Kayleigh Ferreira
Engineer and Change Coordinator, Intelligent Growth Solutions
Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) designs and builds world-leading industrial-scale vertical farms across the globe. IGS is revolutionising plant production, giving growers precision control of the growing environment all year round. Projects like the GigaFarm in Dubai, set to produce 2 billion plants annually, showcase IGS’s innovation in transforming food security and sustainability.
While the IGS products are groundbreaking, its design and manufacturing processes lacked efficiency and struggled to keep up with the pace of innovation.
With more than 5,000 unique parts in its inventory and 12+ different product configurations available in multiple global regions, IGS needed a robust process for revisions.
But manual processes – especially around product changes and bills of materials (BOMs) – led to inefficiencies, project delays and delivery errors. Skilled engineers were also spending too much time on administration, taking them away from product design. It wasn’t just a frustration; it also posed a challenge to operational scalability.
To address these challenges, IGS partnered with Concurrent Engineering to implement Windchill and Creo by PTC, streamlining engineering operations, enhancing traceability, and eliminating inefficiencies.
To continue innovating, IGS constantly iterates its products and changes the requirements of its parts. Previously, IGS relied on manual processes with limited revision control and traceability, resulting in lengthy engineering change orders (ECOs). Engineers also faced difficulties tracking product assembly changes, causing approval delays.
A streamlined, automated system was urgently needed. Windchill delivered the revision control, traceability and speed IGS needed. Importantly, it enabled a 75% time reduction for engineering changes – ECOs are now completed much more efficiently, often within just a few days.
As IGS grew, adding team members and beginning new projects, this automation enabled the business to handle higher work volumes without compromising accuracy or speed.
Before the collaboration, IGS managed all BOMs using Excel spreadsheets, creating challenges for procurement and supply chain teams. Identifying changes, pulling new revisions, and releasing updated Engineering BOMs (EBOMs) was a slow, resource-heavy process.
IGS worked with Concurrent to devise an automated BOM process with complete version control, revision history and reporting. Every IGS team – including engineering, supply chain, deployment, product management and customer service – can now access the necessary technical information, delivering a 100% reduction in manual BOM tracking.
Windchill acts as a single source of truth, enabling every team to carry out their work with confidence, achieving results in days that potentially would have taken weeks before Windchill was online.
Callum Thom
Senior Manufacturing Engineer, Intelligent Growth Solutions
One of the major issues with the previous system was poor BOM accuracy due to outdated information and lack of traceability. This resulted in delivery errors which caused costly delays and disruptions.
With Windchill, every part and each revision is tracked, ensuring that only the correct components are ordered and delivered. The result? Significantly smoother deployments and improved operational efficiency.
One of the reasons this project was so successful is the mutual trust and open communication between IGS and Concurrent Engineering.
IGS was happy to share the challenges they were facing, and throughout has been receptive to advice and determined to incorporate best practices into business processes, taking risk out of the implementation and leading to significantly better outcomes.
At the same time, Concurrent Engineering brought extensive knowledge and experience in improving manufacturing processes, advising and steering their client in the right direction.
Post-implementation, Concurrent Engineering’s support team has continually delivered prompt assistance as required, ensuring a smooth rollout without disrupting ongoing operations.
With major new projects on the horizon, IGS is poised for success with a robust data management foundation in place.
And the work doesn’t end here. The next planned improvement is integrating Creo and Windchill with IGS’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, creating a record of exactly what gets shipped, even when things change on-site.
Today, teams across the IGS organisation are reaping the benefits of their company’s work with Concurrent Engineering. Automation has freed engineers from admin-heavy tasks, allowing them to focus on design and other value-added activities. It’s led to greater job satisfaction. After all, they became engineers to do engineering, not push paper.
At the same time, the new Windchill system has made it easier for everyone to find the information they need quickly whilst simultaneously enabling engineers to make data-informed decisions that ultimately help drive the business forward.