LexxPluss, Inc. is so much more than a robotics company! Their products enable the greatest element of the customer experience we all expect when we buy from our favorite online retailer – next-day delivery!
Launched in March 2020, and based in Kawasaki, Japan, the company produces an automated logistics solution known as the Hybrid-AMR. It uses both AMR and AGV modes to seamlessly work alongside people in warehouses and factories. The Hybrid-AMR delivers a variety of trolleys and roll cages full of your favorite products to where they need to be in the warehouse, quickly, reliably, and safely.
And they do it with OpenBOM.
But it wasn’t always that easy.
“Recently (early 2023) we were faced with an unexpected, and very real, risk to production, the announced end-of-life of GrabCAD Workbench, the data manager and repository of all our product designs”, says Leo Horsman, the company’s Mechatronic Engineer.
LexxPluss, Inc., had to act quickly to find, test, and deploy a functional GrabCAD Workbench replacement while maintaining their engineering and manufacturing pace and minimizing interruption.
The folks on Reddit provided Leo with a list of GrabCAD alternatives as a starting point.
“We relied on recommendations from others in our network to reduce the list to a few candidates”, he says, “then began the process of qualifying each.”
“The usual concerns came to the top: cost, features, support, reputation in the industry”. He goes on to say, “But mostly, we had to do this live and in real-time and without interruption, so ease of implementation and limiting downtime topped the list.”
“OpenBOM was the only alternative that covered all the bases.”
“We liked how easy it was to get a free trial online for testing”, he says. “We had a few configuration questions that the OpenBOM support team quickly resolved for us.”
After deciding on OpenBOM, according to Leo, the go-live process could not have been easier.
“I copied out all our GrabCAD data to the C: drive, then in one operation, I used the Windows drag-n-drop to copy all our data to OpenBOM Drive.”
“Next, I sent out a message to my team that GrabCAD was turned off and all our engineers switched to OpenBOM Drive.”
“It was that easy.”
“Of course, OpenBOM provides more governance and control than GrabCAD so it took a few minutes to get the hang of data manager functions like check-in, check-out but it went quickly since it’s all familiar Windows Explorer menus and the Solidworks integration puts the commands right on the Solidworks toolbar.”
“We also quickly discovered how easy it was to manage projects using the Share function, giving folders the desired permissions to control access.”
LexxPluss also likes the reliability that OpenBOM Drive provides.
“If you use GrabCAD on a team, you know that the last person to save wins, and it’s easy to overwrite and lose changes made by a colleague, that just does not happen with OpenBOM.”
“As a company, LexxPluss solves a painful problem for our customers, removing uncertainty in the logistic workforce.”
“OpenBOM does much the same for us – reducing uncertainty and increasing reliability. We love how we can see a history of changes, who did what and when, AND know that work will never be overwritten by another designer.”
“The migration to OpenBOM was so easy, we had no downtime at all.”
LexxPluss is discovering that OpenBOM has more to offer than just a better GrabCAD.
“We like how OpenBOM guides us in some BOM best practices. While we came to OpenBOM initially to replace GrabCAD we are learning it has so much more to offer.”
“As a young team, we did not have a lot of PDM experience, OpenBOM helped us think about our design activity in terms of a business process while keeping the familiar Windows UI and Solidworks integration we have come to rely on.”
“I definitely recommend OpenBOM Drive to any company looking to replace GrabCAD.”
I asked Leo what he liked most about OpenBOM. His reply was, “We no longer have to constantly ask our colleagues to constantly upload and download their data as we did with GrabCAD. Now that I hit Ctrl+S, my fellow engineers can see the latest version of my CAD. We love that!”
To learn more about LexxPluss, Inc. please visit www.lexxpluss.com
To learn more about OpenBOM, please visit www.openbomcom
Editors Note: You may also enjoy Leo’s detailed G2 review of OpenBOM here:
https://www.g2.com/products/openbom/reviews#survey-response-7842075
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