Problem

An increase in part variety led to the establishment of a Design to Cost department. The drawing management system before Stone3D.AI was not structured to flexibly retrieve past drawing or price information. The ability to reference past drawings in the design process was limited.

 

Solution

Users can instantly find similar drawings from the company’s accumulated drawing data and refer to the amounts and suppliers. As a result, the company has created a list of suppliers capable of handling different levels of processing difficulty, enabling them to place orders with the most suitable suppliers for each part.

Cost Reduction Team Tackles Design, Procurement, Manufacturing, and Cost Planning Challenges

As a renowned manufacturer, the company adopts a made-to-order production approach, designing to the requirements of each company. While this approach offers the advantage of flexibly meeting the needs of each company, it also leads to an increase in the variety of parts, making it difficult to pursue efficiency. Optimizing procurement, standardizing design, and reducing costs have become critical management issues.

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Our mission is to reduce costs at the design stage. We were launched as a task force to solve issues in design, procurement, and manufacturing. We bring together experts from a wide range of divisions, including design, cost planning, material procurement, and manufacturing, to develop price strategies for cost planning and cost management.

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The Bottleneck to Cost Reduction: “Unable to Find Necessary Drawings”

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While seeking a breakthrough, the company received a proposal from Stone3D.AI , a long-time business partner, for the 2D, 3D drawing data utilization cloud. Stone3D.AI has a feature that automatically reads and analyzes text and shapes from drawing data in PDF, TIFF, Step, and other formats. By uploading the company’s drawing data to the cloud, users can freely search using keywords that are convenient for them, such as processing methods and materials, based on the analyzed information.

 

Additionally, past drawings with similar shapes can be immediately referenced using the shape data. Furthermore, by uploading data such as order history, it can be linked to the drawings.

 

The implementation took place in August 2022, shortly after the service’s launch.