"Thanks to Cadac Group's approach, based on best practices proven in practice, we don't have to reinvent the wheel!"
At Kusters Engineering everything revolves around money! Literally, because they earn it by destroying it. While for most people money is just a means of payment, for Kusters Engineering it is a product with a life cycle. With their machines, in about 250 countries, and at about 75 central banks worldwide, paper and coin are destroyed at a speed of no less than 1 million notes per hour.
The company is currently in transition. The new Kusters Engineering must stand for an innovative, self-developing organisation. Under the name "Kusters 4.0", the company wants to eventually double its turnover with the same number of indirect employees.
How will this be achieved?
Richard Geerdink, Business Development Manager at Kusters Engineering: "By investing heavily in innovation (engineering) and standardisation, to be able to switch from a strong Engineering To Order (ETO) company to a project-oriented Configure To Order (CTO) company. At the same time, we want to record all product knowledge. Of course we need tools to do that, think of the right CAD software (Autodesk Inventor), but above all a powerful central vault to store all our knowledge (Autodesk Vault).”
Together with Cadac Group, we take Product Data Management to the next level, i.e. Product Knowledge Management for the entire organisation.
Richard Geerdink
Business Development Manager -Kusters Engineering
Implementation partner
In our search for the best implementation partner, we soon came across Cadac Group. From previous work I knew what I could expect and that they can also live up to these expectations. Within 'Kusters 4.0' they are responsible for software, consultancy, training and even some project management.
In principle, we did not want any customised solutions. This fits in perfectly with Cadac Group's best practice approach, i.e. implementing based on the experience they have gained in the market over the past 30 years. They know what works and what doesn't. So we don't have to reinvent the wheel. Cadac Group has bundled their knowledge and experience in Cadac NXTdim for more productivity for Engineers and in Cadac Organice Vault for a standard configuration of Vault Professional.
The right 3D CAD software
Kusters Engineering has chosen to use Inventor for the design of their machines. This 3D CAD software also offers seamless integration with Autodesk Vault to optimally secure the knowledge for the rest of the organisation.
"Inventor is not only used for engineering, but also for sales purposes. The models are loaded into Autodesk Showcase to create beautiful visualizations, animations and videos that help convince customers to choose our solutions."
Product knowledge management
All knowledge is still in the heads of our people. We search for data and many activities are repetitive. This can be done a lot smarter! How? By recording everything in a PDM system and using handy tools, i.e. smart productivity-enhancing software to automate repetitive tasks.
For the registration of all knowledge concerning the development of our products, we chose Autodesk Vault Professional. This is a very powerful Product Data management system to record all know-how, (project) documents. So not only the CAD model, but also documents such as assembly instructions. The big advantage is that the knowledge is fixed and can be found very quickly, also within other departments of our organisation. Together with Cadac Group we take product data management to the next level, i.e. product knowledge management for the entire organisation.
The next step? Configure to Order!
With the right CAD tools, and the central vault for our knowledge, we are not there yet. In order to be able to deliver our products at the best price and the best delivery time, we will soon be making the switch from Engineering to Order (ETO) to Configure to Order (CTO).
We are currently working on making our products suitable for this. With Cadac NXTdim Configurator we will be able to translate our product decompositions into handy 'fill-in-screens', which we can use to put together machines with and for our customers based on our specifications.