Learn how RCI Engineering is benefiting from our SOLIDWORKS to Odoo ERP integration

RCI Engineering is an engineering and manufacturing company, specializing in custom agricultural and off-road equipment. RCI provides turn-key machinery, from design through manufacturing, focusing on these key areas:

• Complete Product Development
  • From concept through production for low-volume, specialized equipment
• Premier Product Support
  • Supporting customers 24/7/365 in their key seasons to keep machine downtime at a minimum and productivity high
• Customization and Optimization
  • Filling customer needs however needed, from small modifications to complete, custom machinery

• RCI utilizes SOLIDWORKS for product design
• Revisions and part data are managed in SOLIDWORKS
• Production is managed with Odoo, an open-source ERP system.
• Odoo is used for all Material Requirements Planning (MRP) operations.

CHALLENGE

RCI had no means of connecting their Odoo ERP system with their design, based on SOLIDWORKS.

Time was wasted on data entry tasks, as products already designed and defined in SOLIDWORKS had to be manually entered in the Odoo ERP system.

RCI needed a simple way for engineers to specify information regarding routes and purchasing information to communicate with their procurement department.

RCI had been unsuccessful exploring alternative solutions from other providers, before discovering the integration solution provided by CUSTOMTOOLS.

SOLUTION

RCI uses CUSTOMTOOLS to define their products in SOLIDWORKS and transfer the needed metadata, including attachments (DXF and PDF) and preview images to Odoo ERP automatically.
CUSTOMTOOLS can easily be used to map SOLIDWORKS CAD properties of Parts and Assemblies directly to their respective fields in Odoo ERP. The solution also supports transferring full product structures and BOMs from Solidworks to ERP.

Watch a video here to see the solution in action.

Additional benefits RCI have come across after introducing the solution are:

• Error checking finds errors before they cause issues
• Visual BOM in export window allows user to see all data in one easy interface
• Differences between ERP and SW are highlighted
• The ability to create drop-downs for different settings has led to reduced number of engineering errors
• The CUSTOMTOOLS solution works well with SOLIDWORKS PDM when set up properly

OUTCOME

With the SOLIDWORKS- Odoo integration solution provided by CUSTOMTOOLS, RCI was able to streamline their operations for communication between engineering and production.

As a result, setup times for new products were reduced by 75%.

Additionally, time to set up new large self-propelled machines in procurement went down from 2 weeks to just 2 days.

RCI was able to reduce errors between their engineering department and procurement/manufacturing almost completely. More specifically by eliminating errors in manual data entry, now the only remaining source for errors are those made up front in engineering.

If you are interested in learning more about CUSTOMTOOLS or the Odoo ERP integration solution, you can contact us using the contact form below.

Writer:

Olli Murto, Sales Manager