Growing your business as a supplier is an exciting venture that can reap multiple rewards. However, technological advances in the automotive industry and the ever changing preferences of consumers can present a few hurdles to overcome.
As a Tier 1 suppliers for the past 17 years, Brano’s team has prided themselves on delivering innovative products to OEMs that contribute to improving the driving experience of consumers. Their fast response time to customers provides a unique competitive advantage. Brano’s short decision-making process provides the flexibility to adapt and respond quickly to their customers’ needs. They are also able to remain very competitive with the quality and price for products that meet OEM needs.
Brano follows an industry methodology for product development that was designed by Ford, GM and Daimler 15 years ago called Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP). This set of procedures, along with the Production Part Approval Process (PPAP), is used to develop products for the automotive industry and ensure that they develop with the level of quality expected by automotive OEMs.
Winning new business meant that as Brano expanded in size as a company, so did the amount of data they needed to manage between multiple site locations. They began to experience challenges with location of information, collaboration between teams, maintaining schedules and budget adherence.
“Many of the world’s leading automotive companies, including VW, General Motors and Volvo install our products in their cars and the price/feature ratio is a critical factor in their choice of supplier. And in this area, we are generally less expensive than our competitors while still delivering quality products.”
– Daniel Otáhal, Ph.D., Key Account Manager, Brano
Brano recognized their need to improve efficiencies in order to continue to meet customer needs, remain competitive and maintain a consistent approach when they bid for new business. They turned to Dassault Systèmes for an industry solution that could increase collaboration, improve data management and institute a process for project management.
Secure Collaboration
Brano has experienced many positive results with the implementation of their new solution. Now, their management has a comprehensive view of projects and status that can be securely accessed from any location. This expanded capability allows them to troubleshoot potential risks and ensure they continue to deliver quality projects on time and on budget.
“This level of transparency has improved the collaborative experience for our designers and project actors since everyone has immediate access to the right information,” Otáhal said. “Moreover, we now have a foundation for innovation since ideas are more easily exchanged.”
Watch this video to learn more about the PLM implementation at Brano
youtu.be/W-b_P7VMR5w
Consistently Winning New Business
Brano now has a consistent approach every time they bid for new business. They can manage the 220 tasks linked to APQP and guarantee that all project tasks are assigned to the right people and accounted for. This also reduces their proposal response time.
“We answer hundreds of requests for quotations (RFQ) every year. By capitalizing each proposal in our new platform, we are able to reuse this information for future bids, which saves us time and enables us to learn from, and avoid past mistakes,” Otáhal said. “We have increased our business potential.”
Design Value
Brano works for many OEMs and designs its products using the same design solution as its customers. Engineers can access engineering information in the new Platform from within their native CAD application and also manage a multi-discipline bill of materials that reflects the different technologies (software, electrical, mechanical) that can go into a product. Their outlook is even more promising than before with plans for continuing to grow and expand other aspects of their development process.
