Materials handling manufacturers play a crucial role in the supply chains of many other industries, providing equipment that enables other businesses to manage the flow of goods through their operations efficiently.
If you’re a manufacturer of conveyors, lifts, racking systems, or any custom materials handling equipment, your teams are probably spending too much time on custom design and manual quoting. Producing accurate quotes, 3D drawings, and BOMs quickly for custom materials handling equipment is key to driving sales and maximizing efficiency.
DriveWorks design automation, 3D product configurator, and CPQ solutions transform how materials handling manufacturers operate by automating complex engineering design tasks and accelerating the sales cycle.
Increasing demand for customization
The materials handling manufacturing industry has seen a shift in demand from standard products to increasingly customized orders. Traditional manual design and quoting processes are not set up to manage large volumes of custom products, and as a result, workflows become complex and prone to error, and quote turnaround times are longer.
DriveWorks excels in handling customization demands, automating design and engineering processes, and streamlining workflows. Customers and sales teams can easily customize materials handling equipment according to their specific requirements and get accurate quotes, 3D models, and drawings, faster.
Complex configuration
Materials handling equipment often requires complex configuration, involving multiple components, variables, and dependencies. Configuration errors can lead to costly mistakes and rework.
DriveWorks handles complex configuration easily. Using rules-based technology to configure products ensures only viable configurations can be selected. 3D visualization functionality enables customers to see accurate representations of their orders and makes it easier for them to commit to buying.
Communication gaps between teams
Traditional manufacturing workflows often involve lots of dialogue between sales, engineering, and production teams. The level of complexity involved with custom materials handling equipment increases the level of dialogue, often resulting in miscommunication, bottlenecks, and errors.
DriveWorks enables smooth dialogue and clear communication between departments with automated workflows and permissions. By providing sales teams with accurate product knowledge and configuration insight, and production teams with accurate Bills of Materials (BOMs) and manufacturing specifications, DriveWorks ensures a smooth flow of data and documents between teams.
Staying ahead of the competition
For materials handling equipment manufacturers, staying ahead of the competition is a key priority. Businesses need to quote faster and more accurately to win business and ensure customer satisfaction levels are high.
DriveWorks automates pricing logic and approvals so accurate quotes can be generated faster. Quicker quote turnaround times make customers more likely to commit to purchase and improve overall customer satisfaction. This also means that customers are more likely to make repeat purchases.
Maintaining quality & consistency
Manual processes in custom manufacturing are prone to errors. Ensuring high quality and reliability of materials handling equipment is crucial. Striking a balance between cost-effective production and maintaining quality standards presents an ongoing challenge for manufacturers.
By automating the design process, DriveWorks helps enforce design standards and quality controls. Automated generation of drawings, BOMs, and documentation ensures standardized, error-free outputs that meet quality and safety standards.
Scaling up
Scaling up manual workflows can be costly, and bottlenecks can restrict business growth for materials handling equipment manufacturers.
DriveWorks technology can scale to meet manufacturing requirements. Its flexible architecture ensures that as demand for products increases, DriveWorks easily handles the increased complexity. Automated design variations and workflows make it easier to scale up output without the need for additional resources.
Liftech Group reduce crane drawing time from 4 days to 10 minutes with DriveWorks
Liftech Group Sdn Bhd specializes in manufacturing and supplying heavy lifting equipment. They employ over 200 people and operate across Malaysia and South East Asia. Their product lines include overhead, jib, and monorail cranes. To enable them to meet customer demand efficiently and accurately, Liftech needed a solution to optimize the generation of crane drawings.
Liftech’s DriveWorks implementation streamlines the workflow between their sales team and draft technicians. When orders are received, the sales team submits a drawing request to the draft technicians, who use DriveWorks to drive the automatic generation of the required crane drawings.
Liftech customers receive their detailed drawings quickly, improving their purchasing experience and also enabling them to easily identify any changes they would like to make.
Configure, design, sell, and manufacture materials handling equipment faster
DriveWorks technology enables you to accurately configure custom materials handling equipment, calculate pricing, and automatically create documents and data for sales and manufacturing.
Learn more about DriveWorks technology and how your business could benefit with a DriveWorks demo. One of our technical experts will take you under the hood of our technology and explain the features of our design automation, product configurator, and CPQ for manufacturing solutions in more detail.