WorkPLAN, a “Guiding Light” for Creative Design Studio

A design studio serving the French automotive and aeronautics sectors with components, concept cars and full scale models, keeps track of all its administration processes with Vero Software’s powerful ERP system, WorkPLAN.

Style&Design also uses Vero’s WorkXplore CAD viewer and analyser to distribute customers’ CATIA 3D data to each department which needs to work on them, without the need for the original CAD application. 

Established in 2009, the company which has successfully completed a recent reorganisation a year ago now operates with 110 employees, focusing on three core activities: design, models and prototypes, and full digitisation which includes the initial digital creation of the project through to data preparation for manufacture. They have also developed other services, including Brands&Markets, producing special accessories such as badges and stickers for vehicle promotion campaigns.

As well as the aeronautics and automotive sectors, Style&Design also produces one-off projects for Christmas and Easter shop window displays and concept stores for high end brands such as luxury goods providers and functional models for television studios and theme parks.

Thirty-five employees now use a total of 22 WorkPLAN licenses, mainly for job tracking, delivery notes and invoicing. But that wasn’t always the case. In 2011 Style&Design was considerably smaller, and looking to change the way they operated. For example, they used Excel files to collect data for all their activities, and needed an ERP system to manage, structure and organise data, and play an important role in the overall company management.

CEO Olivier Meyer says there was a genuine desire to implement a structured framework for managing their activities. “We tested several applications, and WorkPLAN proved to be the ideal match for our principal modelling and prototyping activity at that time, and has been instrumental in our development and growth ever since.

“It’s improved visibility, tracking and profitability, and is the mainstay of our day-to-day project management, and the Sales Department uses WorkPLAN’s Job Report to determine the current status of any given job.”

And he says WorkPLAN gave them the means to achieve ISO certification, thanks to the good management practices they have developed with it, including document templates which fully comply with ISO quality requirements. “This has been a powerful guiding light for us.”

Describing WorkPLAN as a ‘genuine management tool,’ he says it begins each project with a quote, and runs right through to invoicing, incorporating the complete accounting of hours spent on  job, purchasing costs, and comprehensive job reports.

“WorkPLAN documents such as sales quotations show Style&Design to be a well organised, structured and serious company.”

I.T. Manager David Laroche describes which WorkPLAN modules they use the most.

The Quotations module, which benefits from a knowledge base containing technical criteria for simplified data search, and offering optimised processes based on previous jobs and quotes.
Job Tracker, which regroups all technical and financial data relative to the project, for controlling activities. All data from outsourced components and supplies, right up to component status, can be accessed quickly to check real-time progression of all jobs.
Purchasing and Stock Management includes the forecast purchase budget, supplier quotations, stock management, delivery receipt, supplier invoice and order control functions.
Time Management, including employees’ hours and task progression, along with holiday leave and overtime details. The module also provides the real-time tracking of CNC machine usage, the status of outsourced tasks, and how long a live task will take to finish.
Touch Screen Terminals – information collected by the terminals is used to output time sheets related to current projects.

In addition to WorkPLAN, Style&Design also use WorkXplore to view and analyse CAD files. Olivier Meyer says they invested in three licenses for the workshop’s dimensioning purposes, and for project managers and the sales department to undertake modelling and prototype activities.

When reassembling models, WorkXplore visualises the digitisation created by the engineering department, as well as being used to produce accurate costings from customers’ files. “It’s also used in the workshop to check assembly feasibility, and for taking measurements.

“And it’s easy for us to convert customers’ CAD files, such as SolidWorks, thanks to its export interface.

“Overall, we find WorkXplore’s measurement functions for determining dimensions, and its analytical capabilities such as the bounding box, to be particularly useful. It’s also very practical for calculating the dimensions, volume and weight of selected element to define the optimum stock model required for manufacturing.”

Headquartered in England, Vero Software designs, develops, and supplies CAD/CAM/CAE software radically enhancing the efficiency of design and manufacturing processes, providing its customers with exceptional value through high productivity gains and significantly reducing time to market. The company’s world-renowned brands include Alphacam, Cabinet Vision, Edgecam, Machining STRATEGIST, PEPS, Radan, SMIRT, SURFCAM, WorkNC and VISI, along with the production control MRP system Javelin. Despite the diversity of application, these solutions have one thing in common: they all address the rising challenges of achieving manufacturing efficiencies and bring huge value to the operations in which they are deployed.

Vero has direct offices in the UK, Germany, Italy, France, Japan, USA, Brazil, Netherlands, China, South Korea, Spain and India supplying products to more than 45 countries through its wholly owned subsidiaries and reseller network. Vero is part of Hexagon, a leading global provider of information technologies that drive productivity and quality across geospatial and industrial enterprise applications. Hexagon’s solutions integrate sensors, software, domain knowledge and customer workflows into intelligent information ecosystems that deliver actionable information. They are used in a broad range of vital industries.

Hexagon (Nasdaq Stockholm: HEXA B) has approximately 18,000 employees in 50 countries and net sales of approximately 3.1bn EUR. Learn more at hexagon.com and follow us @HexagonAB.