TEAMCENTER (stories) – Goaltech Engineering Solutions

Siemens supports leading Chinese automotive manufacturer Chery Automobile in internationalization

Product: Teamcenter
Industry: Automotive and Transportation

Teamcenter and Tecnomatix enable Chery to increase efficiency and improve quality in research and development

Founded on January 8, 1997, Chery Automobile Co., Ltd. (Chery) is one of the leading manufacturers of autonomous car brands in China, growing through independent innovations after the reform and opening of the market in China. Over the past 20 years, Chery has built a series of renowned brands such as Arrizo, Tiggo, QQ, and Fulwin, and exported products to more than 80 countries and regions, thus becoming a beacon of independent innovation. In addition, Chery also owns such international brands as Qoros, Jaguar and Land Rover through two affiliated joint ventures. So far, Chery has achieved cumulative sales of over six million units, making the company the first passenger vehicle manufacturer in China to surpass that number, which includes cumulative exports of over 1.25 million units. Chery has led in exports of Chinese passenger vehicles for 14 years in a row. Since its founding, Chery has attached great importance to exploring both international and domestic markets and has actively implemented the “going out” strategy, thus becoming China’s first automaker to export vehicles, complete knock-downs (CKDs), engines, automobile manufacturing technologies and equipment to foreign countries. Chery has built 14 manufacturing bases in Wuhu, Dalian, Ordos and Changshu in China as well as in foreign countries such as Brazil, Iran, Venezuela and Russia. In the evaluation of “Top 20 in Chinese Enterprises’ Overseas Performance Survey” organized by the China International Publishing Group under the guidance of the State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, Chery was honored as the “Chinese Enterprise with the Best Overseas Performance” both in 2015 and 2016, and was ranked the number one player in the equipment manufacturing industry for two consecutive years.

Driven by innovation

“Independent innovation” is the core of Chery’s development strategy. Since Chery’s founding, the company has adhered to independent innovation and endeavored to become a technology-oriented enterprise, investing five to ten percent of its annual turnover in new product development. Based on the V-shaped development system, Chery has formed a collaborative, bigger-picture research and development (R&D) layout integrating the development talents and processes of Qoros, Jaguar and Land Rover, and a complete R&D system that integrates development, trial manufacturing and testing of vehicles, powertrains and key parts, centering on the Automotive Engineering and Research Institute in Wuhu and powered by Chery Technical Center Shanghai.

Through independent innovation, Chery has achieved breakthroughs in an array of core technologies such as dual variable valve timing (DVVT), turbocharged gasoline direct injection (TGDI), continuously variable transmission (CVT), new energy and intelligent technology that drive the technical upgrading of all series. By the end of 2016, Chery had applied for 14,316 patents and won 9,155. As China’s largest exporter of passenger vehicles, Chery is actively competing in the international market and trying to keep pace with international standards of product design, development and manufacturing to achieve parity with world-class brands. The company has observed over the years that in the course of developing advanced technologies, Chinese automakers need reliable long-term partners like Siemens Digital Industries Software, a specialist in product lifecycle management (PLM) soft-ware solutions.

Strong alliance

The partnership between Chery Automobile and Siemens Digital Industries Software began in 2003. With the use of NX™ soft-ware, Chery was able to realize advanced digital product design. In addition, the R&D team used NX solutions to perform virtual simulation and verification of digital prototypes. This approach improved design efficiency and quality while reducing inspection costs. Over the years of cooperation between Chery and Siemens Digital Industries Software, Chery has even established its own information technology company to promote product lifecycle digitalization and computerization through-out the industry. Here, PLM functions and other solutions are planned, implemented and promoted. The PLM implementation team includes engineers, computer scientists and Siemens Digital Industries Software experts.

Teamcenter promotes R&D collaboration

To further support Chery’s integrated R&D management approach, the company selected and deployed Teamcenter® software for digital lifecycle management following the successful implementation of NX. As a result, Chery standardized its R&D process and now centrally manages all development projects, personnel and data. The PLM project director at Chery says, “Teamcenter has helped us to re-use design knowledge and enhanced design team collaboration. Product configuration management and engineering changes have become more efficient and accurate thanks to strict project management and reliable data flow.” “With Teamcenter, we were able to identify many points that had to be improved,” an engineer from Chery’s PLM project team says. “The PLM system supports design collaboration and enables design information sharing, data consistency and re-use of design knowledge and data. In terms of design changes, we discovered early development issues and were able to reduce engineering changes and implementation times. In addition, the PLM system has enabled enhanced collaboration between research and development centers. This eliminates typical cross-nation and cross-region issues, such as inefficiency, inaccuracy and poor communication, and drives business development forward.”

Teamcenter supports Chery in the realization of standardized management of its product development process. Since implementation, the company manages product coding rules, drawing templates, design changes and data sharing modes on a central PLM platform. Such a highly stan-dardized process advances product development quality, drives collaborative design and promotes communication and project collaboration. Thanks to excellent cooperation between Chery’s PLM project team and the Siemens Digital Industries Software team, Teamcenter was quickly connected to the existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, enabling the exchange of product development and manufacturing resources management information. This brought the comprehensive information management of Chery to a higher level.

Tecnomatix supports improvement of manufacturing quality

Today, the auto market is flooded with car brands and models and competition is increasingly fierce. Poor-quality products are not recognized and accepted by consumers. Chery uses many opportunities for quality improvement and stabilization. An engineer from the dimensional control section at Chery Automobile Manufacturing Engineering Institute notes: “In recent years, we have initiated a series of quality control procedures, such as the improvement of processes and standards, the consistent control of project milestones and the addition of test equipment and tools.” Essential quality operations include the dimensioning of product parts from structural analysis to process selection, product and process design verification, piloting, vehicle experimentation, production preparation, process review and control; the use of post-production test tools; and data analysis and feedback. With the Tecnomatix™ portfolio of digital manufacturing solutions, the dimensional engineering team can intervene at the development stage, based on the digital prototype, to analyze structure, positioning, assembly processes, and other factors. On the basis of the results, the team can make suggestions as to how structures and processes can be optimized and identify possibilities for improving body alignment and product quality.

The introduction of Tecnomatix has significantly expanded the dimensional analysis capabilities for Chery’s engineering team. The original dimensional analysis method was a chain calculation formula based on 2D data and was relatively inaccurate. Tecnomatix offers powerful dimensional analysis tools to conduct virtual simulations of manufacturing and assembly processes, predicting deviations and identifying causes. “Synchronization of the Tecnomatix solution with dimensional engineering improves Chery’s capability to predict problems before production,” says a dimensional control engineer at Chery. “For example, in their analyses, they have identified positioning and assembly problems of headlights, thus saving a huge amount of tool modification costs and avoiding production delays. Dimensional engineering provides engineers with product design, process, manufacturing, tooling, and quality control utilizing a quality management collaboration platform that can help solve problems, minimize time and reduce costs at the early stages of development. Chery’s dimensional engineering is already in process for high-end models, with plans to cover all models in the future.”

Joining hands with international partners

Building an international brand is Chery’s strategic goal. Chery has been advancing its globalization layout and accelerating the transformation from the “going out” of products, “going in” of technologies and plants, to “going up” of the brands. In the meantime, Chery keeps deepening overseas cooperation by implementing the product strategy, localization strategy and talent strategy, so as to build Chery into a world-renowned brand with global influence.

Chery has established nearly 1,500 distribution and service outlets, and formed business areas with Iran, Brazil, the Middle East and Latin America at the core, with presence in over 80 countries and regions across the world. Chery has a three-step internationalization strategy: before and through 2013, it was at the stage of exploration and market development; from 2014 to 2020 marks the stage of market expansion, with the aim of building an international brand with quality products and services through overseas plants and overseas marketing. After 2020, the company will be entering the stage of global operation, to build an automotive brand with international influence using world-class products and more professional services.

In the course of internationalization, Chery also needs partners with experience in the international automotive industry. This is one of the main reasons for selecting Siemens Digital Industries Software as its partner. The PLM project director at Chery says: “We chose Siemens Digital Industries Software solutions because the company has a wealth of experience in the international auto industry and the software is widely used by both OEMs and suppliers. The use of Teamcenter and Tecnomatix enables us to align our research and development work with international standards. The experience of Siemens Digital Industries Software in the automotive industry supports us in integrating advanced design management methods and technologies and in realizing our global development strategy.”

“Siemens subsidiaries and professional service teams all over the world also play a special role in the establishment of Chery’s global research and development and manufacturing sites,” Chery’s PLM project director adds. “The Siemens Digital Industries Software team in North America has a wealth of experience in vehicle analysis and is therefore an indispensable part of Chery’s dimensional engineering project.”

Chery is very optimistic about the long-term collaboration between Chery and Siemens Digital Industries Software. “Since the implementation of the PLM system, Chery has significantly increased its market share and customer satisfaction has notably improved,” the PLM project leader says. “Currently, we are working together with Siemens Digital Industries Software subject matter experts on deployment of the bill of materials project. Our expectations for this project are very high. After successful implementation, it will further enhance Chery’s market advantages.”

Industrial machinery manufacturer Sparkonix uses Teamcenter Rapid Start to reduce design time by 25%

Product: Teamcenter
Industry: Industrial Machinery and Heavy Equipment

Sparkonix implements PDM quickly to help designers significantly decrease time spent searching for storing and retrieving data

Corralling data

Sparkonix India Private Limited (Sparkonix), which was established in 1968, is a leading manufacturer and exporter of electrical discharge machining (EDM) equipment. The company also produces special-purpose EDM drill machines and metal arc disintegrators, which are used to remove broken taps and drills. Furthermore, the company engineers a range of innovative solutions in steel rebar branding and handling, and construction technologies.

Sparkonix machines typically include hundreds of parts, from fabricated and machined parts to castings, sheet metal, electronics and electrical items mounted directly on mechanical assemblies. Its market is the die and mold industry and special purpose machine (SPM) and special purpose drill (SPD) EDM operators.

Sparkonix uses Solid Edge® software from product lifecycle management (PLM) specialist Siemens Digital Industries Software for computer-aided design (CAD). However, the company was finding it difficult to manage a rapidly expanding amount of design data.

“The amount of CAD data was growing and we needed to manage it better so that no unnecessary duplicates would be created,” says Anand Atole, assistant manager of Design at Sparkonix. “Being able to re-use design data to speed up work was a priority. Also, the number of users accessing data was increasing and we required control of user workflow, so we needed revision management.”

Speeding up the process

Sparkonix is in a highly competitive market, so the company needed to come up with new concepts and designs. The company was intent on improving its existing products and processes without compromising quality. Achieving this while keeping costs in mind was a big challenge, as was meeting deadlines for deliveries of customer orders and providing updates to marketing on changes to designs.

With these challenges delaying the design-to-delivery process, the company knew it needed a solution that would enable it to move significantly faster, especially with customer demand continually increasing.

Sparkonix previously had a central location for data, but it could not be easily searched. Equally frustrating, Sparkonix was unable to reuse the data. In addition, it was hard to avoid creating duplicate data, and anybody could access it. What Sparkonix wanted was total control of its design data, with ease of access, the ability to readily re-use the data and strong security.

Streamlining design data

Sparkonix found the answer to its information management challenges in Siemens Digital Industries Software’s Teamcenter® software Rapid Start configuration.

“By choosing Teamcenter Rapid Start, we have a central repository for design data with strong management capabilities,” says Anand. “We can search our database for required information to use and re-use parts and assemblies.

“Now we are able to efficiently manage product revisions. We can control the access rights to data based on user type, and share updated data easily and immediately. As a result, we have moved to more controlled paperless operations for the design department. Earlier, we had to do manual paperwork to maintain data that is now being handled by our PDM software,” says Anand. Currently, Sparkonix is using Teamcenter Rapid Start to provide design data to purchasing, sales and support. People can view documents and designs in Teamcenter Rapid Start, because the embedded visualization capabilities present designs in CAD-neutral JT format for viewing and markup. Stakeholders don’t need access to CAD applications to collab-orate and get the information they need to make the right product decisions.

“Ultimately, Teamcenter Rapid Start has enabled us to streamline design data and make it available to all for reuse, from design to sales and support. Designers can now concentrate on design rather than on storing, searching for and retrieving data. We have reduced design time by 25 percent.”

Getting into production quickly

Sparkonix opted for Teamcenter Rapid Start because it wanted to get up and running quickly and immediately apply PDM best practices for data and process management. What’s more, the company wanted an affordable option suited to its small business profile.

Teamcenter Rapid Start provided the PDM capabilities Sparkonix needed at a compel-ling price, while giving the company the option to grow into a full-scale PLM implementation at any time. Because Teamcenter Rapid Start is a preconfiguration of Teamcenter, Sparkonix can extend its implementation to PLM while retaining the preconfigured menu options and processes for PDM.

Following the standard PDM deployment methodology and best practices, Sparkonix implemented Teamcenter Rapid Start in just four weeks, taking two days to train its users. The company can easily upgrade with each future release, noting that it takes minimal information technology (IT) expertise to support and maintain the system.

Trimming inventory

Among a long list of examples that demonstrates the software’s advantages, the company is using Teamcenter Rapid Start for the pipes its uses to connect pumps and filters. “With Teamcenter Rapid Start, we are able to get an idea about the different sizes of pipes that are being used,” says Anand. “Then we can decide to limit variations of pipe lengths and settled on some common sizes, so now we avoid maintaining excess inventory.”

Using the preconfigured processes in Rapid Start – such as design review, supplier design exchange and change management workflow – Sparkonix can streamline and better track project status.

Utilizing support

From the start, Sparkonix had the support it needed to succeed. “Our software partner helped at each stage of the implementation process to get us working quickly and effectively,” says Anand. He notes, “Siemens Digital Industries Software’s Global Technical Access Center (GTAC) is always there to help us out with any matter in which we desire assistance.”

Electromechanical components manufacturer elobau saves costs with Teamcenter product cost management.

Product: Teamcenter
Industry: Electronics y Semiconductors

Siemens’ solution helps elobau reduce processing time for quotations by 40 percent

Ideal interface between human and machine

Founded in 1972, elobau is intimately familiar with machine optimization as it is globally recognized for its engineered, innovative and rugged component parts. With innovative, non-contact sensor products, elobau supports customers worldwide in the manufacturing of industrial machines. The company also sets the standard for performance, operator comfort, safety and quality. Elobau covers a range of application requirements with products for operating and controlling mobile (off-road) machines. One of the world’s leading providers of non-contact sensor technology, elobau supplies globally recognizable companies with systems and components for commercial vehicles, machine safety and level measurement. Renowned commercial vehicle manufacturers from the agricultural and construction machinery sector are among elobau’s long-standing customers.

Industry pioneer for sustainable products

In 2017, elobau received the German Solar Prize. Elobau supports sustainable production by producing more electricity than it consumes and boasts a 100 percent own electricity quota. In 2016, the company was nominated for the German Sustainability Award. With the development of a modular vehicle operating system, elobau is a sector pioneer in the field of sustainable control elements.

Due to a large extent of in-house manufacturing (90 percent), elobau achieves high manufacturing speed, flexibility and reliability while maintaining high product quality. These requests are often customer-specific. Acceptance tests are necessary to design a control system to the exact requirements of a commercial vehicle for specific development work including product design, construction, hardware and software development and tool design and construction as well as simulation. At elobau, almost all development and production processes are conducted in-house. Elobau develops the tools and produces them in the compny’s tool shop. Production and testing systems are also planned, designed, developed and manufactured in-house. This accelerates a series introduction and keeps the necessary flexibility to react to customer requests.

Existing spreadsheet solutions were no match for the requirements

In the past, elobau encountered challenges in product and tool cost calculation. Differing company-wide calculation methods used in individual segments made it extremely difficult to track and optimize product and tool costs. Different information technology (IT) structures and a lack of storage systems standardization challenged elobau’s cost analysts in exchange and access-distributed calculations. The preparation of cost calculations with different versions of a spreadsheet-based software resulted in individual, non-standardized calculations in each region and segment. This lack of standardization of quotation calculations led to different sales prices, resulting in competitive disadvantages. The complexity of offers increased, making, timely quotation submissions full of risk.

A comprehensive approach to calculation

Elobau recognized the potential to optimize the cost calculation process and introduced a process- and database-based solution. One of the key requirements of the new system was to connect product and tool costs within one system to simulate the influence of changes in tool cost calculation on product cost. Following a strenuous benchmarking of competing products, elobau adopted Siemens Digital Industries Software’s Teamcenter® product cost management software.

The complexity of current development projects is reflected in the bidding phase. Elobau’s quotation processes are handled by a project team from different departments to offer customers the best possible solution.

For example, an elobau armrest consists of more than 2,000 individual parts. If a significant number of new parts need to be developed, more effort is required for the quotation. Due to the nature of today’s constantly evolving marketplace, elobau requires a detailed cost calculation. Calculating quotations is a comprehensive analytical task that covers areas such as value engineering/value analysis, development and purchasing. This phase is crucial for new orders. Accurate quotation calculations are crucial for winning a contract and securing the financial success of the future product.

Elobau uses the Teamcenter solution for product costing to calculate complex quotations achieving optimal calculations. The Teamcenter solution for product costing also allows elobau to create the necessary transparency for the customer and provide financial benefits.

Calculate more efficiently and use advantages

After a project has been awarded, the calculations begin. The advantage of using the Teamcenter solution for product costing is evident early in the process. The 3D design data, generated with Siemens’ NX™ software, the system the company uses for computer aided design/computer-aided engineering/computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAE/CAM), can be used for calculations. Elobau uses Teamcenter’s database with reference processes for plastic injection molding. Significant calculation elements include manufactured parts, raw materials, work plans with manufacturing processes and additional costs, such as tools and assemblies.

During the project, the result is a calculation based on a detailed bill-of-materials (BOM). Once the cost details for the individual items have been obtained, elobau performs regular target cost reporting. With the defined figures, the product costs are compared with previously established target costs. The cost analysts can use Teamcenter to track the development cost of individual processing steps and immediately identify critical projects.

Faster, more accurate and less error- prone tool cost calculations

Starting from the part geometry in the tool costing area, the tool components are automatically dimensioned and calculated using Teamcenter® software for tool costing. This is made possible by integrating the product and tool cost calculations using Teamcenter. Using NX Feature2Cost, the integrated tool for tool costing in NX CAD, elobau can accurately calculate mold tool costs based on the detection of costly geometric parameters such as surface area, volume and wall thick-ness. The ability to simulate the implication of the changes gives elobau fast and reliable decisions for each assembly and tool.

“Teamcenter product cost management allows us to reduce any deviations between quotation costing and final costing,” says Christian Herter, Calculation/VAVE Department, elobau.

Despite frequent customer changes during the quotation phase, elobau remains flexible and can adjust quotations in a very short time. “Teamcenter optimizes our quotation calculation processes, reducing the time for quoting by 40 percent,” says Herter.

Today, elobau relies on Teamcenter. All parties in the calculation process access the same data and have the same level of knowledge. Elobau minimizes error sources and calculates additional variants with minimal effort through a structured representation of the cost and use of consistent standards. Teamcenter enables elobau to work much more efficiently throughout the calculation process and pro-duce traceable results. With Teamcenter, elobau has achieved a structured and standardized global process.

“Teamcenter product cost management helps us identify cost saving potential for new products as well as optimize costs for series production,” says Herter. Elobau will continue to rely on Teamcenter in the future to continue realizing high quality while optimizing costs.

ATK: Transforming data into a corporate asset

Product: TEAMCENTER
Industry: Aerospace and Defense

Using the Teamcenter solution for Reporting and Analytics, ATK pulls information from multiple enterprise systems, providing intelligent insight for smarter decisions.

Innovation delivered through PLM

ATK is a premier aerospace and defense company with approximately 17,000 employees working throughout the United States, Puerto Rico and internationally. The company develops and manufactures highly engineered materials and products that support mission-critical applications for its defense, aerospace, and security and sporting customers.

ATK’s business objective is “Innovation Delivered.” To fuel innovation, the company has fully embraced a product lifecycle management (PLM) strategy across its divisions and value chain. Siemens Digital Industries Software solutions – NX™ software, Tecnomatix® software and Teamcenter® software – form the foundation of ATK’s PLM strategy, which spans the product lifecycle. “Our use of PLM extends from portfolio management, to gathering requirements, and then using those requirements throughout all the organizations inside ATK, and even our supply chain outside of ATK, to deliver products that meet our customers’ needs,” explains Jon Jarrett, director of engineering processes and tools at ATK.

The information exists, but how to get at it?

ATK’s PLM database contains a wealth of product and process data, yet it is just one source of information that managers tap as they carry out their programs. Other relevant data resides in financial systems, the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, the company’s scheduling system, and so on. With critical business information segregated in “silos,” it had become difficult to answer common business questions such as, “What is my first-pass yield?” or “How many documents are needed to support this program and will they all go out on time?”

ATK had been answering such questions by assigning a person to comb through the relevant databases, contact the appropriate people, and prepare a report. Some of thosead hoc reports required as many as 80 hours to generate. And while the company was able to get answers to specific questions this way, managers were not able to use data easily or proactively. In fact, many had created their own spreadsheets and other documents for tracking programs and processes. “People were doing duplicate work and there was no consistent format for those documents,” says Jarrett. “And people were constantly being pinged for information. Those interruptions are very detrimental to productivity. We wanted more efficiency in getting the data out, and we wanted it displayed in a way that everyone could benefit from.”

A BI solution that works with PLM

A business intelligence (BI) solution – software designed to identify, extract and analyze data – seemed to be what ATK needed. The company’s first use of a BI solution for PLM data, however, was a failure. “We went down the path with a certain BI solution to pull PLM data, but it couldn’t understand PLM data models or security rules,” says Paul Nelson, PLM architect at ATK. “We didn’t want people to see data they shouldn’t have access to. We wanted to be able to mine that data for gold, but not make it a free-for-all.”

Next, ATK tried the Teamcenter solution for Reporting and Analytics, which turned out to be a much better solution. Not only is Reporting and Analytics able to work with the Teamcenter data models and security rules, companies can utilize it to extract information from multiple sources, including commercial applications like ATK’s financial systems as well as home-grown programs. In addition, with Reporting and Analytics, users can aggre-gate data from multiple sources into reports and dashboards. Users can explore varying degrees of lower-level data to understand project specifics or higher-level data to get the big picture. ATK’s reports and dashboards typically contain three categories of information – for executives, managers and individual workers.

“Using Reporting and Analytics, we can quickly pull out data that helps us run our business,” says Nelson. “We’re getting gold out of that data now. It’s unlocked, and it can be presented in a way that people understand immediately.” For example, ATK has established a Science and Engineering dashboard that is accessed through a SharePoint portal. “With just a glance, people can see that screen is red or green, and know the status immediately.”

Report writers reassigned; everyone is more efficient

A dashboard showing costs and schedules is displayed continuously on a big-screen TV in a well-traveled place where everyone can see it. In addition to dashboards, ATK has used Reporting and Analytics to develop a number of highly useful reports. This work is done by Tim Gleason, an ATK software engineer, who is now handling a volume of work that required four people previously. “Tim can barely keep up with all the requests for reports, which come from managers and occasionally even from customers,” says Jarrett. “But we used to have four people doing this work. Now it’s just Tim. The others have been reassigned.” Reporting and Analytics’ tools allow Gleason to create reports much faster than anyone could previously, and he appreciates the fact that he can easily arrange the information in any format anyone requests.

A great example of the kind of “gold” that ATK now easily mines from its business systems is one called the “Automated Requirements Volatility Metric (ARVM)” that draws from Teamcenter System Engineering data. “One of the predictive metrics established by the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) to determine program success is how often requirements change during the life of the program,” explains Nelson. “You’re not going to have a successful program if you’re trying to hit a moving target. The ARVM reports track how many of those baseline requirements are changing on a monthly basis. If they are changing more than a certain threshold, the screen turns red. It’s a way for a program manager to monitor the health of the program.” ATK did track this information in the past. In fact, they had assigned one person to gather data and provide the monthly report. That person has been reassigned.

Other reports used at ATK include one that lets people see all the items they have due within a certain timeframe. “Typically people just get the hammer when they’re behind. This shifts the focus from firefighting to being proactive,” says Nelson. Another report shows managers how many documents must still be completed for a given program. By combining information from the PLM system and the scheduling system, this report can also tell the manager exactly how many hours are needed to complete that work.

In general, the deployment of Reporting and Analytics has made everyone, from executives to engineers, more efficient, according to Jarrett. “People are not being bugged all the time, and they’re not having to do their own Excel reports,” he says. “We are saving thousands of hours this way.” Another advantage of the Teamcenter solution is that information is more current. With reports that formerly took up to 80 hours to create now avail-able automatically, many reports are generated on an hourly, daily or weekly basis rather than monthly. This real-time visibility helps drive data integrity and accuracy. Finally, ATK is seeing its executives take greater advantage of the information in the company’s enterprise systems. “Sure they could do an advanced search of a database, but they are too busy for that,” Nelson explains. “If you break down the barriers, as we have done by giving them a dashboard that’s very graphical and user-friendly, you get more leadership engagement with the data.”