The Journey of Automatic Systems, Inc., to Connected Data and Processes

MIKE WOHLETZ: Just a little information on the safe harbor statement. Don't make any purchasing decisions based on anything you may see here. And obviously, read through this, but do not copy or distribute anything without written or otherwise notice that it is permissible to do so. Welcome to AU 2024. This session covers digital transformation, journey of Automatic Systems, Incorporated.

In today's market, who would not be interested in offering new products in competitive areas while producing growth in revenue and reducing the time and hours to delivery all while making improvements in your company profitability? I'm the CAD manager for automatic systems. My primary focus is data management, software management, but also spend a good portion of time in dealing with developing and maintaining other programs, custom-made programs, that we use inside of Inventor and Vault.

I have worked for ASI about 29 years in many positions. My first 7-plus years, I spent in manufacturing as a millwright where I completed a apprenticeship program. I served as the weld shop foreman for a couple of years, and later on, I attended community college to get into computer programming. Later on, I worked in engineering for about three years and then moved into a role where I primarily did-- part of a CAD manager position, but basically engineering part-time, teaching others how to use Inventor AutoCAD Vault-- I guess pre-Vault, Inventor AutoCAD.

But teaching others how to use these processes. I wore many hats in the early years. Company growth has caused the CAD manager position to become a full-time job. So I don't just do that part-time anymore. And I am extremely grateful for my family and the time we have, which as you can see on the slide, riding roller coasters is one of the things we do with many of them under our belt.

Today's learning objectives-- we're going to talk about how inefficient processes and workflows can impact business, how managing your engineering data with a PDM solution is a critical part in these operations, and how PLM can offer-- can help with these disconnected processes. We can connect these systems and others with custom or 3D solutions.

We are headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. Automatic Systems was founded in 1972. Throughout the years, many things have changed, but our focus on customer needs has been a key element in our constant growth. ASI designs, manufactures, and installs turnkey conveyor solutions exceeding the imagined.

As noted, headquarters are in Kansas City. We have engineering in Kansas City, also engineering in Auburn Hills, Michigan, and Saltillo, Mexico. We have other offices, such as sales or supporting offices in Lansing, Michigan, and Leon, Mexico, with other sister companies in Cincinnati, Ohio, Auburn Hills, Michigan, and also located in the Kansas City area as well.

This is a small list of our customer base. And as you can imagine, the needs and desire of each customer can be extremely different based on the uniqueness of each customer's operations and products. We convey everything from large, complete vehicles down to small parts. This image shows some of our equipment carrying vans and transferring them from one of our overhead systems onto one of our floor systems. These are two different pictures here. And while they look very much the same, even these two pictures, the picture on the right versus the picture on the left are two completely different kinds of conveyor systems.

Some other variations may be large systems from Caterpillar engines, as shown on the right, down to something a little more different as the agricultural components, such as the front end loader items being carried on the conveyor on the left. All of these are vastly different types of products that we are transporting from one point to another. The variations of materials handled can go from large vehicles, as we have seen in the previously down to the size of luggage in an airport.

A little timeline. In the 1970s, ASI started the journey and the first patent was awarded. In the 1980s, a steel erection company was formed known as Lico Steel. That is the other subsidiary sister company that is located in Kansas City with us. In the 1990s, ASI expanded the campus and was awarded the GM Supplier of the Year Award in 1997 and 1998. We repeated the achievement again in 2021 and 2022.

In the 2000s, we expanded the product line, adding baggage handling that allowed opportunities in the airport division. In 2007, Michael Hoehn was named as the president. This is an important milestone as change in most-- most of the changes in companies are primarily successful when driven from the top down. Good leadership is a good start.

In 2016, ASI replaced previous data management systems with Autodesk Vault. So this is the beginning of our journey. In 2021, we opened the doors to Fusion Manage, for a short time anyway. In 2022, we began implementation of a new, modern ERP system. This halted the previous Fusion Manage progress for a bit of time, but it was a good wait, as we would now have modern systems that we could better communicate all of our data across.

2023 was wrapping up ERP implementation and allowed us to get back on track of implementing Fusion late in the year, Fusion Manage. By 2024 and 2025 began the next phase-- we began the next phase of our transformation.

Automatic system processes require constant data. So the groundwork was in place as ASI introduced Vault in 2016 to manage the data. This consistent data we need. We eliminated missing files of references and design by requiring all of the data be present to be checked in. We eliminating relocation of file references causing disconnections, so moving a file from one folder to the next shouldn't be an issue. And we don't have those issues.

Replicated data in all offices for users. Security on who can access the data. And we restricted the access to files for manufacturing or other departments where it would not be relevant for data that is in a change process or some other unreleased documentation that they shouldn't be seeing yet. This also opened doors to connect external systems. As we all know, junk in will result in junk out. We have to manage our files before we can do anything with them.

Introducing Fusion Manage expanded on the rich capabilities of Vault, allowing better management of data. Updates and changes are better managed and synchronized between these systems by not relying on file names but more key identifiers. Part number changes or replacements are managed by restricting the duplications of the data in the same name causing issues with downstream data record changes.

Basically, we're not relying on the name of a file to do any operations. We're doing things and eliminating those duplicates, breaking free of the traps associated with the smart or intelligent numbering schemes. Assignment of ownership of design or product lines is synchronous across the systems-- ERP, I say ERP, Vault, Fusion Manage.

We don't need to manage this data in multiple locations. We can do it in one. Change requests can be directed to the correct owner without need of investigation. Real-time synchronization of metadata happens throughout the change process, and all of this allows us to more efficiently respond to product issues or requirements.

Process automation-- the previous manual methods of using paper forms-- we were able to manage changes in paper forms because we were more central with engineering and manufacturing all under one roof. With company expansion and offices doing large amounts of engineering in remote location, managing the paper trail became impractical. Although we had introduced homegrown or third party electronic methods, they resulted in disconnected data, creating yet another system gap.

Manufacturing changes on paper documents were often lost due to the lack of ability to trace printed documentation-- trace out the printed paper documents. Changes were not visible to others, even when engineering departments-- even others in the same engineering department unless you had overheard conversation in the office resulting in products getting re-released to manufacturing while duplicating or recreating issues only known to a small group or a single person. Products get delivered to the customer or site where rework costs come at a premium price while our mistakes are visible to the customer.

In engineering, we had-- more paper forms and printing stacks of drawings had to be handed off to other departments for data entry into the ERP system. Manual entry takes time. No connection between ERP data to know if the versions are current between systems. Information can only be manually tracked in a separate spreadsheet that no one knows about. And ultimately, users get frustrated.

Changes to drawings or designs after release require a complete repeat of the same manual process. While newer methods were adopted, this introduced new challenges as rather than change in process, it was just a change of responsibility and department task. Engineering now updating ERP system through other methods resulted in inconsistency in ERP data matching the design because of changes to the design that could happen after the data was sent to the ERP.

Ordering the wrong items, over or under ordering purchased components, wrong or incorrect amounts of materials allocated, all of these are due to making a change to a design after the data is entered into the ERP system and not knowing that we haven't completed the cycle again. Engineering focus is deterred from the things that mattered the most.

In our implementation of Fusion Manage, it provides a few very key items. A proper design management and visibility of changes to all departments, change requests Attach directly to the issue and not on a paper that's on a desk or a document in some other disconnected system. Changes can be issued by multiple departments and multiple areas anywhere we wanted to be. And the process data is tied directly to the source enabling more efficiency on the time spent executing the change task.

Fusion Manage offers customizable workflows to adapt to your business processes rather than your business needing to operate to fit the platform. ASI changes were minor, but allowed alignment with current Vault file states while adding additional department integration-- not trying to change your business to match the system.

ASI introduced a checking state in the workflow. This minimized downstream errors that can result in costly rework. Review assignments by groups or individual delegation allows another set of eyes to review what may be missed or assumed knowledge. Email notifications delivered to those assigned to complete the task with a system-wide visibility of task responsibilities and ownership eliminating lost or forgotten tasks due-- design controls that minimize delays in production.

Our operations department was brought into the workflow. This allows early cross-functional collaboration, ensures designs can be fabricated through the equipment we have available in our manufacturing facilities. Operation changes are noted and marked up on the drawings inside of the Fusion Manage platform, if they need to be changed, early in the process rather than finding out about these changes later on when we have began the manufacturing process.

Some designs may require outsourcing. That's just the way it goes. And so being able to see this information early gives the early visibility that enables us to plan and prepare rather than making last minute costly decisions. Basically, this is enabling the design for manufacturing process.

A final engineering approval state ensures the quality and safety needs of our final deliverable, allowing engineering to focus on customer needs and satisfactions and ensuring all of the applicable previous mark ups have been fulfilled. The entire workflow start to finish, capturing every comment, markup, and note ensuring that ASI's brand promise of exceeding the-- excuse me, of exceeding the imagined is fulfilled, measurables that ensure that quality and safety are at the core of our brand.

Upon fulfilling the workflow, going through all the other departments, it is automatically transformed to the next phase of synchronizing the locked files with the ERP system ensuring that the changes are made to the-- ensuring that we are not making changes to those files outside of a process and making sure that our ERP data and our design data actually do match. Thus eliminating manual operations, saving time, and reducing entry errors.

ASI developed our own web application that allows users to enter a part number of an item and compare the changes that will be made in the ERP system prior to completion. This extracts how this functions is. Basically, we're going to extract all the BOM data from the item that we entered from the Fusion Manage using the API. We're going to extract all the BOM data, if it exists, from our ERP system using the API associated to that program.

And then we're going to do a comparison of the data and basically display, with color highlights, indicating what fields are changed, what's different, what's new, what's getting removed, how are these going to impact the change, is this really what you wanted. And this same data can happen during-- does happen during the, I will say change process, prior to a final release. We will say final approval. But it also can be ran later to validate that what I have is an end result. I am matching one for one. My data does match. The things that matter are the same.

All Vault Item Master data changes are driven or permitted from the Fusion Manage change orders. We don't have the ability to just go randomly make a change to a file in the Vault. If it's part of a Vault item, it's going to have to go through a Fusion Manage change order to get something changed in it. All model revisions happen based on the change order. When the file or item changes are made, all of the BOMs are updated in Fusion Manage and Vault Item Master.

Model variables are updated in Fusion Manage and all the drawings or viewables associated are updated also in Fusion Manage. Change order completion drives the updating of the ERP system, eliminates ERP and other third party application licensing. So all of these programs cost money to operate. So this operates basically under one license. So we don't have a whole bunch of people that have to be familiar with another system that that's a cost of training.

Also, in addition to that, is the cost of all of the other user licensing associated with them being in another system. Being able to do something in one place or one set of tools is more efficient than multiple. And when you can eliminate the licensing costs, we pare down that as well. So that minimizes the time spent doing secondary operations-- always up-to-date connected data. All of this is done in the cloud or background processes, so the user is not tied up and they can be working on the next task and not watching a progress bar.

Our connections are all done using a program called IMAGINiT Pulse. It's a third party application. It basically enables organizations to integrate different applications independent of platform, programming language, or API. The exchange of data is bidirectional between systems, ensuring business users have access to the most current information.

A pulse connector basically is going to extract information from one business system, sends the data to the pulse platform. The pulse platform deals with routing and transforming the data into any new formats or changes that are needed. And then, an additional connector delivers the new data into the other system. These connectors may include other items such as scripting or webhook mechanism to be triggered off of events in the actual program.

So why do we look at these solutions? We have less time to do more work. During the paper solution days, the projects were in the neighborhood of $1 million. Current projects can be $90 million or more.

As indicated in the graphs, you can see that the actual time to complete the project has decreased while the project size has increased dramatically. So less time to complete the projects. Previous projects, we'd have three to four times longer to complete them. And with lead times, allowing more time to do those manual tasks.

The current projects are much more accelerated with longer lead times than ever from suppliers. Getting it right the first time is a critical-- is critical and leaves little to no time to address issues that were handled in the manufacturing process previously. So less people with a knowledge base of the systems we are designing-- why we would look at these solutions.

The knowledge base of engineering has changed making what was clear-- what may have been a clear issue in a 2D drawing or something is now left for manufacturing to figure out. The knowledge base of manufacturing of change requiring better information the first time. Hiring qualified personnel in all positions is not as easy as it was once upon a time.

Most of the designs are variations of what we have done in the past where issues were not properly documented and corrected. Ultimately, that lead to repeated issues. The person or people that you may have around that know everything are going to someday retire. What's the backup plan?

Culture is the most difficult obstacle we will address. Some of the most common excuses are we can't use that system because we have been doing it the same way for 30 years and that system just doesn't work the way we want to or doesn't fit the way we've always done it. Just because we've done it some way forever, doesn't mean we're doing it the right way.

New methods and processes require change in how we operate. We cannot solve modern day issues using 20-plus year old antiquated solutions. Modern day solutions are flexible. As I pointed out earlier, the workflows can adapt to how you do business. But at the same time, we have to be flexible for these solutions to work for us.

So don't go bankrupt trying to save money. Doing things the same way with the mindset that we are saving money by not spending money on these tools or-- is not the solution. Review the time spent on some of these tasks and realizing that the cost could make the modern day solutions a real savings. Don't purchase these solutions trying to continue doing things the same way.

Depending on your process, but if you have a process that your mindset is I'm not going to change that, this probably isn't going to help. But ultimately, the best way to find out is to talk to your Autodesk reseller, talk to Autodesk directly, and know what you need to do for these tools to work for you. You must be willing to make change in a business process, where applicable, and overcome the cultural huddles-- hurdles, I'm sorry. Thank you for joining and attending AU 2024.