Challenge

As a leading manufacturer and system supplier, Jenoptik depends on exporting a parts list to Excel which is used internally by both the purchasing and manufacturing departments of the company. Prior to working with SolidCAD, Jenoptik identified that the original export tool available in Inventor would export Excel files that required a significant amount of manual editing and formatting by an employee. Editing often included: (a) moving all components of subassembly to their own tab, (b) sorting all components on a tab by their part number, and (c) adding project information header to all tabs. On average, formatting this data would take anywhere between four to eight hours for each assembly file which was both time consuming and subject to errors.

Solution

After identifying the issue, Jenoptik turned to SolidCAD in need of a solution that would streamline their process. SolidCAD provided Jenoptik with a workflow assessment that would investigate their current process, provide a detailed analysis and consult them with a solution that would automate the process and easily export Excel files with no manual editing.

After a full assessment of the issue, SolidCAD’s development team customized Jenoptik’s Inventor software with an add-in to automatically generate a complete Excel parts list of their model assemblies, formatted in accordance with downstream requirements.

Results

• The Excel parts list was exported into a document that was correctly formatted to the company’s requirements, eliminating any possible errors that would be caused by users having to manually edit the default export.
• With the integration of this automation, the Excel file is now created instantaneously, saving an average of six hours per assembly that would be spent on manually editing the Excel file.