EnerSys Speeds Time to Market with an Authoritative Source of Truth Across Their NPIs

“Our goal is, and always has been, to develop and lead with innovative technology designed to deliver the best user experience possible,” says Joern Tinnemeyer, Senior Vice President and CTO of EnerSys.

EnerSys needed a new approach to their operations— one that leveraged an authoritative source of truth for all engineering data

For manufacturers, moving from lead-acid to lithium-ion technology means shifting from a discrete, raw-materials-driven manufacturing approach to a more process-centric approach. This dynamic change impacts EnerSys at every layer of their business: sales, quality, manufacturing, the supply chain, and more. Across the entire ecosystem, there is a renewed emphasis on improving efficiency, optimizing total cost of ownership (TCO), and responding to demand faster.

In order to meet shifting demands and rising complexities, EnerSys decided to transition away from ERP-centric data management to a product lifecycle process-driven approach. This meant that people, processes, and technology all needed to be organized around products with governance and traceability.

“Collaboration, design principles, engineering principles, and more—it’s all evolving. Even the product nature itself drives us towards that better way of working,” says Sudip Pattanayak, the Global PLM Head and Architect at EnerSys.

EnerSys implemented Windchill in the cloud to increase collaboration, manage product data, and improve workflows without heavy IT overhead or hardware commitments

EnerSys partnered with PTC to implement Windchill in the cloud for the management of product data, BOMs, verification and validation processes, and suppliers. Windchill is a comprehensive PLM software for data governance and traceability, providing an authoritative source of truth across engineering, operations, suppliers, and customers. Windchill’s open architecture enables easy integrations with other enterprise systems and serves as a foundation for a product-driven digital thread. Enersys determined that the time to value would be faster and the total cost of ownership would be significantly reduced with Windchill in the PTC Cloud, maintained by PTC experts.

Windchill’s SaaS-managed service offering includes a selection of enterprise packages and role-based add-ons for engineering, quality, manufacturing, service, and the extended enterprise with ThingWorx Navigate. It makes the PLM solution easier to configure, scale, and secure, and helps facilitate collaboration and agility across the extended enterprise—including in remote work environments.

With a reliable and secure digital foundation for product development and manufacturing, EnerSys planned to improve processes, unlock efficiencies, and enable people to better use and manage data. Ultimately, EnerSys set the stage for significant financial, time to market, and quality improvements.

EnerSys uses Windchill and PTC Cloud to unify their new product implementation process

Using Windchill and the PTC Cloud, EnerSys is creating a unified new product implementation (NPI) process, from concept to release. This is a multi-year digital transformation story that will ultimately expand into other processes as well.

Their goal is three-fold: first, they’ll integrate and connect all bills of materials (BOMs). Then they’ll enable global design collaboration for product development and create a global standardization of templates and processes. And finally, they’ll create an integrated manufacturing process management environment to exchange information between product data management (PDM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and manufacturing execution systems (MES).

EnerSys also plans to incorporate the entire quality process in Windchill. Quality information is currently distributed across different folders, emails, and more. They’ll collect all of this supplier quality and manufacturer quality information in a single location through Windchill. Then they’ll establish a strict gatekeeping process so people can always find and access the quality information they need. In addition, EnerSys will integrate their current ERP (SAP) data, bills of process, electronic work instructions, and more, into the PLM tool for a completely unified experience.

EnerSys is doing more with less, driving faster time to market, and enhancing quality

EnerSys has already made significant progress towards their goal of reducing costs, improving time to market, and increasing quality. They’ve expanded to multiple systems and won the support of people on the ground floor.

Reducing costs

In terms of financial impact, EnerSys does more with less by increasing reusability and reducing the cost of rework. Without a strong PLM system, manufacturers often end up with excessive duplication, redundancy, or the wrong parts. But with Windchill, EnerSys is improving part disposition and change management processes, flagging quality issues and adjustments faster than ever before. Rather than continue working on parts that won’t meet quality standards down the line, they can quickly catch issues and reduce the amount of rework required.

Now, because all teams have access to the same BOM, the PMO team leverages Windchill for quick visibility into project status. PMO teams have a complete view across production, enabling them to conduct reviews in real time and reduce back and forth discussions between teams. This platform approach helps manage extensive variance requirements as well.

Enhancing quality

Faster, more accurate processes have led to better designs and increased the quality of the parts that EnerSys produces. For example, EnerSys has greatly improved their deviation management process. Manufacturers can quickly record deviations and communicate back to the necessary teams for rework or trace them back to their root cause.

In terms of improving processes, quality teams are more effective gatekeepers at each stage of the journey. During the design phase, they can quickly see whether designers are implementing the right control characteristics. If there’s an issue, they can work together to achieve the right approvals rather than letting the issue leave the design phase. Windchill also enables EnerSys to reuse testing and verification processes across different product families for faster, more accurate quality checks.

EnerSys’s digital transformation journey doesn’t end there

EnerSys’s journey isn’t over. The cost, time to market, and quality improvements they’ve realized are significant, but they still have work to do. In addition to completing their current digital transformation initiative, they’re also looking at implementing other innovative technologies in partnership with PTC.