DCC faced pressure to reduce spend on outsourced and fabricated parts, launching a company-wide initiative. However, data was siloed and not easily accessible, making it difficult to make informed buying decisions.

Dairy Conveyor Corporation

Since its founding in 1954, DCC Automation / Dairy Conveyor Corp.&nbsp;has become a trusted name in hygienic and performance-driven automation. The company designs and manufactures high-quality conveyor systems, robotic palletizers, custom control panels, and end-of-line packaging solutions. DCC’s Evolution Line featuring the Auto-Pack Caser, Round Bottle Caser, and Slant Caser demonstrates its commitment to precision, cleanliness, and flexibility. Each system is engineered to meet the diverse needs of today’s dairy, food, beverage, and household industries. With recent recognition such as the 2024 Rockwell Automation PartnerNetwork™ OEM Innovation Award, DCC Automation continues to redefine performance standards and drive progress across the global manufacturing landscape.Their key projects, including palletizers and casers, often involved up to 800 separate line items, resulting in a lengthy procurement process. External factors further complicated this process, making efficiency a challenge. In the modern era of supply chain disruption and complexity, DCC recognized the need to re-evaluate their procurement costs. Factors such as geopolitical relations, ongoing and upcoming tariffs, and material shortages can make previously viable purchasing strategies less sustainable, prompting a strategic re-evaluation.Unfortunately, making these new procurement strategic decisions requires a lot of experience and expertise. DCC found that the required knowledge was inadequately distributed among different teams, ending up in silos and known only by specific individuals. Existing data management structures, like ERP tools or Solidworks, made the data technically available, but not easily accessible. Different teams working in different systems had a hard time sharing insights and information.On top of this, a specific initiative in one of DCC’s branches was to consolidate suppliers based on expertise. This is a complicated procurement initiative that requires a lot of manual cross-referencing and expertise – knowing where to find categories of component parts that are similar enough, and finding the ideal quality-price tradeoff point for each category. Processes such as these, that require specific experts to track down data, slow the entire company’s progress towards their goals by taking these people away from other valuable work. The most valuable procurement experts were being stretched too thin.

Fortunately, this problem, very typical in modern procurement departments, has a modern solution: CADDi. By implementing CADDi, DCC achieved a reduction in fabricated part spend of 22%, achieving the target of their initiative.Monica Merando, Director of Purchasing at DCC discovered CADDi while researching cost reduction strategies. She searched online for tools that could help consolidate suppliers and find similarity across parts in an automated and consistent way. This searching led her to CADDi’s case studies. On the first introduction call, Monica illustrated that her company relied on vendors to provide non-standard cost guidance for a wide variety of parts. This amplified the cost differential between similar parts with little rationale for the variance, leading to reduced profitability and longer lead time for full custom machines. CADDi solved these discrepancies by linking data and making it searchable.After CADDi was adopted, the process of evaluating suppliers became a far more automatic initiative, even for new employees. Junior buyers at DCC could start making more impactful decisions without relying on the expertise of a few people. Monica Merando, Director of Purchasing, used to personally review each print and recommend a supplier. With CADDi, she can focus on more value-added tasks, spending less time on answering questions and tracking down data.And after a year of working with CADDi, cost optimization has been even more significant. By using CADDi to extract material information from drawings and generate reports, Monica can group parts and make requests from vendors in a way that minimizes the required sheet metal, leading to less scrap and lower costs. Compared to her total spend in 2024, she was able to reduce total spend in 2025 by 49% – an especially impressive accomplishment considering that machine build volume was 65% higher in 2025 compared to 2024. <h5 class="">"By using CADDi Drawer, I have reduced my workflow time by over 80%- what once took an entire week can now be completed in a single afternoon, giving me more time to focus on other projects."</h5><h6 class="">- Monica Merando, Director of Purchasing</h6> This massive unlock in efficiency reduces the time it takes to onboard new people into the procurement department. Katrina, a junior member of the procurement team, has already made over 702 keyword searches with CADDi. Each of these searches would ordinarily require digging through ERP systems manually, with each search taking an order of magnitude longer. A search process that would have taken 40 hours before now takes only 4.After a year of working with CADDi, the procurement team’s search efficiency has only increased. Monica estimates that roughly 12000 searches were required to procure parts for the year’s operations. CADDi has reduced the time of each search by 98%, saving a total of almost 600 working hours for the team. <h5 class="">"It makes my life so much easier, I can sit at my desk and look at CADDi instead of running around with a tape measure."</h5><h6 class="">- Danny Harris, Expediter</h6>

CADDi achieves these goals by connecting data across tools and silos, and surfacing it with more intuitive searches. It functions as a <a href="https://us.caddi.com/resources/insights/manufacturing-data-lake" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="">data lake</a>, taking data from all sources and connecting it. DCC uses this to find past order pricing, quality data, and design data for any given part simultaneously, rather than requiring manual cross-referencing.For example, here’s a common task that was vastly accelerated by CADDi. Monica needs to proactively negotiate with suppliers to ensure optimal profitability. This required surfacing and comparing hundreds of individual orders for each project, an exercise that would typically take five business days. With CADDi, Monica can now just paste a list of IDs into the advanced search function and instantly get a CSV file with all of the old order information. She could skip immediately to the analysis and evaluation stage, reducing this exercise from a whole business week to a few hours. With the time she saved on information gathering, she was able to implement a brand-new inventory barcode system. Automating low-value tedious tasks led to compounding efficiency and accelerating high-value additions.Other high-value tasks that can be difficult to focus on proactively can be unlocked with CADDi. Supplier consolidation becomes far easier. Using cutting-edge machine vision technology, CADDi can automatically group together similar parts using the design of the part itself. You can search with one part drawing to find all the other similar part drawings in your system. <img src="https://cdn.builder.io/api/v1/image/assets%2F209ee507cedf4c298e100edae4bba2df%2Ffa9042ef947b43aaac10e22af9c60921?format=webp" class="" alt="CADDi Drawer screenshot showing a technical drawing of a bearing part with dimensions, its purchase records and sales orders with prices, basic info such as drawing number, customer and material, and a grid of similar drawings on the right."> When DCC launched their initiative to consolidate suppliers for their caser production in Minnesota, they first needed to understand which components were currently coming from each supplier. That is, they needed to know which suppliers were providing wheels, which were providing housings, etc. and what prices each supplier was quoting for each type of part. Before CADDi, this would be an extremely time consuming task, requiring a lot of expert judgment. There would be no way to simply search for “housing” or “wheel”. It would require manual sorting to categorize correctly.DCC implemented CADDi in their initiative for supplier consolidation in caser production. This allowed them to categorize parts into these categories automatically, just by the components of the drawing. CADDi also automatically surfaces all of the relevant information for each part to decide on supplier – previous costs, quality data, design revisions, and more. <h5 class="">"By digitizing and organizing our design data, CADDi enables us to improve team collaboration across sites and streamline the procurement process.</h5><h5 class="">This partnership positions us to more effectively manage costs and elevate our efficiency across the board."</h5><h6 class="">- Monica Merando, Director of Purchasing</h6> ‍Procurement will likely only increase in complexity as tariffs and shortages complicate existing plans. With CADDi, DCC has the fast and consistent access to data required to make the right changes, fast.Monica is excited to continue implementing CADDi across DCC. By integrating it into engineering and aftermarket teams, and adopting the new CADDi Quote, she anticipates even more success in improved efficiency and cost reduction.

CADDi allows knowledge to be shared across all departments, searchable without requiring specific expertise. Data that used to take a whole afternoon to track down can now be found in minutes. Major opportunities for cost savings were discovered through analysis in CADDi.

Driving company-wide cost savings at DCC with CADDi

Accessing drawings, BOMs, and historical data required exact part numbers and a heavy reliance on the "tribal knowledge" of senior staff. This created significant information silos that slowed down onboarding and daily operations for the entire team.

Nichirin

Today, any team member can instantly retrieve drawings, BOM data, and necessary historical information using keywords or similarity search, without relying on drawing numbers or individual experience. Information that was once concentrated among a few veteran engineers is now broadly accessible across departments.This shift has significantly improved the onboarding process. New team members can locate technical specifications and past customer relationships without prior context. In the past, new employees frequently relied on managers to identify relevant data—an approach that was time-consuming for both trainers and trainees. Today, many of these tasks are handled independently.

As a result, Nichirin has significantly reduced the time required to search for information, directly improving quoting turnaround and allowing a focus on higher-value tasks. More importantly, the project is fostering a cultural shift: instead of immediately relying on supervisors, employees are encouraged to first search within CADDi, think independently, and take ownership of their work.

By linking drawings, BOM data, quotations, and control cards, the company is ensuring that every department can use CADDi as their single source of truth, turning individual expertise into shared organizational strength. Building on this success, Nichirin is now expanding the initiative to Nichirin Flex USA, spanning manufacturing facilities in El Paso and Mexico.Nichirin’s initiative demonstrates how digital transformation begins with people—with the willingness to rethink existing workflows and the determination to turn individual knowledge into shared organizational strength. As the company continues to scale this model across its global operations, it is setting a strong example of how to build a truly connected, data-driven manufacturing organization.

Any team member can now instantly retrieve drawings and related technical or commercial data via keywords or similarity search, regardless of tenure. This has democratized information, enabling independent work and turning individual expertise into a shared organizational asset.

Democratizing knowledge to empower independence with Nichirin Tennessee

As the company expanded quickly, the large workload overwhelmed the staff and negatively impacted work quality. The team had minimal dissemination of knowledge, and their manual effort to analyze drawings at scale failed.

Kawasaki Robotic Industries

Ono Takushi

Sakai Koichi

Hayashi Kazuki

‍Kawasaki Robotics, a comprehensive engineering manufacturer, operates in a wide range of businesses, including ships, railway vehicles, motorcycles, industrial plants, precision machinery, and robots. In 1968, Kawasaki Robotics developed and began manufacturing the first domestically produced industrial robot in Japan, establishing itself as a pioneer in Japan's industrial robot sector. The Robot Division of the Precision Machinery &amp; Robot Company, which is the core of the robot business, has been engaged in the development, design, manufacturing, and sales of various industrial robots for industries such as the automotive and semiconductor sectors. In recent years, the company has also ventured into medical robots for surgical assistance. As the robot market has grown, the sales scale of the Robot Division has expanded annually, with a target to quadruple the current sales by 2030 as part of the Group Vision 2030. With the expansion of sales and the organization, the Robot Division faced various challenges. One of the major issues was the need to improve productivity per employee in response to business growth. The allocation of personnel could not keep up with the business expansion, resulting in a continuous increase in the workload for each employee. In such a situation, standardizing knowledge and promoting horizontal dissemination were often delayed, leading to increased dependence on individual employees. The dependence on individuals caused various problems in operations. For instance, in the design department, the lack of utilization of past knowledge led to significant differences in design outcomes among designers. Similarly, in the procurement department, there were disparities in procurement prices and quotations depending on the buyer, resulting in inconsistencies in work quality. To address these issues, the Robot Division began various initiatives, such as trying to standardize operations by creating manuals. In the procurement department, a system was internally developed using Excel to calculate reasonable costs by inputting information from drawings. Takushi Ono"When creating the system, we categorized representative drawings into product groups such as sheet metal parts, machined parts, and purchased parts, and grouped similar items. We then extracted parameters that affect prices, such as shape characteristics, materials, and processing methods, from these drawings. Based on this, we developed a calculation algorithm. The system was created by about seven or eight people. Each person reviewed around 1,000 to 2,000 drawings, so in total, we reviewed approximately 10,000 drawings." The system, developed over about a year, helped reduce price variations and standardize work quality, although the degree of success varied depending on the type of parts. However, as time went on, the system gradually began to encounter problems.‍

The costs of raw materials and processing, which affect the prices of parts, change over time. The system required continuous updates to these price-influencing numbers, but manually updating them became a significant burden. Additionally, the system struggled to handle complex machined parts with many input parameters, leading to a gradual narrowing of the system's usage scope. This necessitated the consideration of a new system that could be used continuously with minimal operational burden. The Robot Division, feeling the limitations of internally developed and manually operated systems, began exploring various external systems. It was during this exploration that they were introduced to CADDi Drawer, a cloud-based drawing data utilization service. CADDi Drawer had already been implemented in the vehicle design department of Kawasaki Railcar Corporation, another group company. Although they were somewhat familiar with the service, the Robot Company had initially hesitated to consider it because they envisioned its use in procurement rather than design, making it difficult to imagine the potential benefits and effects of its use. Koichi Sakai"I was attracted to the idea of 'assetizing drawing data' when I heard the explanation. There are often similar parts, but the drawing methods can differ. CADDi DRAWER's similar item search feature can mechanically detect these differences. You can link drawings to data, allowing you to refer to past unit prices while looking at the drawings. It can also extract data using OCR from drawings. We had struggled significantly with verifying similar drawings and extracting information when we were developing internally. I thought CADDi DRAWER would make such tasks much easier. <h5 class="">"CADDi DRAWER's similar item search feature can mechanically detect differences in drawing methods. You can link drawings to data, allowing you to refer to past unit prices while looking at the drawings.”‍</h5><h6 class="">- Koichi Sakai, General Manager</h6> Robots tend to have many similar products. The ability to handle and view such data with CADDi DRAWER is essential for the future. Also, I felt that with this system, even if the organization expands and new people join, they can naturally carry out their tasks." After receiving the explanation, the Robot Division conducted a trial using actual drawings they typically use and checked the usability with a project team that included both management and field members. As a result, they confirmed that they could find the desired drawings with intuitive keywords, anyone could view past similar drawings and procurement information with one click during quotations, and data collection for the integration and standardization of similar parts was easy. This allowed them to envision the actual use of the system in their operations, leading to the decision to implement it.

The preparation for implementation progressed at an astonishing speed. In the past, it took at least six months to a year to implement a system in the Robot Division, but this time the implementation was achieved in about three months. Kazuki Hayashi"The response speed was incredibly fast, allowing us to communicate without stress. When the response is quick, internal communications also proceed swiftly, creating a synergistic effect for both parties. Furthermore, CADDi's Customer Success team worked alongside us to organize the current challenges in our operations and discuss how to proceed with solving them, enabling us to move from contract to implementation at an unprecedented pace." <h5 class="">"The response speed was incredibly fast, allowing us to communicate without stress. When the response is quick, internal communications also proceed swiftly, creating a synergistic effect for both parties.”</h5><h6 class="">- Kazuki Hayashi, Procurement Section 1</h6>‍Not only during implementation, but CADDi also provides extensive support after implementation. Takushi Ono"The Customer Success support structure was very attractive. Simply introducing the tool does not lead to its adoption. It requires a lot of effort to expand it with only internal members. Many cases have ended without fully utilizing the tool. CADDi, however, does not just sell the tool; they provide solid support and help integrate it into our actual operations. The consulting-like cooperation after implementation was a significant advantage. We hope to continue working together towards achieving the business goals set out in our Group Vision 2030." <h5 class="">"CADDi provides solid support and helps integrate the tool into operations… This consulting-like cooperation was a significant advantage for achieving our Group Vision 2030."</h5><h6 class="">- Takushi Ono, Senior Staff, Procurement Department</h6>‍ Currently, the Robot Division mainly uses CADDi DRAWER in the procurement department, but they are considering expanding its use in the future. The plan is to extend its application to the design department after mastering its use in the production division responsible for procurement. Ultimately, they aim to expand its use throughout the entire company to create synergies. By leveraging CADDi DRAWER, they plan to improve production efficiency, establish a solid foundation for business operations, and achieve further business expansion.

With CADDi DRAWER, it became possible to quickly search for similar past projects and purchase records. CADDi allowed the team to establish a structure capable of handling the impending business expansion.

Operational Speed Increased, and a System for Delivering Consistent Results Was Established with CADDi

Engineers and procurement staff want to refer to past drawings when designing and procuring, but searching for drawings based on memory is time-consuming. This inefficiency cuts into the time for core tasks.

Sugino Machine

Sugino Machine is an industrial machinery manufacturer that develops, designs, manufactures, and sells equipment and technologies such as ultra-high pressure water jet cutting machines, parts cleaning machines, and small machining centers. Inheriting the founding spirit of “think for ourselves, make for ourselves, and sell and service for ourselves,” the company has been developing technologies for over 80 years, offering six “ultra-technologies” of “cutting, machining, washing, polishing, crushing, and solving.” Sugino Machine has contributed to the development of diverse industries worldwide and has received high acclaim.At Sugino Machine, there is a high occurrence of custom designs that modify standard products to meet customer requirements. During the design process, designers strive to find and utilize past drawings of parts with the same or similar shapes as much as possible. Creating new drawings not only increases design work hours but also generates additional work in other departments, such as drawing registration and processing method evaluation, leading to increased costs.<img src="https://cdn.builder.io/o/assets%2F209ee507cedf4c298e100edae4bba2df%2F6c871b889c0a4bb1b5a6e0d629df2bff?alt=media&amp;token=08f8f9e1-6635-46cb-b869-6c9c9884ec0e&amp;apiKey=209ee507cedf4c298e100edae4bba2df" alt="Sugino JCC 102 WIDE machine with its front door open, showing a multi-nozzle cleaning head positioned above a metal casting on the work table and a control panel with a screen and keypad">Even for new development projects, designers search for past drawings and use them as is if they find the same parts, or refer to how similar parts were designed. In the procurement department, it is crucial to procure at the optimal quantity, price, and timing, so they search for past drawing data to confirm procurement history and proceed with their work.However, since drawings are managed in PDF format or on paper, the only way to find them is to rely on each person’s memory or predict based on the part name, which takes a huge amount of time to search for past records.Although a drawing management system is in place, it is used to manage drawing versions and the relationships between parts depicted in drawings, such as which parts are attached to which drawings. It is difficult to search for parts with similar shapes or search based on the text written in the drawings, making it challenging to find similar drawings from the past. The time that should be spent on core tasks is being consumed by searching for drawings.

Sugino Machine, facing the challenge of “low searchability of drawing data,” learned about the drawing data utilization cloud, CADDi Drawer, while exploring solutions. By implementing CADDi Drawer, it becomes possible to display search results as a list using keywords, part numbers, or images in about 2 seconds. Considering it optimal for improving drawing search speed and reducing work hours, Sugino Machine began considering and decided to implement the system.Yasu from the Precision Machinery Division describes the implementation process: “They devised various ways to use the system, and whenever we had questions, we received answers promptly.”“When we made requests for specific features, they were fulfilled in a relatively short period. The most challenging part of starting something new is getting it to take root. This speedy response was a significant factor in our decision to implement the system.”Within about three weeks of implementation and the start of operation, Sugino Machine completed the registration of tens of thousands of drawings, enabling immediate searching and viewing of similar drawings. The accuracy of drawing searches has also improved by using functions such as multi-condition searches. In some cases, a 50% reduction in work hours has been achieved compared to before implementation.Tak from the Precision Machinery Division describes the effects and expectations after implementation:“The most important thing in establishing a system is understanding. To varying degrees, people have a status quo bias, and they will resist if a system, no matter how wonderful, is forced upon them. From now on, I believe visible effects will emerge, whether in work hours or costs. Of course, educational activities are also necessary, but when one department seems to be doing well lately, and it turns out that CADDi Drawer is one of the reasons, it should naturally lead to increased usage.”“In the procurement department and among designers, there are often cases where designers spend time on non-design tasks without even realizing it. With CADDi Drawer, they may suddenly find that their work is finished earlier than usual, creating time that can be used for other purposes.”“I hope this will lead to the development of new technologies or other advancements.”

Sugino Machine is also considering further utilization of CADDi Drawer. First, they plan to expand and establish usage in the initial implementation departments, and eventually consider expanding to other departments. By doing so, they hope to use drawings as a common communication tool and promote information sharing between departments.“When there are many types of products, the number of design departments also increases. However, we have not quite reached the point of sharing drawings between departments. On the other hand, there is only one procurement department. Drawings come from different departments, and there may actually be something similar. If we can easily search for similar drawings and view past records, we can identify the most cost-effective options. I expect CADDi Drawer to lead to such realizations.”“We can now view drawings across the company, and I hope this will trigger innovation.”Sugino Machine not only improves operational efficiency with CADDi Drawer but also transforms drawing data into an asset to drive change and continue contributing to the development of diverse industries worldwide.

Similar drawings from the past can be found immediately, significantly reducing work hours. There is anticipation that drawing data can be transformed into an asset and used as a common communication tool.

Escaping the Inefficient Cycle and Changing How Time is Spent

Data was scattered between multiple systems, requiring teams to spend time navigating file systems, requesting documents from other teams, and manually verifying relevance. This caused slowdowns in their Design, Engineering, and Quality Control teams.

Neaton

Before CADDi, engineering documentation—including drawings, D-Notes, and QA sheets—was stored across multiple shared drives and folder systems.Because Design teams rely heavily on these documents in their daily workflows, locating the correct drawings and specifications required manual navigation through folder hierarchies. This created inefficiencies in design workflows and slowed engineering coordination across teams.Engineering teams, responsible for prototype development and validation, also depended on accurate and up-to-date design information. Confirming revisions and locating Design Notes required manual effort, increasing engineering preparation time.Quality Control teams faced similar challenges when investigating service parts and troubleshooting issues, where quick access to drawings and QA sheets is essential.Neaton needed a centralized solution to improve accessibility, reduce search time, and strengthen engineering efficiency across teams.While searching for ways to overcome these roadblocks, Neaton discovered CADDi. Our data platform can pull in unstructured information from any system, from PLM and ERP software to scanned documents with handwritten notes. After centralizing it in CADDi, it becomes searchable with one click.Neaton implemented CADDi to centralize engineering documentation and enable instant access across Design, Engineering, and Quality Control teams.Neaton consolidated over 140,000 drawings, Design Notes, and related engineering documents into a unified, searchable platform in CADDi.

Design teams are the primary users of CADDi, relying on it daily to reference drawings, confirm specifications, and access related engineering documentation.CADDi enables engineers to instantly search for drawings and related documents using part numbers, keywords, and specifications. This significantly improves workflow efficiency and reduces time spent locating files. Rather than being tied to their desks, CADDi means engineers can find what they want, wherever they are.Many slowdowns in the engineering process occur from inefficient communication. Traditional systems, where information is scattered across multiple systems, often demands switching between different applications to collect and send data. CADDi smooths out these potential stopping points, becoming a universal platform for all data requests and answers."[CADDi] will reduce unnecessary communications between personnel, and communication can be handled via email. I believe this tool will improve communication," says VP of Engineering Naomi Noda.

Engineering teams use CADDi to support prototype builds, validation workflows, and engineering coordination.By providing instant access to drawings and Design Notes, CADDi enables engineers to quickly confirm revisions and reference engineering documentation required for prototype development. CADDi keeps all the relevant notes for a drawing linked to the drawing itself. That way, revisions, concerns, and future plans are kept readily available, preventing errors from emerging. This improves engineering efficiency and reduces delays in prototype and validation workflows.The efficiency and power of keeping this data connected was remarked on by senior leadership:

Quality Control teams use CADDi to support service part validation and troubleshooting activities.When something goes wrong with a part, CADDi allows QC members to quickly locate drawings, QA sheets, and related documentation required for investigation. In these crucial moments, every second is costing money from lost productivity. QC members can skip the preliminary tasks of data collection, and move directly to diagnosing the problem.This improves investigation speed and supports faster root cause analysis. Moreover, it means that the power to launch RCA can be undertaken by any member of the team, regardless of their experience level. Managers and other veteran QA members are free to focus on high value work, without needing to guide their newer teammates.

By centralizing engineering documentation, Neaton has significantly improved accessibility to critical design information. They estimate that the time it takes to find data has been reduced by up to 70%.Engineering teams can now quickly locate drawings and related documentation, allowing them to focus on higher-value engineering work.Quality Control teams can respond more quickly to service part investigations and troubleshooting scenarios.CADDi also improves onboarding efficiency by making engineering knowledge accessible to all users, reducing dependency on individual experience.As a result, Neaton has established a scalable engineering knowledge platform that supports efficient operations across Design, Engineering, and Quality Control.

Building on the successful deployment of CADDi, Neaton is exploring opportunities to further improve quoting efficiency and cost visibility by adding on our procurement and RFQ management software, CADDi Quote.By connecting engineering drawings with quoting and cost information, Neaton aims to support more efficient and consistent quotation workflows.In traditional procurement workflows, a significant portion of time is spent on manual and repetitive tasks such as collecting supplier quotations, organizing data, and referencing past similar parts. This limits the time available for higher-value activities such as evaluating quotations and making strategic sourcing decisions.By introducing CADDi Quote, NAPM aims to minimize these manual efforts while structuring historical part and cost information into reusable, searchable data tables. This enables procurement teams to focus more on quotation analysis and supplier strategy rather than administrative work.Initial pilot operations have begun with selected commodity parts and a limited number of suppliers. These efforts are focused on:<ul><li>Reducing quotation lead time through streamlined workflows</li><li>Improving consistency and visibility in supplier quotations</li><li>Structuring historical part and cost data for reuse</li></ul>As part of this initiative, NAPM has aligned on a phased rollout approach, including supplier onboarding and training prior to broader deployment.Looking ahead, NAPM plans to expand the scope of suppliers and parts covered under Quote, with the goal of reducing procurement workload and enabling more strategic sourcing activities.This represents the next phase of Neaton’s digital engineering transformation.

By implementing CADDi, Neaton has centralized critical engineering knowledge and improved accessibility to drawings, Design Notes, and QA documentation.CADDi enables Design, Engineering, and Quality Control teams to work more efficiently by providing instant access to engineering information.This strengthens engineering workflows, improves quality investigation efficiency, and establishes a foundation for future quoting optimization.Want to see how CADDi can revolutionize your process for Design, Engineering, Quality Control and more? Sign up for a demo today.&nbsp;

With over 140,000 documents loaded into CADDi, Neaton’s teams were able to find crucial data as soon as they needed it. This led to shorter design cycles, more consistent revision processes, and more efficient QC investigations.

Strengthening Design-Driven Engineering Operations at Neaton

In both design and procurement, work became increasingly dependent on individuals, leading to the creation of numerous new drawings and significant fluctuations in procurement prices.

Kashiyama Industries

Kashiyama Industries successfully developed the dry vacuum pump, which became its flagship product, in 1986, and has since engaged in the manufacturing and development of numerous vacuum devices. The company, which upholds "Faster, Fewer, Simpler" as its action guidelines across the organization, is highly regarded in the market for its quick response to industry needs. Kashiyama Industries holds a top position globally in the dry vacuum pump industry, essential for semiconductor and liquid crystal panel manufacturing.Kashiyama Industries has its own processing division and has been processing key parts that determine product performance in-house. Other parts are ordered from various suppliers. A single product can use as many as 100 different parts, and the total number of parts for all products handled by the company at any given time reaches approximately 15,000. Moreover, the products manufactured by Kashiyama Industries often involve custom designs based on customer specifications, resulting in a large number of unique drawings being created daily.The drawings are stored in a drawing management system introduced in recent years. However, the details of the drawings were only known to the design engineers and procurement personnel involved in the orders. To find drawings of past similar projects, the only options were to ask the relevant person or to manually search through each drawing, which required an enormous amount of time. Additionally, since the purchase history data and drawing data were managed in separate systems, even if the relevant drawing was found, it was necessary to open the order management system to search for the purchase history related to that drawing.In principle, procurement should involve comparing multiple suppliers to select the most suitable one. However, many cases prioritized delivery time, making the selection heavily reliant on the experience of the procurement personnel. As a result, procurement work became increasingly individualized, leading to fluctuations in procurement prices of up to 20-30% for similar cases.Similarly, in the design department, the lengthy search process often led to the creation of new drawings instead of utilizing available similar drawings. The use of past drawings and knowledge depended on the designer's experience, further advancing individual dependence in this area.

Kashiyama Industries was seeking to reduce individual dependence in design and procurement, minimize procurement price fluctuations, improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, and promote standardization through the unification of parts. The growing demand for semiconductors was expected to further increase the need for dry vacuum pumps in the future, making a quick response to these needs imperative.As Kashiyama Industries searched for a new system, they were introduced to CADDi Drawer, a cloud-based drawing data utilization service. After a successful trial, they decided to implement the system. "It was very user-friendly. One of the key factors in our decision to implement CADDi Drawer was its ability to address areas that our existing drawing management system couldn't," explained Kyohei Hara, Procurement Department, Production Headquarters, discussing the background of the implementation. "One of the key factors in our decision to implement CADDi Drawer was its ability to address areas that our existing drawing management system couldn't."- Kyohei Hara, Procurement Department With the implementation, the efficiency of procurement department operations significantly improved. CADDi Drawer allows keyword searches based on the contents noted in the remarks column of registered drawings. This reduced the time required to search for similar drawings by a significant margin compared to the previous methods of asking around or guessing and checking. Now, anyone can easily find the necessary drawings. Additionally, since similar drawings are linked to purchase records, there is no longer a need to switch between multiple systems, resulting in an average reduction of over 60% in the time required to gather information about the parts to be ordered, select the supplier, and finalize the order.The ability to perform instant searches also enables the selection of the most suitable supplier based on past records without relying on personal experience. This has resolved fluctuations in procurement prices and reduced procurement costs. The ease of using similar parts also contributes to these benefits. Previously, cost reductions were primarily achieved through mass production effects by increasing lot sizes, but now it is also possible to reduce costs by switching to similar, more affordable parts or standardizing parts. CADDi Drawer has thus achieved the goals of improving operational efficiency, reducing costs, and promoting standardization.

The positive impact of the implementation extended to the design department. The ability to easily search for similar drawings made it possible to reference them during the design process and consider the standardization of parts. This reduced the number of new drawings created. Even when creating new drawings, it became easier to utilize past drawings. Less experienced designers used to rely on asking more experienced colleagues if similar drawings existed, but CADDi Drawer eliminates this need. Now, designers of all experience levels can easily leverage past design knowledge.Kotaro Nakatani, Deputy General Manager, Procurement Department, Production Headquarters, discussed the future prospects of using CADDi Drawer: "Initially, the implementation project mainly involved design and procurement. In the future, we hope to operate it as a project that includes departments such as manufacturing, production technology, and quality assurance. "Using CADDi Drawer, inter-departmental communication becomes easier."- Kotaro Nakatani, Deputy General Manager, Procurement Department For example, if there is a problem with a product, quality assurance can investigate whether the same issue affects similar parts or related products and horizontally deploy this information to other departments. By using CADDi Drawer, inter-departmental communication becomes easier. I believe it would be beneficial if departments could collaborate across functions to propose design methods or cost-saving measures."Kashiyama Industries plans to continue practicing "Faster, Fewer, Simpler" and remains committed to ongoing improvement efforts and challenges.

CADDi Drawer enables anyone to instantly search for similar drawings and purchase records, leading to improved operational efficiency, cost reduction, and standardization promotion.

Resolving Fluctuations in Procurement Prices

The manufacturer wanted to improve their speed in making accurate quotes. Searching for past data necessary to make an accurate quote could take upwards of 30 minutes, slowing the quotation process significantly.

A Leading Manufacturer

Our client has been manufacturing high-precision metal and plastic products across a wide variety of industries and functions for decades. They aim to be a one stop shop for customers, comprehensive manufacturing services, from prototyping to production.At the same time, the reality of the manufacturing space is that, when it comes to winning jobs, speed is the most important component. Being able to provide a quote as quickly as possible is the most reliable way to improve your win rate for new jobs. But if the quote isn’t accurate, the quality or turnaround time will suffer.In order to properly research new jobs and provide accurate quotes, the manufacturer would cross-reference new requests with old work. This is the best strategy for estimating new costs. However, if searches are slow or give incomplete or inaccurate results, the entire quotation process can grind to a halt. Our client found that each search could take up to 30 minutes to get the correct information. In trying to improve this time, they discovered CADDi.

With CADDi, search speed improved from upwards of 30 minutes to just a minute or two. Users in the manufacturer’s sales engineering team can take drawings, specifications, or any other provided information from the RFQ and instantly gather any and all similar drawings to use as reference. CADDi’s patented drawing similarity search uses bespoke AI to take one drawing and find any that overlap in shape and structure, allowing users to find the right references without needing to remember any labels, part IDs, or file locations. <h5 class="">"The similarity search has just been fantastic."</h5><h6 class="">Member Tooling Estimator Team</h6> Once reference drawings have been found, CADDi brings together all of the information needed to make an accurate quote. Over a million of the manufacturer’s past documents, including sales orders, past quotes, non-compliance reports, and more, have been loaded into CADDi and linked for instant cross-referencing. Users can get a complete picture of a previous project, allowing them to accurately estimate what the new job will ultimately cost, and giving them a starting place to plan the production work. Previous production challenges for similar projects can be proactively addressed, rather than repeated.By drastically reducing the time for each search, and making each search more accurate and impactful, the manufacturer can finish quotes faster than ever without sacrificing accuracy. Best of all, these productivity gains are available to everyone: new hires can operate just as effectively as veterans with easy access to decades of past data.As the manufacturer has come up to speed on using CADDi, they find themselves using it for more and more quotation requests. The Tooling Estimator team estimates that CADDi is being referenced for around 75% of their requests now, a number that will only increase as more team members integrate it into their workflows. The manufacturer plans on expanding its usage of CADDi further, using it to consolidate and standardize their design work.

CADDi’s capabilities allow the manufacturer to make searches in just a couple of minutes. All of the relevant data for pricing is linked together, allowing an accurate quote to be created with minimal work.

Driving faster Quotes and Accurate Estimation with CADDi

Data was scattered across many systems, requiring long searches and reliance on knowledgeable individuals

Unytite

9Since 1986, Unytite, Inc. has been recognized as a trusted U.S. manufacturer of high-quality structural fasteners and cold and hot formed components. The products support critical applications in infrastructure, heavy equipment, and automotive industries. With a strong reputation built on reliability, product quality, and disciplined manufacturing processes, Unytite’s US facility plays a critical role in supplying large volumes while meeting strict standards and ensuring full traceability.However, as production demands grew and customer specifications became more detailed, Unytite encountered difficulties in how information was organized and accessed. In addition, Unytite also faced the difficulty of passing down technical manufacturing skills and knowledge to the next generation.<img src="https://cdn.builder.io/api/v1/image/assets%2F209ee507cedf4c298e100edae4bba2df%2Ff301431589ff4de8a5b346592a96b4c9?format=webp" alt="Seven members of the Unytite and CADDi teams standing together in front of a wall with the Unytite sign and Quarter Century Club plaques">Members of the Unytite and CADDi teams during an onsite visit.

Key engineering, production, and quality data — drawings, check sheets, tooling instructions, routing sheets, quality alerts — were technically “available,” but scattered across decentralized storage locations and emails. As a result:<ul><li>R&amp;D engineers used an extensive amount of time to investigate how past quotation projects had been designed.</li><li> </li><li>Quality engineers spent excessive time searching for past countermeasures, alerts, and customer feedback.</li><li> </li><li>Sales and Production frequently lacked visibility into process routings, process notes, or customer specification changes.</li><li> </li><li>Operational expertise was largely dependent on a few of the senior employees, which meant some activities stalled without them. This reduced efficiency and diverted their focus from high-value tasks.</li></ul>Even with disciplined processes, critical information was scattered across multiple platforms, causing delays, inconsistencies, and added risk in a fast-paced production environment.

In situations requiring detailed analysis or process reviews, teams often need to take preliminary steps, including:<ul><li>Cross-referencing customer drawings</li><li>Reviewing past alerts</li><li>Confirming previous corrective actions</li><li>Comparing revision histories</li></ul>Instead of focusing on analysis, they spent valuable minutes — sometimes hours — simply locating the correct files.Moreover, an internal survey at Unytite highlighted a recurring issue:“I searched inside the internal network storage, ERP system, and emails. Only certain people know where the right documents are.” — Survey RespondentThis heavy reliance on specific individuals created obstacles, slowed reaction time, and hindered knowledge transfer.

Recognizing the need for a centralized, intelligent, and revision-safe information system, Unytite implemented <a href="https://us.caddi.com/product-overview" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">CADDi Drawer</a> across Production, Quality, Sales, and R&amp;D.The impact was immediate and transformative.

Drawer unified roughly 60,000 drawings, inspection sheets, routings, and customer specs under a consistent structure. Instead of navigating multiple systems, teams simply:<ul><li>search by part name,</li><li>search by drawing number,</li><li>search by keywords such as “check sheet,” “problem control,” or “routing,”</li><li>or even use AI-powered similarity search to locate related components.</li></ul>

Building on a centralized and reliable drawing management foundation, Unytite further addressed a key challenge: knowledge being dependent on individuals rather than the organization.By digitizing and centralizing past drawings, quotations, and quality records in Drawer, the following improvements were achieved:<ul><li>Visualization of individual knowledge</li><li>Past designs, estimates, and quality issues became visible and searchable for everyone, eliminating reliance on specific individuals.</li><li>Faster Sales proposals</li><li>Sales teams can reference similar past products and propose dimensions and specifications more efficiently when discussing with new customers and products.</li><li>Reduced R&amp;D and quotation effort</li><li>R&amp;D teams can quickly review past quotation studies and quality issue records, reducing evaluation time and quotation workload.</li></ul>Beyond improving efficiency, these changes fundamentally transformed the way knowledge is shared within the organization.

By shifting from “tribal knowledge in people’s heads” to “institutional knowledge in Drawer,” Unytite has made critical information discoverable for anyone — including new employees. <h5 class="">"I used to ask senior members where files were stored. Now I just search Drawer."</h5><h6 class="">Employee Unytite R&amp;D Department</h6>

<h4 class="">90%+ reduction in search time</h4>Before CADDi, a typical drawing lookup would take 10 to 15 minutes. With CADDi, it takes less than one minute. With many instances of drawing searches per day, this quickly adds up to hundreds of engineering and production hours saved per year.<h4> </h4><h4 class="">55,000+ documents centralized in a controlled, revision-safe structure</h4>Rather than having data scattered across many different systems, CADDi allowed Unytite to centralize access to all their manufacturing data.<h4> </h4><h4 class="">Faster quality response and RCA</h4>Cross-referencing between customer drawings, alerts, and past countermeasures has become immediate, dramatically shortening investigation cycles.<h4> </h4><h4 class="">Active adoption across departments</h4>Production, Quality, Sales, and R&amp;D teams consistently use Drawer for daily tasks, setting the groundwork for a unified digital workspace across the entire facility.

Building on early success, Unytite and CADDi have aligned on the next stage of transformation. Unytite plans on expanding the usage of CADDi in three major areas:<h4> </h4><h4 class="">Quote &amp; Cost Integration via CADDi AI Data Platform</h4>Combine Drawer drawings with:<ul class=""><li class="">PO history</li><li class="">Supplier pricing</li><li class="">Purchasing Management</li></ul>This will support smarter quoting, vendor evaluation, and spend reduction.<h4> </h4><h4 class="">AI Chat Search Implementation (conversational access to data)</h4>Enable members to ask questions like:<ul class=""><li class="">“Show me similar drawings with 1’’ threads.”</li><li class="">“What was the last Quality Alert for part XXXXX?”</li><li class="">“What materials meet that standard?”</li></ul>A major step to enhance the quality level and democratize expert knowledge.<h4> </h4><h4 class="">Japan–U.S. knowledge alignment with shared tenants</h4>Unytite can standardize documentation management across regions and accelerate cross-plant learning.In conclusion, CADDi Drawer is helping Unytite transition from isolated document storage to a unified, intelligence-driven manufacturing ecosystem.By connecting design, production, quality, and cost data, Unytite is unlocking the speed, traceability, and efficiency required in fastener manufacturing.Unytite reduced drawing search time by over 90% and built a unified, revision-controlled knowledge hub connecting production, quality, Sales, and R&amp;D — setting the foundation for global, AI-driven operational excellence.

Anyone can find any needed information quickly, searching in one central repository  ‍

Accelerating design for R&D teams at Unytite with CADDi

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