Omnify Brings Savings and Clarity to Crystal Technology

By Alaine Portnoy

Engineering change orders (ECOs) are implemented and controlled within Omnify and automatically pushed to Infor ERP Baan. It enables catching any mistakes early on.

Since 1967, Crystal Technology, Inc. (CTI), an EPCOS company, has manufactured oxide single crystals and selected optical components based on these crystals. Located in Palo Alto, CA, CTI products are sold globally for a wide variety of applications in electronics, optics, and acoustics.

  With product quality and value as top priorities, a staff of 150 people works to deliver a number of highly customized product lines involving various product development teams. As a volume manufacturer (the company produces 60 tons of single-crystalline lithium niobate annually), Crystal Technology operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This environment,  coupled with increasing pressure from customers to deliver products faster,  required Crystal to evaluate its existing product development processes and find ways to improve efficiencies.

“First and foremost, we needed to eliminate waste associated with filing and searching for information,” says Fred Garderes, director of supply chain management for Crystal. “We could no longer search through file cabinets to find information where one hour could be spent looking for one piece of information.” 

After decades of using manual, paper-based processes,  Crystal needed to automate the exchange of internal and external information so it was available throughout the organization for faster reviews and evaluation. “We needed our data to be consistent and available across all of our systems,”  says Garderes.

Empower is now the master database for all Crystal’s parts and products . The system was easy to configure and required little customization.

Centralized Product Data
Crystal wanted a central repository that would be the “bearer of the truth” for all data. With many product lines, and mostly customized products (each part is a custom application), it required a solution that could manage a large amount of part information such as specifications,  package size, and specific output. Crystal needed to make sure new product designs could be easily reused to cut costs and eliminate re-work.

  Crystal was looking to automate processes to streamline product development and change management between its Infor ERP Baan system and Cadence OrCAD design environment. “We were looking for continuity of information among these systems with some consideration for migrating information to our outsource partners, whether on the manufacturing or design side,” says Garderes.

  In addition, some of Crystal’s electronic assembly design is outsourced and it wanted a system that would simplify the packaging of information sent to its contract manufacturing (CM) partners including bill of materials (BOMs), part information, assembly instructions, and test specifications.

Omnify the Solution
Crystal soon realized that a product lifecycle management (PLM) system was what it needed to manage all product information. According to Garderes, Baan did not have the features for managing detailed design information or the necessary level of access control.

  Crystal evaluated three key PLM vendors, including Omnify Software. After assessing each product, the company picked Omnify’s PLM solution because it addressed all Crystal’s requirements at a reasonable cost,  easily integrates with its existing design and manufacturing systems, and Omnify’s team was willing to support company needs. And while Crystal engineers were comfortable with their paper processes and were hesitant about using a new automated system, Omnify’s intuitive interface helped overcome that reluctance.

Crystal currently has 28 workflows in place for a specific product team where changes are reviewed and approved in Omnify and then automatically released from document control to Baan, eliminating any previous inconsistencies due to manual data entry.

“Omnify Empower is now the master database for all of our parts and products from cradle to grave,” says Garderes. “The system was easy to configure and required little customization to reach our key needs,  including the interface to Baan. In order to maintain full integrity between Omnify and Baan, we decided to mirror a number of tables from Baan to support the parts creation process in Omnify. Today, 140 fields are passed between Baan and Omnify.” All of Crystal’s product documentation is solely vaulted in Omnify. “We plan to eliminate all of the file cabinets we have filled with paper and deposit that information in Omnify as well.”

Efficient Design Processes
Omnify helps to create more efficient design processes by providing engineers with instant access to information from their desktops via a direct interface to OrCAD. All of the detailed part, BOM, and document information stored and managed in Omnify is at the fingertips of Crystal’s design engineers. “Omnify is used as a sandbox for our engineers to play with designs by adding items to BOMs, scratching off items from BOMs, creating parts, and changing drawings,” says Garderes.

  Crystal can now easily package required information from Omnify to send to its CMs and avoid redundancies. Engineering change orders (ECOs) are implemented and controlled within Omnify and automatically pushed to Infor ERP Baan. It enables catching any mistakes early on. Crystal currently has 28 workflows in place for a specific product team where changes are reviewed and approved in Omnify and then automatically released from document control to Baan, eliminating any previous inconsistencies due to manual data entry.

“We wanted Approved Vendor Lists, costs, suppliers on the AVL, and potential switches from supplier to supplier available to engineers to better meet customer requirements and save on costs,” says Garderes. “Having all of this data available in one view in Omnify lets engineers know the inventory on hand and on order, who the supplier is, the availability, etc., so they can make better design choices.”

  As an ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 140001 registered company,  Crystal is required to document certain procedures and maintain adequate records to conform to both regulations. By providing an automated process for documentation, Omnify helps Crystal pass audits and maintain accreditation. Omnify is also used to meet Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS)  requirements for identifying, tracking, and reporting compliance information.

Customer Success/Return on Investment
Implementing the Omnify PLM solution has helped Crystal meet its goal to improve product development processes and effectively meet customer demands while maintaining its focus on quality and cost leadership. “We are very satisfied with the results of our Omnify implementation,” says Garderes. “We have been able to reduce our ECO cycle by 16 percent, from 12 to 10 days,  and this is trending towards even further reduction.”

  Crystal is also realizing significant time savings in finding information, making it easy to retrieve historical as well as current information. No more diving into file cabinets.

  Finally, the company is getting a return rate of approximately 2.5 times its investment over the first five years, with a projected ROI rate of 6.25 thereafter. “We have estimated a substantial cost savings of about $250,000 over a five-year period due to the enhancements made to our product development processes.”

  As Crystal expands its use of Omnify Empower with new Quality Management and Project Management modules, it will eliminate all paper processes and home-grown systems. Further, Crystal will have all document control and quality information in one central location, giving engineers added knowledge about what issues accompanied a part during its lifetime, and it will leverage the Project Management module as a platform for its new product introduction (NPI) process to help shrink those NPI cycles.

More Info:
Cadence Design Systems
San Jose, CA

Crystal Technology, Inc.
Palo Alto, CA

Infor Global Solutions
Alpharetta, GA

Omnify Software
Andover, MA

Alaine Portnoy is the vice president of marketing at Omnify Software. She has experience in the manufacturing and PLM industry in the mechanical, defense, medical device, and electronics markets. Send comments about this article to [email protected].