Accelerating design for R&D teams at Unytite with CADDi

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.

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:

• R&D engineers used an extensive amount of time to investigate how past quotation projects had been designed.
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• Quality engineers spent excessive time searching for past countermeasures, alerts, and customer feedback.
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• Sales and Production frequently lacked visibility into process routings, process notes, or customer specification changes.
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• 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.

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:

• Cross-referencing customer drawings
• Reviewing past alerts
• Confirming previous corrective actions
• Comparing revision histories

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 Respondent

This 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 CADDi Drawer across Production, Quality, Sales, and R&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:

• search by part name,
• search by drawing number,
• search by keywords such as “check sheet,” “problem control,” or “routing,”
• or even use AI-powered similarity search to locate related components.

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:

• Visualization of individual knowledge
• Past designs, estimates, and quality issues became visible and searchable for everyone, eliminating reliance on specific individuals.
• Faster Sales proposals
• Sales teams can reference similar past products and propose dimensions and specifications more efficiently when discussing with new customers and products.
• Reduced R&D and quotation effort
• R&D teams can quickly review past quotation studies and quality issue records, reducing evaluation time and quotation workload.

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.

"I used to ask senior members where files were stored. Now I just search Drawer."

Employee Unytite R&D Department

90%+ reduction in search time

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.

55,000+ documents centralized in a controlled, revision-safe structure

Rather than having data scattered across many different systems, CADDi allowed Unytite to centralize access to all their manufacturing data.

Faster quality response and RCA

Cross-referencing between customer drawings, alerts, and past countermeasures has become immediate, dramatically shortening investigation cycles.

Active adoption across departments

Production, Quality, Sales, and R&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:

Quote & Cost Integration via CADDi AI Data Platform

Combine Drawer drawings with:

• PO history
• Supplier pricing
• Purchasing Management

This will support smarter quoting, vendor evaluation, and spend reduction.

AI Chat Search Implementation (conversational access to data)

Enable members to ask questions like:

• “Show me similar drawings with 1’’ threads.”
• “What was the last Quality Alert for part XXXXX?”
• “What materials meet that standard?”

A major step to enhance the quality level and democratize expert knowledge.

Japan–U.S. knowledge alignment with shared tenants

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&D — setting the foundation for global, AI-driven operational excellence.