Connection of SolidWorks EPDM to Infor LN

About the company

With over 175 years of tradition, NILES-SIMMONS Industrieanlagen GmbH is one of the most renowned companies in the field of machine tool construction. Thanks to continuous and innovative product development with a high degree of customer orientation, NILES-SIMMONS has developed into one of the world's leading manufacturers of high-precision machine tools with an integrated range of services. Machines and technologies are tailor-made in Chemnitz and individually developed according to the specific machining requirements of the customers.
 

The Challenge

For a company like NILES-SIMMONS Industrieanlagen GmbH, efficiency in design is crucial. The challenge now was to standardize the data pools from the various systems that had grown over the years and thus optimize the work between the departments. Previously, a relatively high proportion of manual work was required; many employees had to operate several systems as isolated applications. Data was entered multiple times. This meant that data integrity was no longer guaranteed in some cases.
 

Structured approach

To do justice to the complex structure of a manufacturing company of this size, detailed coordination was necessary. The needs of the design department were worked out, but also the requirements of the other departments were taken into account. As a result, first steps were taken ( exchange of article data ) to test the expected results.
 

Connection of SolidWorks Enterprise PDM to Infor LN via web services

Implementation of the project

To achieve the standardization of the data basis, web services were implemented to realize the data exchange between ERP system and SolidWorks Enterprise PDM. This not only ensured the data integrity of article and master data and parts lists, but also created the basis for a later connection of third-party systems via a service-oriented architecture ( SOA ). This made it possible to call up and synchronize ERP data from the PDM ( online view ). Since it is no longer necessary to operate individual isolated applications, there are savings in data entry time ( e.g. article data and parts lists ). In addition, a reduction of license costs is achieved.
 

Conclusion

The project will improve data integrity and reduce manual processes to a large extent. Process reliability will be increased by automation. With the implementation of web services, the basis for the connection of third-party applications is created. This will allow planned extensions to the IT landscape to be seamlessly integrated into the structure of the company software.

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