Sealed with outstanding service

A commitment to unparalleled customer service lies at the heart of AESSEAL Plc, a business founded on expertise that focuses on preventing liquids and gases from escaping into the environment. The company invests seven percent of annual sales revenue in research and development (R&D), and achieves exceptional delivery times for the mechanical seals and support systems that it designs and manufactures for rotating equipment, such as pumps and motors. Millions of permutations can be assembled from stock and dispatched within 24 hours, and a database founded on decades of experience speeds the development of nonstandard products.

The company’s expertise and innovation has resulted in rising customer demand and industry recognition in the decades since the company was established in 1979. AESSEAL now supplies customers in 104 countries and operates from 230 locations, including 9 manufacturing sites and 58 repair facilities. Such impressive growth also presented a huge challenge. Stuart Welsh, head of IT (information technology), explains. “Our reputation is built on customer service and our speed of response, yet we have gained customers who are far from our original base in the UK (United Kingdom); shipping time has become our biggest business challenge. In order to continually improve our customer service, the business recognized that we needed to create a global design and engineering team, supported by local manufacturing capability.”

Having agreed on a business strategy, it became obvious that existing systems were inadequate. The company decided it was time to implement a more comprehensive product lifecycle management (PLM) solution. “We already use Solid Edge® and NX™, so the obvious choice was Teamcenter® because we knew that it would support a global engineering and manufacturing facility,” says Welsh. “We undertook a thorough analysis of our business with Siemens Digital Industries Software, and this enabled us to begin planning an implementation project.”

Implementing a global vision

Siemens Digital Industries Software partner Majenta PLM provided a consultant to work alongside users at AESSEAL headquarters. “Through Majenta PLM, we gained one global licensing and maintenance program with Siemens Digital Industries Software and a clear, focused approach to implementation that allowed the business and users to steer the transition process.”

Chris Newton, senior designer, notes, “For the user community, it was very important to establish workflows that truly represent the different ways in which we respond to and fulfill customer requirements. These can be complex, particularly when there are multiple products and configurations associated with one order or we need to understand the history of an existing installation. For example, with our old system, we were forced to find workarounds to bypass standard rules when special situations arose. Our Majenta PLM consultant clearly understood the user perspective and led us expertly through the process of defining new workflows and gathering feedback on proposals.”

For AESSEAL it was extremely important to integrate Teamcenter with other business solutions, including customer relationship management (CRM), manufacturing execution system (MES) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology, and this was built into the implementation project.

Training for key users began with a three-week “train the trainer” boot camp. This was followed by the foundation of a dedicated training network for the global user base of 150. In the spring of 2013, engineering information already released for production was migrated to Teamcenter, and over the following two weeks all new designs were originated using Teamcenter. Finally, all projects in progress were transferred over, along with computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) programs.