PDM Success Story: HOMA Pump Factory

55,000 documents of all kinds

The 16 design engineers at the Neunkirchen-Seelscheid site know: You have to master both components – submersible motor and pump.
For this reason, the engines are also developed and manufactured at the site itself. And so HOMA Pumpenfabrik currently manages around 55,000 documents in its PDM software. The range extends from AutoCAD and Inventor documents, office documents, technical documents, PDF files to specific calculations of special software for engine design.

Company-wide access to PDM and ERP system

PDM access is available to the design and development departments with their various teams or sub-departments (pump design, electrical engineering, technical documentation, project planning). Quality management and CNC programming can also access the PDM for the use of design documents. Other departments such as Purchasing or Sales have access to the data provided automatically by the PDM system via the ERP system.

Lengthy search for a suitable PDM system

For about 13 years, the components of HOMA Pumpen were managed with the product data management solution Autodesk Productstream Professional (PSP).
“Due to the imminent replacement of PSP and because of our large, diverse data stock together with much grown individualization, we already started looking for a suitable PSP successor in the summer of 2015,” says Martin Senkowski, the design manager.
“The successor recommended by Autodesk, Vault Professional, seemed like a closed system to us. Very inflexible and ultimately unusable for our requirements. Adaptation would only have been possible with very complex programming.”

Good advice from cubikom

Martin Senkowski has been relying on the know-how of the employees of the GAIN software system partner cubikom for many years: “cubikom introduced us to the PDM system GAIN Collaboration. After an initial, positive test, we then looked at the software with selected key users.”

Step by step to the goal

Senkowski: “First, we analyzed our PSP in a workshop: What do we have? What do we need? Will it be possible to easily transfer previously used functions and familiar working methods to the new system? Here cubikom, system partner of GAIN Software, gave us comprehensive advice based on practical implementations.
In the end, we worked with cubikom to create a concept of how GAIN Collaboration should be tailored to the requirements of HOMA Pumpen.
In a specification cubikom defined the details for the PDM implementation: mask layout, file structure, release cycle, authorizations, and so on. After doing our homework, such as cleaning up the data in the old system, cubikom started programming the first test system. We worked with this until cubikom implemented our suggested changes for the next version. In many iteration steps, we got from the first test system to the finished individualized application in only 3 months.
We found working with our own data over the entire test period particularly positive. Two days before we switched to the new system, cubikom trained our staff.”

Expanded: Information about the ERP system

“With GAIN Collaboration, we deepened the possibility of using our ERP, which is familiar to all employees, for the distribution of drawings. Today, for example, if a drawing is automatically generated as a PDF by the PDM system or manually by another software, it is available to the employees via the ERP system at the push of a button,” says Senkowski.

PDM software enables fast assembly handling

Senkowski: “PSP always opened our assemblies completely via the network.
GAIN Collaboration first plays a copy on the local hard disk, on which you then work. That alone has sped up our work considerably. But a lot of other new features, like the check-in/check-out methodology, are good and useful, too.”

Good customizability of GAIN Collaboration

The high adaptability of GAIN Collaboration meets with great approval at HOMA Pumpenfabrik. Senkowski: “We are currently thinking about a new structure for the office documents because with increasing experience on the new PDM system, the potential for optimization is also growing. We now also manage our own engine calculations, the corresponding designs and simulations, engine data and internal calculations in the PDM system.”

Strong partner – strong PDM system

“We are extremely satisfied with the consulting from GAIN Software system partner cubikom. cubikom has shown us very efficient possibilities in the new PDM system”, Senkowski sums up. “cubikom’s recommendation to use GAIN Collaboration was spot on.
The product is very customizable and picks us up as former PSP users in the best way. A PSP analog desktop – coupled with similar workflows – makes the transition effortless. With cubikom’s additional support we can use the full product flexibility and adapt the PDM exactly to our needs.
If we have a request, we simply talk to the experts at cubikom, who maintain very close contact with the manufacturer. So, even if our requests should go a bit more into technical depth, we benefit from fast response times.
A direct and sympathetic contact with short response times. Just the way we want him.”