Case: Voith Turbo Safeset

What the system supports

• Product selection and configuration of unique product variants
• Automated generation of quotation documents such as 3D models, drawings and product specifications
• A digitalised process for sales and engineering to create quotation documents
• Data collection and generation of unique product manuals

Values in this solution

• Digitalisation of quotation processes
• Shorter lead time for quotations
• CAD design automation
• Greater availability of configuration
• Time freed up for product development

Custom products require custom documentation

Voith Turbo Safeset in Hudiksvall manufactures torque limiters — a type of safety coupling installed inside a driveline that prevents damage during overloads. It is an effective and very valuable solution that is also easy to reset after an unplanned stop.

For Voith's customers, this often concerns very large and expensive drivelines, in tunnel boring machines or large ship engines for example.

Since every driveline has its own specific characteristics, every torque limiter made in the Hudiksvall factory is unique to the customer. That means drawings and manuals must also be modified or created anew for every project.

“The dialogue between sales and engineering took a lot of time”

Every time a salesperson presents a solution to a potential customer, they need to produce a quotation basis quickly, often from limited input data.

– That was an area where it hurt for us. It took a lot of time, and the dialogue between the salespeople and the engineers could simply be made faster and more efficient — and with better quality, says P-O Berg, CEO of Voith Turbo Safeset.

For the engineering department it meant a lot of monotonous work that stole time and held back development. Development and engineering manager Jonas Löfgren explains: – We made changes to existing couplings or drawings. We could make a change to the same drawing four times. Monotonous, repetitive work. And a great many quotation drawings are made every day.

“The pre-study is very important”

Voith Turbo Safeset asked KonfigDesign for help creating a system to streamline the process. The work started with a thorough pre-study, in which all the departments involved took part in developing a concept for a configurator.

– KonfigDesign helped us examine ourselves. “What is it that we need?”, “What does the customer need?” and “What is the benefit of this… is it for my department, for someone else, or is it for the customer that we do it?”

The pre-study is very important, and there KonfigDesign was very good at helping us understand what we as a company need. And I think that is the key to us getting a good end product too, says Jonas Löfgren.

The end product is a configurator built with RuleDesigner Configurator, today used for all quotation requests. With it, salespeople can quickly produce quotation documents: the system shows clear suggestions for products matching the current enquiry, and the limits that apply for changing different properties.

The configurator also shows which other cases are currently with the engineering department, and what lead time applies if special solutions outside the limits are needed.

– It means we have better structure on the tasks performed, where they sit in the queue and how much there is to do. Sales and engineers know where their cases are, what status they have, and we get an idea of when they will be finished, which has improved the dialogue and reduced friction between sales and engineering, says P-O Berg.

“The sales process has changed from the ground up”

The sales process has changed from the ground up, says Håkan Westberg, sales manager at Voith Turbo Safeset.

– Our inside sales people get back from the configurator — essentially within seconds — a validation of the design that we can price and send out to the customer. The most important thing is to capture the customer very early, when they are interested in our product, and immediately be able to give them a solution, he says.

Håkan Westberg says the configurator has effectively increased their hit rate — the share of customer contacts that lead to business — by speeding up the quotation process considerably. – The faster we can answer the customer, the more inclined they are to buy our products.

Another advantage is that it lets Voith's salespeople around the world create quotation drawings on their own, out at the customer. – Which is an extreme advantage. The customer gets to be in on the design, and they are more inclined to feel it is their own design, which makes them choose our products, says Håkan Westberg.

“The configurator removed much of the monotonous work”

But the collaboration between KonfigDesign and Voith did not begin with quotation documents, but with a completely different time thief — creating manuals. One effect of working with customer-unique products is that customer-unique manuals are needed too, with specific measurement data and drawings.

Voith had built their own solution in Excel, but it required around 45 minutes per manual and only a few people could do the job.

– We pasted together documents, drawings, diagrams and various parts that became a manual, in different languages. So it was a lot of cut and paste. Very monotonous. Absolutely not value-creating, says engineering manager Jonas Löfgren.

To streamline the creation of manuals, KonfigDesign developed a configurator that eliminates a large part of the manual work. With it, the manuals are created almost entirely automatically.

The third and latest version of the “Manual Creator”, as Voith calls it, is based on several departments helping to enter data into the system, which has given a very large time saving to the engineering department, a critical resource in the company.

– With the configurator we have removed much of the monotonous work. We essentially do not need to spend any time at all. We enter what is needed into a database and then the configurator handles the manual creation completely automatically, says Jonas Löfgren.

With the configurator's help, Voith can spend less time on, for example, training new engineers and salespeople, and more time on complex, value-creating tasks, which in turn leads to faster and better growth.

CEO P-O Berg says the company has seen a rise in order intake over the last three to four years, partly because of the improvements the configurator has brought to internal flows. – We have had good help from the configurator of course, and we can answer faster now. We can send out more quotations, we can take in more orders, and so we grow. It is a very good symbiosis, he says.