Move Production In-House with Product Design & Manufacturing Collection

Thai Summit Automotive Co., Ltd. is in the Thai Summit Group, which is the leading automotive parts manufacturer in Asia. As the company's production line is going bigger, there is an increasing usage of work holding devices like jigs and fixtures. In the past, Thai Summit outsources to third party companies to produce these jigs and fixtures to support their production line. However, there is a huge challenge to control the time and budget of jigs and fixture's production.

The 3 main goals of Thai Summit include:

• Reduce time of support devices' production by 30% within 1 year by in order to avoid delay in their production process. The company needed to operate in-house production and set up their own design team to produce these tools.
• Reduce cost of producing support devices by 20% within 1 year in order increase profit margin.
• Add more flexibility and effieciency to their production workflow in order to respond to the changing needs.

Following initial consultation to review business needs, Thai Summit Automotive started to kick off their own production house. They adopted the Autodesk Product Design & Manufacturing Collection for their team. There are 5 main users who use AutoCAD Mechanical to design supporting tools such as jigs and fixtures. There are also 2 users who use Inventor to assemble the designed parts together. Once the device has been designed and assembled, it is sent to the production team to produce the part by CNC machines or Laser machines. Then, the team does the finishing and assembly by welding. Finally, the finished devices will be sent to the production team to test in the actual production lines.

By fully implementing the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection in their production house, Thai Summit Automotive was able to effectively solve important business outcomes. The cost of manufacturing the supporting device has been reduced by 20%. By setting up their own production house, they can utilize the workforce and the machines that they own and create more productivity. Also, the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection allows users to 2D and 3D design tasks so the users can integrate conceptual design and manufacturing together by using AutoCAD and Inventor in the Collection. Moreover, the time of production has been decreased by almost 30%. Since they start their own production, there is no waste of time to negotiate with the third party companies. The job could be easily done and discussed within the company. In addition, the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection allow users to build a single digital model from the beginning to the end, and it creates an uninterrupted flow of data which allows more speed and flexibility for their jobs.

In Conclusion, Thai Summit Automotive is satisfied with using the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection to design various parts to support the company's production line. Although the production of these supportive devices is not the main part of the company, it is still an important activity to support the main production line. The company can save costs and operate more efficiently. Autodesk's software is a highly effective tool at a reasonable price because in 1 Collection subscription, users can use various programs. Thai Summit Automotive plans to develop the use of existing software to the highest efficiency. They also plan to implement the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection with new types of work such as milling and turning parts.