Q&A with Ralph Picklo

By Ann Mazakas

Ralph Picklo is the director of sales for Cimatron Technologies, a global provider of innovative software solutions for design and manufacturing. Its flagship product, Cimatron E, is a leading CAD/CAM package developed specifically for the tooling industry. Picklo began his career as a CNC programmer, but it didn’t take long for him to take on the responsibility of assembling a manufacturing technology department that included the latest CNC machines and CAD/CAM technology. Because of his fascination with CAD/CAM and eagerness to take advantage of living in a tooling capital like Detroit, Picklo joined Gerber Systems Technology in 1989. He started as an application engineer and was quickly promoted to the sales department, giving him the opportunity to see a new side of the software industry. Though he thoroughly enjoyed CAD/CAM sales, Picklo wanted to find a company that was focused on the tooling market and landed a job at Cimatron Technologies in 1996. He has been leading the Cimatron sales team ever since and has contributed greatly to the company’s success through his leadership, dedication, and sales skills.

What prompted Cimatron to look at the entire tool manufacturing process, from quote to delivery?

Picklo: We live and breathe the tooling industry, and meet with toolmakers day in and day out. We realized that despite years of investment in technology, toolmakers were suffering. Given the way the economy has gone and the pressure put on the industry by overseas outsourcing, toolmakers had to take a step back and reevaluate how they do things. Working with toolmakers, we decided to look at their entire process, and what we could do to improve that process. Shortening delivery times was a theme that kept coming up in our conversations. Shorter delivery times give local toolmakers an edge over overseas competition. It also impacts cost. So we asked ourselves, “How can people deliver tools in six weeks instead of 10 to 12 weeks? What can we do to help them get there?”

How Does Cimatron help improve the process?

Picklo: You have to look at each company individually to find out where the pain is and what the root causes for the pains are. Analyzing the entire process and uncovering the bottlenecks is critical because solving a problem in one area may just push the bottleneck elsewhere. What good is that? We came up with a methodology that allows the manufacturer to evaluate the entire process from quoting to delivery and draw a plan for complete process improvement. It doesn’t mean that the entire plan has to be implemented at once; that would be unrealistic and destructive. The important thing is to have a plan and a vision so each step is leading toward that goal.

What are some of the key areas for improvement that you have discovered?
Picklo: For years, toolmakers have invested in solving local problems, installing point solutions to solve what seemed to be the most problematic area at a given time. When we started working with these companies to analyze their processes, it became quite obvious that the problems are mostly related to communication. You can’t improve the process without solving the communication issue.

To begin with, it is important to allow manufacturing to easily look at what the designer has done. They need access to that information so they can understand how it was put together and what they have to do. Putting design and manufacturing on the same platform provides a framework for communication and gives the ability to control changes. Many companies have design reviews where they develop a preliminary design and include manufacturing in that meeting. Looking at a 3D model helps everyone understand how it’s going to be designed. When the manufacturing group is involved early enough, they can provide input on cheaper or better ways to manufacture that part.

We continue to look for ways to help toolmakers facilitate this kind of communication. For example, we have an inexpensive viewing seat that runs on any PC or a PC-based controller. It lets the manufacturing department mark up a design and send it back to the design department so that they have better manufacturing information for the next time they design a part. This is how knowledge can be shared and preserved, leading to continuous process improvement.

Can Cimatron help toolmakers manage engineering changes better?
Picklo: Effectively managing engineering and design changes is crucial to on-time delivery. Cimatron is a data manager along with an engineering reporting system. Cimatron provides simplified product data management capabilities to help keep track of changes. As you’re adding components and plates and ejector pins to a mold assembly,  Cimatron keeps track of all the material being used so the bill of materials is constantly updated. Once the design engineer decides which components are purchased and which are manufactured, Cimatron can notify purchasing so the parts are ordered ahead of time. Standard components can be stored in libraries and we also tie into component libraries from outside vendors. We have their catalogs with their components so you don’t have to recreate anything. When you pull out a catalog item,  the system knows it’s a purchased item so it automatically knows that the purchasing department should be notified.

With a system like that in place you can track which components have been added or changed and alert anybody that is affected by the changes. The goal is to make the bill of materials somewhat like the gospel. If the file changes at any time, everyone affected by the change gets notified automatically by e-mail. That could include purchasing,  manufacturing, subcontractors, or any other department or person. We can tailor several ways to notify people of what needs to be done.

You seem to have strong capabilities in electrode solutions: Why the emphasis?
Picklo: Again, it all comes from understanding toolmakers’  pains and evaluating the entire process and what it takes to shorten delivery times. Electrodes are often a bottleneck in the process. We’ve analyzed every step in the process and automated it. We came up with tools that extend surfaces automatically, keeping them tangent with neighboring surfaces and sealing them off correctly. And, with a click of a button you can automatically create the drawing, an inspection drawing, and an assembly drawing.

We looked at how we can not only shorten the design and creation of electrodes, but shorten the entire process around it. With concurrent engineering capabilities, we actually enable toolmakers to get a head start on the electrode design. We asked our customers what else we could do to make their jobs easier and they asked for better communication with their EDM machines, so we came out with a program that automatically feeds information to the machine.

You’ve even included quoting capabilities in your software. How does that tie into the rest of your solution?
Picklo: This is one of the things that came up in our conversations with toolmakers. Quoting is the lifeline of the business. You can spend a lot of valuable management and engineering time producing quotes, and if you don’t get them right you either lose the job or you get the job and still lose money.

We offer specialized quoting solutions for molds and dies. Here again,  the key is enabling communication and knowledge sharing. With our quoting tools, designers can understand how the job was quoted. You can take the quote information and pass it directly to the designer so they don’t have to start over again. All the information is already in the system. We also have full round-trip capabilities. After the project is completed you can bring the time and labor information from another MRP system or labor-reporting system back into the quoting package and compare the actual hours with what was quoted. Over a period of time,  this lets you fine-tune all your quotes to give you more accurate numbers.

How do you decide what get included in the future releases?
Picklo: A lot of good things come out of all the releases with major improvements constantly being added to the software. We base these improvements on feedback from customers. We have close to 20,000 toolmakers that use our software day in and day out all over the world. Our focus on the tooling industry enables us to stay close to these customers and get an in-depth understanding of the tooling business.

Have you seen some trends for the future?
Picklo: What we hear in our conversations with moldmakers is that they are increasingly looking for more integrated solutions; integration among CAD/CAM functions as well as integration of CAD/CAM into the complete business process from business acquisition ]e.g., quoting] to product delivery. CAD/CAM solutions can no longer be viewed as a collection of tools, but rather as integrative systems that support a continuum of business processes.

In addition, we see growing emphasis on support. Toolmakers are no longer happy with vendors throwing software at them. They expect vendors to understand their business and be there to support them. This is something we keep hearing from toolmakers, and we have greatly expanded our support capabilities to step up to this challenge.

Ann Mazakas is the president of Intelligent Creations LLC. You can reach her regarding this article by clicking here. Please reference August 2005 CAM & Design article.

Company Highlights

Company:    Cimatron Technologies

Headquarters:    Novi, Michigan

Founded:    1982

Product:    Cimatron