Description
Key Learnings
- Discover how customers were able to use Autodesk Fusion 360 Manage to manage outside-the-box workflows.
- Learn about the challenges, solutions, and outcomes these customers realized by implementing these business processes.
- Assess which nontypical workflows you may be able to manage within Autodesk Fusion 360 Manage.
- Determine how to calculate a return on investment to justify the addition of these types of workflows to their tenant.
Speaker
- Scott HooverDr. Scott Hoover, Ph.D. is a Solutions Consultant for IMAGINiT. Scott's primary role is to implement the Fusion 360 Manage for clients. Scott is an Autodesk certified Fusion 360 Manage implementer and as a part of the IMAGINiT PLM team, Scott has successfully completed numerous Fusion 360 Manage implementations. Scott received his Master's and Doctorate in Industrial Engineering for the University of Louisville and has been working with IMAGINiT for over 10 years. Scott has researched multi-industry processes, procedures, and workflows through the use of quantitative models to help improve workflow methods and procedures.
SCOTT HOOVER: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to Thinking Outside The Box with Autodesk Fusion 360 Manage. So let's start with some introductions. My name is Scott Hoover. I am a solutions consultant for IMAGINiT Technologies. I've been with IMAGINiT for a little over 10 years, all within the Autodesk channel, all focusing on the PLM solutions, whether that be Fusion managed, or Upchain.
I've been an industrial engineer for a little over 12 years now focused in a number of different industries across health care, warehousing, manufacturing. But the two commonalities that I see across all of these industries is the fact that everything is based around workflow, and the fact that you can use technologies to help create solutions that help companies and organizations improve those workflows.
And that's where PLM, Fusion managed, that's where it really shines. And that's why we're here today is to take a look at how we can utilize that, utilize the Fusion manage tool, to help create and improve business workflows.
So let's take a look at our objectives for the class today. So to begin with, we're going to take a look at some customer examples and how they have been able to use the Autodesk Fusion 360 Manage tool to build workflows that are outside the box, not ones that are typically thought of in terms of being managed within a tool, a PLM tool. We're going to learn about the challenges that each of those customers had, the solutions that we implemented, and then the outcomes that they were able to realize by the implementation of those business processes.
We're going to talk about how you can go back and assess some of your non-typical workflows that you might be able to manage within the Autodesk Fusion 360 tool. And then finally, we'll talk a little bit about the return on investment and how you can justify the addition of these workflows through that ROI.
But before we dig in on those customer examples, let's take a look at, or let's talk about, what Fusion 360 Manage really is used for in most business cases. Typically and traditionally, a PLM tool is used to help manage your items, and BOMs, and your change process around those items and BOMs. Of course, it can also be used to help with other processes like new product introduction, quality, supplier collaboration, and such. In all of these areas, Fusion 360 Manage shines. It does a great job at managing these business processes.
If you've used the tool or have done any research around the tool, you'll see that all of these workflows have preconfigured work-- workflows already created within the tool. And really, you can come in, and with some minor configuration begin to use the tool right away. But what a lot of people don't realize is that you're not just limited to those workflows. The Fusion Manage tool has the ability to create your own workflows. And really the only limitation is your own imagination.
And so again, that's why we're here today is to take a look at how some customers of IMAGINiT have been able to take the Fusion 360 tool and expand it beyond just the traditional sense. So we're going to look at five specific examples and the different workflows that they have been able to create within the tool.
So to begin with, we're going to talk about Boa Technology. So Boa Technology has been-- I've been working with them for somewhere between six to seven years now. And when they first started off with the Fusion Manage tool, they started off with the traditional items and BOMs change management. But they were able to very quickly grow and adapt the system to meet their other needs.
So currently, as of today, they're sitting around 30 different workspaces that they have developed workflows for. And we're going to look at three of those examples. First of all, we're going to start with the molds workspace, then we're going to talk about their color samples process, and then finally talk about the Fusion 360 Manage scripts workspace that was developed. So let's begin with the molds.
The challenge that Boa had here was that they utilize a third party vendor to help with their injection molding. But this third party vendor was running into issues of not really knowing when they needed to either repair molds or completely scrap them, and to begin the new process for creating new molds. So the solution that was developed by Boa was that we were going to create two different workspaces to manage this process.
First of all, we had the mold items workspace, which was a revision controlled workspace. And within this workspace, this is really where all of the physical parameters of the mold were set up and established. And from there, we were able to relate those molds to the parts that were created from the mold. That way, somebody can go in and very quickly see all of the different part numbers that were-- that are or could be affected by a change to that particular mold.
Then the second workspace that developed-- that we developed was the molds project and tracking. This workspace is a basic workspace with workflow. And it builds this one to one relationship with the mold item. And this is where we, in the end, kind of manage the overall lifecycle of that mold, taking it from its conceptual phase all the way to the death of the mold.
And so within this workspace is where we capture the daily input of shots that go into that particular mold. So here on our next slide here, we have the mold item, the Rev controlled item. And this is where, again, all of that metadata he's brought in and shown for this particular mold. And you can see we've got a section here that is the link to that mold project and tracking record.
And in another section further on in this, we have that relationship to all of the parts that this mold creates. From there, if we go and take a look at that mold tracking workspace, this is where all of the data associated to the mold gets created and gets put in. So this is where you'll see the total number of shots that this mold can have as well as its current status in regards to how many shots are left. And we capture all of that information on the grid tab. So every day, this data is imported into the system. And it keeps a running counter of the total shots for that mold.
And then at certain points when it hits whether it be 25, 10, or 0% life remaining, we have email triggers that get sent out and notify stakeholders within the business that this mold is nearing the end of its life, and that they need to then decide whether or not the mold should be scrapped. So at least in this example, you can see here that they took this mold almost 6 and 1/2% beyond its life and then finally decided to scrap it and utilize and create a new mold to continue the creation of the parts.
The second workspace we're going to take a look at here is the color samples process. Now as a part of the product that Boa creates, they have the ability to create a number of products-- create these products in a combination of a number of colors and materials, whether it be different types of plastics, or even different types of metal. And so the challenge that Boa had with this was that they needed a way to be able to keep up with any new combination of the materials and the colors.
So to do this, we created three workspaces. First of all was the color samples workspace. And this is where the combination of the two-- of the color and the materials is brought together and then taken through an approval process to be considered an approved color sample. And the other two workspaces that go into this are the color target, which was a basic workspace, and simply contains all of the metadata associated to those different color swatches that can be used. And then the materials workspace, which contains all of the metadata associated to the different types of materials.
And so if we take a look here at the workspace, take a look at a couple images, you'll see here, this is that color target and standard workspace. So this is where all of the characteristics around the color are stored, even to the point that we gather an RGB value for that color to provide a preview so that users can come in and see what that color would look like.
In addition then, we have the workspace, or the material workspace, which again captures all of the information around that particular material that is going to be used. And then finally, you get the combination of the two into that basic workflow with-- or basic workspace with workflow that allows the data to be derived in there, and then taken through the approval process to get it to be an approved color.
Now finally, the last workspace that I'm going to review, at least for Boa, is a JavaScript code workspace. So as Boa developed, or continued to develop the PLM tool out, and different JavaScripts were created for the different workspaces it became a challenge for the admin at Boa to keep up with the different JavaScript code changes that were made and to ensure that we weren't making-- we weren't losing any historical versions of that code. Because anybody who's gone in and used the JavaScript functionality knows that once you make a change to the code and you hit Save, within the tool, you do lose access to previous versions of it.
So what we did was develop just a revision controlled workspace that every time a change is made to one of the scripts, the admin is able to create a new dot JS file and add it as an attachment to the working version of that record in the workspace that represents that particular script. And then he just utilizes his existing change order workspace to take it through its rev change. So here's an image of that workspace of a particular script. And you can see we gather the type of script that it is if there's any library scripts that are linked with this one, and then of course, what workspace it's being used for and so forth.
And by doing this, Boa was able to-- or the admin at Boa was able to help, he was able to maintain his code in a lot more stringent manner without the fear of losing a previous version in case he were to make a change and then have some ill effect come from that change. He would always be able to go back and revert it.
So let's take a look here at the outcomes of these examples that I've reviewed over here with, at least with Boa. So with the managing mold workflows, it really allowed Boa to become more proactive instead of being reactive in regards to changing out their molds and starting a process for a new mold. And then in the end, that helps them reduce waste. Because if they are using old molds that are no longer any good, then they're creating bad parts.
And then those bad parts are obviously wasteful and need to be disposed of. So by maintaining and keeping up with where the molds are, they're reducing the risk of creating bad parts, and thus reducing waste. For the color samples workflow, prior to implementing it within fusion, they were utilizing another software. And they were able to completely eliminate that software. And that software even had limitations in that they really couldn't build out those relationships between the color and the materials.
So they not only were able to eliminate that software, but they were also able to gain additional functionality by having the two workspaces being pulled together into one. And then finally, the JavaScript, as I mentioned. There's no longer any fear from the admin about losing historical versions of that data. He's able to just go in, keep a revision, and be able to go back and look at the superseded versions of his script in the event that he needs to go back and pull out some of that code.
OK, so now we're going to move on to our next customer example. This is going to be with Superior Essex. So when Superior Essex first implemented the Fusion 360 Manage tool, they started with the NPI process. And they set up what I would consider to be a pretty typical and standard NPI process. Now where it kind of gets outside the box is because of the product that they create, they have a number of different tests that have to be performed on those products, on some samples of the products that are being developed.
And so they needed a way to help manage that test, not only the testing process, but the way in which those tests get requested by certain individuals within the workflow. So the challenge that they had was that for this test request process was the old system that they were using was very antiquated. And the person who-- it was a homegrown system. And the person who developed it would no longer-- was no longer with the organization. So they could no longer go in and make updates to the system, which left them kind of behind the eight ball when it comes to any changes within their process.
They had to try to find a way to either do a workaround or adapt what their tool was to be able to meet these new changes in the business. In addition, their tool had the ability to upload some documentation. But it tended to corrupt the files. It was never really understood why or how. But at times, they would not be able then to redownload or view those documents that got loaded. And then finally, their old system didn't allow for any type of reporting, especially any type of key performance indicators.
And so with all of these challenges, we were able to work with Superior and help develop really two workspaces that meet-- met this need. First of all was the test request workspace, and then the actual test workspace, which captures all of the information on the tests that were being performed. So let's first take a look here at the test request.
So the test request workspace really just gathers all of the information for the particular request that's being placed for that particular product. You'll see that it gets related back to a project, one of the NPI records. And what the users are able to do is on the Grid tab, they are able to come in and select what tests they want to take place in-- for this particular product.
So they can go in and create these tests. And then as a part of the workflow, right here where it says Begin Testing, the system will go in and generate a record in the test workspace for each of these rows in the Grid tab for each of the tests that's being requested. That takes us here into the test workspace, which just brings over some of the necessary information, the related request, the related project.
But more importantly, this workspace allows the lab technicians to come in and not only indicate where in the process they are, but it will also allow them to capture how much effort and time they have spent on this particular test.
So as they're going through this workflow process and they acknowledge that they have this test, and then they begin the testing process, any resource who works on it can come in, record some time, and effort, so that then Superior is able to go back and report on any of those metrics. So talking about the outcomes as for Superior, first of all, the system was just easy to use and easy to update for them. The admin there at Superior is able to come in with really minimal assistance and make-- update changes.
And then if the update or changes he wants to make is a little above his head, then he's able to come to us and we'll be able to help him. Typically, that involves the Java scripting or something like that. But for the ability to create a new field, or to adjust the workflow, he has the capabilities and knowledge to go in and do that himself.
The fear of lost data is no longer there. They don't have to fear losing those documents, or them being corrupted. They're always there. They're always easily available. And there is no fear of any corrupted data. And then finally, they're able to do continuous improvement to their processes because now, they're able to report back on those KPIs.
They're able to not only capture how much time is spent on a particular test, but we implemented the statistic tracking where as it moves through each workflow, we're capturing how much time is spent in each of those workflow steps. So they're then able to go back and run some reports and pull out information around where their bottleneck is in the process. And then from that, they can go and try to determine why they have a bottleneck there, and then determine a resolution to help improve that bottleneck.
All right, moving on to our final, or our, I'm sorry, our next example. We're now going to talk about Owens Corning. So Owens Corning has been a user of the Fusion Manage tool for many years now. And they originally got the tool to help manage their capital projects. But Owens Corning was very quickly-- they very quickly saw the capabilities of the tool and really took it upon themselves to start expanding this out into other business areas.
So these examples here that I'm going to show you, these are actually all examples that Owens Corning did basically all on their own. They may have reached out for some help, or a question here and there. But the majority, if not all of these workflows, the admin at Owens Corning was able to go in and do himself.
So we're going to look at a couple examples from them, the first one being their travel request and passport stamp and visa workflows. So because of their capital projects, their resources that work on those do a lot of traveling. And a lot of that traveling is international. So whether it was international or domestic, what they would do, or what one of the challenges they were having, was keeping up with which resources were required to travel, and where they needed to go.
So they needed to put in some type of process to request approval for them to go and travel. And then with that, for any travel that was required to go out of country, there's typically visas that are needed. And so they needed a way to be able to track those visas and make sure that the resources weren't rejected at the border when they would try to get in.
So to come up, or to address these challenges, really three workspaces were developed. First of all was just the travel request workspace, which allows a resource to come in here and put a request in for where they want to travel, why they're traveling, if it's related to a project, and then be able to put in some of the estimated expenses for that.
And with that, it gets tied in to that passport stamps and visas workflow, which will keep track of what visas have been assigned, or have been obtained by that resource, and when their expiration dates are and so forth. So when the approval process, during that approval process, whoever is approving is able to go in, review all of that information, and ensure that that person is going to be able to travel, and then that they do have the approval to do so.
The next workflow that Owens Corning tried-- or utilize the tool to come-- to solve a problem was with their capital projects, they needed a way to kind of keep up with how much time is being spent on each of the capital projects across the different resources that work on them.
So they simply just created a timesheet workspace, which really utilizes the Grid tab to capture those time entries for those specific projects. So a user is able to come in here every week at the beginning of the week, or at the end of the week. They're able to come in, create a record, input who, or what week this is for, and then on the Grid tab, they are able to select different projects that they are a part of, that they did some work on, and provide the amount of effort that they spent.
And then from there, management at Owens Corning is able to go in and run reports and be able to assign these hours and costs off on to those other projects, or onto the different projects so that they're able to keep up with expenses and where from a monetary standpoint, those projects stand. OK, so this takes us into our next example, which is from the world's largest tire manufacturer, Bridgestone.
Now Bridgestone is a relatively new user to the Fusion Manage tool. I'm actually actively working with them right now on their system. And Bridgestone actually took a somewhat different approach to implementing out Fusion Manage. Where most customers will right off the bat start tackling those items, and BOMs, and change the core processes, Bridgestone wanted to help with the adoption of this tool to be as accessible as it could be.
And so to do that, we actually started with some workflows that fit outside the norm. But we're going to get individuals involved very quickly across the organization, large, large number of individuals, so that we can grow the knowledge and the trust of the system so that when we do start coming back and tackling the processes like change and NPI, they're already used to the tool and know how the tool works.
And so to do that, we identified two workflows, approached this with Bridgestone. The challenge that we first wanted to go and tackle was that they have a process in which they utilize outside contractors to work on their CAD models. And to be able to do this though, they have to provide those contractors with direct access into their vault within their data management system.
And they were having difficulty keeping up with who had access, and when their access should be removed, and all of that. So we developed a workspace to help them manage that process. And really, what's happening here is within that workflow, we create a record that represents somebody gaining access into the tool. Somebody goes in and requests access for this contractor to get into the vault, they provide them with all of the information that they need in regards to where, and what they need access to, and who it's going to-- who it's for, and how long they need to have that access.
And when we get through the workflow, once all of the access requests has been approved, the vault admin will be able to go into vault, make the security changes, allow that user to come in here, and then there's a timer that sits. And it starts counting down. And as we approach that expiration date, it will send out emails, notifications to individuals, telling them that this person's access will be removed at a certain date and time.
And it allows them to then kind of go back, make a request to either extend it, or they allow it to keep going. And at the end of the workflow, their access-- the admin will get an email saying that their access needs to be removed. And at that point, they're able to go in, and remove it, and indicate that it has been closed, and their access has been taken out, or has been taken out of the vault system.
So the second workflow that we went after was, again, another workflow that is applicable to a large quantity of users within the organization, and also something that was very simple and very easy to set up. And this was what they call their record retention workflow. And this is where on a yearly basis, the engineering employees have to go in and remove any intellectual property from their computer. So any documents, PDFs, CAD drawings, whatever it might be, anything that contains IP, it has to be removed off simply for security reasons.
And they used to have a SharePoint workflow that they utilize to help manage this. But that was lost in an IT incident. So they wanted to-- they wanted to recreate this process here within Fusion Manage. So again, we went in, we created a workspace, just a single workspace, to help manage this. And similar to the vault access, it utilizes a timer and keeps track on a yearly basis of when these individuals need to go into their computer, perform the compliance process, meaning removing those documents from their computer, and then submitting that they have done this to their manager.
The manager then goes in and says, yes, I approve that you've done this. And then that puts them back into compliance. And so through all of this, a couple of the outcomes that we saw, or that we're seeing with Bridgestone, is that like I mentioned already, it's-- both of these processes were used by a majority of the individuals within the organization. And so it allowed for some quick and easy adoption by the users. And it's going to get them more comfortable with the tool before we go off and tackle those more complex processes like NPI, and change, and all of that.
All right. Now for my final example. So Shutterfly has been a customer of Fusion Manage for, oh, about two years now. And they utilize the tool, again, for NPI, New Product Introduction, to get new products out there to the marketplace for consumers to purchase. And they have a pretty lengthy NPI NPD process. And as a part of that, they create RFQs, or Requests For Quotes, that they send out to their partners for them to bid on to become the person, or the company, that's going to create that product for Shutterfly.
So the challenge that they had prior to implementing the Fusion Manage tool was that this process was very time consuming and very manual, meaning that they had a lot of different data across a number of different Google Sheets, all of which had to be pulled in to get the appropriate information that they needed for the RFQ. And then they had to individually email each of the partners that they wanted to potentially have bid on this. They had to individually email them all out with all of that information.
And it just became a very manual and time consuming process. So to address this, we created two different workspaces for them. First of all, the RFQ workspace, which contains the workflow and the data collection for Shutterfly to send out to the partner. And then there's the partner quote workspaces, which is where the partner can actually enter their information around that particular RFQ, and then submit the information back to Shutterfly for them to review.
So here on the screen is that RFQ process. This is the front end of the process where Shutterfly will come in and create the RFQ. They will-- they'll select the product that they're wanting to get this RFQ on. And then they'll select the partners that they want to submit it to. And as a part of the workflow, it will go and create a partner quote record in another workspace, which is what you see here.
And within this workspace, this is where the partners can come in, and they can provide all of the cost information, and any MOQ type of information around the product that they are bidding on. And they can then submit their bid back to Shutterfly for them to review. And then what we did as a part of this is we've created this quote analysis tool down here in the lower left corner, which by clicking on that, it will build a report and summarize all of the-- or all of the partner quotes that are associated to this RFQ.
And it very quickly allows them to compare all of this information, or compares all the cost. They can control what fields show up here within this report. And then they're able to go in and make a decision around who they want to award the RFQ to. And then there is actually a process in the RFQ, or actually in the partner quote, that allows them to communicate a couple times back and forth until the final-- it's finally, all of the details are finalized and the RFQ is completed.
So the outcomes that came out of this was first of all, it just it brought all of that information into one location for Shutterfly. They no longer had to have all of these Google Sheets. They didn't have to go in and manually create these emails. All of the emails were sent out automatically from the tool. And then the partners were able to respond and provide their information back in the same tool. And they're all working within that same environment. And so this obviously reduced a lot of effort on the Shutterfly part to create these RFQs and analyze the RFQs and sending them all out and so forth.
So let's talk a little bit about how you can go back and identify some of your business workflows. Really, here are just a few examples of many to consider. Other areas. Not only do you have your standard business processes, like we've talked about, the change process, and quality. And of course, we have all of these examples that we just went through. But there are a whole lot of other office procedures, or other business workflows, that you could go and potentially create a workspace for.
And these are just a couple additional examples, employee training, onboarding of new employees within your organization. If you specifically talk about business workflows, proposals and contracts workflows. We utilize this internally here at IMAGINiT. We have a workspace that we use to manage any of our customer service proposals that we're presenting to them. And the whole process of writing out that scope, getting it approved internally before it gets sent to the customer.
And once the customer has it, any feedback that they have, or when they sign off on it, there's a whole workflow around that whole business process. But then there's other business workflows like inspections, kind of very similar to the tests workspace that we talked about with Superior ESIX. There's things like artwork and packaging. I mean, it's kind of like a documents workspace. In the end, the point that I'm trying to make here is that you're only limited by your imagination. If you can--
If you have a repeatable process that you can define with workflow steps, then it's a process that you can manage within the Fusion Manage tool. Some other things to consider, though, when you're going about doing this would be things like your quick wins. And Bridgestone is a great example of this. And we kind of talked about it already. You don't have to necessarily go out and go right after the big processes like change management, items, and BOMs. Now it's definitely recommended because it's, again, the core functionality of the Fusion tool.
But if you have other little quick wins that you can go and get, other small processes that can retain either stakeholder interest, or that are easy and simple to build, or that's-- it's a global process that's going to get a lot of users in there very quickly, then that's something you should go after, and get in there, and get that adoption building very quickly. Get the familiarity building so that people are comfortable with the tool. And they quickly realize that they can't do their jobs without the tool.
And then finally, just talking about that return on investment. Now, when I talk about ROI, I know most people will automatically equate that to money. And how much money am I going to save? And that's definitely a good and valid point. And definitely, a good measurement tool. And if you're able to do that through the capturing of information in the system, then by all means, that's the way you should do it. But ROI doesn't, in my opinion, always necessarily relate back to money.
It can be simply just the way you perform your business, like the idea of being more proactive instead of reactive. Now I'm sure we can go and calculate a monetary value associated to that. But simply by the fact that you're being more proactive is better for your business. But some of the things to help consider and capture maybe as a part of this would be throughput, and cycle times, and bottlenecks, identifying where those bottlenecks are. We talked about the idea of Superior ESIX capturing those statistics so that they can do this.
They're not the only one. Boa utilizes this tool as well as a number other-- Shutterfly as well. A number of other, all of these customers, they utilize that statistics tracking so they can understand how much time is spent in each workflow step and identify where those bottlenecks are so that they can go and address them. And then from there, they can set up KPIs that can be measured and hold people accountable to those workflow processes.
So in conclusion, I hope you all have been able to gather just some ideas of other out of the box type workflows that you're going to be able to go back to your organization and start to implement within the Fusion Manage tool. So with that, I thank you for your time. And thank you.
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