Victaulic Company Keeping Productivity Flowing At Full Speed
Victaulic upgraded its CAD system to maximize productivity and remain
competitive during the recession that followed the September 11th attacks.
Lost time, severely reduced productivity, employee frustration and lost
data. That sounds like a fire or some other natural disaster just hit the
company headquarters. Actually, these are just some of the problems a
company can face as it moves to a new CAD system. To minimize these
disturbances, Victaulic Company relied on its thorough review of available
products and selected Solid Edge as its new CAD system. With Solid Edge,
Victaulic got powerful software that met its design and engineering
requirements. Just as importantly though, it got a system that was easy to
learn, allowed the company to retain complete access to existing data and
was a very good value for the price. “With Solid Edges’ short learning
curve, we were back to full productivity in a couple of months,” says
Wayne Biery, manager of Engineering Design at Victaulic Company. “In fact,
because of the tools in Solid Edge, we quickly surpassed our previous level
of productivity.”
Victaulic Company, headquartered in Easton, Pennsylvania, has been
developing mechanical pipe connections for 80 years. As the world leader in
piping system solutions, the company offers a full range of products serving
markets such as the automotive, biotech, fire protection, oilfield, and
plumbing industries. Victaulic’s “victory joints” played an integral
part in the D-Day invasion in 1944 by helping to move water and oil to the
front lines. On a lighter note, the company’s couplings and fittings were
used in the creation of the mechanical shark in the “Jaws” films. The
company relies on its CAD system to develop all the components of its piping
systems, its pipe prep and grooving tools, as well to create unique
production machinery, such as a machine that grooves the products the
company is known for, and production tooling.
Victaulic had been using the I-deas CAD system prior to making the switch
to Solid Edge. “I-deas worked very well for us,” states Biery. “But,
with the migration of I-deas towards NX, coupled with the recession
following the September 11th attacks, we decided to look for a CAD system
that had the right set of tools at the right price to help us hone our
competitive edge and remain lean.” Biery and his engineering team
thoroughly reviewed Solid Works and Autodesk Inventor alongside Solid Edge
before making a final selection. One factor that helped tip the scales in
Solid Edge’s favor was the fact that neither Solid Works nor Inventor
could support the bulk migration of Victaulic’s legacy data. Since many of
the company’s 10,000 plus part numbers are built from similar platforms,
access to this legacy data was crucial for a smooth transition. The company
was also attracted by the low initial cost of Solid Edge and the short time
needed for training. “We stayed with UGS because they have the right tools
for the right price,” explains Biery. “I’m responsible for making sure
our engineering staff has the tools they need to be productive. Solid Edge
was the answer to that, at a third of the operating cost.”
Keeping productivity flowing at full speed A first step in making the
transition to the new CAD system was getting the users trained in the new
technology. The speed with which Victaulic engineers were able to learn and
become proficient in Solid Edge amazed management. As a test, the company
started with one license of Solid Edge and had an engineer try to learn the
system without any formal training. Using the on-screen tutorials he was
confidently navigating his way through the software by the end of one week.
Within a month he was proficient in Solid Edge. “Seeing how quickly our
‘test’ engineer picked up Solid Edge, we sent our remaining design,
manufacturing, and foundry engineers to outside training,” says Biery.
Those engineers were up and running with Solid Edge within one week. Several
of the company’s engineers who previously worked solely in 2D began
working in the more efficient 3D environment after training on Solid Edge.
“With Solid Edge, being productive in 3D is easy even for part time users,”
adds Biery. “They can walk away from it for days, come back and still be
able to use the system.”
Another crucial transitional step was data transfer. UGS’ philosophy of
ensuring its products work together to allow its customers to protect their
investment in design data was a major reason Victaulic chose Solid Edge. A
powerful bulk translation wizard for migrating assemblies, parts, drawing
files and attributes into Solid Edge allowed this transitional step to
proceed quickly and smoothly. “The data migration tool in Solid Edge was
impressive,” states Biery “It can select the product data right out of
the database and seamlessly moved it into Solid Edge.” Victaulic
transferred more than 31,000 drawing files in a short two-month period, on a
part-time basis. This ease of data exchange allowed engineers to spend less
time on managing the CAD system and more time designing parts to improve the
company’s product offerings.
Engineers at Victaulic use Solid Edge to design and model all the company’s
new products, tools, manufacturing fixturing, as well as some of their
product manufacturing machines. The engineers rely heavily on the family of
parts capabilities in Solid Edge to speed new product design and get new
products to market faster. “Many of our products are true ‘family of
parts’,” says Biery. “As pipe diameter grows, associated parts such as
couplings, valves, and fittings change relative to the change in pipe
diameter.” One recent product developed using Solid Edge is the VIC 300
Master Seal, a high-volume production valve that the engineering team was on
or ahead of schedule throughout the entire development process. Solid Edge
also excelled in the design of a complex production machine that Victaulic
uses to groove its new AGS (Advanced Groove System) fittings. This machine
is made up of roughly 1,700 components, all designed and modeled in Solid
Edge. Within the Solid Edge assembly environment, designers were able to use
the constraints effectively and efficiently keep up with part interference
checks during the entire development process. When the tool was assembled
there were zero fit issues. The end result is a highly automated machine
that is over 50 percent more productive than the previous model. Victaulic
also designed its new line of AGS couplings, fittings, valves, and specialty
items while in midst of its transition to Solid Edge. Designers were able to
use a collaboration of newly created Solid Edge models and translated I-deas
models to get them on their way to finishing the project in Solid Edge, and
on time.
Not wasting a drop of efficiency Leveraging the efficiency of Solid Edge
even further, Victaulic uses Voyager Partner Programs to seamlessly work
with other applications to accomplish tasks such as finite-element analysis
(FEA) and CAM. Voyager Partner Program members are carefully selected to
provide Solid Edge users a wide choice of “best-in-class” applications,
with guaranteed seamless interoperability with Solid Edge. “We use
DesignSpace for FEA and MasterCAM for CAM,” explains Biery. “They both
work tremendously well with Solid Edge.” The company also uses Solid Edge’s
built-in application, Insight Connect, for design management.
Maximizing the flow of productivity even more, Victaulic uses Solid Edge
Virtual Studio+ to create digital images of its products. Many images
incorporate shadows and shading for a very realistic look. The company
previously built physical parts and took photos of them for its
publications. Now it uses these Solid Edge images instead. The company also
converts product images, black line 2D drawings and rendered 3D detail
drawings into PDF files for distribution in-house throughout its global
product data management system.
For a company that produces 16 million couplings a year, which in turn
are used to connect 160 million feet of pipe, efficiency gains, whether
large or small, ripple throughout the entire organization and are vital in
keeping Victaulic on top of its industry. The smooth transition to Solid
Edge allowed the company to significantly reduce the associated performance
lapses common with CAD system changes, thereby staying more productive in
both the short and long term. A long-term outlook that has Victaulic looking
like the giant of its industry for some time to come -- a rather appropriate
image since another giant, the oversized gorilla in the remake of “King
Kong” was made with flexible couplings and fittings from Victaulic too.
