SEA-LECT Plastics Combines SOLIDWORKS and DELMIAworks to Improve Efficiency and Profit Margins

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SEA-LECT Plastics Corporation is a leading supplier of custom injection molding, design, product development, and tooling services in the Pacific Northwest. As a full-service provider, the company frequently deals with early-stage product ideas, often starting from rough, 2D sketches. SEA-LECT takes the two-dimensional sketch and builds it from scratch in SOLIDWORKS® using various extrusions and surface manipulations.

Today, when SEA-LECT takes a customer idea from concept to reality, they know, before the job starts, how profitable the job will be. “With DELMIAWORKS, we have complete visibility of all of our operations, with information right at our fingertips, because everything is managed and automated within a single system,” says Vice President and General Manager, Matt Poischbeg.

But it wasn’t always that way.

Duplicating Efforts

SEA-LECT Plastics initially relied on a custom-developed enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and Excel spreadsheets to manage its injection-molding operations from estimate through delivery. However, the growing company realized that it needed to increase efficiency and improve quality as well as to better understand actual costs per job to maintain profit margins.

“Relying on Excel spreadsheets hampered our efficiency and required a lot of repetitive data entry,” Poischbeg recounts. “This caused us to ballpark estimates, to learn actual costs and whether we made a profit only after a job was complete, and to be frequently late on delivery.”

The company had already achieved productivity gains implementing SOLIDWORKS and CAMWorks; however, SEA-LECT realized they still needed an overarching system that would enable automation throughout all functions related to injection-molding production.

Streamlining Operations

In 2011, Poischbeg began evaluating available manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that would allow SEA-LECT Plastics to streamline its operations further. The company implemented DELMIAWORKS®—which is tailored specifically for a factory environment—in 2012 because of its integration with SOLIDWORKS and the ease of configuring it to SEA-LECT Plastics specific automation requirements. As a result, the company it was able to substantially increased operational efficiency—from 70 percent to 98.5 percent.

“DELMIAWORKS gives us access to all job details at any time in the process. With this tight management of data and automation of processes, we can see exactly what is happening on each of 16 different machines in real time,” says Poischbeg.

With a better grasp of actual data, SEA-LECT Plastics can generate more precise estimates and quotes, which helps the company avoid losses, boost profit margins, and improve its competitive position.

With the DELMIAWORKS ERP system, SEA-LECT Plastics has substantially increased operational efficiency—from 70 percent to 98.5 percent—while simultaneously improving injection-molded part quality and related processes, enabling the company to obtain its ISO 9001:2015 certification. DELMIAWORKS has helped SEA-LECT to increase productivity, profit margins, and to consistently achieve on-time delivery.

Click here to learn more about how DELMIAWORKS provides manufacturers with a reliable system for planning, scheduling, executing, and measuring manufacturing results. And, feel free to add your comments below.

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Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp. offers complete 3D software tools that let you create, simulate, publish, and manage your data. SolidWorks products are easy to learn and use, and work together to help you design products better, faster, and more cost-effectively. The SolidWorks focus on ease-of-use allows more engineers, designers and other technology professionals than ever before to take advantage of 3D in bringing their designs to life.
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