The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: A Case Study on Vault Professional Integrated with Autodesk Fusion Manage

KIMBERLY HENDRIX: Thanks for joining our class. The Good, the Bad, the Ugly. It's a Case Study on Vault Professional Integrated with Fusion Managing along with our friends from Bradford White. So Taylor Alberts and I will take you through the process of joining Vault and Fusion Manage together and the whole two year process as we go, along with the good and the bad.

So who are we? I'm Kimberly Hendrix. I'm the VP of professional services for Team D3. I'm based out of Oklahoma. I have four wonderful kids, and that is actually me playing the saxophone. And if you are at AU last year I left because this little man was born right in the middle of AU. And then I'd like to introduce our first time speaker this year is Taylor Alberts from Bradford White. Taylor, would you like to introduce yourself?

TAYLOR ALBERTS: Sure. I'm Taylor Alberts. I'm the engineering Services Manager at Bradford White. I work at our manufacturing facility located in Michigan. I'm where all the engineering changes meet. New product development, production support. That's what I do outside of work. I have three beautiful daughters, and when we are not going to wrestling tournaments, we are traveling to car shows around the country.

KIMBERLY HENDRIX: Awesome. All right, let's get started. So what we're going to cover today is the pain or what we are trying to solve for Bradford White, way back in '21 when we first proposed this project, and then we'll talk about what the original project was from the original statement of work. We're going to talk about what went well and what quite didn't go as well as we wanted. So the ugly. And then where we're at now and what will we do differently if we had this to start all over now with the lessons that we've learned. So with that, Taylor, can you explain the original ask, the pain that drove Bradford White to explore this PDM/PLM solution?

TAYLOR ALBERTS: Yeah, we were looking for something to help us track who has what, how long they've had it, for our drawings, for our prints. A system that would help us so we wouldn't duplicate work and stop writing up our changes in Excel and then somebody manually putting them into our ERP system. We had people working on the same print at the same time, basically, doing different changes.

And we just needed more constraint on our changes. Our engineering changes would make it to the production floor sometimes just because we were so slow at it, we'd have to implement it into production and then the paperwork would follow and our system would be updated. And that's not how anyone wants to work. We still PDF our prints to send them via email to our supplier, and didn't feel like that's a very safe way to send out our work, not knowing did they receive it, how did they receive it. And there's no checks and balances there either to even say that we sent it.

And then lastly, something that plays nice with what we already had. We didn't want a clunky trying to integrate multiple different softwares. Like we just want something that works well.

KIMBERLY HENDRIX: So you said that you had multiple people working on the same prints at the same time. I assume that caused some problems on the shop floor occasionally.

TAYLOR ALBERTS: Yeah, that absolutely causes downtime. It was like a race. Whoever got their change released first, that's what the production floor would see. And the other person's work never made it to production. And then it would cause confusion and they stop and look at it. And every time we're down, every minute we're down is thousands of dollars lost.

KIMBERLY HENDRIX: Wow, OK, so then the decision. You want to take us through that?

TAYLOR ALBERTS: Yeah so quite the extensive amount of research went into it. But we identified the need. We needed a PLM system. We needed a PDM system to help solve both of our pain points. So we could keep growing because we're only adding more products, expanding, as we move. So then we decided like, yep, this is what we need. We need a PLM. F3M. Fusion 360 manages what we want to what we want to get. PDM Vault software. These play nicely because we are Autodesk, we already have Autodesk products. So it would help with that.

And just help us manage all of our pain. Just help us manage the new product introduction, consistency, manufacturing, making sure our bill of materials match and match the print. Nice collaboration with our suppliers. No more emailing PDFs and just have that overall improved quality and efficiency for our process.

KIMBERLY HENDRIX: So that brings us to the proposal. So the original project way back in November of '21, that the team at Team D3, along with our partners at Autodesk, proposed a solution that included Vault Professional and implementation, a data load and some training, along with Fusion 360 Manage and about seven or eight workspaces. Customer success, engineering management, change management, change order, NPI supplier management and quality management. And then along with that, connecting those two, so that where one needed to talk to the other, we did that automatically using our partners at coolOrange and powerPLM to put those two together.

So when a change order happens, it affects the file and Vault. And when the Vault file gets released, it should affect what's in the change order in F3. So that was the original plan, the original project. So what went well? The Vault Professional. That first implementation of Vault Professional, it's a mature product, it's a mature team that puts it in. The data was all there. There were a few things that we missed-- we'll talk about that-- we put in a Vault Professional foundation. We did Vault lifecycles. We then took that foundation plan and converted it to an item centric Vault, because we were going to do items and BOMs in F3M. So we needed the items in Vault.

And then we did a bunch of property mapping. We did miss something in the assessment, though. We went, we missed that. So we're just being transparent here. So we're going to tell you what went good and what didn't go good. So we missed the fact that at the time Bradford White was predominantly 2D based in AutoCAD. That's a different animal than Inventor and 3D based with properties and building materials and converting to items. So we missed that in the assessment. So property mapping became somewhat of an issue.

But we cleaned it up and we've got that with some automation in the background, trying to help clean that up. They're in the process, I believe, of going 2D to 3D. It's a process though, isn't it, Taylor?

TAYLOR ALBERTS: It is absolutely a process. We were 82% AutoCAD, by the way, when we did this.

KIMBERLY HENDRIX: OK that's a lot. AutoCAD still prevalent out there. It's still there. We added a job processor again, powering with our friends at coolOrange for the powerJobs and doing some automation. You heard Taylor say that they created PDFs for their suppliers. We still create PDFs for them. We just try to automate that feature. So a drafter or a salesperson or a technical person is not going in and open that drawing and creating a PDF. We try to do that automatically on the life cycle changes.

We also did a full data load of all their historical data. I'm not sure that's always necessary for everybody, but in their world, it was. They wanted all their historical data in the Vault and we put it in a file structure that literally says something to the effect of old data or historical data or something like that. And then there's a line in the sand and everything new gets put in a proper folder structure with the proper folder, property mappings and file property mappings, and no duplicate file names.

We did then take all the historical data that we could and automatically using some scripting created items for all of that, so that they were up at ground zero. Best we could be with the data that they had. There were some issues with the item creation. Anytime you're doing something automatically, it's that 80-20 rule. And then duplicate file names still are a problem today. But we have a plan for that in the newer releases of Vault in '24 and '25. You can set a folder and says from here down, duplicate file names are allowed. So we can allow them in that historical data and not allow them in that new stuff. And that'll clean that up.

But then after going live in the Vault and realizing that there were some issues, team D3 went in and met with Bradford White and we were like, demo back to us. The customer, as in Bradford White. Demo back to us your entire process. And I'm not going to lie. I'm sitting there at that table in the middle of Taylor's office and I'm going, wow, we should automate this. And they shouldn't have to manually do this. And I was trying to be quiet and let them finish. I didn't make it.

But after all of that, we did go back and add some more automation to their prior job. So that some of that PDF creation is done at the right time so that the checks and balances can be done. And they're not going back. We're sending emails automatically. We're doing some little things to help with that automation so that they don't have so many points and clicks. So there was some back and forth and some cleaning up of that as we went through.

And then next we put in Fusion Manage. And there was about seven main workspaces that were done. Product engineering requests, engineering change request, and change orders, advanced information release, items and BOMs, control documents. And then there's a slew of misleading supporting miscellaneous-- I'm sorry-- supporting workspaces that help manage all of that, like a to-do list and work list and things that Taylor needs to get done every day are on one screen. So that she can see that in one dashboard. So those kind of things are done as well.

And then also, in this environment, we use the Vault Job Processor and our friends at coolOrange used powerPLM to do that connection between them. And then there was some initial data load of the items and BOMs, but Bradford White handled that themselves as needed.

So what is connected between Vault and F3 is primarily around the change request and change orders. So when a change order is implemented in F3, it goes and finds the linked file in Vault and changes its life cycle state. So that you remember when she talked about that first in, first out thing. And people working on the same thing. We don't want a change order sitting out here and that file is still being set at released or in work in progress. It's going to put it in that change order state so that people know where it's at, and keep those two things in sync.

The opposite is also true going back. When that file is released in Vault, it's going to notify F3. And it does that. And this is just a little snippet of a script, and it's part of powerPLM from coolOrange. It does that by pulling Fusion 360 Manage every so many minutes and anything marked as pending, it will move the corresponding Vault. Item and file to the right life cycle states.

And that's an ongoing-- it's called a Cron job-- and it's an ongoing job that runs every, I don't remember how many minutes. Taylor, you might remember, but every few minutes and checks for those. How many?

TAYLOR ALBERTS: Five.

KIMBERLY HENDRIX: Five minutes. So it runs every five minutes and checks for any changes and then takes care of those changes in the Vault as well. So what didn't go well? So when you start talking about a multifaceted project, taking somebody from a chaotic environment, which we'll talk about in a minute, and network drives and siloed information and PDFs, communication is huge. And I'll be honest, we didn't do it well at the beginning.

So you're talking about PDM, PLM, integrations, migrations, all at the same time. One, it's a lot. Two, there's a lot of people on both sides that are involved, and the communication across these teams are vital. And during the initial phases, we failed. We failed to communicate that properly and that allowed for a repeat of work and meetings that were repeating the same stuff over and over again and stepping on each other's progress.

We cleaned that up with an overall team and an Oversight Committee that cleaned that up, and since then it's been going much better. But communication is vital, wouldn't you say, Taylor, in these projects?

TAYLOR ALBERTS: Absolutely.

KIMBERLY HENDRIX: Yeah. It can make it go bad quickly. And we were going down that path. Let's talk about the next thing. I'm going to call it the ugly, the consumption model. So if you look at the image in the background, it's kind of-- and if you've been around the Autodesk world, you've probably seen this image before. It's like the chaos model. All these siloed things and data going back and forth and email everywhere and PDF you got Excel here and you might have some Power BI here.

And Bradford White was no different. They had a lot of different systems that worked independently well, but they didn't work together. And so CRM, ERP, network drives, Excel, email, PDF, all that was and we tried to go from this chaos to this beautifully stacked, organized everything talking to each other in one step. There was a lot.

And honestly, if you try to do all that in one step, you're going crater somewhere. Something's got to give somewhere. And what was given was production and the quality of the work. And so that comes down to our lesson of what did we learn from this? And what we learned is, we cannot go from chaos to calm in one step. The teams have got to still work in production, and too much consumption at one time leads to frustration, miscommunication and slowdowns. Taylor, you want to talk about how it affected your production line and the work in you're trying to do all this at once?

TAYLOR ALBERTS: It got to a point, we were pretty much at a screeching halt. We could not keep up with any ongoing changes for production that they needed. We had new product development, chomping at the bit. We got government deadlines where we need to release new product and we are just spinning our heads in circles at this point. It was frustrating, to say the least. And yeah, absolutely. Just it delayed us significantly. I think we had one project that got delayed by over three months and it was just because we could not get our stuff together to make it move forward.

KIMBERLY HENDRIX: So from that, what would we do differently. And I think and Team D3 is really working towards this and we've talked with Taylor and some of the newer workspaces and stuff that we're doing at F3 we're doing in this work, doing in this way. And we should start foundationally. You know when you build a house, you don't start with the shingles, right? Or even the roof decking. You don't even start with the walls. You got to start with the foundation at the very bottom and build it up. You can't just throw it all in there all at once. Even if you're prefab, right? They still start at the bottom and work their way up.

So we've taken a step back, learned our lessons from this project. And what do we do different. We would start with the data. To me, that's the foundation, that's the PDM package, this. Implement it, load it, train it, rework it, automate what we can with the powerJobs, with the job processor and the PDFs and what works to that point. Get all the data in, get it all loaded, get it item centric, get it all cleaned, help them go from 2D to 3D if that's what they want to do. Get to your items, take a breath, then let's add PLM.

Maybe there's some overlap if the teams can work simultaneously while we're implementing the PLM. We're going to implement, we're going to load, we're going to train, we're going to learn that process of what we do. Before we start automating things and connecting things, we have to know how we do it manually. What is that process that gets us from A to B to C all the way to Z in a manual workflow before we start automating it and everybody's not understanding what's going on in the background?

So lastly, we'll connect it, integrate it, test it, train it, and then we'll stop and we'll do extended packages on top of that. What's next, Taylor? It was like we're connecting to your ERP system now, I think is the next step. And we're starting to grow the PLM system and we're adding some workspaces around that. Because now that we've gone through that the hard way, they know what the product's doing and what's missing. And what easy buttons they need. And we can do it efficiently rather than doing and redoing and doing and redoing.

So we want to drive that maturity and consumable bites. And I don't know, Taylor. I think if we had to step back in '21 and done it this way, we might be further along than we are now. What are your thoughts on that?

TAYLOR ALBERTS: Absolutely. I think we'd be done. We'd already have additional packages and everything on top of it. It definitely would have been beneficial. We've changed our process, I think about three times now, and how we do things because we just didn't understand the full capacity of what our PDM system did, how it worked. We didn't understand it because at the same time, we're also trying to get the PLM, and we're still learning that and what it can do, and now we're expanding. But we should have-- yeah, we should have already that had we taken smaller bites.

KIMBERLY HENDRIX: Yeah, so to wrap that up, there was a lot of good things that we learned both, I think, in Bradford White situation and ours on how this it's a very common project to go from network drives and siloed information to PDM and PLM. And think if we do it in a consumable bites, in packages that are fixed in range, and everybody knows what we're doing, and you can get into it, it's a rapid time to ROI. You can use your ROI from the last one to fund the next one. You can learn what the project is doing. So we're not doing these big bespoke spiderweb projects at the beginning, when we don't even know what the processes are as we're changing those.

So that's kind of our lessons learned. Anything else you want to add, Taylor, to that.

TAYLOR ALBERTS: No, I think you hit all the points.

KIMBERLY HENDRIX: Awesome. So if you want to talk more about this process and the maturity roadmap and how Taylor and I identified what was good and what was bad and what was ugly and what we learned from it, feel free to connect with us on our LinkedIn here with those QR codes and our LinkedIn deals. And we sure appreciate your time. Thanks so much.

TAYLOR ALBERTS: Thanks, everyone.