Crystal Clear Benefits

Mankind has adored the simplistic brilliance of glass for thousands of years. Today, glass and crystal tableware has blossomed into a complex hotbed of competition within consumer goods industry. Speed to market with new and stylish product offerings is key to catching the consumer's eye. Companies that do not abide quickly lose the pulse of consumer demand and struggle to survive.

To retain its leading edge in the glass and crystal ware industry, ARC International has developed an aggressive industrial and marketing strategy with Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions to enhance the quality and originality of its products and to reduce costs. By boosting design productivity by 20 percent, the decorative glass and cookware manufacturer is securing its future in an age-old industry undergoing 21st century change. In a report titled, "PLM Is Growing Fast in Consumer Products, but Vendor Selection Is Tricky", Kevin O'Marah, research principal, AMR Research comments, "consumer product companies cannot thrive on a strict diet of cost cutting. Growth demands innovation, and PLM is the system of record that companies are building to manage this accelerating innovation."

Growth Objective
To address these challenges, ARC International launched a growth strategy, focused on improving the performance of the company's industrial processes, in particular, product lifecycle management (PLM), a tool that analysts believe is instrumental for growth. ARC's growth objective is to deliver a wider range of innovative products in all of its market segments from high-end to everyday articles while improving time to market. The company believes its proactive stance provides a better method to sense and respond to changes in market demands and competitiveness.

Solid Solution
In 2001, ARC International launched a company-wide project to optimize its industrial tools. A part of this project includes a PLM solution from IBM and Dassault Systemes, Paris, France. The solution combines the advanced 3D product development capabilities of CATIA V5 with comprehensive data and lifecycle management features of SMARTEAM. MDTVision, a local IBM business partner, was brought on to implement the project.

Using PLM, ARC International completes the end-to-end product development capabilities it was looking for -- from initial product and mold design and analysis in the mechanical design department, and finally to numerical control programming in the machining department.
The roughly 100 employees in these departments use specialized, task specific modules including, styling, mechanical design, numerical control manufacturing and collaborative design.

"Optimizing new product development is an integral part of improving our industrial process," says Philip Durand, chief executive officer, ARC International.

How It Works
Today, all new product designs are created using CATIA V5. Data from Euclid, the group's legacy CAD tool, is being transferred to CATIA V5. An interface has been created between SMARTEAM and INGRES, the group's legacy product data management tool. The ultimate goal is to use the environment to manage the design data and associated documents, including photos, PDF's, market research and other office files. The industrial design department is the creative heart of ARC International and contributes more than 2,500 new projects each year. Of these, 400 are sent to the mechanical design office for development. Using an integrated PLM environment eliminates the interface and data conversion problems since the group's creative and mechanical designers now both work with the same tool. Also, since the projects are designed in 3D, designers can immediately get technical validation of projects, since the software points out any design constraints.

Benefits to Behold
To date, ARC's PLM plan has increased design productivity by 15 percent to 20 percent, which amounts to $320,000. The time to modify designs also was reduced between 50 percent and 80 percent annually, according to a study by CIMdata, an industry consultancy. CIMdata also calculated overall ROI for a six-month period, which determined a pay back period in 10 months with an internal rate of return of 339 percent. PLM enabled ARC International to meet and surpass its business challenges. "Tuning up our industrial tools was part of our five-year plan to guarantee growth and profitability," says Guillaume de Foughieres, director of finance, ARC International.