High Tech – Diagnostics
Case Study
1.866.937.1438 | arenasolutions.com
Company
Sinton Instruments
Location
Boulder, Colorado
Industry
High-Tech (Diagnostics)
Business Challenges
• Manage mounting version control issues
• Overcome IP-theft concerns of sharing
bill of material (BOM) data
• Reduce inefficient processes between
silo’d systems
Arena Solutions
Arena PLM BOMControl
Arena SolidWorks Integration
Business Benefits
• Successfully ensured team members
were working on correct BOM versions
• Streamlined internal processes by
integrating Arena PLM BOMControl with
SolidWorks
• BOMControl’s security controls
eliminated fear of sharing sensitive
product data
ROI Results
• Projected to deliver significant cost
savings with reduced scrap/errors/time
to market
• Calculated to accelerate product design
time by 20%
• Forecasted to reduce version control
issues accounting for 10% of product
errors
Arena PLM Case Study | Manufacturing Success Stories
Arena PLM Case Study
Business Challenges
Originally established in 1992 by Stanford-educated scientist Ron Sinton, Sinton Instruments designs cost-
effective state-of-the-art device physics and measurement tools to determine the quality of silicon in solar
cells and integrated circuits.
Sinton’s customers are R&D facilities, universities and manufacturers
scattered around the globe. The company’s measurement instruments
have become the de-facto calibrated lifetime-measurement standard in
laboratories worldwide.
“Our instruments and analysis techniques are based on a firm device-
physics foundation,” said Cherie McCandless, Sinton Instruments’
Procurement Director.
As Sinton ramped its operation, McCandless struggled to ensure the
team’s engineers were working from the same drawings and model
documents she distributed to machine subcontractors, machinists and
sheet metal workers. Revision control had quickly become one of Sinton’s
major concerns.
“I would send out a purchase order for a huge job and discover that some of the drawings were below
revision,” said McCandless. “So, we would either get back parts that were built incorrectly or I would spend a
lot of time going back and forth on the phone and interfacing with the engineers to find out which version I
was supposed to be getting.“
Another challenge McCandless faced was Sinton’s mechanical engineer designed completely in SolidWorks;
because it was a silo’d system, McCandless did not have a seamless process to share BOM data updates. “I
used to walk over and leave a sticky note and hope it did not get lost,” she added.
Arena Solutions
McCandless quickly realized the company’s proliferation of specialty products required a document control
solution to formalize processes to ensure her team worked from the correct and most up-to-date version
of the BOM. For the savvy procurement manager, Arena PLM BOMControl was the obvious solution to her
troubles.
BOMControl’s cloud-based centralized solution was important to McCandless. “With Arena, everybody can
access the BOM I’m uploading and all the files that go with it – data sheets and drawings and models and
specs,” she said. “The benefit is we don’t have to physically recreate them every time we want them.”
How Sinton Reduced Shipping Delays &
Product Errors Resulting in Cost Savings
The whole design process has been impacted in a positive way
by switching to Arena.
— Cherie McCandless, Procurement Director, Sinton Instruments“
BUSINESS CHALLENGES
ARENA SOLUTIONS
1.866.937.1438 | arenasolutions.comArena PLM Case Study | Manufacturing Success Stories
Arena PLM Case Study
BOMControl’s security controls were another selling point to McCandless. In addition to BOMControl,
McCandless uses Arena PLM’s SolidWorks Integration, which allowed team members to quickly establish
a link between the associated BOMControl item and SolidWorks part or assembly. By having a revised
drawing’s properties automatically pushed to BOMControl every time a file is checked in, Sinton engineers
could search for existing part numbers or generate new intelligent part numbers directly in Arena
BOMControl—without ever leaving SolidWorks.
McCandless believes Arena will resolve the issues with outdated
paper processes, which have resulted in product introduction
delays and product errors at Sinton. She is convinced Arena has
resulted in an immediate ROI with reduced shipping delays,
decreased product errors, and – most importantly — measured
cost savings.
“I personally think that we’re going to have a significant cost
savings just in ordering and purchasing alone,” she said. “I think
once the engineers start using the engineering change order
(ECO) process, it’s going to make a big difference; in fact, the
whole process of creating an instrument has been impacted in a
positive way by switching to Arena.”
In an effort to reduce time-to-market even more, McCandless plans to implement the Supplier Sharing
feature of BOMControl. Providing specified access directly to drawings and BOMs will significantly diminish
the likelihood of propagating down-revved items by guaranteeing suppliers up-to-the-minute information.
Arena is calculated to accelerate product design time by 20%
and reduce version control issues that account for 10% of our
product errors.
— Cherie McCandless, Procurement Director, Sinton Instruments“
“
”
With Arena, everybody
can access the BOM I’m
uploading and all the
files that go with it – data
sheets and drawings and
models and specs. The
benefit is we don’t have
to physically recreate
them every time we
want them. I personally
think that we’re going to
have a significant cost
savings just in ordering
and purchasing alone.
— Cherie McCandless, Sinton
Instruments’ Procurement Director
Find out how Arena can help you achieve success and take your company from
chaos to calm. Sign up for a demo at www.arenasolutions.com/plm-demo
or give us a call at 1-866-341-4424
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