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CADVenture Success Story – Invacare Corporation

Invacare is the industry leader in the $6-billion worldwide market for home medical products, manufacturing and distributing the world’s broadest product offering to more than 25,000 independent home medical equipment providers worldwide. Headquartered in Elyria, Ohio, Invacare manufactures products in four categories (standard products, rehab products, respiratory products, and medical supplies) and has manufacturing plants in the United States, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The company strives to improve, expand, and broaden its existing product lines, and recently introduced 75 new products to replace 90 percent of its major equipment product line sales in 2003.

Transitioning to 3D CAD to Drive New Product Development

The Challenge

Invacare’s success as the world’s leading manufacturer of home medical products rests with the company’s commitment to developing high-quality products and leveraging design and manufacturing technologies in innovative and strategic ways. Recently, the company’s commitment to product development took on even greater emphasis as Invacare management initiated a strategic plan to leverage new product development to gain market share and maintain the company’s competitive edge. Invacare established the strategic objective of introducing greater numbers of new products more quickly by accelerating product design efforts. To achieve this goal, Invacare turned to CADVenture for help in transitioning to the SolidWorks® 3D mechanical design system.

The Solution

By standardizing on the SolidWorks mechanical design system, Invacare sought to achieve greater design collaboration and efficiency across its several remote facilities. Previously, product designers at Invacare used several different CAD packages, which created obstacles to reusing existing product design data and working collaboratively across facilities. Using different design platforms also created bottlenecks in dealing with vendors and suppliers.

“It’s easier to support a single platform and makes more sense in terms of cost, speed, and productivity,” explains Neal Curran, Vice President of Engineering and Product Development at Invacare. “Working with CADVenture, we successfully transitioned to the SolidWorks® 3D modeling system as our standard CAD package.”

CADVenture provided implementation, training, and technical support services to help Invacare make a smooth transition to SolidWorks software as its sole design platform, which enabled greater collaboration and more efficient interaction with vendors. “The training provided by CADVenture for our SolidWorks implementation was top notch,” recalls Tom Herb, Manager of Invacare’s Corporate Documentation Group. “I rate CADVenture high on the scale compared to other CAD resellers.”

The Results

According to Curran, CADVenture’s SolidWorks implementation plan was executed effectively and is helping Invacare meet its objectives of developing new products faster, better, and more cost-effectively.

“We’ve been able to reduce our design cycle time significantly, from 12 to nine months, and refocus more of our effort on new product development. Now, with a better design platform, our engineers have been able to continue to support operational initiatives as well as increase work on new product development,” Curran says. “We have realized quite a boost in productivity.”

“Having a common CAD format has definitely allowed us to get closer to a true collaborative design environment with our remote facilities,” Herb adds. “We’ve made tremendous headway in making our product development process more efficient.”·      

  • Shortened design cycle by 25 percent.
  • Increased amount of engineering time spent on new product development.
  • Reduced amount of rework.
  • Improved design communication.

Invacare Corporation
One Invacare Way
Elyria, OH 44035
Phone: 1-800-333-6900
www.invacare.com

SolidWorks is a registered trademark of SolidWorks Corporation. All other company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

©2003 CADVenture. All rights reserved.


"The training provided by CADVenture for our SolidWorks implementation was top notch. I rate CADVenture high on the scale compared to other CAD resellers.”
Tom Herb
Manager, Corporate Documentation Group

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