Collaborating with vendors using Unifize
Michael elaborates on Harmonic Bionics' systematic approach to documenting design outputs, emphasizing their reliance on definitive documents such as step files and PDFs. He offers a peek into his daily routine, which frequently involves addressing quality notifications on Unifize, collaborating with vendors, and updating specifications. Through his narrative, the importance of Unifize in streamlining vendor interactions and ensuring accurate design documentation becomes evident.
Transcript

00:00 - 00:26
So at Harmonic Bionics, we follow a system where we document our design outputs. So the file that we would send to our vendors is a step file or a PDF or some immutable document that captures a snapshot and the design of the robot that is reviewed and released and entered into Unifize my day to day workflow will usually start with me.



00:26 - 00:56
You know, maybe looking at a quality notification on Unifize saying that, hey, we should update maybe our cosmetic finishes standard and maybe I sit down, discuss the vendors over the phone, come to an agreement and update a print in SolidWorks that calls out a new specification. I'll make a commit to our version control software, get my commit number, and I will create my export files, my step in my PDF and those together we'll go on to a change order that I've created on Unifize.



00:57 - 01:15
That change order will get released and those parts will be live in our system. Our purchaser can go in, download those parts from Unifize. He knows that it's the same file that I was working on earlier that day and he knows that if he sends it to that vendor, that that's the print. The changes that we talked about that day are going to be on there.



01:15 - 01:27
So it's very versatile. You know, everybody has access to the data. There's no, you know, gates or, you know, blocks that could prevent somebody from getting to the information that they need. And it's easy to use.



01:27 - 01:36
So we have a I guess you call it a sub process for parts in Unifize where we specify a revision for those parts.



01:36 - 02:03
So let's say my purchaser needs to go in and look at, you know, the version of part before I made that print update to see if, you know, maybe our parts are going to look differently. If they came in on an old video, he can look at the old version of the part that we have stored in there, and he'll still have all of that product, the product definition, the step file, the PDF stored in there, that's available for for them to look at.



02:03 - 02:30
So the way we handle it is we have the and I actually don't know if this is something that Unifize does by default or if this is the way we've configured ours. But the default process for displaying our provisions is to only display the most recent version. If you were to go do a search for that part number and then you would open up a submenu to access the previous revisions, only the most recent revision would be marked as active.



02:30 - 02:36
It would have a status. All previous versions, I believe, would be marked as obsolete.

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Transcript

But what we've known from what I experience was, is we were able to get there with the system. We still there with the system. The system has what is needed to provide us what we're looking for, because every company, admittedly, is trying to get compliant. If we educate people, if we get people the education that they need and to get over the fear factor, I think 90% of those things can be resolved because most people will go to what they're most familiar with.What I worked with from a different company, but they're not willing to sit down and look at what the demographics are saying. People are into social media now. People are moving fast into fast paced world. But technologies are still antiquated. So there's a disconnect here, right? So while we're moving at a fast pace at home with dragging at work, so why can't we continue that speed while we at work?If your supplier has issues and you're not informed on time, you want to have an alternate supplier in place. If your suppliers are not qualified, you may not know that that needs to happen. And so when you have an integrated system that speaks to itself and is giving you all this data, you literally have the pulse of the organization in your hands as an executive at a money bound access.

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