Wanzl shortens research and design times for the development of a new shopping cart by more than 2 hours with PARTsolutions

Wanzl is the global leader with its bestselling shopping cart – over 2.5 million new carts are placed on the market annually and provide for every service needed in numerous variations. The topics "to present and transport" are paramount for the Wanzl Metallwarenfabrik GmbH as the manufacturer of shopping carts and baskets, shelf systems, etc.: To expand its position as a leader of innovation for convenient shopping and selling, the company makes use of the Strategic Parts Management PARTsolutions of CADENAS GmbH at four locations in Germany and the Czech Republic. PARTsolutions offers the engineers and designers of the Wanzl product development central access to manufacturer catalogs with intelligent 3D CAD engineering data and thus minimizes unnecessary research and design times for the whole development of a new shopping cart by more than two hours. By labeling preferred parts, the CADENAS software solution also reduces the diversity of parts in the company.

Streamlined design process accelerates product development

Since 2015, the Strategic Parts Management PARTsolutions has been the central tool in Wanzl product development for the access to 3D CAD engineering data from more than 700 manufacturer catalogs. Parts management enables design engineers to find the components they are searching for quickly and easily, to configure them with just a few clicks and then integrate directly into the SOLIDWORKS CAD system. "The wide variety of manufacturer catalogs in PARTsolutions convinced us. All major standard parts suppliers important for us are represented with their products, which we frequently use," says Dirk Webert, Head of Technology and Development at Wanzl. "The download of 3D engineering data in the form of clear 3D PDF data sheets from manufacturer catalogs also gives us high added value. The fact that the data sheet does not have to additionally be requested from the manufacturer saves a lot of time.

Avoiding the new creation of components & limiting diversity of parts

Although access to intelligent engineering data of various manufacturers is easy, it’s important not to create too many unnecessary or even duplicate components within the company, as this could bring about extensive costs over the entire life cycle. PARTsolutions makes a defined process for newly creating components possible for Wanzl, which have not yet been used in the company.

The various catalogs and components are shown with the help of a traffic light system. A sensible selection of available components are displayed in PARTsolutions for Wanzl’s engineers and designers, defined beforehand by Purchasing. So-called preferred parts, which are to be used by Product Development, are marked by a green bullet. Catalogs and components shown in red, on the other hand, are not to be used by Product Development. The marking is visible for all Wanzl sites with PARTsolutions working stations.

PARTsolutions is planned for further subsidiaries

In order to optimize product development worldwide, further Wanzl sites in Europe, USA and China are to have access to the CADENAS Strategic Parts Management in the near future. "As soon as new design engineers are hired by Wanzl, they will automatically receive access to PARTsolutions regardless of his location," according to Carsten Glogger and Ralf Müller, both CAD / PDM administrators at Wanzl. Furthermore, the company has the goal of extensively using the intelligent search methods of PARTsolutions, such as the Geometric Similarity Search GEOsearch, thus avoiding the creation of any more duplicates and further consolidating the diversity of parts.

The entire user report by Wanzl and CADENAS can be found at: www.cadenas.de/partsolutions/customers/success-stories