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CADVenture Success Story – Simonton Windows

Founded as a family business in 1946, Simonton Windows has grown over the years into one of the biggest and most respected vinyl window companies in the United States. Headquartered in Parkersburg, West Virginia, Simonton manufactures many distinct lines of vinyl replacement and new construction windows and patio doors at eight state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities located across the country. In addition to products that bear the Simonton name, the company manufactures numerous private label window and door lines through licensing agreements with national home improvement experts, such as Owens Corning. Every Simonton product is engineered for superior performance, thermal efficiency and long-lasting beauty.

Transitioning to 3D to Support Innovation in New Product Development

The Challenge

Simonton Windows has grown into one of the leading American window manufacturers, with sales exceeding $300 million annually, through its commitment to operational excellence and delivering the highest quality products in its industry. To maintain and grow its market position, Simonton recently launched a strategic five-year initiative to revamp its product development organization with the goals of accelerating its product design cycles, developing greater numbers of new products, and leading the industry in innovation in window design. To achieve these objectives, the company realized it needed to upgrade its existing 2D CAD tools to take advantage of the benefits of 3D solid modeling — including faster times to market; improved visualization, simulation, and design analysis capabilities, increased agility and design flexibility, and engineering and manufacturing cost reductions. For assistance in transitioning to a new 3D design environment, Simonton turned to CADVenture and the SolidWorks solid modeling system.

The Solution

Simonton evaluated a number of 3D CAD packages and value-added resellers (VARs), analyzing potential solutions against 15 design criteria to determine which solution best met the company’s immediate and long-term needs, before selecting CADVenture and the SolidWorks 3D modeling package. John Mitchell, Director of the Simonton Product Development Center, says the choice had as much to do with the partner providing the software as the CAD system itself. “A tool’s only as good as the people who support it. When we faced the decision on selecting which 3D CAD system we would transition to, the quality of our VAR, CADVenture, became the determining factor,” Mitchell says.

Unlike some CAD resellers that are not involved in a design platform transition beyond the actual software purchase, CADVenture helped Simonton to audit its design processes and develop an effective plan for moving from 2D to 3D for product design. “What we wanted was a detailed implementation plan that addressed all of the issues related to transitioning to 3D CAD, including the implementation, training, and support services that are critical to making the change successful,” Mitchell recalls. “CADVenture helped us to develop an effective plan for implementing SolidWorks, including two rounds of training, so we could hit the ground running. CADVenture played a major role in making our transition from 2D to 3D a success.”

Ed Heck, a Simonton product engineer, concurs. “CADVenture does a whole lot more than most resellers in helping to implement their solution. Software is software. What will make or break you is VAR support. The quality of a VAR is a crucial part of the software evaluation, and CADVenture is helping us to achieve our big-picture vision of becoming the leading innovator and deployer of new product development technology in our industry.”

In addition to providing services to support the Simonton CAD transition, CADVenture is also helping the company incorporate structural, thermal, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis capabilities through the SolidWorks Simulation Software family of design analysis products.

The Results

According to Mitchell, CADVenture is helping Simonton to achieve its goal of becoming the leanest, fastest, most innovative product development and manufacturing organization in its industry. “We want to grow the company exponentially,” Mitchell explains. “To do so, we need to leverage technology to facilitate a complete culture change in product development. We have established some ambitious productivity flags that we need to eclipse to achieve our goals. CADVenture’s services and support are key elements in helping us to shake up the industry and grow Simonton at a rapid pace.”

Specifically, CADVenture’s assistance in helping Simonton transition from 2D design to 3D solid modeling is helping the company to reduce product design cycle times from two years to 10 months, increase the introduction of new products from one annually to three per quarter, shorten the engineering change process to less than three weeks, break new ground in window design, and improve design communication, both internally and with external vendors and suppliers.

“We’re really starting to build some momentum,” Mitchell notes. “The folks at CADVenture are doing a good job.”·      

  • Reduced design cycles by 60 percent.
  • Shortened engineering change process to less than three weeks.
  • Increased new product introductions from one to 12 per year.
  • Sparked innovation in new product development.
  • Improved internal/external design communication.

Simonton Windows
P.O. Box 1646
Parkersburg, WV 26102-1646
Phone: 800-746-6687
www.simonton.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.



"A tool’s only as good as the people who support it. When we faced the decision on selecting which 3D CAD system we would transition to, the quality of our VAR, CADVenture, became the determining factor.”

John Mitchell
Director of the Product Development Center

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