Consumer Goods Technology

Black Diamond uses another Siemens PLM solution, the NX digital product development system, in the design of its products. It uses other CAD and CAM programs for manufacturing engineering. Teamcenter bridges the gap across diverse applications.

By storing all product information in one place, Black Diamond now has the assurance that members

Teamcenter just handling those transfers.”

“And when we move into production, we’re building exactly what we intended,” adds Dees. “That not only allows us to deliver to the customer the product we promised, it also allows our manufacturing

“We must make sure that we can acquire the information
about what our customers want… and then use it in a
meaningful way to get great products to our customers.”

— JOSHUA DEES, VICE PRESIDENT FOR MIS, BLACK DIAMOND

of product teams are working with valid data, whether they’re in the company’s offices in Switzerland, North America or China.

According to Brendan Perkins, a design engineer at Black Diamond, “We’re saving a lot of the time we spent — a half hour to an hour trying to download files and maybe the connection is really slow from China this morning or in the evening — as opposed to

team to operate more efficiently because they have built tooling around a certain design.”

The Web-based solution is also used to make critical project management information accessible to all members of product teams.

“Whether it’s a Utah employee working from home or one of our colleagues overseas, they are able to track and update a project,” says Dees.

The Total Package

In addition to providing the platform for innovation and collaboration, Teamcenter is expected to reduce Black Diamond’s IT costs by reducing the number of systems that the IT staff must maintain. “Implementing Teamcenter on Microsoft SQL Server brings into our organization another system, but it’s a system with the back end that we already know how to manage,” explains Dees.

Dees would like to see as broad an implementation as possible at Black Diamond. “I’d like to see Teamcenter and the entire PLM vision end to end, from forecasting

for particular product lines all the way to our warranty and returns department,” he says. He also sees benefit in integrating the solution with the company’s ERP system.

For now, though, Black Diamond is already seeing a competitive advantage. “There are a lot of companies in our industry that are good competitors,” says Walker. “But as we continue to grow and implement tools like Teamcenter and NX, they give us a competitive advantage over other companies because we’re working in a way that’s much more efficient. We’re actually empowered to design products that truly lead in our market.”