Teradyne Simplifies and Streamlines Parts and Engineering Change Management Globally

Capgemini’s process, technical project management, and system integration expertise was a key enabler to the on-time delivery success of this strategic project initiative. The Capgemini team understood our business needs, had the experience and expertise to ramp rapidly, and delivered against our aggressive goal to re-engineer our existing processes while continuing to get products and product changes out the door to our contract manufacturer without interruption. The team was responsive, accommodating to our needs, and brought global talent and world class best practices to our team. Bill Duggan, Manager, Engineering and PLM, Teradyne

The Situation

Teradyne is a leading global supplier of automatic test equipment used to test complex electronic devices in automotive, communications, entertainment, military and defense applications. It manages configurations of a large, complex inventory of commercial and Teradyne-designed parts from development to field support and service.

Teradyne’s Engineering Change Management (ECM), to manage part release and Bills of Material (BOM) processes was work-intensive and error prone. Cycle times of change ranged from a few days to three months. Several databases, file servers and email used to support the process were difficult to track and accelerate; most required human intervention. A form was routed for technical review, completed and reviewed again–30% of rejections were for clerical errors with the form being integral to the process. The next step–to review implementation of the change with Teradyne’s manufacturing unit–was facilitated by the document control division (staffed across two design centers) via emails and check lists.

Slow, error-prone change order cycle times and adherence to Environmental Compliance regulations through tighter regulations restricting the use of hazardous substances in Electrical and Electronics Requirements (RoHS/Weee) escalated challenges. Competitors were announcing aggressive strategic plans to produce “Green” testers. In response, Teradyne launched a program to ensure all new products were green. Existing designs were reassessed toidentify required changes to meet corporate strategy.

Management needed an ability to identify main suppliers and Teradyne parts through approved vendor lists to electronically obtain the material declaration sheets, analyze data for compliance and convey information to the design community to ensure design met RoHS standards. A new compliance database was needed to gather, store and analyze the material content of each part through an electronic data exchange. This evaluation would then set the status at the master part level to convey the RoHS status to the design engineering community.

The Solution

Teradyne called upon Capgemini’s proven expertise in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) to help make its change process “leaner.” Working cohesively with key stakeholders at Teradyne, the two teams laid the foundation for a new robust change management process by eliminating error prone and redundant steps. The new solution was implemented using Siemens Teamcenter Enterprise 2007 PLM.

The Result

With the PLM change solution deployed globally, Teradyne’s entire engineering design, manufacturing and support communities now access data for ECM, parts and RoHS status in real-time. It allows New Products teams to quickly implement changes to support product development. It provides the latest RoHS status so that new designs meet the “Green” initiative and facilitates improved error checking for new parts and BOMs before they reach a supplier to build.

The result is a 50% reduction in change cycle time, improved data accuracy and reduced errors to manufacturing. Reducing number of databases, file servers and status values has improved cycle times and data integrity. Creating a digital change process enables improved tracking and an audit for future reference and re-use.

Meeting environmental compliance goals has also been improved through aggressive data collection, improved analysis, storage and reporting of the substances used in parts and manufacturing processes. Teradyne now

has access to toolsets by Synapsis Technologies, the industry standard for compliance management in the electronics sector.