Meet Nortek

Highstage has completely transformed our workflow

Highstage has significantly enhanced production efficiency while minimising errors. Thanks to the persistent links that consistently display up-to-date revisions of drawings and production documents, Highstage has brought about a singular, reliable source of truth. Additionally, we value the, ensuring engineering, production and purchasing teams can all access the right information.

Christopher Grinde

Director of Development

Christophers thoughts about Highstage

Starting from scratch with a PLM implementation

"Getting our PLM system up and running was quite a challenge. We had to figure out how to arrange information that was scattered across different computer drives. Data had to be sorted based on the products we make.

Surprisingly, mapping out our internal work procedures took much more time than actually setting up the PLM system. But in a way, the Highstage implementation encouraged us to do this work more efficiently. And we received very good support from Nordcad during the implementation."

Effective document management

"We are very pleased with the features offered by the Document module. At present, we have several hundred documents in various stages of approval. While some still create documents on their individual computers, we are gradually fostering a culture where documents are directly generated within Highstage automatically, using the correct templates.

One particularly valuable feature is the ability to link a document with multiple parts, rather than storing it in a single folder. This interconnected approach enhances our document management significantly."

Minimizing mistakes

"The most significant difference since using Highstage? Now, our team members no longer keep individual copies of drawings on their computers; instead, we have a single, reliable source of information.

This means we can manufacture our products based on the correct drawing and the right revision. In the past, there were occasional errors.

With Highstage, our change process has also become smoother, resulting in fewer errors. Highstage has inspired our entire organisation to become more focused on processes and to establish clear work methods."

From spreadsheets to integration: a game changer for production criteria

“In my opinion, the most powerful aspect of Highstage is its ability to connect with other systems. For instance, we've started integrating it with our production software.

In Highstage, we've added fields that display acceptance criteria for the sensors we manufacture. Currently this information is in an Excel file, but as we input more data into Highstage, we'll stop using the spreadsheet and access the information directly from Highstage. This is a completely new possibility for us: we can now introduce revision control for our production criteria.

All this is thanks to Highstage's customised search feature that simplifies data access. We can create our own searches for the Highstage database and easily convert them into standard formats like JSON and XML. This allows us to easily retrieve the data from other software. "

The magic of persistent links

“We started off with another PLM tool, but it lacked some functionality - for example, the persistent URL links that Highstage is offering. This concept is very important for us: we want the production team to be able to always use the same link for the latest approved revision. With the link being persistent, meaning the URL is constant but it always points to the latest approved revision, there is no need to update links when revisions change.

Implementing Highstage has reduced errors work can be done faster as we don’t have to spend time updating links. Persistent links are also very useful when integrating with ERP and other systems."

Should you start with PLM or ERP?

We often hear companies ponder whether to wait until their ERP implementation is complete before starting with PLM. Christopher Grinde has an interesting experience to share:

"During our Highstage PLM implementation, we developed solutions and data fields that now have been set up in our ERP system as well. So, the PLM effort actually made our team see the possibilities start using inactive parts of our ERP system which suddenly made sense. This was quite a surprise."

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