Easier Design for VegaStream Hardware

As a leading Voice-over-IP (VoIP) supplier, VegaStream competes on the world stage. Being first to market with a groundbreaking new Technology builds a strong competitive advantage for them. Vizola System’s Documentor plays a vital role in speeding this process — from drawing board to manufacture.

Richard Webb, Hardware Manager for VegaStream, comments: “Between design and manufacture is a hornets nest of issues and controls. Get it right and you can deliver a product on schedule and at the most economic price. Get it wrong and you’re left behind”.

Faced with this challenge Webb looked for a suitable product to help him bridge the gap. “I took a long hard look at the marketplace and discovered that there was nothing to meet our requirements at a sensible price. We were resigned to using spreadsheets and WP”.

It was not long however, before Webb realised the shortcomings of such tools, as apart from anything else, errors were easy to introduce and then difficult to eradicate. He began to contemplate developing some kind of database solution.

It was at this point that he met with Chris Cohen, founder of Vizola Technology. Chris had worked with Racal, Nortel and other IT companies, and had an in-depth understanding of just these issues being faced by VegaStream. Moreover, he had experience creating database business solutions, so quickly a powerful alliance was formed, matching real user needs to functionality in the newly evolving Documentor product.

Cohen explains – “Having real user involvement was key to getting the functionality spot on and accelerating development. At the same time we recognised that we were building a product, not a bespoke solution, and needed to take care that it was generic and suitable for different types of companies”.

Cohen continues – “With increasing competition, shorter product lifecycles and more complex supply chains there is a compelling need to smooth the process from design to manufacture, facilitating concurrent engineering and empowering all personnel, whilst at the same time maintaining control.

We therefore needed to produce an integrated solution embracing Bill-of-Materials (BoM), parts database, stock control, change control, drawing lists, scheduling and planning. At the same time there’s a need to interface easily to EDA (Electronic Design Automation), MRP (Materials Requirements Planning) and CAD (Computer Aided Design) systems”.

One vital ingredient for managing product data is change control. As Cohen comments – “For some organisations the entire change process is controlled through a once-a-week meeting involving many key staff. The overhead of these can quickly become a real burden, and the process definitely is not in accord with concurrent engineering”. Documentor automates and speeds the change process by using email circulation of change documents to necessary and interested parties. Progress is no longer delayed by waiting for the weekly meeting, as bona fide approvers can accept or reject the change on-line.

VegaStream, like a lot of electronics companies, chooses to out-source product manufacture, whilst keeping control of strategic component sourcing. With preferred parts and controlled BoMs handled by Documentor, it made little sense to use a separate system for stock control and materials forecasting, especially as Documentor’s integrated simple MRP module allows balancing of build schedules with forward purchasing.

Many companies in VegaStream’s position can feel at the mercy of their contracted EMS (Electronics Manufacturing Supplier) through inadequacy of information. In response to this, Documentor provides facilities like Costing Tool, Build Scheduling and Multi-Location Stock Control to maintain real-time information without the big expense and overhead of running a full-blown MRP system.

Crucially important also is the ability of Documentor to provide instant ad hoc reporting, either for internal use or sharing with supply chain partners. These include standard BoMs, product structures, materials forecasts, RFQ (Request for Quotation), ‘cost-to-make’, stock movement and many others, which may be supplemented by user defined reports. In addition to printed formats, the information may be directly exported to other applications.

As Cohen comments – “For VegaStream, we aimed to eliminate the headache of managing product and logistics data using general office applications. Documentor provides error-free, consistent, reliable information allowing them to focus on getting their innovative designs to market as fast as possible.”.

Webb concludes – “Without doubt Documentor has given us control over the development process, and thankfully removed the time-consuming, error-prone spreadsheet work. We’re more confident about our first release builds, we know the information is good, and can easily disseminate it to suppliers. What’s more, we can forecast our materials requirements and costs. Documentor has given us management control”.