Korg Italy tunes up with think3 PLM

Think3 and Korg Italy, part of the Japanese group Korg Inc., a producer of electronic keyboards and musical instruments, have extended their partnership to enable a new PLM project.

The collaboration between think3 and Korg Italy dates back to 1997 when think3 guided Korg Italy through the changeover from 2D to 3D. To optimise its entire product development process and part management procedures, Korg Italy has chosen think3’s product lifecycle management solution.

Korg Italy Spa designs and manufactures high-tech musical instruments such as digital pianos and home keyboards. KORG Italy is the group’s European research and development centre. The company combines innovation and advanced technology with the solid Italian tradition of design and musical instrument making.

The collaboration between think3 and Korg Italy dates back to 1997 when think3 guided Korg Italy through the changeover from 2D to 3D. This development brought considerable benefits in the product development cycle.
Recently, Korg Italy has extended the partnership with think3 for a new PLM project. A Korg product has between three hundred and one thousand components, some commercial, some customized. The company wanted to optimise its entire product development process and part management procedures.

“We were looking for a flexible, easy-to-use solution which permitted the management of the numerous components comprising a Korg product. At the same time the solution had to enable the management of parallel projects and the sharing of updated information both in-house and with our outside suppliers” says Franco Ripa, Hardware Development Manager at Korg Italy.
To do this, Korg Italy implemented the thinkteam suite for product data management and webteam, the web interface for thinkteam. The solution proposed by think3 benefited the organisation of the entire process and at the same time opened the way for Korg Italy towards globalisation.

Korg Italy uses webteam to manage its spare parts service. This module is a winner with distributors because they can make orders in real time: the reseller sees the object, places it in the trolley with the price clearly shown and the order is processed automatically at Korg. Previously the spare parts service was managed by three people. Now, it only requires one.

“We are currently working on a new phase of the PLM project – the exchange of parts lists with China”, explains Ripa. Korg has had two production facilities in China for several years. Product engineering is done in Italy while China handles the production side. “Our objective,” continues Ripa “is to ensure that our parts list is automatically present on the Chinese management system. This will enable considerable savings in the time and resources needed to manage the lists. At present we transfer the lists manually on Excel spreadsheets which take a considerable time to draft and check. We also hope to reduce the amount of human error present in the current system. Webteam will enable the various offices of Korg world-wide to access this information in real time.”

Put briefly, the implementation of these think3 solutions has brought the following benefits: more efficient collaboration between the company departments involved in the product development process thanks to the sharing of continuously updated information; a more straightforward, efficient change management process based on automatic communications between the company departments involved; more efficient supplier relations management thanks to equal electronic access to technical documents via Webteam; elimination of manual processes; reduction in production errors; reduction in document retrieval times.