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April 03, 2023

Precision Engineering for Critical Component Design with Teamcenter on Azure

As a global multinational based in Japan with 5 core business segments, EKK (Eagle Industry Co., Ltd.) Group provides precision-machined products for major companies in automotive and construction, semiconductor, marine and aerospace industries. These cover specialized mechanical seals, valves and bellows for transport equipment, including automobiles, ships and aircraft, and also rotary machinery, most notably pumps and compressors.


Eagle Industry

Scale and efficiency through precision engineering have defined the company’s approach, allowing it to become the only manufacturer in the world providing mechanical seals to all of these industries.

Substantial efforts have been underway in the group over the past decade with digital transformation of computer aided design & engineering (CAD / CAE) throughout the workflow for product-lifetime management (PLM).

Enablement of Siemens Teamcenter on Microsoft Azure has automated the design change process and facilitated sharing of product data across multiple locations worldwide. Engineering capabilities are benefiting from DX with enhanced new product development allowing many more products to be brought to market in a shorter period of time. This undertaking has accelerated in recent years with the integration of the product suite from Microsoft, including Dynamics, Microsoft 365 E5 and Azure.

Centralized PLM Enabling Global Knowledge Sharing on the Cloud

Started as Eagle Industry Co., Ltd., the EKK Group has established a roadmap to develop and expand sales for new products in next-generation mobility and energy markets by leveraging their deep knowledge of surface texturing and other proprietary technologies.

The complexity and importance of product lifecycle management has increased significantly over the last few decades, driving growth from ¥40.2 billion in FY2000 to ¥140.8 billion in FY2021.

A business alliance agreement in 2005 added to the firm’s European footprint and growth with the EagleBurgmann alliance. Since that time, the company has completed additional expansion at other locations in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Americas.

The path to improvements for internal CAD and PLM systems started in a limited fashion following that initial business alliance. Siloed design teams across regions meant that consolidation and sharing of engineering designs had to be managed separately at each location.

Dr. Yoshihiro Teshima, Manager, PLM Process Department, says, “In the past, our approval of seal designs and drawings used stamps or hand written signatures on a paper drawing which was inefficient in many aspects of the engineering process.”

In addition, previous workflows were regionally based which hindered the speed and advancement of global knowledge sharing. Data was frequently sent as physical documents or by email, from Japan to locations such as India, and safety of intellectual property across multiple geographies and business units became an increasing concern from the perspective of data governance. The process over several different systems was complicated and time-consuming. 

Daniel Froehlich, Deputy Manager, PLM Process Department, says, “All over the globe, our subsidiaries were using different local systems that were not in sync. About 15 years ago efforts started with digital transformation in this area to unify business knowledge and the supporting systems for IT.”

“Many of our alliance and joint venture partners have their own long and unique history. So that is a challenge as we aim to introduce a single global system at all subsidiaries and business units.”

Centralization of those processes started with introduction of PLM management for 3D CAD data with Teamcenter at Eagle-Burgmann Japan, a company of EKK group. That has developed into an integration for the larger EKK Group with Microsoft providing an Azure Cloud Solution.

The larger goal of the cloud-based PLM implementation is centralization of all product information into a single source, including CAD data, design specifications, design standards, material specifications, supplier data and other specifications, and all other data sets related to product data.

Kenichi Yokoyama, Manager, IT Infrastructure, says, “Azure was almost the only option for the PLM infrastructure. As Windows was already used throughout our business, Azure was considered ideal since we were also reviewing Microsoft 365. We are currently using Microsoft 365 E5 Security and Dynamics 365 Sales, so there is great compatibility and we can unify our authentication infrastructure with Azure Active Directory.”

Kenichi added, “Internal teams at Eagle Industry needed to work extensively with our infrastructure partner and Microsoft to create an original bespoke system that could meet our rapidly expanding needs. Based on this experience, we were then able to smoothly deploy the system to EagleBurgmann Japan from 2019 to 2020.”

Scalability for Global Product Design and Streamlined Workflow

EKK Group has made a range of noteworthy improvements following the deployment of Teamcenter on Azure as a PLM platform. This includes further digitalization of design and business processes, which are now set-up as standard team workflows. As recently as three months ago workflow requests for drawings and quotations were previously handled by email but are now managed within Teamcenter on Azure.

Daniel says, “We were having to install servers to handle workflows at our subsidiaries, which were being maintained by locally hired IT staff. Now we can simply connect to Teamcenter running on Azure, for better teamwork and eliminating those server, maintenance and operation costs.”

“We always had to use on-premises server capacity for testing and oftentimes that would just be for one month. So that really limited our flexibility in case we wanted to create and run development servers. However, we are now able to plan and run those servers as necessary with Azure Cloud,” added Daniel.

Shingo Okazaki, Manager, IT Department, says, “Azure allows us to start small and scale up easily, and we can save on unnecessary costs by adjusting to actual usage. One of the major advantages is that we can quickly set up small development and testing environments. With on-premises systems it took time to invest in equipment, but as soon as we started using Azure we were able to immediately test various systems. Teamcenter is one example. We started with about 50 users, but now we have about 1,000 users.”

On-premises data was managed separately by territories, which meant it could not be easily leveraged across other departments and teams worldwide. In addition, designing at multiple sites in Japan and overseas meant server installations at each site added to the costs of maintenance and operation.

Once a year power is cut at factories for annual inspections which cause downtime for on-premises servers. With almost all company-wide systems transitioned to Azure, that time-loss and other inconveniences have been eliminated. Backups can be set up, restores are easy, and there are comprehensive security features to handle online threats such as ransomware.

“There have been very few issues since our transition to Azure. When something does happen, flexible authorization settings allow us to restart the system at the discretion of the person in charge, even when the IT maintenance staff is not available,” says Kenichi.

Global resources are now in place to facilitate highly collaborative projects by multiple international teams. As an example, designers in Korea and India are now better able to contribute support to Japanese teams on large-scale projects for global customers. Subsequently, the assets of those projects can then be shared again to the company’s worldwide network of engineering teams.

In a typical process, an order comes from a customer which is handled by sales and the design department starts creating and checking data. There is a round of reviews by the customer as the project proceeds but now PLM is handled digitally with all the workflow steps clearly scheduled, tracked and available globally to all business units.

“There was a strong hesitance to allow storage and access of proprietary data ̶ drawings, designs and documents ̶ on the cloud as recently as 10 years ago,” says Daniel. “In the last 5 years that mindset has changed significantly, and the Azure Cloud is increasingly seen as a better option to on-premises for a variety of reasons including cost, security and management.”

Growth with Optimized Business Systems and Engineering Processes

The full transition to a cloud-based solution for Teamcenter has allowed centralized management of PLM servers for all subsidiaries from Japan with a core group of engineering and IT support staff. The company is transitioning from reliance on external consultants to building an internal team that is more responsive and fully responsible for maintaining and optimizing business systems and processes.

When expanding rollouts to design and engineering teams in other locations, such as India and Taiwan, global standard processes are made to guarantee increased performance.

It is now much easier and cost effective to create development, testing and validation environments without the limitations of on-premises server management. Comprehensive PLM data is synchronized via Teamcenter, enabling design collaboration on a truly global scale.

EKK Group is now focusing on development and sales of new products in anticipation of next-generation mobility and energy markets. It is expected that textured mechanical seals for electric vehicle motors and hydraulic hybrid devices to improve fuel efficiency will be indispensable for all industries in their quest to become carbon neutral. The company is also aiming for realization of smart factories with paperless management of mold operations and inventory control by RFID.

Kenichi concluded saying, “In the field of CAE (Computer Aided Engineering), we are now regularly using Azure when performing large-scale analyses. We plan to continue leveraging the advantages of the cloud and advancing our engineering efforts with DX.”

By centralizing information from the design and development process in Teamcenter on Azure, EKK Group has made it possible for everyone to work within a single system and obtain the information they need. With its enhanced ability to develop new products, the company will be able to provide society with an array of products it needs for the future.

“As Windows was already used throughout our business, Azure was considered ideal since we were also reviewing Microsoft 365. We are currently using Microsoft 365 E5 and Dynamics 365, so there is great compatibility and we can unify our authentication infrastructure with Azure Active Directory.”

Kenichi Yokoyama, Manager, Infrastructure Section 1, IT Department, Eagle Industry Co., Ltd.

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