Company Background
Dynamic Australian brand Tieman Tankers has been manufacturing tankers for more than 70 years. It was founded by Neil Tieman in 1953, working from his backyard to manufacture stainless steel tankers initially for the dairy industry.
As the business grew and diversified, it added aluminium fuel tankers and mild steel bitumen tankers to its range. In 2001 Tieman Tankers designed and built the first stainless steel bitumen tanker, utilising an innovative non-corrosive barrel design which is still an industry standard today.
Today the company’s designs cover the full range of bulk liquid and dry bulk tankers for the Australian, New Zealand and PNG markets.
Challenges and Paint Points
Central Innovation’s longstanding partnership with Tieman Tankers goes back to 2014 when it began supplying SOLIDWORKS licenses to the business.
Since then, ongoing expansion and growth of Tieman Tankers design and manufacturing teams has generated a large amount of design and production data – necessitating an effective company-wide data management solution.
Having forged a strong relationship with the Tieman Tankers team, Central Innovation’s inhouse experts were able to identify this need and the best way to address it.
Decision-Making Process
Tieman Tankers Engineering Manager Eiman Nosrati explains how the decision to implement the PDM PROFESSIONAL data management solution put forward by Central Innovation came about:
“We recognised we needed to clean up our large product database - not only because many of the parts were no longer in use, but because over time we had inadvertently created many duplicate names. We needed a system which would prevent duplications while making it easy to identify which parts we are no longer using.
“We also wanted to put in place a process for drawing validation which would facilitate the most efficient workflow - such as an automated issuing process in place for all drawings to be signed off by a senior team member.
“And ultimately we wanted to scale up our output - and we realised the potential time savings generated by PDM PROFESSIONAL could deliver a higher quality result.”
Implementation Emperience
Tieman Tankers’ brief, with Central Innovation’s team working remotely to manage the implementation process, was achieved in a record 10 days.
“We had great support from Central Innovation,” Eiman confirms. “Whenever we needed assistance, I was always able to send an email or pick up the phone and talk to one of the team members and they would be out straight away.
This was very important to us because we have a team of engineers supporting our production - so it’s a very busy working environment and any downtime is extremely costly to us.
Measurable Impact
“Taking on board Central Innovation’s solution has made a big difference to organising our workflows and has helped us take our quality to the highest level,” Eiman says.
“Now if production wants a change to a drawing, we are able to adjust the latest drawing iteration. When you factor in the number of team members benefiting from the improved workflow, this has saved us hundreds of production hours per month.
“Thanks to the new system we now have zero instance of duplicate part names, so we have eliminated that path for errors. After two to three years our database size has gone down through the elimination of all unnecessary data.
“And with all the workflow improvements, our team is now a warrior of efficiency - they can finish the most complicated jobs in next to no time, whereas before it would have taken considerably longer. It’s so much easier and more efficient than before to identify the parts, put them into the drawings and create the assemblies.”
ROI and Business Value
Eiman says: “After we implemented this solution, our maximum build capability significantly increased. And we are now able to offer our customers a wide range of customisation, as the new system helps us to manage all updates in the most timely and cost-efficient way.”
Lesson Learned and Recommendations
“Central Innovation worked closely with us to ensure everything was done effectively in terms of data migration to the new system. They provided full admin and user training as part of the implementation process and continue to maintain a strong connection with us going forward.”
“Whenever there is an issue, they fix it on the spot without compromising production, which is very important to us. They will go out of their way to do this, such as scheduling upgrades when we have minimal workload, for example right at the end of the week.
“They are also very nice people to work with; in fact, they are one of the best suppliers we have. Central Innovation’s Implementation Manager Amgad Yacoub, Technical Manager Chatura Elkaduwa and the whole team are professional, knowledgeable, responsive, friendly and always willing to help. It’s a very positive partnership and one which has stood the test of time.”