In 2000, UBS faced significant challenges following its merger with Paine Webber. The merger brought together two companies with different CAFM operations, allocation methods, and reporting scenarios. UBS needed to ensure that their allocation processes matched floor leases, building leases, and site requirements consistently. The complexity of managing these allocations across multiple locations and systems required a robust solution to standardize and streamline operations. Additionally, UBS had to address the issue of maintaining five separate ARCHIBUS databases across different locations, which hindered coordinated changes and collaboration. The need for a unified system that could provide consistent chargeback processes, standardized occupancy tracking, and integration with other databases was paramount.

Managing the complex range of buildings services for a large organization is challenge enough for any buildings engineer, but gearing up for a two week world-class sporting event each year, which is truly global in its excitement and media appeal, puts an altogether different level of stress into the job. With an annual influx of over 400,000 visitors for The Championships, a vast range of buildings of differing ages totaling 163,000 square meters, and a year crowded with sporting events, John Cox and his team are also working with contractors and colleagues on a multi-million pound Club Development Plan. The standard of the buildings services which underpin the Club's activities is excellence at all times. The critical element which sets The Championships apart from all other tennis events is the outstanding level of service available to all concerned—from new seats for the disabled on Court No 1, designed for easy access and the best view of play, to the elegant dressing rooms provided for the world's mightiest players.

Carnegie Mellon University faced the challenge of updating and replacing outdated Rich Text drawings for all campus buildings. The goal was to enable users to view updated CAD drawings for various purposes such as maintenance, networking, scheduling, or business reasons. The existing telecommunications standards were cluttered and lengthy, making it difficult to manage and access information efficiently. The university needed a solution to streamline the process, improve accuracy, and make the data easily accessible to the university community.

Great American Insurance Company faced significant challenges in managing its extensive real estate portfolio, which included 1.8 million square feet under lease across 133 leases in 100 buildings. The company struggled with outdated space management methods, initially using a people-on-board (POB) system that assigned space charges based on headcount rather than actual usage. This method led to inefficiencies, especially with a 26% annual churn rate and Human Resources' inability to maintain real-time headcounts or location information. The transition to Excel spreadsheets and a Microsoft Access database for space allocation and rent calculations introduced further complications, including double manual data entry and lack of integration with AutoCAD drawings. These limitations hindered the company's ability to identify vacant space, improve allocations, and manage space utilization effectively.

Pirelli, a leading real estate development and management firm in Italy, faced the challenge of managing a significant number of new public sector contracts. These contracts involved overseeing 3,000 buildings and 5,000,000 square meters of space, along with 4,500 service-specific contracts. The company needed to simplify and integrate various contract management processes to optimize service quality and monitor management costs and revenues effectively. Additionally, Pirelli aimed to enhance their ability to handle 10,000 annual work requests and 300,000 preventive maintenance work orders from public sector clients.

The University of Missouri - Columbia faced significant challenges in managing its extensive real estate portfolio, which includes over 200 buildings on the main campus and an additional 900-plus buildings across the state. The university's floor plans and space inventory were stored in separate databases, leading to inconsistencies and inefficiencies. Changes made in one database were not automatically reflected in the other, compromising the integrity of the information. This disjointed system made it difficult to perform accurate space programming studies, which are crucial for an educational institution of this size and scope. Additionally, the university needed to provide accurate square footage information for Indirect Cost Recovery (ICR) and health services reimbursement for Medicare and Medicaid patients. The existing system was not equipped to handle these requirements efficiently, leading to potential financial losses and operational inefficiencies.

Wuhan University faced significant challenges in consolidating space data and drawing information following a merger with three other institutions. The formerly separate campuses had different approaches to tracking real estate and facilities management data, with paper-based or CAD drawings scattered across campuses and departments. This made it difficult to acquire and consolidate the necessary space data and drawing information to effectively manage the new combined institution.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. faced significant challenges in managing its facilities, which included 34 buildings across the U.S. with a total of 1.4 million square feet. The Facilities department was burdened with time-consuming, manual management systems for space and maintenance information. Leases were stored as hard copies, and lease activities were recorded in Excel spreadsheets, making access and management cumbersome. Utilities costs were tracked in a separate system, further complicating property and lease management. The fragmented data and manual processes hindered efficient management and decision-making.

Banco de España faced significant challenges in managing its extensive portfolio of office properties, which includes 33 historic and modern buildings comprising 300,000 square meters (over 3,000,000 square feet) of space. The bank needed to effectively track and manage a large inventory of non-human assets, such as chairs, desks, and equipment, which frequently moved along with employees. Additionally, the bank required improved space management functions to simplify move management and enhance decision-making processes. The existing system lacked the necessary accuracy and efficiency, leading to difficulties in asset tracking, space classification, and department allocations.

ADG, part of Duke's Corporate Information Services, faced the challenge of unifying space information that was scattered across various homegrown systems. Different departments tracked space data for different purposes and at varying levels of detail, leading to inconsistencies and inefficiencies. The Medical Center Architect's Office used ARCHIBUS for planning and construction, while the Plant Accounting department relied on a flat-file database. Additionally, many large Medical School departments maintained their own separate systems, further complicating the task of creating a unified institutional space system.

The desire to better manage First National’s growth has accelerated in recent years as they make a transition from leased to owned property, add space on an ongoing basis, and increase facility-related accountability. Those trends have all helped drive their expanding use of ARCHIBUS. Prior to the implementation of ARCHIBUS in the late 1990s, FNBI’s space data was maintained manually, which often resulted in inaccurate or inconsistent information. The maintenance and operations systems then in place did not tie directly back into the building portfolio information or provide the access and detail that was increasingly important for management purposes. In addition, the lack of a preventative maintenance system had them responding to exponentially more – and more costly – equipment failures. Another point of pain, parking management for over 2,500 parking stalls also presented a challenge, as did establishing a reliable methodology for overall strategic master planning.

John Menzies Wholesale faced significant challenges in maintaining high-quality service amidst unprecedented changes in the UK news market. The company was transitioning from a 1930s building to a new, technologically advanced headquarters. The new building's design and functionality were critical to the company's mission to become a marketing-led business. John Tucker, the newly appointed Facilities Manager, had to ensure that the facilities management (FM) services for the headquarters and 46 branches met the same high standards. His responsibilities included building maintenance, office cleaning, catering, security, health and safety, fire procedures, mail room, switchboard, reception, space planning, and procurement of supplies, equipment, and furniture. Aligning the FM function with the central business mission, Tucker decided to implement a computerised system to provide greater control, flexibility, and development potential.

The Telefónica Inmobilario (TI) group faced the challenge of managing an extensive real estate portfolio spread across 50 countries. The primary issues included geographical disparity of employees and locations, incomplete and scattered property data, and the need for a consolidated view of all real estate assets. The existing data was fragmented across multiple databases, making it difficult to manage space usage, lease contracts, and building operations efficiently. The TI group aimed to bring all this information together in one system to save time and money, optimize space usage, and provide a self-service portal for employees and subcontractors.

Although Advanced Oncotherapy is still manufacturing prototypes, the company recognized the importance of a fully-integrated business system to support its operations and meet the upcoming requirements of regulatory bodies. However, the company soon realized that its legacy PLM system would be an impediment in achieving a fully-integrated business system. Another consideration for Barker was cost. “We were developing many of our business processes from scratch. We wanted a platform that would enable us to control the business without mounds of paperwork. Our goal was to expand beyond the traditional PLM functionality of managing the product, and include other areas such as quality and non-conformity. Initially, we looked at expanding the use of our previous PLM system. Even though it contained some of the functionality we required, it came at an extra cost. The advantage with Fusion Lifecycle is that you get access to all its capabilities for a single license fee.”

Mesa Labs realized that its legacy software systems could no longer support a growing business. Mesa labs relied on a manual system to manage the change control process. “We used ‘red folders’ containing all the change documents, and these were sent to the appropriate departments for approval. We also had to rely on timely updates to the ERP system. This led to ordering materials at the wrong revision level. It was also possible to have the same part number in different facilities for different items,” said Alcala. For any company regulated by the FDA and desiring to maintain ISO compliance, strict change control and adherence to documented procedures is paramount. “We had a couple of audits that were a cause for concern for FDA and ISO auditors. Management recognized that we needed to address this issue immediately.”

As a fast-growing company, Astro introduces over 200 new products a year. With a growing product line, maintaining all the data for each product was becoming difficult and time-consuming. “Our product specifications were held in a variety of places including an Access® database, Word® documents, and Excel® spreadsheets,” said Stuart Wells, Head of Product Development. “Our distributors need a lot of technical information when quoting a new job. We had to manually collate the information from various sources into a spreadsheet to give to our distributors. This process was very difficult and time-consuming.” At the time, Wells was responsible for the introduction of new products, from concept to completion. “We recognized that there must be a better way to store and access our data. In addition, I had created a giant spreadsheet to help control the critical path for the entire new product development process. Unfortunately, this was cumbersome to use and maintain.”

In a previous R&D role at a medical device company, Emil had worked with a paper-based quality management system where they also leveraged digital tools, like Excel, to manage their device requirements. This experience proved to be cumbersome, time-consuming, and full of complexity when it came to maintaining traceability and version control. While starting FlexLogical, Emil had a strong sense of the importance of implementing a digital quality system. As they began solidifying their device concepts and adding more team members to focus on risk and developing their QMS, Emil wanted to assure they approached quality the right way. Emil knew that “using excel would be too comprehensive” for their devices and would not support the integrity and quality of the devices they want to produce – leading to more cumbersome work in the long run.

Desktop Metal recognized that current metal 3D printing was too expensive and industrial for prototyping, and it was not fast enough or cost-effective enough for mass production. Because of the many innovative technologies in Desktop Metal’s products, there can be frequent engineering and supply chain changes. Coordinating team members, suppliers, and contract manufacturers is essential for the company to hit its design goals, target costs, and production timeframes. The rapid growth of the company also makes it essential for newly hired employees to quickly come up to speed on the latest product discussions.

As FlexGen began scaling their product pipeline, it became clear that they needed a more transparent way to keep engineers, suppliers, and customers on the same page for all their product designs and discussions. As experienced engineers and industry veterans, the FlexGen team knew they needed a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution. However, they were concerned about the extensive deployment, custom development, and IT support typically required by many PLM systems.

Owl Cameras, known for their Owl Car Cam, was experiencing rapid growth and needed a scalable solution to manage their product lifecycle. They were using spreadsheets, shared DropBox folders, and Jira, which were not sufficient for their expanding needs. The complexity of their product, which combines elements of a phone into a sophisticated industrial design, required a more robust and intuitive tool for managing engineering change orders (ECOs) and bills of materials (BOMs). With 20-30 team members working on the product, they needed full control over the product development process to handle frequent changes and updates efficiently.

Yukon Medical faced significant challenges with their legacy product and quality systems, which were not scalable and made training difficult. The existing quality management platform was cumbersome, inconsistent, and hard to learn, leading to constant questions and inefficiencies. Yukon needed a more seamless and integrated Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Quality Management System (QMS) to ensure consistency, proper training, and effective communication with partners.

As a medical device manufacturer, deploying a dedicated, scalable quality management system was essential to maintaining compliance across the product lifecycle as the company continued to scale both their workforce and product portfolio. Supporting a remote workforce made their paper-based change approval process all the more challenging. Paper-based quality management makes it challenging to integrate quality with the design and development phase. Without having clear insight into quality issues during the design phase, engineers risk the possibility of designing products with components that may have been associated with a quality incident or complaint. Imperative Care quickly discovered their previous method for tracking CAPAs and NCMRs was an inefficient way to get their products to market. The paper-based process also made it more challenging and time-consuming to collaborate across teams and projects. In order to increase efficiency, collaborate effectively, manage quality and get their products to market faster, Imperative Care needed a cloud-native solution that combined product lifecycle management and quality management in one platform that enabled their team remote access from anywhere in the world.

Following Fortive’s acquisition of ASP from Johnson & Johnson, ASP had one year to deploy its own technology stack to run the business. ASP recognized the opportunity to improve their business processes, as their quality management processes and capabilities were spread across multiple systems. ASP needed a platform that enabled them to communicate events with the FDA digitally through the FDA’s webtrader portal without requiring re-keying of any information captured in the complaint investigation process. ASP needed an interconnected platform that helped them swiftly intake, investigate, assess, report, and track all aspects of the complaint process, alleviate software overhead costs and gain organizational efficiencies, all while maintaining compliance and quality for the business.

Like many organizations, Sierra Monitor’s back-end systems consisted of different platforms and various shared folders dispersed across operations, engineering, sales, and marketing. This led to mismanaged information, longer launch cycles, missed opportunities, and unnecessary or lengthy meetings due to miscommunication. Because of their various technologies, employees needed to rely on manual methods of data exchange, including sneakerneting or the sharing of USB drives, to facilitate cross-functional business processes. As the company began to scale, Michael Farr, Sierra Monitor’s Vice President of Operations, realized the arising need to consolidate these disparate systems onto a cloud-based solution that would benefit them as they matured as a company.

Electric power consumption in automobiles has risen significantly over the last decades. In the near future, even greater electrical power requirements are expected. To limit the associated increase in fuel consumption and exhaust emissions, new strategies for the generation, storage, retrieval, distribution, and consumption of electric power are needed. The challenge that arises now is how to control the power net to obtain maximum energy efficiency within the vehicle. One of the main causes of increased electric consumption is the replacement of mechanical and hydraulic components with electrical devices. The increase in electrical consumption affects the testing and simulation process. In the 1990s, statistical modeling was carried out to monitor various driving cycles in different weather conditions. These experiments could provide the mean value and peak request for electric power. During the development process, the designer could select the appropriate battery and alternator to meet the electric requirements of the vehicle. To be on the safe side, several physical tests had to be done in order to confirm the choice. The trend to shorter development cycles and, therefore, performing fewer tests, really began early in the 21st century. At that time, Renault decided to replace actual testing by virtual validation for selected driving cycles. To minimize electric consumption, emphasis was placed on optimizing the battery and alternator selection by taking into account additional dynamics and using more precise models.

After expanding operations to meet ever-increasing customer demands, Omni Mold faced the challenge of working efficiently with a lean headcount. The company needed to compress design cycles and reduce production time to meet customer demands while solving workforce shortages caused by business expansion. Additionally, they aimed to curb the rate of human error and lower manufacturing costs. Omni Mold's management foresaw an upward trend in customer demand for complex three-dimensional (3D) products and shorter turnaround times. To address these challenges, they identified the use of cutting-edge technology as a key business driver and competitive differentiator.

De Voogt Naval Architects faced significant challenges in maintaining the high quality and precision required by their wealthy clientele while also needing to improve their productivity and reduce lead times. The traditional 2D design process was time-consuming and often led to inaccuracies that affected both the engineering and construction stages. This inefficiency was a major bottleneck, especially as the company aimed to grow and take on more complex projects. The need for a more accurate and integrated design process became evident to meet customer expectations and streamline operations.

Précicad faced the challenge of designing and manufacturing a small fleet of electrically powered utility vehicles with bodies and frames made of aluminum instead of steel. Aluminerie Alouette requested a load-carrying capacity of 1,000 pounds. The smelter was at the point where it needed to replace its existing vehicles, so Précicad agreed to have a working model ready within six months to a year. The vehicles needed to operate in areas with strong static magnetic fields, which regular internal combustion engines couldn't handle.

HHI Construction Equipment (HCE) faced the challenge of becoming one of the top five worldwide suppliers of construction equipment by 2010. This was particularly difficult as the supply of construction equipment exceeded demand. To achieve this goal, HCE needed to bring new products to market quickly, which required optimizing the design process, integrating the entire product lifecycle, and improving collaboration between HCE and its suppliers. Additionally, HCE needed to enhance visualization for faster and more accurate validation of designs.

Demag Delaval Industrial Turbomachinery’s Lincoln site faced a significant bottleneck in NC programming, which was a time-consuming process requiring highly trained engineers. This bottleneck was critical as it affected the delivery speed of their gas turbine engines. Management aimed to accelerate the NC programming process and reduce dependency on specialists to improve competitiveness and eliminate non-value-added processes.