DIKO - Integration of the Inventor and Vault environments at a manufacturer of industrial assembly systems

DIKO Polska Automatyka Przemysłowa Spółka z o.o. is a manufacturer of industrial assembly systems from Krępic near Wrocław. The company has been operating in Poland since 2001. They produce complete assembly and control automation systems, entire technological lines for assembly and production processes, semi-automatic and automatic. They have a lot of orders from the automotive industry, which expects the production of a large number of parts with 100% process control.

From the following story you will learn:

• What does DIKO do and in which market segments does it operate?
• What are the challenges and goals facing the industrial machinery company?
• What are the departments in the company that use Autodesk software.
• Why the company decided to implement Vault.
• How did we integrate and transfer the design database.
• What additional tools can we prepare for the client during the implementation.
• How Vault facilitates work in the implementation of complex projects consisting of up to 9000 thousand parts.
• What does the assembly department use Vault and Inventor in the “browser version” for?
• What it's like to work on one machine by a team of several people.
• What improvements in work and processes have been made possible by the integration of Vault and Inventor software.

The most important issue for DIKO is to increase efficiency and improve processes within the company and introduce new systems. Departments such as construction, production, assembly and sales could benefit from the new solution.

An inconsistent purchasing element database, trouble with productivity on large assemblies, problems opening older designs and lost files led DIKO to look for a new solution for managing design documentation.

DIKO used to use a document management system (Product Stream Professional/Compass), but the product stopped growing. They could no longer expand the number of users, and because the number of licenses was too small, people outside the construction department could not access the relevant data. DIKO used older versions of the program, which did not have the same productivity as newer releases.

Increasing the efficiency of work on large projects, above 5,000 components, would enable them to realize new orders and attract new customers. It is also very important to standardize the library of purchasing elements, improving the project structure and access to data for more employees at DIKO. This would allow faster and more efficient implementation of current projects reducing errors at the production and assembly stages.

After PCC Polska performed a needs analysis at DIKO, we proposed a number of additional solutions in addition to the implementation of Vault Workgroup for project documentation management:

• Transferring the project database from the old version 2012 to the latest version of Inventor, including metadata.
• Development of systematics for the library of purchase items.
• Implementation of Vault Data Standard - forms that standardize data entry used for creating new files, copying, changing data, automatic data entry.
• Implementation of a tool for convenient copying of projects with documentation and easy completion of iProperties data.
• Making a tool for replacing tables in old drawings.
• Introduction of barcodes on documentation.
• Development of new templates: documentation, tables, lists, style libraries and standards.

During the implementation of Vault Workgroup, we used special development tools for transferring data and copying the database from the PSP/Compass system to Vault: Data Export Utility, Data Transfer Utility. We made a dedicated configuration of the tools tailored to the customer's data structure along with the migration of metadata like: revisions, status, CTH_Ident, file linking structure, etc....

We created an additional tool that made DIKO's job easier. This is an extension of the Replace with Copy + ("Save and Replace") tool - we included documentation copying.

PCC Polska made an implementation of Vault Data Standard in DIKO - we created dialogs that enforce standardization of the input of descriptive data in AutoCAD, Inventor, Vault Client files, which the user must enter when creating a new document or copying a document. This is a very important thing, making it easier to retrieve and reuse data later.

"(...) By combining all this with Vault, we can work on all files on multiple components at the same time, locking files and not overwriting each other's work."

- Matthew Mrozinski, designer at DIKO

"One of the most important options that helps us collaborate with the production department and with changes requested by the customer or assembly is drawing versioning. By saving the drawing and locking it, we are able to subject any modification to the versioning, so (...) we avoid mistakes."

- Mateusz Mroziński, designer at DIKO.

Currently, DIKO Polska Automatyka Przemysłowa Spółka z o.o. uses the Vault Workgroup system, which is used by everyone who needs access to product documentation: the design department, CAM production, assembly, sales and purchasing. Overall, the company has 18 licenses of Vault Workgroup and 13 licenses of Inventor and PD&M collections.

Implementing new tools at DIKO:

• Improved cooperation between departments and reduced working time.
• Allowed more efficient work with large projects and implementation of complex projects, complete assembly lines, projects that have hundreds of thousands of elements.
• Made it possible to preview files and parts, develop technology, fill in missing information.
• Allows to assemble the product without mistakes.

We also performed an integration with MasterCAM, which normally is not directly integrated with Vault. Our integration allowed us to prepare a database of production orders for CNC machine tools in Vault, and thus make production faster and easier to handle without additional saving and clicking.

"A very interesting thing is the possibility for multiple constructors to work simultaneously in Vault on the design of one device. By listing and blocking access, blocking modifications by one constructor,(...), teamwork is possible.

If we assume that a machine consists of a clique of stations, we are able to divide these stations into individual constructors, and what's more, these stations also consist of subassemblies, functional units, which again can be divided into more people. And so in the case of large machines, five to six constructors can work on one machine."

- Mariusz Mazurek, head of engineering | DIKO

We encountered many obstacles during the implementation, because with such a large database and number of files as DIKO had, the available tools for data transfer and project import were ineffective. The implementation of Vault Workgroup due to the huge database, lost files was very tedious, time- and labor-intensive, and therefore more costly. Therefore, it is not worth choosing substitute solutions or delaying the integration with Vault.

To face this implementation was not easy, but the knowledge and experience of our specialists allowed to complete it successfully. In addition, DIKO received from us a number of facilities that allowed us to integrate Vault with other systems used in the company. We laid the groundwork for introducing new systems to DIKO.

"By combining Inventor together with Vault, we are able to exchange files together with fellow designers,(...) and collaborate together on one machine or one big line. We also use Vault to exchange information from the customer, such as PDF files, drawings and any models we got from the customer, so we don't have to search for them each time, whether on our working disk or on the server, they are always in one place where the project files are."

- Mateusz Mrozinski, designer | DIKO