Going Worldwide, 24-7

Ingersoll-Rand helps build the world by manufacturing around the world

—edited by Richard Mandel

All of us have an affinity for some man-made contrivance, to the point that it’s nearly unthinkable to be without a toothbrush, a washing machine, or something so basic as a roof over our heads. Scaling up, it becomes difficult to imagine cities without hospitals or fire stations, regions without airports, states without highways.

Manufacturers like Ingersoll-Rand, headquartered in Woodcliff Lake, NJ, have built their companies on supplying tools and machinery, those man-made contrivances, to the construction and road-building industries. As their reputation grew, so did the needs of the market. As with many companies, interest and orders became to come from outside the Continental United States. At one time, the response was to build the requested item and put it on a container ship to the customer’s port. But as the company grew, it became more practical to build factories in key foreign locales, reducing delivery time and costs, as well as enabling products to be built to local requirements. 

Making changes

To function successfully with satellite operations, there must be unhindered lines of communication, which today involves not just the phone and the fax, but computer data as well.

“Ingersoll-Rand is made up of 23 distinct business units,” observes George Ashley, manager of I-R’s engineering business services. “Each unit, in turn, is made up of many different companies and divisions of that unit. I believe that, right now, we have 343 separate, discreet manufacturing or operations locations that are distinct from sales offices, literally all over the world. The core companies have been reorganized into five sectors—a climate control sector, an independent power sector, a security and safety sector, an industrial productivity sector, and an infrastructure development sector. The latter is the traditional I-R companies—the road machinery, the drills, the air compressors, and other similar products. For the most part, those infrastructure groups have been using PTC software for their engineering work, but they’re less than 20% of our total business. The other sectors have been ground-up, turnkey businesses or acquisitions with perhaps 41 different ERP systems and seven or eight CAD systems. Ingersoll-Rand, therefore, elected to strategically drive towards common systems such as PTC for engineering and manufacturing, with Oracle for ERP.”

The task may have been daunting, but not insurmountable. The infrastructure group itself had one company in Pennsylvania using Unigraphics, and a company in Germany using several different softwares in addition to continuing to use paper-and-pencil diagrams. Not to mention the potential difficulties of exchanging data with the group in Wuxi, China. But the directive at I-R was to “design anywhere, build anywhere.”

“At first that meant just among the Ingersoll-Rand plants around the world,” says Ashley, “but now the strategy is literally to turn fixed costs into variable costs. We want to eventually get away from the traditional high-capitol brick-and-mortar factories, as a fixed asset, and turn it into a variable cost by being able to design anywhere, build anywhere. We’ll be able to make the “make/by” decision or the outsource decision literally at a moment’s notice, once we have the technology in place to provide the engineering and supply chain information to the engineer.”

Does this new system put Ingersoll-Rand in the arena of just-in-time manufacturing? “It’s kind of funny,” replies Ashley, “because JIT started out as an inventory tool, and now we’re talking about just-in-time operations and just-in-time manufacturing, which is exactly what we’re doing. To that end, we’ve recently appointed a Worldwide Vice-President of Operations, a global operations VP. This is the guy with the crystal ball, the guy who will know capability and capacity at any given moment of any I-R facility or our strategic suppliers around the world. A global facilities-and-supply-line manager.

“We’re in the process now of implementing PTC’s Windchill sourcing software into our global operations,” continues Ashley, “which we expect will help move us closer to our goal. This will allow us to take advantage of strategic sourcing worldwide. And not just sourcing, but strategic outsourcing, as well.”

The increased speed of communications for Ingersoll-Rand keeps the company on pace with faster manufacturing technologies. Machines such as road compactors have structures built around large-scale forgings, which today’s shop outputs more quickly because of higher spindle speeds and more accurate material handling systems.

Unified corporate software

“An example of meeting our goals comes from our air solutions group,” remarks Ashley, “results we think are directly attributable to the PTC products; specifically, Pro-E, Windchill and IntraLink. Because we have a common ERP system and a common database system, we’ve closed two plants and accordingly reduced costs, literally because we can design anywhere and build anywhere. Based on this success, we’re now doing plant rationalizations in our other sectors. We couldn’t do that without the tools.”

So why Pro-E?

“I-R was inherently looking for a common CAD database,” Ashley replies. “In the manufacturing business, a product business, the main requirement is for product structure, and that structure typically starts out being defined as a CAD model. We had the vision of a product structure which could be readily available for preview models the engineers can use for analysis, or to a marketing person for a visualization, or to someone in manufacturing who needs to run an NC machine, or for a planning view required for a bill of material for sales and operations planning or an engineering bill or a manufacturing bill, or if that structure needs to be in an item nester for sourcing or commodity code. It’s all about product structure.

“So we decided we needed a product-centric system, not just a CAD modeler. We quickly generated a short list of Unigraphics and PTC. On the solid modeling side, both were about equal. The deciding factor was PTC’s leveraging as an across-the-enterprise product, through the web environment. That’s what I-R needed. Even our plant in Shippensburg, PA, which had been operating on a UG platform, has requested the Windchill package for engineering change control and collaborative engineering because of their satisfaction with the smooth conversion of their data.”

What about the paper-and-pencil people in the German operation?

“The person who was the professional drafter needs to be applied elsewhere or enhance their skills, because they find that the design task in not about drawings, it’s about structures. That structure has features with relationships to each other, and there’s geometry to it, as well. The engineers and designers are now in the loop, which is better in the long run because there’s no longer the hand-offs between the three separate elements.”

Dual Citizenship

I-R invokes and encourages within their corporate principles the ability of their employees to see beyond immediate job boundaries and business units and think in terms of contributing to the total company. Their experience has taught them that well-managed change reduces risk and enhances possibilities, and in light of events earlier this year, it may be necessary for worldwide corporations to re-examine their business structure and methods.

“We’re always looking at opportunities on our engineering side, as well as our sales side,” Ashley comments. “We’re doing just that with our independent power sector. They have some products, and they have a handful of excellent people who invent things. They have no plans to build a factory, a sales organization, any customer interfacing or ERP. They just want to be product development people. They’re hooked by Windchill and IntraLink to our Torrington company, our Thermo King company and our air solution company, who are providing various parts of the design, ERP and administration tools. That’s internal dual citizenship. The external is the customer facing and strategic partners. And that’s how we operate in today’s world.”

For more information:

Circle 203—Ingersoll-Rand, or connect directly to their website via the Online Reader Service Program at www.RSLeads.com/?111df-203

Circle 204—PTC, or connect directly at www.RSLeads.com/?111df-204