New Product Development Isn’t Child’s Play at Kolcraft
Company Size
1,000+
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Aras Innovator
- PTC Windchill
- Oracle Agile
Tech Stack
- Microsoft Platform
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Customer Satisfaction
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
- Functional Applications - Product Lifecycle Management Systems (PLM)
Applicable Industries
- Consumer Goods
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
- Quality Assurance
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Kolcraft Enterprises, Inc. is America's #1 Crib Mattress manufacturer, founded in 1946. The company initially made playpen pads out of cotton batting and oilcloth covers and later invented the all-around crib and playard bumper pad. Over the years, Kolcraft expanded into the manufacture and distribution of a wide range of baby products, including playards, high chairs, walkers, strollers, bassinets, bouncers, swings, and juvenile furniture. Today, Kolcraft is recognized worldwide for its quality and dependability, aligning with leading brand names such as Sealy®, Sesame Beginnings™, Jeep®, and Nascar®. The company remains committed to developing high-quality baby products that make parents' and caregivers' lives easier.
The Challenge
Kolcraft Enterprises, Inc., a leading manufacturer of baby products, faced significant challenges in managing its extensive product lines and the related components, documents, drawings, specifications, and requirements. The company's in-house Product Specification System (PSS) had served well for many years, but as product lines expanded and customization increased, Kolcraft realized it needed a more robust solution to manage the many facets of its highly sophisticated product lifecycle. The manual process of managing product updates across every bill of material (BOM) was time-consuming and inconsistent, making it impossible to ensure that every affected product was always up to date. Kolcraft needed an automated BOM to update and manage changes to each variation on a base product, as well as the base product itself, by discipline: Engineering, Fashion, and Marketing.
The Solution
Following a review of leading product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions, Kolcraft chose Aras Enterprise Open Source PLM. Aras was selected for its significant out-of-the-box functionality, high flexibility, ease of tailoring, configuration, and installation, and the absence of PLM license fees. To meet the needs of Kolcraft's Engineering, Fashion, and Marketing groups, Aras leveraged its Prototype and Iterate methodology, based on the Rational Unified Process (RUP) approach. This methodology allowed capabilities to be developed and tested by actual users in their environment, with refinements incorporated immediately based on user feedback. This approach ensured that each group had a voice in the system design and that the final solution met everyone's needs upon rollout. Aras's rules-based configuration management system was modified to maintain independent revision levels on every Kolcraft product based on the specific rules and schedules of each of its three major disciplines. The system enabled Kolcraft to control how and where a single product change ripples through to the base product and all related variations. Designers could change colors and fabrics and apply them to all related products in a single step, and changes could be made to a single finished product without affecting the base product and other related finished products.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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