Consumer Goods Technology

The ability to capture all the nuances of consumer requirements, along with employee ideas and expertise for its climbing and skiing equipment has been critical to growing Black Diamond’s business.

Turning Passion into Product BLACK DIAMOND SUPPORTS AN INNOVATION CULTURE BY BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER

Black Diamond Equipment Ltd. (www.blackdiamondequipment. com), an employee-owned manufacturer of climbing and skiing equipment, operates on three continents and sells its products in more than 20 countries. One of the company’s defining characteristics — and a key strategic asset — is the fact that its employees are passionate climbers and skiers themselves.

They know what makes a great product versus a good one.

The ability to capture all the nuances of consumer requirements (along with its employees’ ideas and expertise) has been critical to growing this business.

“We must make sure that we can acquire the information about what our customers want, put it in a place where a skilled and ener-

information. “The problem was you never knew where to find data,” says Dave Mellon, vice president for products at Black Diamond.

“And when we tried to share information across the organization, with manufacturing engineers and further out through production, for example, it became very difficult to manage, particularly because design data changes fairly rapidly in a progressive product line like ours,” adds Dees.

“We are a very open and creative company,” adds Ben Walker, director of R&D at Black Diamond. “But that isn’t necessarily conducive to proper file management.”

Teamcenter now supports Black
Diamond’s innovation cul-
ture by providing the abil-
ity to bring many people
together in the design of
its products.
“Employees, friends,
and professional
climbers and skiers
together give us a

multitude of perspectives,” according to Dees.

getic design team, manufacturing engineering team and production and sales teams can access it, and then use it in a meaningful way to get great products to our customers,” says Joshua Dees, Black Diamond’s vice president for MIS.

Black Diamond implemented the Teamcenter product lifecycle management solution from Siemens

PLM Software ( www.siemens.com). The company is using the solution’s enterprise knowledge management, project management and collaboration functionality to ensure continued innovation and future growth.