do this with product prints. We will have view stations situated around the shop floor at certain locations. This will help eliminate a lot of paper waste. The major benefit, however, is that it clears up any issues with print revisions.”
The company’s managed development environment is helping get new products to market faster. According to Munch, it used to take the company about two years to bring an entire raceway product line from concept to end user. Now it takes closer to one year. Much of that time is saved by the huge reduction in the tooling design process. A secondary tool such as a punch formerly took about four weeks to design. With the automation made possible by NX, it now takes only one week. Tasks that took half a day are now done in 15 minutes. More complicated tools are also designed faster, although the savings isn’t as high as 75 percent as it is for the simpler tools.
Additional time savings come in product design, where fewer prototypes are now required. This saves money as well as the time it used to take to make the physical models. Wiremold experiences less rework now too, thanks to the accuracies of 3D design and the elimination of manual errors made possible by the use of master models. All these efficiencies are just the beginning, however. As Wiremold taps more of the potential of NX operating within a managed development environment, it expects to see further improvements in its ability to compete.
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Challenges:
- Prepare for changes in electrical and communications markets
- Keep prices competitive in an aggressive market
- Develop new products that meet customer needs
Keys To Success:
- Design new products and tooling in NX® software
- Drive all downstream processes off 3D master models
- Customize NX to automate tooling design
- Employ Siemens technology to control master models within a managed development environment
Results:
- Time-to-market for a new product line down by as much as 50 percent
- Tooling design time slashed by up to 75 percent
- Number of physical prototypes cut in half
- Reduced and controlled rework
Industry:
- High Tech & Electronics
Client's Primary Business:
The Wiremold Company, a subsidiary of Legrand SA of Limoges, France, offers the industry's most complete line of wire and cable management solutions.
Business Initiatives:
- Commonization & Re-use
- Production Efficiency
Solutions/Services:
- NX
- NX Design (CAD)
Client Location:
West Hartford, Connecticut
United States
"We’re facing a lot of competition these days, so developing products faster and getting them to market faster has become really important. Using Siemens technology, we've created solutions that help us do that."
Gary Munch
Design Engineer, CAD Administrator
The Wiremold Company