Speeding the Delivery of Next-Generation Printers With a Dedicated PLM

About the Company

Kornit Digital is the global leader in on-demand sustainable fashion production, empowering textile manufacturers and brands to produce only what they sell, at the touch of a button. By eliminating preparation time and maximizing production uptime, Kornit’s digital textile printing solutions create new opportunities for revenue, ensure profitability from orders large and small, shrink carbon footprint, and mitigate vulnerability to sudden shifts in market dynamics.

AT A GLANCE

SYSTEM USED

Arena PLM

Best Thing About Arena

Serves as a single source of product truth for managing BOMs, items, and engineering changes

Bottom-Line Impact

Saves Kornit considerable time in implementing design changes and getting products through to production

Key Benefits

Eliminates costly IT overhead and maintenance expenses with cloud-native architecture
Keeps product teams and partners on the same page, minimizing design and production errors
Provides secure platform for contract manufacturers and suppliers to access critical product information
Reduces engineering change order (ECO) cycle times
Integrates seamlessly with OrCAD, SOLIDWORKS, and Oracle Fusion ERP through prebuilt apps and industry-standard APIs
Speeds the compilation of RoHS, REACH, and conflict minerals compliance documentation
Ensures smooth PLM implementation with dedicated support from solution consultants and success coaches

BUSINESS CHALLENGES

Kornit’s printing solutions are built from bills of materials (BOMs) with thousands of intricate parts and assemblies. The company relies on several suppliers and contract manufacturers to ensure that their products are manufactured to the highest quality standards. Lacking a real product lifecycle management (PLM) solution, Kornit found it challenging to manage their products’ growing complexity.

Early on, Kornit leveraged the Product Data solution within Oracle Fusion ERP to manage product information. Due to its limited PLM functionality, the company could not maintain full control of their BOMs and efficiently execute engineering changes. Email correspondence with supply chain partners created information silos that led to bottlenecks in the product development process.

Consequently, Kornit sought out a dedicated Cloud PLM solution that could connect to their existing ERP system while filling these product development gaps. After evaluating Arena, Siemens Teamcenter, and Dassault 3DEXPERIENCE platforms, they selected Arena PLM.

Photo-Direct to Fabric Printing for Streetwear

Blue quote mark

We chose Arena because it provided the greatest value for our investment. The pricing was competitive, and it was the best fit for us in terms of scalability and PLM functionality. We also liked that Arena’s cloud-native platform eliminated the need for costly IT overhead and maintenance.”

—Liran Vaintrov, PLM Business Analyst, Kornit Digital

THE SOLUTION

Arena PLM provides a single source of truth for Kornit’s product teams and supply chain partners to access the entire product record comprised of drawings, BOMs, sourcing information, and more. Automated ECO review and approval routings enable Kornit to release changes fast. Since engineering changes link directly to BOMs, items, and drawings, everyone always has access to accurate and current information.

Using Arena’s role-based access polices, Kornit can invite supply chain partners to participate in formal ECO reviews and exchange information without compromising their IP. This fosters more collaborative design reviews and enhances teamwide visibility to quickly resolve issues.

Arena’s industry-standard RESTful APIs and prebuilt apps enable Kornit to seamlessly integrate Arena PLM with upstream and downstream systems to enhance their product development workflows

RESULTS

With dedicated support from Arena solution consultants and success coaches, Kornit successfully deployed Arena PLM. “Thanks to Arena’s user-friendly interface, our organization has fully embraced the system,” stated Liran Vaintrov, PLM Business Analyst at Kornit Digital.

With access to revision-controlled items and BOMs in Arena, Kornit’s product teams and partners stay aligned on the latest designs, thus minimizing errors and production delays.
Leveraging Arena’s CADTALK connection, Kornit integrated Arena PLM with their engineering design system, SOLIDWORKS. They also used Arena’s prebuilt app to facilitate a bi-directional integration between Arena PLM and the OrCAD component database. Furthermore, Kornit integrated their ERP system, Oracle Fusion, with Arena PLM. These integrations ensure a smooth handoff of information between engineering and production teams.
Through Arena’s chat function, Scribe, engineering teams gather input from key stakeholders to initiate formal engineering change requests (ECRs) and ECOs. Kornit’s contract manufacturers and suppliers now regularly participate in the ECO approval process. They also fill in critical design and sourcing information directly in Arena. “Since implementing Arena, we’ve reduced our ECO cycle time. Our suppliers appreciate the ability to review and retrieve information directly from a single, trusted source. We are no longer held back by manual or siloed processes,” added Liran Vaintrov.
Arena’s Supplier Item Lookup feature enables Kornit to quickly search component market availability and verify compliance with regulations like REACH, RoHS, and conflict minerals.

Looking ahead, the company plans to fully leverage Arena’s Automations and Analytics capabilities to further expedite change and quality processes and monitor their performance.

Overall, Kornit has enhanced supply chain collaboration, reduced errors, and increased operational efficiency since adopting Arena. With the implementation of a transparent product record, Kornit can now speed the delivery of next-generation printers that transform the world of fashion.