The Queen's Award for Enterprise 2006: Innovation.
In 2006, Halyard (M&I) Ltd, the Salisbury based manufacturer of marine engine exhaust silencing solutions, was awarded The Queen's Award for Enterprise in the Innovation category. The prestigious Award was made to Halyard for its design and development of a new range of highly effective exhaust silencers for large powerboats. These new silencers were essential as the European Recreational Craft Directive (RCD) for the first time defined permitted noise levels from large powered craft. The innovative range of silencers produced on average 85 per cent less sound pressure than previous devices, putting Halyard products ahead of the competition, and enabling its customers, including many of Europe's leading builders of large yachts and powerboats, to build significantly quieter boats to comply with the new legislation. To ensure that the design documentation for the new product range would be made available at the correct release level, to those who needed it, when they needed it, wherever they may be, Halyard has invested in DesignDataManager, the Engineering Data Management and reporting system from Concurrent Systems Inc. Limited.

Exhaust systems for every engine option.
Halyard is a substantial and successful organisation producing a large number of exhaust systems and producing an even larger number of drawings, all of which have to be controlled, issued, archived and retrieved. The company employs nearly 90 staff and had a turnover in 2006 of almost £5 million. As James Grazebrook, Managing Director at Halyard (M & I) Ltd points out, “We employ a design team of four, working with technically qualified sales staff to design bespoke exhaust systems for every engine option offered with Europe’s leading large powerboat ranges. We also design around 1,000 bespoke marine exhaust systems each year for one-off craft and re-engining projects, as well as a range of standard exhaust systems.”

3D CAD enables reduction in site visits.
Graham Clapp is Design Director at Halyard. He says, “AutoCAD is our main cad tool and all our manufacturing is done from 2D drawings. However, we adopted 3D design for a number of reasons. Various customers provide us with engine rooms modelled in 3D CAD. We then fit our components into the models and return them for approval.” Graham adds, “Previously this task would sometimes have involved two or three site visits with patterning on site to get the system to fit in the vessel. We can now do the same job with one final site visit.”

Spreadsheet and file management no longer enough.
John Stout, Product Engineer, explains, “Owing to the number of files created by this approach, we needed something more than the spreadsheets and windows file directories they had been using to organise their drawing indexes.” He adds, “We had been using e-mail to get drawings to our production sites in Poole and Portsmouth. As a result, there were multiple copies of the same drawing in circulation, creating a huge potential for drawing control problems. It took a significant amount of time and effort to ensure there were no errors, so we really did need to find a solution.”

DesignDataManager the clear choice.
Graham Clapp again, “We learnt more about what was available. As we learnt, we broadened our outlook and decided what we wanted from a system.” He continues, “We had a clear idea of the drawing office administration we wanted for issue control and engineering changes. The ability to share information securely across our sites was vital, too.” After much research, Halyard chose DesignDataManager (DDM) from Concurrent Systems Inc Ltd. in preference to other products. Graham adds, “We looked at cost, we looked at functionality and we looked at the ease with which the solution could be tailored to our requirements. DDM was the clear choice.”

Confidence in the company and the solution.
Explaining the choice, Graham comments, “Our problems are unique and we had the confidence that Concurrent Systems would be able to tailor the solution to satisfy our requirements rather than us having to work round a fixed set-up. DDM was seamlessly integrated with Inventor, too.” He adds, “With Concurrent Systems, we were talking directly to the people involved with writing the software. We were confident that they would be there to support us through the implementation and beyond.”

Approach fully vindicated.
John Stout recalls, “We placed the order on Christmas Eve 2005 for late February 2006 installation.” He continues, “We used our four DDM Professional licences in the design department six months before going live with DDM Web in sales and manufacturing. We configured the system to provide the required level of access, setting the status of drawings that design, sales and production workgroups could access. We also set up models so we could be sure everything was right, before we actually went live.” John believes, “…we were fully vindicated in our approach since we had very few problems. In fact, I don’t think we have changed anything since we extended it out of the design office.” John adds, “Sales now use DDM Web to access the drawings and order parts locally or remotely. A sales person at the other side of the world can use the Internet securely, knowing that the information they are accessing is right up to date.”

Better issue control means improvements in quality.
Stuart Cochrane, Halyard’s Manufacturing Director, is happy, too, “We have seen improvements in outgoing quality as issue control is better and drawing queries are resolved more quickly and more effectively. We have also freed up floor space as we no longer keep a drawing library locally.” John Stout also points out, “Manufacturing uses DDM remotely to access all the production drawings and information they need. We have just bought a DDM Office licence, which will eventually be used by the production sites to control other production documents. Users can open and view drawings but are not permitted to change the state or issue status.”

Huge peace of mind.
Explaining the many advantages DDM provides for Halyard, Graham comments, “The main impact has been the ability to share the information across the production sites with much more robust issue control. The peace of mind this gives is huge. It’s a great weight off everybody’s shoulders.” He continues, “Time saved is important, too. The search facility is really powerful. Previously we’d have to trawl through all the spreadsheets if we wanted to find something that wasn’t current.” Graham also points out, “We were running the electronic version of a traditional DO system. If we made a change to a drawing, we would raise the issue but would overwrite the old file. The only record we would have would be in the modification box or on the change note. Though we may have a print, we wouldn’t actually have a copy of the previous issue. But now with DDM, every previous and current issue of drawing is there and available.” He adds, “It’s a sales tool as well. It enables sales staff to react faster to customer requirement because it drastically reduces the need for them to refer to the design department when they need drawings and other information.”

Exceptional Customer Service.
Graham cites his personal experience of DDM Web in action. “We had only just gone live with DDM Web when I got a call at home one Saturday morning. There was a problem on a particular installation but I was able to get to the drawing over the Internet and let them have the information immediately. If this had happened just one week earlier, I’d have driven into the office and even then, I’d have struggled to find the information. As it was we were able to provide exceptional customer service.”

Document control right across the company.
Looking to the future, Graham says, “We will be using Inventor more and more and DDM will just grow along side it, primarily handling design information, drawings and specifications. Other manufacturing information such as quality documents could be controlled by DDM and we are looking at using it for document control right across the company. He adds, “We are about to install Microsoft Dynamics NAV and we have already started to talk to CSI about linking the two systems.”

Moving to secure direct customer access.
Looking further ahead, Graham notes, “We tend to work very much in partnership with many customers. They see our information as being very important to them in supporting their warranty work and after-sales service. Our use of DDM has really impressed them when they carry out audit visits. They can see that we have control over that information, which they see as their information. In fact, our Sales Director would like to roll out DDM to those major customers as they would have secure direct access to the components which are specifically theirs.”

Everyone on board.
Graham is highly satisfied with DDM and comments, “It gives us the ability to organise our work in the way we want. We can find what we want and share it with the rest of the company in a secure and controlled manner. I have been pleasantly surprised by how smooth the introduction of DDM has been. I really did expect us to have more hiccups than we have had.” Summing up, Graham says, “We saw this as part of the ongoing development of the company. DDM really became part of the whole project to move to designing in 3D.” He concludes, “If you do as we did and demonstrate the advantages for sales and production, then everybody in the company will come on board.”

John C Marchant - www.skilstream.com