Autodesk Fusion Manage: The Journey and Destination of Implementing PLM for Vow ASA and Its Subsidiaries

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Hi, guys. Welcome to this session where Knut and myself, Marcus, will discuss the journey and destination of implementing Fusion Manage for VOW ASA and its subsidiaries. So safe harbor statement-- we probably won't talk about anything regarding future states, but now we have seen it. You will probably see it a lot during AU. So quick, short and snappy about us-- Knut, I would like you to start.

KNUT GAARD: Yeah, hi. My name is Knut Gaard. I'm the product manager in Scanship and VOW. And I will represent both companies today, but mainly focus on the Scanship work we have done.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: And my name is Markus Gundersen, fourth time presenting at AU, CEO at Addwize, the company that has helped Scanship VOW implementing Fusion Manage over the years. So our agenda for today is to discuss something about VOW Scanship and Addwize so you have brief understanding of what the company does.

We're going to discuss the different strategies we had in the beginning of the implementation. We're going to look at the technical solution, how it's working, what kind of integration we have, and we'll also conduct a live demo. We'll go through our lessons learned and Q&A at the end. So to start with, it will be VOW. So, Knut, tell us, what does Scanship VOW do?

KNUT GAARD: Yeah, we have for the last 25 or some years now been delivering equipment and technology to these large, large cruise ships going all over the world, handling all waste streams that are generated on board these ships. All waste and also wastewater-- black water, gray water-- is collected in the basement of the ship, so to say, and handled and recycled.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: And it's not only the cruise ships, right? You have some land-based stuff as well.

KNUT GAARD: Yep, and the top picture there shows the world's largest cruise ship with our equipment on board, which went into operation earlier this year. So that's the newest one. But over the past years, we have also been looking into adapting our technology for also land-based projects, utilizing the same technology and pyrolysis for handling of waste and different other feedstocks, including also woodchips for generating then high-value gas and also biocarbon. And the lower picture there shows the size of these pyrolysis reactors. This one is handling over five tons of waste per hour. So this-- yeah?

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: So VOW, what's the acronym for that?

KNUT GAARD: Yeah, that could be different interpretations of that one, but I like to think of it as value of waste for these three letters.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Agreed.

KNUT GAARD: Yep, some key numbers-- we are approximately 240 people in the company, all in all, and 25 different nationalities. So we are quite diverse. And we have 45 or so proprietary technologies and over 100 patents, meaning we have top of the notch technology. And we need to have that kind of technology staying in the front with all environmental regulations and everything. So just some of the key numbers.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Perfect, thank you. And Addwize, it's a Norwegian-based consultancy company with customers all around the globe, Canada, for instance. We are a software-agnostic company, meaning we do other stuff than Autodesk as well. And we have also created some value-added software for Fusion Manage, for instance, and office integration for check-in and check-out, for instance. So the different strategies we had in the beginning we're going to discuss.

And one of them was the data and process strategy. So we laid out-- I say we even though I was hired as a consultant. I feel like I'm a part of the company. But we had a strategy or a vision for all subsidiaries to use the same system and to reduce the time spent on nonvalue-added activities like searching for information, verifying information, finding files, documents and so on.

KNUT GAARD: Yeah, and we also decided to start off with one of the subsidiaries, meaning Scanship and getting that up and running to a certain level before including the other subsidiaries-- so not opening our mouth too wide at once here.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Yeah, so the Fusion Manage goals as part of one of the systems to fit the vision-- and the goal was to increase the product data quality and have a integrated PLM and quality management system and replace the existing QMS system.

KNUT GAARD: Yeah, and also replacing the existing file storage on a file server with all these files and Excel sheets that we have was also part of the plan or the goal

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Had, had, had they accepted, yeah.

KNUT GAARD: Good.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: So regarding the board, we had some strategies with board and management as well, Knut.

KNUT GAARD: Yes, before we started off anything, we did a couple of surveys and some user interviews regarding how to find information and the time spent on finding that information, which gave us some numbers and some graphical illustrations of that. And then we went to the board and the management presenting this and concluding that we spent a little bit too much time on nonvalue-added work, so yeah.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: So regarding adoption, I think I remember back in 2021, I believe, when the CEO of VOW presented what we have achieved so far and presented the go-live dates going forward before the Christmas holiday, which I thought was a really cool commitment, having the top guy talking about all the benefits we have already achieved.

And I also remembered when we went to France in Compiegne to help the subsidiary Etia, where you and me, Knut, and two other Norwegians went to Compiegne and had the training with the users transitioning from SolidWorks and file storage to Inventor Vault and Fusion Manage and having them flown to Norway and conducting these different teams meetings every week.

I thought that was really a commitment and that VOW ASA took the responsibility regarding adoption really seriously. Another thing we did, which I think was really fun, was the support service center. Do you remember this flyer which we posted all around the office?

KNUT GAARD: Yeah, I remember very well. We even printed this one out on a large scale plotter and hang on the doors, making a statement. This was fun. This was fun.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Yeah, so it was a quite open forum where every user could come and just ask questions, have some improvement suggestions, or discuss anything regarding Fusion Manage. And conducting it every Friday for an hour was really a good thing. Like, we met employees that we didn't really even knew used Fusion Manage, so really good thing.

KNUT GAARD: Good.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: So let's talk about how this solution works and what we have done.

KNUT GAARD: Yeah, this is a rough timeline for what we have done so far. Starting back four years ago, we did some preparations for implementing Fusion Manage, which, of course, was to get an overview of all our products and articles. And we started the classification work, transforming, so to say, all these tens of thousands of products into groups and classifications. This was a large job, but it has been worthwhile getting control of the products.

And we implemented the-- first of all, we implemented the QMS system in Fusion Manage actually, handling customer claims. That was the first thing we did. We also implemented a new ERP system. Later on, we looked into the CAD and PDM world and did some changes and integrations there between Vault and Fusion.

And we have also done some integration between the PLM system and the ERP system mainly for products and approval and release of products integrated to the ERP system. Right now, we are in the middle of looking into the project execution model for better handling and documentation of projects in Fusion Manage.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Yep, and in addition to these six boxes, we have also moved the Vault server from a local computer to Microsoft Azure. We have closed the local file server. We have done a lot of change management with people, trying to get them to understand what data quality means and reporting, training on what's a revision or what's a new part number. So it's a lot of, lot of other activities in addition to these six main topics in a way.

KNUT GAARD: Yep, it is. But we are very-- in the company, we are very product oriented and having a high focus on standardizing products and reusing products. So this illustrates a little bit my department-- which is in the middle for once-- with all the other departments connected both to each other, but to a large degree to the product engineering department. Yep, that's, yeah.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: And this is also the way all the departments are, in a way, set up where everybody has information for their product engineering team. And therefore, this is the kind of architecture of how Fusion Manage is working as well, where the product is at the center. So given that, we see that the two main systems of information and the two main working places is finance and operation and Fusion Manage.

And some departments, unfortunately, have to work in both systems, but the data is connected on some parts. So you find different kind of information in different system and, yeah. So the way it's kind of connected is through leveraging the open APIs from Autodesk. So we are able to connect data from different sources and present them, for instance, in Power BI. So some data are naturally owned in Fusion Manage, and some other data is naturally owned in ERP.

But those two data sources could be one dashboard in Power BI, for instance. So by connecting these different systems, we get a much better data flow. And having Vault and Inventor and other files like P&IDs, PFDs, PDFs and so on, that's just tools of creating information, same as Word and Excel.

KNUT GAARD: Yeah, with all these general slides, so to say, we can have a closer look at what is actually going on. Like we have said, we have the product at center. This is an actual product that we manufacture and deliver to our customers. And on the top left, we see the product definition in Fusion Manage with the direct attachments, such as mechanical drawings, electrical drawings, data sheets, et cetera. On the bottom left, we see the connected bill of material to this product after we have integrated the PDM system to Fusion.

And this bill material comes from PDM, which we see on the top right image there. And on the bottom right, we also see the ERP system, a snapshot of the item card with the connected data, and a direct link back to the Fusion Manage product with the product in the center with the connected data and relations, keeping everything together.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Yeah, we can also see the actual thumbnail from Inventor to Vault to Fusion Manage and then to ERP. So it's quite cool to have the same image of the same items in every system. And another cool part is not having to create them. So the core usage of Fusion Manage is, of course, the product data and bill of materials.

We also have a lot of supply chain management functionalities with qualifying suppliers approving this qualifying and so on, agency functionalities, QMS-- which we have talked about-- document management system as well with release process and classification. And we have some other specified different tools such as improvement suggestions where every user can request an improvement. And later on, we are going to see how the product data with bill of materials and files are working and the nonconformity with change management as well.

What's your favorite workspace in Fusion Manage, Knut? Except the common ones, of course-- like, bill of materials should be the best one. But outside of the out-of-the-box stuff?

KNUT GAARD: Well, I would say that one of my favorite workspaces is actually the minutes of meeting, which shows the great functionality of working inside a system with writing the notes directly as data into the system, making decisions, creating tasks. We haven't mentioned that yet, but we are also using Fusion Manage as our global task management system and follow up on all tasks and minutes of meeting. So of all these--

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Sorry.

KNUT GAARD: Of all these workspaces, which are so great, I would say minutes of meeting.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: We will see some of the task management in the nonconformity and change request as well later on. So that's good. So yeah, I have to take on my fat, nerdy glasses and talk some numbers as well. We have approximately-- or at least when I took out data-- 116 workspaces, where 12 of them are working as reference. The main workspace type we use is Workspace with Workflow, which the ISO9000 audit person really enjoys.

We have 52 groups with 351 roles. And we have 373 different scripts where the main scripting part is ActionScript. And considering me as an previous automation engineer, it's fun to automate whatever can be automated.

And we also have 27 different applications running with Fusion Manage, some tools like the Office 365 integration, which I talked about earlier. We have a deviation reporter for creating either HSE reports or nonconformities from your cell phone. We have a master document list and transmittal application, Vault integration, ERP integration, Power BI integration, and so on and so on.

KNUT GAARD: And in addition to that, I must say that my favorite tools are actually on the right side of this slide with the backend or administration tools, which are very useful for me as the administrator of the system for uploading files and generating lists of any user's outstanding work for follow-up purposes or also when people are leaving the company.

This is useful tool to follow up that there are no leftovers. I also recently got a tool for publishing views-- meaning I can create so-called public views and pushing them to all my users-- and some other tools for running action scripts and mass creation or batch importing all kinds of information. So this is really nice.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Good, so enough PowerPoint for now, Knut, maybe?

KNUT GAARD: Yeah, at least for a while. Let's see some live action.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Yeah, I'll just-- you go. So let's start with looking at Document Workspace and the relationships to different products and so on. So we have a front page like everybody else, of course. The really cool part about the way we have set up the relationships here is-- for instance, this is a product drawing which can be used for, in this case, nine different products, nine different items.

So this means that when this product drawing is revised, you just need to revise one item, and all products that are using this document is getting the latest revision. This could be a data sheet from one of your suppliers, for instance. Or it could be a user manual or whatever. So the use cases are quite huge on setting up the different relationships in this smart way. So it's just one place to revise the item. Not sure if you have anything to add on this topic, Knut, but really, really good stuff we have done in this case.

Nothing to add? OK, so the next thing we're going to look at is the product and the nonconformity. So here, I have created a new product, which is a clone of another product. And here, we can see the bill of materials for that product. It's possible to expand all levels if it has multilevel.

Since we have connected the change management system as well, you'll see the different items that are undergoing a change with quick access to that specific change order-- quick access to the different direct attachments that this item has. And you can see the relationships if it has relation to a product ring like this one or test report-- the changes, the release of this item, yeah. So I have prepared a nonconformity report on this specific product.

So as you can see down below, what's specific for this solution in Scanship is that we have a risk priority in number calculator based on the severity or impact occurrence and detection. Meaning if the risk priority number is 3, you can just move ahead with your nonconformity. If you get an RPN of 2, you have to conduct a root cause analysis or at least say, I don't want to do a root cause analysis.

If you have a RPN 1, you are forced to do a root cause analysis with minimum three different possible root causes. So I won't go into that now. We have, as Knut mentioned earlier, the task management connected to minutes of meeting and in this case, a nonconformity. So when I registered this nonconformity, there's one thing that we can do immediately. It's to plan to move the sampling point and the preventative so that it doesn't happen again is to update the 3D model and drawings.

When I then move on in the workflow, the tasks get created automatically. So in this case, we have two or three options to close this nonconformity. We can either create a change request, or we could create a supplier corrective action request. So I'll create the change request by just moving on in the workflow. And this adds a new change request for me which moves the different properties that are similar in the nonconformity to the change request, as well as the preventative plan from nonconformity.

Like, if you have any preventative tasks, they will also follow into this Gantt chart. You can add more tasks and plan more accordingly, but it's important to not lose the data from the nonconformity analysis and so on. So what we also do here is make sure that we don't revise a part or an assembly or a subassembly when you are affecting the 3Fs. So the system forces us to-- if I answer yes to any of the 3F questions-- sorry-- then it will force me to create a new item instead of changing the existing one.

So here, you see I can answer yes or no. I'll answer no to every one. Looking at the workflow for change request, you see we also have three different exiting options here. It's either creating a change order, meaning revising the product from B to C, or create a new product request, which is the formal workflow of creating new items.

We also have this admin escape if we need to clean some items that hasn't been touched on the last 20 years. We need to cheat a little bit, yep. So if we then do this change, let me see. I'll just add-- and since I'm an admin, I can be the made by, checked by, approved by.

So the really good thing about this is when we create the change order, we see, for instance, now on the product before I do it, you see that it's still locked-- nothing special about it. But when I approve and then create the change order, the item will get a. stamp on it if everything is working, of course. No-- ah, yeah, that's how the system is working. The made by can't be the same as the checked by, approved by. I thought admin was allowed. Doesn't matter, I think the audience-- you understand my point.

So by having this system with connected quality-issue reporting and then leading to the formal changes, one of the things that we have seen is that more and more people are reporting issues either if it's a supplier issue or something we have done internally. And these issues gets taken care of faster than previously when the QMS was not integrated to the PLM. So I think that was what I wanted to show live.

So, Knut, we need to discuss what's in it for a while. And This beautiful sentence from a legend inside of the Scanship VOW system was set in a cool context.

KNUT GAARD: Yeah, as you can see, this is actually a quote from myself, and it takes a little bit out of context. But the whole context was last year I helped out with an article in Industry Week, which was posted by Andrew Anagnost. He's the CEO of a large company. You might have heard of him.

And he used this sentence in that article, which was quite cool, and actually, it is true. On some products, given the integration with the CAD system and the PDM system and the PLM system, we have actually reduced the time needed for taking out new products or variants of these products substantially.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Yeah, and it's not just because you implemented the Fusion Manage, but it's also the whole work we did with redefining the design philosophy and so on. But Fusion Manage really helped us see that oh, this is an opportunity for us. We should do this to achieve this as well. Am I right?

KNUT GAARD: Yeah, that's correct. It's a combination of several efforts and the combined effort we did for several systems. But you are correct, Marcus, because implementing and starting to use the PLM system actually helped us to see other opportunities in our existing systems, yep.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Yep, so other outcomes-- VOW Scanship achieved this, of course, faster time to market by improved collaboration, the agility when creating new products, better supply chain quality and agility as well, reduce the nonvalue-added processes and tasks a lot. And as I briefly talked about in the live demo, reducing defects and nonconformities because it actually gets taken care of the first time correctly. So that the same error doesn't happen again and then again and then again because the QMS is disconnected from the item database.

KNUT GAARD: And if you look back a little bit on the goals that we did set up-- the increased product data quality and the integrated PLM and QMS-- let's have a look at how we ended up. We have an increased reuse of products, definitely And with products in the center and all these connected data, we also reuse all these documentation to a larger degree, meaning all the drawings, the data sheets, the electrical drawings, and everything connected to the product is reused to a larger degree now.

And as a result of that, again, we spend less time on finding this documentation and the data, which was the purpose. And like you said, Marcus, we have an increased culture of reporting issues. We see now that users and end users and even also the guys out in the field with this mobile app, they report issues because they see that something happened. They get a result from the reporting. So that's absolutely a good outcome.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: And one of the things kind of foundations we had in the beginning was that the originator of the issue should never get a task back in a way. So by reporting nonconformity, for instance, doesn't mean that you get more work. So it's quite important to understand the human nature of reporting in a way.

KNUT GAARD: Yeah, and that takes a little time to adapt to this new philosophy. But we see an increase of the reporting and actually, also more smiles, more happy people because these problems are taken care of.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Yep, so that leads us in a way to lessons learned as well. And lessons learned isn't just about the pitfalls we went into, Knut. But it's also to talk about something that we did really good, which we believe you should adopt and do the same if you are in this process of implementing Fusion Manage these days.

KNUT GAARD: Yeah, it's a combination of different lessons. We didn't do everything right, of course. We have been on a learning process ourselves-- but some lessons in that respect, but also some good advice, so to say, that we want to share with you.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Yeah, so we-- sorry. Yeah, I'll do it. Even though we had it as a goal in the beginning with tight alignment with the board and management, we learned that it wasn't tight enough.

KNUT GAARD: Yeah, that's right.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: So their suggestion, Knut, is--

KNUT GAARD: Lessons learned from this was to keep the good work together with the top management and keeping them informed more frequently and actually setting up monthly reporting meetings.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Yeah, so as we had in one of the beginning slides, the implementation of ERP was nearly simultaneously as PLM. And so our lesson learned is to have it sequential so that you don't do both at the same time because it's too much change for the users. And with two new systems rolling out at the same time, it could lead to an efficiency drop. So our recommendation, I think you should have the honor of saying the recommendation for that one.

KNUT GAARD: Yeah, of course, the recommendation from my side is to roll out the PLM first and for several reasons. I would say that implementation and rollout of the PLM is a more flexible way of doing it. In our case, we did not have any PLM system from before. So this was a new system.

Rolling out the ERP was an upgrade, a large, major upgrade. But doing both at the same time put a little bit too much stress on all the users, and we were actually facing some risks of production drop. So we needed to hold on a little bit and wait, not doing everything at once.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Yeah, and I think by also implementing PLM first, you get a system that really helps you defining the product structure and how the product should change, and so on. Which if you have that already defined in your PLM system, then-- at least in my opinion-- then the ERP implementation would go faster because PLM helped you define your different workflows.

KNUT GAARD: Yes.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: So you can take this one, Knut.

KNUT GAARD: Another lesson learned with implementing several systems at once-- this is back to the dual implementation of both the ERP system and the PLM system-- is to define in a better way the responsibility for the implementation of the different systems and also having some kind of function for overseeing that both implementation projects are on track.

So this is my-- or our-- recommendation or suggestion and responsible roles. And these three boxes in my head needs to be three different people. Combining these roles for one person or two of them or three of them is not a good way to go.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Yep, and the ERP responsible should be more hands-on, detail managing ERP and the same for PLM, while the responsible above the data and process responsible, which we call it, should be a person understanding data flow and workflows, not the nitty gritty details about field length of a field, if it should be a float or integer in a way,

KNUT GAARD: No, and the green box is actually a mini project manager. And the yellow box and the blue box is the doers, the people actually doing it. Knowledge accessibility-- at least in the PLM implementation, we learned that rolling out added functionality could actually go too fast and forgetting a little bit about-- we need to stop up a little bit from time to time and document what we do, create some user guides, and then move on.

We did also conduct some kind of support center like we saw on one of the previous slides. And we should have started that a little bit earlier as well. That's my opinion.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Yeah, we rolled--

KNUT GAARD: Otherwise--

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Otherwise, yeah, we rolled out too many workspaces, too many features, too fast because it was so easy to map out the different opportunities and then just fix it in Fusion and in the next challenge in a way. So self-sufficiency is not, of course, really happy topic for consultants. But I honestly believe that it's an important thing to plan for so that you do something. You go live with it, conduct the training and all the necessary stuff, and then turn off the assignment with the consultants.

No support for a brief period of time so that you are able to map out what the super users for different departments' lack of knowledge and as well as prioritizing the next feature implementation. So it's not nice-to-haves, but it's more on the need-to-have basis. So that's also something we should have done earlier on, having some kind of OK, we'll work Q1. And then we have a month break or two-months break and map out all the gaps.

KNUT GAARD: Yeah, we might have done it a little bit too late, but well, looking back is easy. Last year, about a year ago, we sat down and actually found out, discussed, and agreed we should be self-sufficient now for a while on purpose and just using the system instead of adding new functionality. And this went quite well, or actually very good, I would say. So this is a good advice from me and our side, and don't go too fast. Take a break. Use the system and then map out whatever is needed. And then, fix it and go back.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Yep, so we're coming close to an end. So summary or future talk, we still have some topics that we have mapped out. We haven't prioritized it in the correct order yet, but there are some agendas on our board for the future as well. And that leads us to this slide with my favorite quote, "The only constant is change." So with customers, the different environmental demands, employees, or products-- all of that are changing.

So we believe that you should optimize your system accordingly as well so that the system doesn't reflect the step or maturity level you were when you were done. So that's one of the things I believe you really enjoy about Fusion Manage as well, Knut. That it really helps you stay on top of everything.

KNUT GAARD: Yeah, having the system up and running all the time, making minor adjustments when we need to. Having the flexibility of doing some adjustments at the same time that the system is up and running and we are being productive is actually very nice. We enjoy that and the philosophy behind how the system or the software is built, making us able to work like that.

MARKUS GUNDERSEN: Yep, we can optimize and users are still using it without knowing that there's a change coming in the way our workflow works, for instance. And then suddenly, it's live for everybody, and the system is never down when we optimize it-- so awesome work, Autodesk, if anybody is listening. So with that, I think we'll say thank you and really hope you enjoy this session. And if you did, please recommend by clicking the Recommend button in the AU portal.

And don't be afraid to send me an email or add me on LinkedIn. I also added Knut's LinkedIn so you can add him on LinkedIn as well. So don't hesitate asking us. We are passionate about this subject, and we have some years of experience together, Knut and me. So it's a knowledge based in the small country in Norway. So please stop by and ask us. So thank you.

KNUT GAARD: Thank you.