Case study
Supercharging Digital Gauging at Bobcat North America
PolyWorks|Inspector™ Gauging together with PolyWorks|DataLoop™ achieves an exponential increase in measurement tasks and process quality.
Doosan Bobcat is synonymous with skid-steer loaders and produces more than all other brands combined, a powerful testament to quality products and customer satisfaction. The company is on a strong growth path, launching tractors and mowers among other products for grounds maintenance, in addition to acquiring Doosan Material Handling (DIV), adding material-handling equipment and that segment’s high growth potential to its portfolio. Doosan Bobcat continues to create new solutions for its customers’ toughest equipment challenges.
The Challenge
Bobcat’s commitment to quality begins with establishing stable processes for producing high-quality parts. However, the company was rapidly outgrowing its legacy software, leading to challenges in maintaining consistent processes. The existing system's programming limitations meant that critical data was not being captured or effectively communicated across the organization, resulting in frustration and delays.
Quality team members lacked confidence in the effectiveness of their measurement and improvement efforts, and there were concerns that key insights were not reaching the appropriate stakeholders. In short, the right data was not being accessed by the right people, undermining the overall effectiveness of the quality processes.
The Solution
Digital transformation includes where you acquire the data, how you store and access it, and how it is displayed to those who need it. Powerful and robust 3D data measurement performance without the requirement of learning proprietary programming languages makes PolyWorks|Inspector™ Gauging, together with PolyWorks|DataLoop, a force multiplier for quality decision-making.
PolyWorks|Inspector Gauging delivers power to measure, edit, revise, and review parts and projects directly to the shop floor in a format operators will actually enjoy using, combined with effective data storage and sharing across the entire Bobcat organization. Metrology programmers with little or no previous PolyWorks® experience can create programs in minutes, vastly increasing the amount, speed, and efficiency of decisions touching product quality.
“ Digital transformation starts with where you acquire the data, how you store it, how you access it, and finally how you display that information.”
Josh Mickelson, Senior Quality Engineering Manager.
The Benefits
Capturing, accessing, and sharing the right data is at the heart of Bobcat’s digital transformation journey. Equally important is ease of use -- shop floor personnel report PolyWorks|Inspector Gauging is vastly easier to use than their previous software. PolyWorks|Inspector Gauging adds 3D measurement guidance to its robust data acquisition and sharing toolbox.
Operators can refer to CAD models, specific work instructions, and images to use tools they may not be familiar with. Furthermore, all point cloud and metrology data is available from a high-speed database, meaning the operator’s work is effectively and securely available to more people across the entire organization. These results are notably boosting measurement efficiency and improving collaboration and quality decision-making like never before.
PolyWorks|Inspector™
PolyWorks|DataLoop™