Going Pro

Callaway Golf is one of the best known brand names in the world of sports. Callaway Golf's success -- the company reported sales of approximately $1 billion in 2006 -- stems from constant product innovation, which results in popular golf equipment such as the Big Bertha and FT Series drivers, and the X Series woods and irons.

 

In the company's early years, it launched a new product about twice a year. But in the past decade, as demand for its products grew and competition increased, Callaway Golf Keeping an Open Mind KELLOGG COMPANY DETAILS ITS OPEN APPROACH TO INNOVATION began introducing as many as seven or eight new products a year, with most products having about an 18- month lifecycle.

 

Designing and launching new products at this pace requires the tight coordination of efforts of many different teams, including designers, engineers, marketing department personnel and lawyers working on patents for new designs. Most of these roles are performed at the company's California location. These teams, in turn, have to communicate with companies in China, Japan, Korea, Mexico and Taiwan that manufacture the Callaway Golf product components, such as club heads and shafts.

 

MESSY PROCESSES
Managing communications over a supply chain that spans continents and offices separated by tens of thousands of miles creates some tough challenges.

 

As Callaway Golf grew during the 1990s, one of the biggest challenges that it faced was finding an effective way to exchange businesscritical information, especially large files created with computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software.

 

"We used a wide variety of methods of managing communications between our manufacturing partners and various internal teams," says John Loo, senior manager of Design Systems, Callaway Golf. This included e-mailing documents, using File Transfer Protocol to upload files and shipping CDs when they had very large CAD files that were simply too big to manage in any other fashion.

 

"The process was kind of a mess," Loo continues. "Because of the transit times -- especially when we were shipping CDs -- communications would get out of sync. Sometimes, during the time it took for the CD to arrive at the manufacturing site, our engineers would make a slight change. The manufacturers would not be aware of the change that had been made, and we would have to start the whole process over again so that everyone was working from the same document."

 

The challenge for Callaway Golf, according to Loo, was to find a way to enable teams in different locations to work with a "single version of the truth."

 

ANGLE OF APPROACH To address the challenges of its geographically dispersed teams and partners, Callaway Golf decided to implement a solution based on Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server and SharePoint Team Services. Callaway Golf deployed Teamcenter Community Collaboration, a product lifecycle management solution from Microsoft Gold Certified Partner UGS, a subsidiary of Siemens.

 

The Teamcenter Community Collaboration closely integrated with the UGS CAD and CAM software already in use at Callaway. The portal uses SharePoint products and Technologies to provide a Web-based environment that helps the various Callaway Golf teams in a number of key areas. These include:

 

New product development: All the people involved on various teams are able to post product content and receive communications, including email messages and alerts, on the Teamcenter Community Collaboration portal to streamline processes and product development.

 

Intellectual property management: Callaway Golf lawyers use the portal to aggregate, access and review design documents in preparation for evaluating or filing for patents.

 

Supply chain synchronization: Manufacturing partners are given secure access to the portal for accessing design, specification, quality and process files. The system is configured to send alerts when changes are made to files after they have been posted.

 

Given the different time zones of the various Callaway Golf teams and partners, the portal is in use every day of the week. On a typical day, up to 200 people will log on to access documents and collaborate with other people.

 

BENEFITS IN PLAY
At Callaway Golf, the implementation of Teamcenter Community Collaboration solution based on Microsoft SharePoint products and technologies:

 

Improves the collaboration process: A content management capability helps Callaway Golf control changes made to product content by providing document and version histories and e-mail alerts.

 

"We have design teams in California and suppliers in Asia, but everyone is able to collaborate effectively by posting their product content on the portal and using it to keep track of what's being done on specific projects," says Loo. "The technology has allowed us to get away from the days of using e-mail to send thousands of files to hundreds of people and reduces time, travel and errors. People don't end up with the wrong version of a file."

 

Information residing on the portal is accessible 24 hours a day, eliminating the barriers created in the past by time zones and physical boundaries. Loo also notes that suppliers make heavy use of the alerts functionality provided by SharePoint products and technologies.

 

"This helps to eliminate confusion that can lead to delays in development. That, in turn, helps us get products to market faster than we could in the past," says Loo.

 

The portal also includes functionality that allows Internet-based, realtime collaboration on complex CAD files and specification documents.

 

Speeds data access for many departments: Since implementation, use of the portal has progressed beyond engineering, design and manufacturing teams to include other departments that are important in bringing new products to market. Now, program managers, marketing personnel, attorneys and others have access to it as well.

 

For example, the marketing department uses the portal to coordinate activities and content prior to a product launch. And the legal department spends a lot of time on the portal, managing the large number of Callaway Golf patents -- covering cosmetic issues like colors and finishes; physical attributes like face and groove shapes, moments of inertia, and center of gravity; and manufacturing processes such as casting and bonding technology

 

Encourages innovation: An advanced design team also relies on the collaboration portal. The team focuses on creating new golf club concepts and working with new combinations of materials. Although not all the work makes it into production, the group benefits directly from the features of the portal.

 

"The spark behind innovation comes from engineers and conceptual designers working together with customers as well as other employees," Loo says. "With the collaborative functions available in our SharePoint-based portal, team members can work together more efficiently on design problems and refine concepts faster." CG