SMART Modular Technologies

GREG CUNNINGHAM: Hello, everyone. My name is Greg Cunningham. I'm with IMAGINiT Technologies. I'm on a team at IMAGINiT. We help companies of all sizes digitally transform their business.

Today, I have the pleasure of introducing you to one of our customers, Smart Modular Technologies, that over the past five years has digitally transformed their business. I will also introduce you to Kevin Gabrielli, who is responsible for ensuring their solution-- Fusion 360 Manage with Upchain-- that forms their strategy around digital transformation is properly administered, running smoothly, and expanding capabilities, as their business grows.

Our agenda for today-- we'll focus on Smart Technologies' digital transformation journey and their adoption of Fusion 360 Manage with Upchain and its integration with SAP. To start, I'll play a short video on their parents, Smart Global Holdings, and discuss their distinct brands after.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC]

- At SGH, our purpose is simple-- to power growth for our people, businesses, customers, and shareholders. As a technology holding company, we're a diverse collective of doers, united by a drive to raise the bar every day.

Our operating philosophy inspires our teams to think creatively, execute with discipline, and focus on what's next. With a team-first mindset, we lift each other up and always seek different perspectives. We listen and adapt, with humility and openness, about what's working and what's not, to deliver purposeful solutions that are built to last.

And we take a long term approach to building our family of businesses because sustainable growth requires continuous investment in people, innovation, and new opportunities. At SGH, we never stop seeking a better way because when better never ends, we build a world that's always advancing.

[END PLAYBACK]

GREG CUNNINGHAM: So, as you saw in the video, Smart Global Holdings, they design and develop high performance, high availability enterprise solutions that help their customers solve for the future, delivered through four distinct brands. The brands are-- Cree LED. Expertise is in LED chips and components for large scale lighting projects, such as stadiums. Stratus' expertise is in high reliability, mission critical computing platforms. Penguin Solutions' expertise is in helping customers apply emerging technologies, such as AI, or artificial intelligence; high performance computing; and the internet of things. And Smart Modular Technologies, who we're going to focus on today, is about data and storage solutions.

So more than 30 years ago, Smart Modular Technologies started helping customers around the world enable high performance computing through the design, development and advanced packaging, especially memory solutions. The product portfolio ranges from today's leading edge technologies to standard and legacy DRAM and Flash storage products-- provides standard, ruggedized, and custom memory and storage solutions, that meet the needs of diverse applications in high growth markets.

Smart's product offerings are designed for diverse applications, from artificial intelligence, high performance computing, data center storage, to point of sale and gaming. Their technology is about enabling high performance computing, through the design, development, advanced packaging, and special memory and storage solution. Here are some of their Smart data and storage solutions.

With headquarters in Newark, California, Smart Modular Technologies has R&D, product development, and manufacturing locations around the globe.

So digital transformation is a journey, and, quite frankly, one that never ends. As you heard at the end of the video, when better never ends, we build a world that is always advancing. And that's true with Smart Modular.

So from the journey perspective, Smart Modular Technologies began conversations with Autodesk and IMAGINiT in early 2018. July 31, 2018, Smart Modular purchased Fusion 360 Manage software licenses and implementation services from IMAGINiT. The initial project kickoff took place in early September.

In 2019, the implementation of Fusion 360 Manage was complete. A product launch workspace was rolled out, really, to get users acclimated with the new system. Shortly after that, item creation and engineering change notices were implemented and integrated with SAP, and bill of materials followed shortly after that.

Recently-- June 2023-- SGH divested in majority stock in Smart Brazil.

Our customer advocacy team at IMAGINiT run license reports, utilization reports, over the last year, that allowed us to go in and collaborate with Smart Modular, Autodesk, and really co-develop a go-forward named user flex token license strategy that supports expansion, as well as rolling it out to their other business units.

2024, the intent is to roll it out to the other business units, adding Penguin Solutions and Stratus business units to the Fusion 360 Manage process and workflows, expand capabilities, include regulatory and compliance, product change notice, or PCN, and deviation processes and workflows.

So I'd like to now ask Kevin Gabrielli to walk you through the process and workflows that form the foundation of their digital transformation. Kevin, the presentation is yours.

KEVIN GABRIELLI: OK. So starting with the item and volume creation, we'll go ahead and-- so, basically, this is a sample of one of our part numbers that we created in PLM and released to our ERP system, which is SAP. Go ahead.

So it's broken down into 16 different tabs. The first couple we'll go into in a second. The rest of them are based on the different views in SAP. So these are fields, basically, that are shown in SAP, and these areas will be filtered through there.

So the first one, tab, is for our plant extension. So we select which plant we want to do. So, in this case, it's showing we're adding our Malaysia plant. And then-- on another one of the tabs at the top we'll cover in more detail later-- it shows that where the plant was created for a raw material. OK. So to the next slide.

All right. So the next one is another view in SAP. It's our Classification view. This classification is used by Smart's management team, to determine-- run reports and determine how much we're buying, who we're buying from, who we're selling to, and the other things-- what our customers-- which customer groups are buying which products, that kind of thing. OK. So you can see it was transferred to SAP.

So the next tab on the Autodesk is our Related Changes tab. And that just shows if it's going-- the page right there, the working part part-- is going through any ECNs at this point. So, and then, there's a sample of an ECN we'll cover in more detail later. Go ahead and go to the next one.

Next ones are Bill of Materials. It's kind of structured to follow SAP. From the right, you'll see quantity, reference designators, the part components, and then, the item category-- whether it's a stock item, a text item, or the line number in SAP. So you can kind of see on the window that popped up that this is the view of the BOM, once it's transferred to SAP. Very similar structure to the Autodesk 360 Manage. OK.

So the next tab is Where Used-- pretty self-explanatory. It shows wherever a part is used in another BOM. All right.

So this is the Relation to Chips tab in Autodesk 360 Manage. We have renamed it to be specific to the areas that it's currently showing. So, right now, it's named for our plant specific data and our worldwide drawing log.

So the first couple of items here are the plant-specific, so these would have data that can be managed on a plant level. So SAP, you can have global fields that affect all plants, or you have some fields that are just for each individual plant. So you wanted to obsolete a part in one plant, but not globally, you could do that, using the plant-specific workspace that is related to our items in BOM's workspace. OK.

Next one is an Attachment tab. So we use it to upload data sheets, RoHS documentation, REACH documentation, things like that.

And our last tab here is the AVL. So it shows our vendors, whether the part's qualified, disqualified, EOLs, that kind of thing, and what part number-- the manufacturer part number that we're buying. And then, you can see at the bottom a screenshot of the SAP with the same data, just transferred from the Fusion 360 Manage.

So now, moving on to our Change Management system. So yeah. We call it an Engineering Change Notice. Here it shows the main details-- the locations that are affected, the product line that's affected, the change types that we have-- many, many change types. Probably 20, for a product line.

And that's all controlled through this approval matrix link. We determine who needs to approve based on the change type and the product line. If it's a product that has revision controls, then we will show current and new revision. And then, we give a detailed reason why we're making the change and the detailed corrective action we're actually changing.

So the approval process, like I said, it comes from that approval matrix link. You'll see on the right, there's some-- in the middle here, there's some-- on the right side, there's some check boxes that says, is this required. So through the Fusion-- through that approval matrix link, we're pulling out which departments have to approve. And then, the people who originate an ECN have to select approvers in that group. They can select more, but this is the minimum allowable required approvers.

And then, at the bottom of this matrix, there is the table of how it shows who's got to review, who's remaining to review, who's approved by. There's also an ad hoc approver, where you can add somebody to approve, that isn't necessarily in a department. And then-- so we actually have two reviewal states, the review and update. I'll cover that more in a second, when we go over the workflow.

So the ECN is created, submitted to our SAP document control. They will review it, and do a quick review, and, then, send it out to the review state.

In the review state, this is our change control board, where most of the approvers required to sign off on the ECN are done.

Then it will move to implementation. So at this point, it will be implemented. It will move to an ERP update. This is where PLM is communicating through a third party software with SAP and, depending on the type of change, will actually make the changes in SAP.

Then it goes back to the originator, to verify that the implementation went correctly-- they made no errors on their own, when they were making the initial product.

Then there's an update state. This one is kind of a post-implementation sign off. So, for our planning, they need to go refresh work orders or manufacturing, may need to update our pick and place program, things like that. So they have a sign off here that says that they've done their responsibilities, now that SAP is updated.

And then, finally, it completes.

We also-- here on the right, we show we have a section in the ECN that's strictly for running statistics, for, like, age, how long it took from submission to completion, the cycle time, and then cycle times at the various stages.

All right. So I'm going to take a brief look at three of the other workspaces that we created and are currently implementing in PLM. So we'll cover the product launch, which was actually the initial one we created for and started using in PLM, our worldwide drawing log, and, then, the DRAM Form A.

So the product launch workspace is set up to create our SAP routings. It's basically the steps a product will follow, from, basically, the stockroom through finished goods, where it'll ship to the customer. So, basically-- but to set that up, we need information from manufacturing, from test, and things like that. So this will go through a pretty simple workflow.

Engineering will provide some information on what tests are required, things like that.

Then it will go to manufacturing and test, and they'll fill in their sections-- sections 2, 3, 4, 5-- and will determine-- will put in all the information that needs to be uploaded to SAP.

Then it will go to our SAP document control, and they'll update in SAP manually, transfer over the data. This one hasn't. And because it's a text, we haven't set it up yet to do it automatically.

And then, it goes through a review cycle.

And then it goes to one more system, where we actually have our home develop system, where we use for printing labels and all that stuff. So that's the final step. OK. Next one.

So the worldwide drawing log is a file repository. We use it for maintaining our PCB files, mechanical drawings, product specifications, for stuff we inspect on incoming-- so anything like that. So our test specs are in there.

The worldwide drawing log, they're linked to-- they have to be linked to an item. We've set that up, so that it's a requirement that they're linked to an item. And then, they're released through an ECN process. We have a couple of those ECN change types that are strictly related to the worldwide drawing log releases.

All right. And then, the DRAM Form A workspace is a way for, basically, other departments-- people that interact with the customers-- to request a new part number and get created in SAP. So it can come from our field application engineers, the FAEs, product marketing, program managers-- so they'll provide the information of what the customer has required, any kind of custom requirements for them, things like that. And it's routed through a simple workflow involving our BOM engineering team. And then, at the end, it gets created in SAP.

OK. Looking forward.

So we're planning to take the Fusion 360 Manage and release it to our other business units-- Penguin and Stratus, to start with. We're going to enhance our existing processes and workflow and then work on expanding to some new areas. We're transitioning this year to a go-forward named user token flex license model. And then, we're in the process of developing some additional workspaces already. Our compliance and regulatory, our product change notice, and, then, our deviation and waiver, are already started in development.

GREG CUNNINGHAM: Thank you, Kevin. Appreciate that walk through. So, in conclusion, I want to share some key takeaways. Kevin and I talked about this quite a bit. Both of us have been around through the entire process. And some key takeaways-- if at all possible, identify a low complexity process that you can roll out quickly. It allows users to get acclimated to the solution. It gives them the opportunity to offer suggestions, possible enhancements, changes, that could just help the overall user experience, which is ultimately going to lead to much higher adoption.

I also feel that, if you have some type of tool that you use for polling your user community-- especially, like, Kevin manages a very, very large user community-- so if you have some type of software that you can use to poll them periodically and get input, especially in the early stages of rolling out some processes and workflows, I think that's very advantageous. Having meetings, and writing notes, and collecting those types of notes can end up getting lost or are not-- just not right at the forefront of your fingertips. Email's kind of the same way. It's really difficult. I mean, everybody's bombarded with email these days, so it makes it very difficult. So any type of software that can help with that, I highly encourage polling the users. If people feel like they're part of the process, part of the development-- whether they are or not-- you seem to get a lot more adoption.

And then, defining really clear expectations-- for everyone that's going to be involved-- I think this is very, very important. What are the resource requirements? You know, Smart Modular Technologies' implementation was-- some parts of it were fairly simple. Some parts of it were fairly complex, especially when you get to integration. And knowing exactly which resource is going to do what-- where their expertise lie, how that kind of plays into the overall implementation integration strategy, just agreeing to and having that all laid out up front-- will really help. It's going to really accelerate your implementation integration.

Kevin and I talk about it just recently. From the hiccups and stuff like that, fundamentally, everything went really well. It was really smooth. But, you know, that was almost six years ago-- well over five years ago. And when you look back on it, that's one of the things that I kind of see we could have just tightened it up a little bit. And that's all we're really trying to say there.

And then, I highly recommend avoid going live with a new implementation right in the middle of a global pandemic, if at all possible. Switching to a remote workforce-- to flip a switch can definitely create a unique set of challenges.

So, with that, Kevin and I, we'd both like to thank you for attending and taking some of your time here to Design and Make Conference to spend with us. We truly hope that your learning objectives for this session have been met and would just like to thank you very much.