A digitization platform as the basis for further growth of Bakon Food Equipment
Mr. Ronald Gijssel, director of BAKON Food Equipment, during the kick-off of the PRO.FILE implementation process: “being able to offer a lot, without too much work from one of our Mechanical Engineers.” This is not a sign of laziness, but rather of realizing that, only by controlling the knowledge flows and integrating them with the value flows, the turbulent growth of the company in the past can be further accelerated.
Bakon is experiencing strong growth and in order to prevent growing pains, an improvement project was started in the spring of 2020 under the heading "optimization of knowledge flows". One of the important objectives is the central management of all Intellectual Property (IP). All employees and parties involved must work together on R&D and Engineering to Order (ETO) projects from a central product data backbone (single source).
BAKON designs and manufactures bakery and food equipment. The development and production of the machines is mainly done at the head office in Goes (NL). The company offers standardized and tailor-made depositing machines, spraying machines, casing machines and ultrasonic cutting machines, as well as production lines for efficient and large-scale processing of confectionery products. With a lot of attention to innovation and R&D, Bakon is a progressive specialist in this sector.
PLM to support growth In the selection of supporting software, the need for both the short and the long term has been considered. Bakon's international growth objectives must also be covered by the PLM solution in the future. In the PLM Plan of Requirements, the functionalities related to that growth strategy were therefore part of the requirements together with the seamless connection with the other business processes that will be supported by Ridder iQ. The standard bi-directional link with the ERP package Ridder iQ, which is implemented simultaneously, guarantees integrated processes, an efficient use of the scarce engineering and work preparation capacity and, above all, a short lead time.
In the first phase, BAKON will replace the existing PDM (end-of-life) solution for the PRO.FILE "the product data backbone". A lot of attention will be paid to correct master data, classification of modular systems and machines to support CTO, integration and management of SolidWorks 3D CAD data and derivatives, release flows, comprehensive version management on documents and parts lists. Also, before going live at the end of 2020, the integration with ERP will be implemented, creating an uninterrupted process in which manual actions are banned. In the second phase, at the start of the new year, Eplan and the integration will also be implemented to support Systems Engineering and mechatronic collaboration.
At the beginning of September, the project teams started with the implementation of PRO.FILE and Ridder iQ. And yes, this is a challenging task; but because taking action is in the DNA of this machine builder and doing half the work is not an option, a simultaneous approach was chosen with close cooperation between the project members and experienced support from project leaders Mark Damen and Gerard Vervoorn (from McEffem and SpartnerS respectively) and the consultants from Ridder and PLM Xpert.
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