In the architectural and building components industry, customization, efficiency, and quality are key components of success. Manufacturers face the challenge of balancing these factors while staying competitive and following strict regulations.
Design automation, 3D product configurator, and CPQ technology are being used by many businesses in the architectural & building components industry to overcome those challenges and keep pace with customer demand for highly configured products.
Customization
Architectural and building components often need to be highly customizable to meet the specific design requirements of different projects. The ability to offer highly configurable products is a key requirement, and configurations can be complex with multiple variations. This level of customization can lead to production inefficiencies, with each unique order requiring significant time and effort to design.
Design automation technology enables architectural and building component manufacturers to create configurable design templates. Engineers can define rules and parameters that guide the customization process based on customer requirements. This ensures that each order, even if highly customized, follows a standardized and automated design process. Automating repetitive and mundane design tasks delivers improved accuracy, quicker design turnaround times, and less rework. Additionally, design engineers have more time to focus on value-add tasks such as new product development.
Material costs and availability
Fluctuations in the cost and availability of raw materials can significantly impact production costs, profit margins, and design accuracy. This is often the case for manufacturers of architectural & building components.
Design automation and CPQ technology integrate with your real-time data sources to monitor material costs and availability. By automating the quotation process, prices are automatically adjusted based on fluctuations in material costs, ensuring accurate and competitive pricing. This level of flexibility enables manufacturers to operate dynamically and avoid costly delays.
Agile manufacturing also enables quick reconfiguration of designs to accommodate alternative components or suppliers. This ensures that products always meet delivery timelines and don’t cause any unnecessary knock-on delays for other parts of the building process.
Quality control
Maintaining consistent quality across both custom and standardized components is crucial in the architectural components and building industry. Ensuring that products meet industry standards and customer expectations requires robust quality control measures.
Design automation technology ensures consistency in designs by using standardized rules and parameters. Additionally, quality control checks can be embedded within the design automation process, reducing the risk of errors and ensuring that products meet both industry standards and customer expectations.
Manufacturers can also embed quality control checks within each stage of their design automation process, further reducing the risk of errors and ensuring that products consistently meet the required quality standards.
Regulatory compliance
The architectural and building components industry is subject to a wide range of different building codes and regulations. Ensuring that products comply with these standards can be complex and may vary across regions.
Design automation enables architectural components manufacturers to embed regulatory requirements into their design rules. This ensures that each custom product generated through the automation process complies with relevant regulations.
CPQ and guided selling tools enable sales teams, customers, and distributors, to access the up-to-date compliant configuration options. With the knowledge that all product configurations are compliant, sales teams and resellers, are able to sell confidently, knowing that product configurations are valid and accurate.
Long sales cycles
The sales cycle in the architectural and building components industry can be complex and prolonged, especially for large-scale projects. Longer sales cycles can impact project timelines and other building interdependencies.
Design automation and CPQ technology accelerate the sales cycle by providing a quick and accurate way to generate quotes and designs. With the automation of design and quoting processes, manufacturers can respond quickly to customer inquiries, reducing the time it takes to finalize orders. This efficiency significantly shortens the overall sales cycle, which is particularly beneficial for large-scale projects where time is a critical factor.
Competitive pricing
The architectural and building components industry is highly competitive, with lower levels of product differentiation. Competition based on price is typical in the industry, however, maintaining competitive pricing while ensuring quality can be challenging.
Design automation and CPQ technology enable manufacturers to optimize pricing strategies by factoring in real-time material costs, labor, and other variables. This ensures that pricing remains competitive while maintaining profitability. Using guided selling tools, both sales teams and distributors have access to the most up-to-date product prices and discount options, enabling them to sell products at the most competitive level.
Architectural and building components manufacturers achieving success with DriveWorks technology
Improving company-wide workflows and improving customer experience
ERHARDT manufactures high-quality, customized products for sun protection, outdoor living, and terrace roofs.
Using DriveWorks technology to connect sales and manufacturing has enabled ERHARDT to improve customer experience, streamline the sales process, reduce errors, and optimize engineering and manufacturing processes.
The accuracy and reliability of DriveWorks Design Automation for SOLIDWORKS has enabled ERHARDT to manufacture the products configured by the retailer without further modification by the design department.
Implementing DriveWorks technology has enabled ERHARDT to keep pace with increasing demand while maintaining its reputation for high-quality products.
Reducing design time from 4 hours to 20 mins
markilux GmbH & Co. KG is an award-winning awning company, based in Germany. Prior to the introduction of DriveWorks, products had to be customized by hand. Each assembly had to be manually opened and edited, the drawing derived and saved. A large, time-consuming effort with an incalculable potential for errors.
Using DriveWorks technology, design engineers create sets of rules defining entire systems. These sets of rules are based on the native 3D data and are fully integrated into SOLIDWORKS and linked to selected parameters. The customization of an awning can offer a wide range of different choices and these variables all have to be made configurable. Using DriveWorks Pro, markilux have reduced design time from 4 hours to 20 minutes.
Powerful SOLIDWORKS® part, assembly, and drawing automation for architectural & building components manufacturers
DriveWorks Solo is the ideal solution to transform how you design, configure, and sell custom architectural and building components. Using DriveWorks Solo, design engineers automate repetitive SOLIDWORKS® tasks, freeing up more time to work on new product designs. Automating and streamlining the process of designing, configuring, and selling architectural and building compenents drives sales and improves business growth.
Make the most of a DriveWorks Solo 30-day free trial by setting clear goals, testing key features on real projects, and using the whole host of free training material provided. Use the time to evaluate its impact on your workflows and ensure it meets your needs. You can also set up a meeting with a technical expert from the DriveWorks team to help you get off to the best start.