Project review model of Meeker Phase II facility

THE CLIENT

Founded in 1959, Bush Industries, Inc. of Jamestown, New York manufactures furniture that is both fashionable and affordable. They are a leading global manufacturer of ready-to-assemble and OfficeReady™ furniture for home and office. The company was voted one of the 200 Best Small Companies in America by Forbes Magazine in 1997. The company is headquartered in Jamestown, NY, with manufacturing plants and offices in New York State, Pennsylvania, China, and Germany.

THE CHALLENGE

Diversity can be a powerful asset but can potentially produce challenges many global organizations struggle to overcome. Bush Industries recognized the value of diversity and required their international design and manufacturing teams to collaborate across the globe, striving to utilize the strengths of all cultures within their organization. With limited information technology, personnel, and worldwide growth, it was challenging to effectively communicate and coordinate design requirements and expectations to their newest global source in China.

DESIRED OUTCOME

A fundamental part of Bush’s business model is upholding their high quality design standards with innovative technology and best practices. With an extension of their manufacturing team in China it was critical to communicate design methods and share knowledge between the two global locations. “It was a key objective to put a manufacturing process in place designed to mitigate any issues that would happen from an engineering perspective and to maximize both global and domestic sourcing so all our design teams would be streamlined and retain high quality designs,” noted Information Technology Director, Keith Fowler.

THE SOLUTION

At Bush’s headquarters in Jamestown, New York, IMAGINiT’s professional services consultants helped move them from 2D to 3D design and implement a global web-based data and document transfer system would improve productivity and reduce product development lead times. The software central to the implementation was Autodesk® Inventor™ for 3D design and Autodesk® Vault, a highly adaptable, user-responsive document management system. “We were so impressed with IMAGINiT’s implementation services in our Jamestown facility that we inquired about IMAGINiT’s ability to assist us with a similar project in our new China manufacturing facility,” explained Keith. “We chose IMAGINiT for this worldwide project because they provided valuable support for our Jamestown installation plus they had the global presence to support the software deployment, technical training, and had the resources to provide on going support to our office in China.”

ACTUAL RESULTS

“With two different cultures sharing in the exchange of information, it was fundamental to create synergy between the two global locations and take advantage of the diversity at the same time,“ stated Keith. Seamlessly replicating the design environment in Jamestown facility would necessitate a background exchange of information between IMAGINiT New York and IMAGINiT Singapore. The IMAGINiT consultants that worked on the Jamestown, New York implementation communicated to IMAGINiT Singapore about Bush’s configuration, environment, unique challenges, and design requirements. IMAGINiT Singapore, speaking native Chinese, provided hands-on training to ensure the engineering team in China could take advantage of all features available with the new, customized Vault document management system and Autodesk Inventor.

Keith noted, “IMAGINiT was very easy to work with and their positive communication strategies made the expansion of our manufacturing team transparent and seamless. A special thanks to the IMAGINiT team for a good job at customizing the software to fit our needs and for late hours assuring the servers talked with each other.”

At the end of the implementation phase, IMAGINiT successfully deployed a mirror image of the New York design environment in Bush’s China operations. “This streamlined replication allowed us to monitor expectations and standards on a continuing basis and make certain all the requirements were met, globally,” stated Keith. This project has several strategic elements of success, the principal benefit is Bush’s clients are assured the same quality and level of performance regardless of the source – domestic or global.

Contact Information

IMAGINiT Technologies

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