Success story
Välinge Innovation select Teamcenter PLM with Nextage as their partner to support their ongoing success
In 2020 Välinge Innovation, a company globally known for its revolutionary and innovative flooring and furniture technologies, went searching the market for a PLM platform. Today, Välinge is two years into using Teamcenter from Siemens Digital Industries implemented by Siemens partner Nextage, and the team is experiencing significant benefits including faster time-to-market. As Välinge is full of ideas for the next steps, they are particularly pleased with the configurability and flexibility of Teamcenter.
Famous for inventing the mechanical floor locking system Välinge Innovation has licensees of their locking technology, and users of their floor locking machines, all around the world. In addition, Välinge has production for its own and other floor brands in state-of-the-art facilities in Viken, Southern Sweden, and Croatia. Their cutting-edge R&D center in Viken continuously develops new floors with innovative materials and Välinge has recently announced a revolutionary invention; the click furniture.
Some years back Välinge made the strategic decision to insource the engineering of their floor and furniture locking machines from external partners. Considering their large installed base, and their future expansion plans, they realized the need for reliable PLM system support. Having previous experience with PLM systems, the PLM project team benchmarked three larger and one smaller local solution, and eventually selected Teamcenter, from Siemens Digital Industries with Nextage as their PLM partner.
Välinge’s two main reasons to invest in a PLM solution
Service – Välinge Innovation’s important installed base
Välinge set their customers first, and their Services team frequently visits their customers. This is where Välinge sees great business value with Teamcenter. Collecting an exact and accurate overview of what the customer has installed and how it has transformed over the years helps Välinge provide that excellent customer care.
“Välinge stand for flexibility and the machines are customer specific. To easily find and add new information to Teamcenter when we do service will support us in our work.” Olle Sendel, Operations Manager at Välinge Innovation.
Connecting product information and coworkers
Historically Välinge Innovation’s design of machines and lock elements was outsourced to external machine builders and consultants. When building their in-house design teams, they insourced the expertise and wanted to gather all product information and structure it to make it easier to find and reuse information.
Välinge also wanted to support a common way of working for their teams. Their streamlined workflows in Teamcenter help maintain high productivity and quality throughout the process.
Selecting Teamcenter PLM
Following an out-of-the-box proof-of-concept (POC) of Nextage’s Teamcenter configuration in early 2021, the platform was implemented. Richard Jolfson, Manager of Engineering at Välinge Innovation led the PLM platform selection and his machine-building team was first out using it.
Richard Jolfson explains the main reasons Välinge chose Teamcenter.
Great value for the money
Välinge saw that they got a lot of value for the money with the out-of-the-box Nextage configuration of Teamcenter making it both fast to get started and a cost-efficient solution.
Flexibility
Compared to other systems license handling was found flexible in Teamcenter, making it easy for Välinge to administrate short-term consultants or external partners while maintaining full traceability. In addition, the license model provides the same access to Teamcenter no matter if working at the customer, at the office, or from home. The solution was also found flexible in terms of the opportunity to extend it in later steps.
Instant benefits for Välinge Innovation
- Increased control of the installed base of different types of flooring, furniture and other machines
- Collected and connected product data, including parts, drawings, and documents
- Fast and easy to search and find CAD parts and drawings
- Easy to re-use parts in new projects
- Ability to revise parts of several projects at once
- Easy to check in and build structure with other CAD-formats than SolidWorks. A specific model/part can easily be exchanged to SolidWorks format when needed.
“ Our machines are customized to meet our customers’ needs. Depending on floor or furniture licenses product range, there are different lock elements. We have about 80 variations of format kits adapted to our machines at our customers. As a base for the kits there are two types of flooring machines and one for furniture. In Teamcenter we now have easy access to information about each installation. ”
Richard Jolfsson, Manager of Engineering, Välinge Innovation
“ We experience faster time-to-market. By first addressing the most critical business needs and adding value in later steps with smart configurations that fit our unique work processes, we see that we are saving both time and money which makes the calculation of ROI easy. ”
Richard Jolfson
Manager of Engineering
Välinge Innovation
” I have used other PLM systems at former employers, and for me, Teamcenter stands out as easy to configure and flexible. Instead of us having to adapt the way we work to a system, Teamcenter supports how we want to work, and the processes and goals of our business. ”
Carl Andersson
Senior Design Engineer
Välinge Innovation
” Our vision is to have full traceability of Välinge Innovation’s products in Teamcenter throughout their entire lifecycles, from design and delivery to retrofitting, rebuilding, maintenance, and spare parts management. This includes a ‘how-it-is-today’ cataloging status of the machines to which different functions could contribute and add their information. We are taking steps towards achieving this vision, one at a time. ”
Olle Sendel
Operations Manager
Välinge Innovation
Extending the value of their Teamcenter PLM platform
Through exploration and hands-on experience, the team is constantly finding ways to optimize the use of the Teamcenter platform. The result is a continuous increase in value and benefits which is impacting their product development and business operation positively.
“The more we engage with Teamcenter the more we discover its potential.”
Carl Andersson, Senior Mechanical Engineer, Välinge Innovation
Vendor Management
Vendor management is providing Välinge with full control and traceability over self-developed components, purchase components and spare parts components. They can create vendor-BOM reports, handle spare parts, and trace supplier changes of a specific part from one revision to another.
Adding more departments
As a next step, the lock mechanism team will join Teamcenter.
Carl Andersson, Senior Mechanical Engineer and member of the machine development team says:
“There will be a lot to gain by involving the lock mechanism group in the use of Teamcenter. It will provide that backbone to ensure that we are working with the same methodology and work processes throughout both teams.”
ERP integration
The push of articles to the ERP system makes work easier and faster for many individuals on the team. Key indicators for Välinge such as BOM, vendors, material, and weight follow through to the ERP system, a setup Välinge created themselves.
Richard Jolfson’s tips for successfully selecting a PLM solution
- Get demos
- Ask a lot of questions
- Set up a requirement list but don´t be too square in your thinking, a lot of functions are possible to solve in a different or new way
- Take it step by step
- Make sure you can grow the solution and extend it
About Nextage as a PLM partner
“ Nextage helps us with anything we run into. Whether we have a question or see an opportunity for new features in Teamcenter we want to investigate further. ”
Richard Jolfson, Manager of Engineering, Välinge Innovation
“ Nextage assists us in getting Teamcenter perfected for us. They are proactive and act as our discussion partner. ”
Carl Andersson, Senior Design Engineer, Välinge Innovation
Discover Välinge Innovation
The Välinge Innovation success story started in 1993 with entrepreneur Darko Pervan inventing the mechanical floor locking system, and the business has grown ever since. The company is family owned and the group holds several brands, including Bjelin Flooring and Välinge flooring.
Find out all about Välinge Innovation on valinge.se.
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