A six seat 3D CAD pilot at Molex has grown into a global product development platform with nearly 400 licences of Designer Modeling used globally across dozens of countries.

CoCreate Software has announced a 10% expansion of the CoCreate product development platform at Molex to accommodate engineering growth. This major expansion also marks Molex's 10-year anniversary of standardising on CoCreate's product development suite. In that time, a six seat 3D CAD pilot has grown into a global product development platform with nearly 400 licences of Designer Modeling used globally across dozens of countries.

What was initially a better approach to 3D design is now an integral part of Molex's business process of product lifecycle management (PLM).

Since standardising on CoCreate, hundreds of new products have been designed using the full OneSpace product suite of 3D CAD, add-on design modules, integrated data management and collaboration.

History-free Dynamic Modeling sets CoCreate's product development platform apart from the noisy CAD/PLM marketplace.

This radically different approach to 3D design introduces advantages for fast and flexible product development, enabling companies to rapidly introduce new products to market.

These attributes are highly valued for products with short development cycles and intense time to market pressures, characteristics often found within the electronics industry.

Benefits cited include: faster design creation and modification with Dynamic Modeling's freedom to design; quicker turnaround on tool design and fabrication with OneSpace.net; and fast ramp-up - Designer Modeling is easier to learn and use, which has proven to be highly valuable in rapidly growing regions such as Asia where new users are trained within 3 days.

CoCreate's design data management solution has provided some of the most significant benefits allowing Molex to effectively leverage product information throughout the company.

In addition to promoting design reuse, the single global database is a core back office system to its product website providing key up-to-date information about products to customers.

Meanwhile, distributed file servers automatically synchronise in the background to deliver up-to-date information to product development teams at all locations.

When development issues surface, engineering teams hold online design reviews and bring together team members from across the globe to resolve problems and share ideas.

Molex displays the enterprise scalability of CoCreate's product suite.

Following a single system vision, CoCreate delivers full capabilities to create, manage and collaborate on engineering data across the world.

Global licensing maximises Molex's software investment as workers from all regions pull from a single licence pool.

As the sun sets on one region and another comes online, licenses travel the world and create opportunities for 24 hour utilisation.

CoCreate's global deployment model not only delivers a robust and reliable development network, but also economies of scale.

'We have been able to provide our global engineering community with a unique and effective engineering toolset very cost effectively'.

said John Koester technical systems manager, Molex corporate development group.

Molex's view of development extends far beyond the design team to include the entire business process of developing and manufacturing products.

By recognising PLM as a process, Molex works to identify bottlenecks and gaps in the flow of information within the company as ideas are turned into physical products.

As example, Molex recognises opportunities to create stronger connections between the engineering and manufacturing processes, such as managing electronic change orders between CoCreate and SAP.

While CoCreate's data management product manages the highly iterative and chaotic process of design, SAP manages the manufacturing process.

Seamless transitions and exchanges between the two environments helps to further streamline the business process, eliminating hidden costs and speeding the overall development cycle.

'We are pleased that Molex has embraced CoCreate's world-class product development software and taken the strategic step to integrate design data with systems throughout the enterprise'.

'Sharing design information with teams outside engineering is critical to achieving product lifecycle management'.

'CoCreate's 3rd generation PLM approach delivers a low deployment cost, high value, and quick implementation time', said William M Gascoigne, CoCreate CEO.

'Molex's enterprise implementation of the OneSpace product suite exemplifies that PLM can be both cost effective and scalable'.