OVERVIEW

Thanks to RuleDesigner, Breton s.p.a makes product innovation structural by transposing the Agile approach to PLM digital processes, with enterprise-wide extension.

#PLM #DigitalThread #DigitalInnovation #Agile

Breton s.p.a., world leader in the production of machining centres, lines and stand-alone machines for processing natural stone, metals and engineered stones, started a process of organizational change of the process of new product development based on the Agile practice, which starts from the R&D to embrace the extended company.

Such approach relies on collaboration, flexibility, speed of response and adaptation as key aspects to achieve the goal: more innovation in less time.

The impact of change on digital processes was drastic and quickly highlighted the insurmountable limits of the technological tools in use.

From that moment on, Breton s.p.a. turned to RuleDesigner for the digital transposition of the Agile mind set to the PLM context, with the aim of supporting creative R&D processes, improving efficiency, integrating the value chain and reducing time to market.

RuleDesigner is the solution designed to make concrete the digital innovation initiatives, with an approach aimed at managing, integrating and automating data and collaborative processes related to product and business innovation to long-term competitive edge based on the development of new products and services.

At Breton, an integrated and highly collaborative PLM platform was implemented to supports lean and dynamic product development processes and make information sharing across the extended company automatic, immediate, secure and profiled.

Breton s.p.a., driven by innovation.

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”The corporate culture is stressed by the new paradigms that allow to achieve surprising results in terms of quality of design, costs and people commitment. The integration amongst the various applications and RuleDesigner turned to be the only solution that could have granted the management of the company's huge historical heritage while ensuring modernization of flows and methodologies of each individual role”

Gabriele CaccinTechnical Information Systems Manager

COMPANY OVERVIEW

Breton spa

Breton S.p.A. is a world leader in the design and production of state-of-the-art industrial machines for the processing of natural stone, ceramics, metals and composite stone plants.

Breton is a company where the excellent balance between flexibility, high quality, reference technology and wide range of products have allowed to grow and become an international leading player.

The current company size and the need to make the company system more efficient and responsive have required to optimize processes related to the product life cycle.

Breton offers to the international market a very wide range of equipment, machines and plants to carry out all the industrial

processing of marble, granite and ornamental stone in general: from the sawing of the blocks to the finishing and packaging of the products.

Part of the production takes place with the collaboration of third parties (contractors and suppliers) which must be coordinated to the best so as to optimize the final assembly phases. This activity is in charge to Breton itself. If we should describe Breton’s production according to the standard logic we could say it is based on ETO (Engineering to order) and ATO (assembly to order).

The company is very attentive to the optimization of the business organization. To pursue organizational excellence and open leadership, a new cultural and organizational path was undertaken in 2013: Breton Innoway. It is based on the culture of continuous improvement, and integrates different methodologies and organizational models.

To date, the methodology that BRETON follows is essentially a mix of experiences and skills so as to create the best possible balance between all business factors and in particular operational and management processes. This said, Lean Manufacturing and Agile Project Management are certainly the primary references in recent years.

INFOGRAPHIC

Business Unit

Natural stone
Engineered stone
Machine tools
Ceramic
Additive Manufacturing

Sistema Qualità

Breton è certificata Uni EN ISO 9001:2015 e UNI EN ISO 14001:2015

Headquarters

Castello di Godego (TV) STABILIMENTI Italia: Breton Campiglia a Campiglia dei Berici (VI), Lapitec a Vedelago (TV)

Foreign sites

6 commercial branches with international growth in continuous expansion.

Markets

20% Italy  80%Abroad

“Always focused on research, continuous improvement, innovation and quality of processes, products, and services”

250

Mln Euro Sales

1000

Dipendenti Totali

5

Unità di Business

KEY ASPECTS OF DIGITIZATION

RuleDesigner | Globale PLM platform

At Breton, product lifecycle management is a strategic process as the company focuses on designing and developing products, with a competitive advantage based on differentiation and innovation.

A total, efficient and effective management of the product life cycle is therefore essential to maintain the ability to meet or anticipate the needs of customers. In this context, RuleDesigner PLM stands at the heart of technology.

With this project, the main goal for Breton Spa was the re-digitization of the workflows related to product development by integrating all the actors in the value chain.

NEEDS

Replacing the PDM

Redesign of the scope of the old PDM, overcoming the functional and technological limitations of the previously adopted platform

Implementing a Digital Thread

Overcome the critical performance related to the sharing of technical data along the value chain

Improving the user experience

To improve the user-friendliness perceived by users

Establishing a strategic partnership with the technology provider

Establish a strategic partnership relationship with the technological partner to develop the solution

Integrating the supply chain

Lower service costs for external suppliers by delivering ready-to-use models for production

Autonomously managing the technological platform

Be independent of the technology partner in updating and adapting the system

Adopting a modern technology

Equip the organization with a modern tool which is always up to date and in line with new/ future technologies

Flexible licensing

Access to a flexible licensing system
NEEDS AND CHALLENGES

The first fundamental requirement for the RuleDesigner project was to replace the existing PDM platform, which in few year became:

Obsoleta

Outdated in terms of technology architecture

Inadequate for smart work

Insufficient to support critical paradigms for smart and distributed work

Complex

Complex due to the high degree of customization performed to meet the required business requirements

Rigid

Rigid in adapting to change and non scalable to enterprise level

Critical performance

With critical performance issues in CAD projects managed internally and in collaboration with external engineering offices.

With RuleDesigner PLM it was possible to address the process of importing product and drawing data from the previous PDM using a migration framework realized through the powerful native low-code configurator.

Data migration is generally a so complex task as to hinder change. But, with RuleDesigner, it can be performed safely and without complications by applying the rule-based methodology to obtain a normalized, centralized, protected and organized
drawing archive.

”In Breton, one of my main responsibilities is to introduce the best IT tools to preserve and enhance the informative heritage of the product and to follow its evolution.

With RuleDesigner, we have approached the migration process with extreme serenity, obtaining the total recovery of the history of the product data and reaching the goal within the estimated timeframe”

Gabriele CaccinTechnical Information Systems Manager
PROJECT KEY FUNCTIONS

Advanced classification and part-numbering

Implementation of an advanced, unique and CAD-file integrated classification and part-numbering model of the company asset heritage. The system, characterized by rules-based logic, guides users in correctly assigning classification data, which facilitates the recovery and reuse of projects. The part-numbering plan can be easily updated or extended to new product families with total autonomy by the client.

Advanced BOM Management

RuleDesigner provides a powerful editing and manipulation BOM environment and its configuration with synchronization to the ERP system. Also, it enables the organization to configure several types of BOMs to provide each actor or business function with the “point of view” of interest on the product. So, multiple types of bill of material could be associated to the same part-number (CAD BOM, sales BOM, Production BOM, etc). The structured sharing of BOM in the downstream functions of R&D positively affected both the supply of production lines and intralogistics. The bill of materials is at the heart of the system through which the sourcing and production processes are triggered.

Global support with multiple and heterogeneous CAD technologies

RuleDesigner PLM allows to work simultaneously with multiple CAD solutions and on multiple geographically dislocated design sites. The CAD solutions currently in use and integrated are Solid Edge from Siemens and Solidworks Dassault Systèmes. RuleDesigner, owning a much larger portfolio of possible integrations, enables the possibility of adding new CAD integrations whenever business dynamics make it necessary.

Configuration management

RuleDesigner mapped Breton’s business model based on job orders with configurable or special products. The management of product configurations makes it possible to save and deliver the information related to the job order by acting as a collector for different business areas (purchase, aftersales and spare parts). Finally, the natively integrated product configurator allows the organization to create any procedure to support the definition of the configuration and automation of workflows.

Collaboration at enterprise level

With RuleDesigner the different corporate divisions – engineering, external design offices, sales, purchase and service – were integrated, enabling a new level of collaboration between business functions and the extended company. The delivery and sharing of information flows seamlessly with high levels of performance, especially in reference to the global access to a drawing archive characterized by large assemblies. All product stakeholders are updated and aligned in real time on the released changes and updates.

Integration of the supply chain

At Breton, the production and supply of components are mainly outsourced. For this reason, the sharing of product design information is of critical importance. To address this need, the Purchase Office has been integrated into the project release workflow: with RuleDesigner, the purchase team is totally independent from the technical area in finding drawings, drafts, and all the technical information needed by external suppliers. It is also able to overcome the lack of document formats using ad-hoc automated generation procedures.

IT ECOSYSTEM

RuleDesigner is perfectly integrated into Breton’s IT ecosystem thanks to a services architecture that makes integration and interoperability between company systems simple.

Indeed, on the one hand, it offers a rich portfolio of specific and solid integrations developed to interact and drive the most popular CAD systems, such as Solid Edge and Solidworks.

On the other hand, it guarantees a simple management of integrations even in contexts characterized by high dynamisms (M&A), which normally require to manage heterogeneity of IT applications as well as process standardization .

Finally, RuleDesigner, in its function of process automation, places itself on top of the applications allowing to adopt an approach to rule definition that goes beyond the specific functioning of the applications allowing to centralize the formalization of the procedures and to preserve the business know-how.

USERS WORKING WITH RULEDESIGNER

150

Internal user

20

External Eng. Offices

INTEGRATION WITH IT ECOSYSTEM

Solid Edge | CAD
Solidworks | CAD
RuleDesigner PLM + Configuratore Low-Code
SAP | ERP Enterprise
Jarvis Knowledge Platform | CRM, Collaboration tool, Documentale e Ticketing
ConnectToBe | Portale Fornitori
QLik | Piattaforma Business Intelligence

IMPLEMENTATION PROJECT

Management of the implementation project in Agile mode

RuleDesigner Agile PLM

Breton had specific requirements for the new PLM system. First of all, create a flexible architecture capable of growing hand in hand with its needs and embracing a lean approach along the implementation project.

The implementation project focuses the attention on some key aspects:

Defining a project embryo to reach a functioning release in a short time

Setting up a test environment and fine tuning activities through following iterations (sprint)

Collaboration with the customer and key-user active participation

Immediate feed-back and responsiveness in responding to change

RuleDesigner allows to meet the customer’s requirements thanks to some intrinsic technological factors that characterize it:

Configurable and Flexible

RuleDesigner is a highly configurable system and therefore adaptable to multiple and changing operational contexts. It allows organizations to take advantage of the use of a standard product while enjoying all the benefits of a customized configuration. Nevertheless, unlike highly customized systems, it allows organizations to take advantage of software updates and upgrades with the guarantee of an always up-to-date infrastructure , in line with the latest technological developments.

Scalable and functionally extensible

RuleDesigner is made up by several modules that can be implemented individually or in synergy with each other. Functional breadth and modular structure make it an extremely scalable solution that can be implemented gradually with a forward-looking vision on the digitization roadmap.

Low-code Framework

Equipped with a powerful configurator (native low-code framework), RuleDesigner allows to create, in complete autonomy or in collaboration, applications that extend its functional scope. Specifically, it is possible to quickly create prototypes and procedures for the configuration and automation of processes by extending the range of action of the platform itself.

”With RuleDesigner, we got an immediate saving in costs associated to lead times for vaulting and check-in operations. Indeed, now these tasks are processed in batch mode”

Gabriele CaccinTechnical Information Systems Manager

The application of the Agile approach to the PLM implementation project allowed to obtain the following benefits:

Fast implementation with go-live timeline compliance
Reduced service costs
Immediate Return of Investment
User experience optimization
High adaptability
Continuous delivery of new enhancements
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