Top 4 Reasons to Integrate your CAD and ERP with CADLink
Top 4 Reasons to Integrate your CAD and ERP with CADLink
Manufacturers rely on both their ERP and their CAD program for important pieces of the production life cycle, like prototyping, inventory control, procurement and managing the BOM. For many manufacturers, the data that resides in their ERP remains separated from the data in CAD. This siloed approach causes a myriad of issues that can be easily resolved by integrating your CAD and ERP.
With countless successful CAD and ERP integrations under our belt, here are the top 4 reasons to integrate your CAD and ERP using CADLink.
1. Increased Engineering Productivity
By bridging the gaps between CAD systems and ERP solutions, CADLink increases engineering productivity through a reduction in non value-added engineering time. On average, an engineer creates 1 hour of BOM data every day which must be input into both the ERP system and CAD. With CADLink, that one hour can be reduced down to 2-3 minutes. The less time spent inputting data across multiple platforms, the more time your engineers can invest on projects and designs.
By using CADLink, engineers can enter, view and update information automatically, including item master data and BOMs, without having to switch between two different software solutions.
2. Improved Data Accuracy
All manual data entry has the inherent risk of costly errors. CADLink has built in features to improve your data accuracy from engineering all the way to production.
Some of these data accuracy features include:
- Auto Validation: CADLink checks to make sure that the data is compatible with ERP standards and that you aren’t writing data that is incomplete or would causes errors in your ERP.
- Live Data Comparison: Part numbers are picked up from CAD and then CADLink checks for you to see if a part exists in your ERP or if it is a new number. Any errors or discrepancies are visually noted, ensuring that costly errors are corrected long before inventory is ordered.
- Direct ERP Integration: Instantly assign critical fields like Product Codes, Material Types and ABC Codes.
- 100% fidelity between CAD and ERP. CADLink features bidirectional data to ensure both systems have the same data at all times.
With CADLink, data does not need to be reworked, transferred or imported/exported along the way. This ultimately leads to:
- Reduced scrap
- Improved purchasing accuracy
- Less overall manpower
- Elimination of many cost overruns
3. Faster Speed of Data Flow Between Departments
With CADLink, you can increase the speed of data flow from engineering to procurement and manufacturing. Your entire product development process becomes more streamlined, giving you an edge over your competition. Another advantage to using CADLink is that your work order documentation will be identical to your drawing information. With better information comes a better product.
CADLink also aids in communication between departments. In the past, engineers needed to focus on getting components that may call for long lead-times, like purchased items, out the door so that procurement could do their work. Integrating CAD and ERP with CADLink, however, eases a lot of this work since it happens automatically. Once the information is in the ERP via CADLink, procurement has everything they need and engineering can focus on the design process.
4. Documented Return on Investment
Although the benefits of integrating CAD and ERP systems are obvious, manufacturers also must be able to justify the cost benefit of the integration. According to a recent analysis performed by QBuild, CADLink ROI is estimated to six months. The cost savings comes from:
- Reduction in the amount of scrapped parts due to BOM errors
- Late shipments
- Time spent by engineers on BOM entries instead of value-added design work
Most of our integrations achieve a payback within 6 months. Engineers can even be trained to use CADLink in less than an hour!
