Design for Serviceability: Extending PLM at Volvo CE Improves Aftermarket (AM) Business Agility and Efficiency

Volvo CE’s commitment to product centric service and parts information improves overall efficiency while reducing operational costs

Headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden, Volvo Construction Equipment (CE) is a leading international manufacturer of premium construction equipment. Leveraging more than 180 years of construction expertise and the knowledge of 14,000 employees, they supply products and services to more than 140 countries around the world. With innovation at the heart of their strategy and culture, Volvo CE provides the right machines and solutions for any construction job to ensure their customers succeed.

Volvo CE partnered with PTC to drive efficiency throughout their processes by establishing a digital thread of product data using out of-the-box PLM software. Furthermore, their global distribution and inventory management challenges prompted Volvo CE to extend their digital transformation to the aftermarket side of their business as well.

Their global network of dealers, service businesses, and warehouses needed access to parts availability information and early access to change notice (CN) data so they could coordinate activities, remove roadblocks, escalate issues, and update planning. Volvo CE saw an opportunity to provide available, up-to-date information by extending their PLM solution.

Communicating changes downstream to improve the aftermarket preparation processes

Like many companies with a long history, mergers and acquisitions have impacted Volvo CE’s product and service portfolio. A complicated and costly IT landscape—based on no less than four different product data management (PDM) systems—emerged over the last four decades. These systems resulted in manual processes and poor communication.

Further complicating their data management, Volvo CE has over 30 thousand releases each year. This equates to about 50 CN each week for each of their five platforms. These changes generate a lot of data that needs to be passed on to purchasing, warehouses, service departments, etc.

CN analysis and preparation weren’t visualized for designers or linked in the system. Change requests were handled in several systems (such as Microsoft Excel, Teams, and different databases) so there was no common way of working or traceability. Once a CN began, engineers had to search in several systems for parts or information. They didn’t know what the impact of the changes would be within downstream processes, such as bills of process (BOP) and serviceability.

Each change introduces a level of risk due to disconnected PDM systems and processes. For example, if systems and processes are not integrated effectively, it isn’t clear whether purchasing receives notification of a change. Ineffective communication channels resulted in quality problems for Volvo CE.

Volvo CE’s challenge—Breaking down the silos between R&D and the aftermarket business

• Planning changes. Changes must be planned and introduced in a way that gives service departments notice of when the new part will be available in the market. It’s critical to plan whether existing parts get scrapped, re-worked, etc. In addition, service manuals, tech tools, and operator manuals all require updating prior to product release.


• Communicating changes. Engineering knows when new parts are being introduced, but there need to be open, reliable communication channels that give service teams, purchasing, and warehouses time to align target implementation dates to ensure all AM deliverables are met.


• Distributing parts.Planning service work is a challenge when it isn’t clear when parts will be available/in stock. Dealerships around the world rely on Volvo CE’s dozens of warehouses for parts—the logistics of distributing parts throughout the network are complex.

Goals for the Volvo CE digital transformation project
Their goals were aimed at making CN and parts inventory information accessible both upstream and downstream. They wanted early visibility of global availability of parts in warehouses, and when those parts are available to the market. They wanted to eliminate manual processes (spreadsheets) for tracking availability and wanted PLM governance and traceability.

The solution: Improve technician effectiveness and service performance with Windchill and ThingWorx

Volvo CE implemented Windchill, PTC’s out of-the-box PLM solution. The value-ready deployment of Windchill is a preconfigured, flexible configuration built upon 25 years of PLM best practices. Windchill is a proven, ready-to deploy offering that can be up and running within months and is fully supported by PTC experts.

Leveraging Windchill, Volvo CE creates and collects all change management requests and problem reports in one system. By establishing a connection between parts in EBOMs, MBOMs, and SBOMs with visualizations and traceability, engineers see the direct impact on downstream processes and execute analysis on a single source of information, greatly reducing change cycle times.

With PTC’s service process management solution, technicians have the right information at the right time. Parts lists, technical documentation, and illustrations from CAD models are trusted because they are automatically linked and updated to the latest engineering and design information. Service documentation is then released sooner, resulting in a faster time to market, while support and service engineers solve problems faster, driving up customer satisfaction scores.

“We have one source of information through Windchill. Plus, the metadata is available through our ThingWorx application,” says Pascal Martinez, Global Director of Strategy and Solutions Portfolio. “Downstream departments access metadata using ThingWorx. They find it very easy to use. They can easily see recent product changes, and they can optimize the aftermarket service operation.”

Concurrent Engineering with Service Process Management: A solution with tangible benefits

Removing manual handovers and processes freed up three to four full time employees from doing manual work, to taking on more strategic projects. Furthermore, their digital approach eliminated errors that are inevitable with manual work. They noticed improvements in time to market, quality, and costs.

 

With a single source of product data throughout the entire product lifecycle, all work adds to the organization’s collective knowledge—increasing value. Efficiency improved at every stage. Volvo CE also anticipates improved customer satisfaction and increased quality through fewer mistakes caused by manual handovers and data duplication.

During discovery, Volvo CE identified that around 20% of their parts might change in a given year. They’re using that number as a benchmark and—with the help of PDM—they’re committed to reducing the number of changes resulting from lack of communication.

Fundamentals are in place, with potential to capture even more value

By creating a single source of truth for their engineering and aftermarket organizations, Volvo CE unified communication and optimized processes. “The beauty is we put everyone on the same system, using the same data, looking at the same things. That adds so much value because all relevant information is at the fingertips of every team,” says Pelle Bokedal, Vice President of Strategy, Architecture and Systems.

Volvo CE is well positioned to keep unlocking benefits into the future. “As we break down the silos between teams and expand shared architecture,” says Bokedal, “we will integrate IoT data related to equipment usage, device status, and other critical component information, in real time. Connected data will be used for remote troubleshooting and faster problem resolution, but also to inform product enhancements.”