Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace buys into collaborative PLM for engineer-to-order projects

Norwegian high-tech military products manufacturer Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace (KDA) is replacing its existing internal product data management (PDM) system and buying collaborative PLM (product lifecycle management) software from MatrixOne to manage its overall engineering development. The system, which is already being implemented by Scandinavian engineering systems firm Technia, will eventually involve more than 1,000 users at KDA. The company expects the new system to provide an integrated electronic environment for all of them into its product data and document management, and thus to speed up its complex engineer-to-order projects. KDA develops and manufactures products like anti-ship missiles, communications systems and command and control centers. The new system will provide the hub and real time managed links into its customers and its extended teams of suppliers to better support development and change management throughout its project and product lifecycles through MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) and the rest. It’s a big undertaking, and one that a few years ago would have meant years of business process change and million of dollars of IT investment. The hope is that engineering, manufacturing and commercial teams will get the advantages relatively quickly – all being able to optimise cross-enterprise business processes and share the real-time information and content necessary for making critical joint decisions. KDA says it selected MatrixOne’s technology after a study of major suppliers in the PLM marketplace. “KDA needs strong support for its engineered-to-order processes with full configuration management control, along with the integration to all of our design and analysis tools,” says Niels Mortensen, CIO at KDA. “MatrixOne fulfilled our requirements. In addition, Technia understands our needs from both a management and a practical system level perspective.” Technia is MatrixOne’s preferred alliance partner in Scandinavia – and has also recently been named ‘Growth Company of the Year’ for the region.