Amphenol-Tuchel Electronics finds key to global product development

The Amphenol Corporation is one of the largest manufacturers of interconnect products in the world. Amphenol-Tuchel Electronics is one of more than 70 independent operations within the corporation specialized on Automotive, Industrial, Mobile and Smart Card Connectors. “Our geographically dispersed product development teams needed a collaboration tool to co-design high-quality products in short time frames,” said Dr. Christian Pohl, Engineering/Marketing manager for Industrial and Smart Card Products at Amphenol-Tuchel Electronics.

The company uses CoCreate’s collaborative product lifecycle management (PLM) software, OneSpace.net, mainly for online design reviews, discussions and trainings. “We upload drawings and models during a design review to discuss and agree upon,” said Dr. Pohl. “With OneSpace.net’s application sharing function, project members and customers anywhere can view models and other data from the entire spectrum of Engineering support software online.”
CoCreate built their application-sharing feature specifically for engineers so they can work with large graphic files without bogging down. “We can discuss, inspect and agree on changes during our design reviews,” said Dr. Pohl. Since all project members are present during an online meeting, decisions can be made fast so that the product development cycles progress quickly.

Ad hoc meetings quickly clarify issues, thus reducing idle time. “We don’t have to wait for people traveling around the world or rely on email communication to resolve issues,” said Dr. Pohl. “We just start OneSpace.net.”

Dr. Pohl considers OneSpace.net extremely easy to use. “Most people adopt the software right away; it’s easy to use even for those who don’t work with it regularly,” said Dr. Pohl. The software even makes it easy to invite team members and guests to online meetings as well as manage deadlines.

“As a result, product development is more accurate, moves faster and costs less,” said Dr. Pohl.

Amphenol-Tuchel Electronics also uses OneSpace.net for communication with their engineering support department in its Czech plant and for international sales trainings.