Project Background

Sorda Sanitary Ware Co., Ltd. is located in the Yuhuan Science & Technology Industrial Park, Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, on China’s eastern coast. Founded in 1985, Sorda is one of China’s leading exporters of sanitary ware products. The company is equipped with advanced quality inspection instruments—including raw material analyzers, valve cartridge life-cycle testers, and salt spray testing machines—as well as specialized production equipment such as gravity casting machines, CNC machining centers, and automated electroplating lines, enabling it to consistently deliver high-quality products to the market.

Through more than two decades of dedicated effort, Sorda has earned strong market recognition, exporting its products to over 200 customers across more than 80 countries, including Germany, France, Poland, Greece, Russia, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the Middle East.To expand into the domestic Chinese market, Sorda established a subsidiary—Shanghai Sorda Sanitary Ware Co., Ltd.—in Shanghai in 2004. To date, the company has built a nationwide network of over 400 physical retail stores and authorized dealers.

Project Objectives

Through the implementation of the SIPM/PLM project, the following objectives will be achieved:

All drawings and technical documents will be stored in the system before release, maintaining a one-to-one association between each drawing and its corresponding item/material.
Consistency between electronic and paper-based data will be ensured, with electronic signatures implemented.
100% of all engineering changes will be managed and controlled within the system, and all design-related activities will be conducted through the system.
A knowledge-sharing platform and an experience-based database will be established.

A unified product data management platform has been established through SIPM/PLM.

Products have been meticulously categorized and these classifications have been embedded into the PLM system. Additionally, documents and drawings have been systematically linked to their corresponding products, forming a unified and integrated data structure. This approach achieves the goals of classified and standardized product management.

The Integrated Application of 3D Software and PLM System

By employing the integration technology of 3D design software and the PLM system, designers only need to complete their drawings using predefined templates within the 3D design software. Afterwards, they can upload their designs to the PLM system through an integrated interface. When saving a full set of product 3D design software drawings into SIPM/PLM, a tree-like product BOM can be directly extracted and generated, ensuring that any subsequent modifications to the drawings result in automatic updates to the corresponding parts and BOM information.

Standardized Coding Rules to Prevent Duplicate Codes for the Same Item

Through the implementation of SIPM/PLM, the company’s material coding rules and document coding standards have been embedded into the system. Technical documents are automatically assigned unique codes within SIPM/PLM, ensuring a "one-item-one-code" principle and eliminating duplicate or inconsistent coding.

Change Traceability

Every change is recorded in the system. BOM comparisons highlight differences between versions, and all documents maintain a complete history of previous versions—available for review and download at any time.

PDF Factory

Enables electronic signing of drawings, as well as Word and Excel documents, streamlining the traditional review and approval process and reducing enterprise costs.

Real-Time Data Status Visibility Through Dynamic Management

Prior to the implementation of SIPM/PLM, drawings and documents were stored locally on individual engineers’ computers, making it impossible to track or aggregate information about data creation and changes.

With SIPM/PLM in place, users can now intuitively and dynamically query real-time data status—such as output volumes by department and records of data modifications—providing clear visibility into the current state of all technical documentation.

Dynamic Management – Document Dynamics

Access Control

Modification rights to system data are controlled based on item attributes, significantly reducing the risk of erroneous or unauthorized data changes.

Summary:

Data Management：Established a formal submission and review mechanism for data, enabling centralized, standardized, and unified management of product data—including BOMs, drawings, and technical documents. This enhances data security, improves retrieval efficiency, and elevates the company’s overall product data management capabilities.

Unified Data Source：Implemented a consistent coding system and ensured seamless integration and interaction between drawing data and system data. This eliminates inconsistencies that lead to management issues, reduces administrative costs, and provides robust data support for downstream systems such as ERP and MES.

Change Management：Standardized and systematized the change management process, ensuring controllable approval stages and full traceability of all change histories.

Knowledge Management：Enabled continuous accumulation and preservation of technical data, transforming it into a core corporate data asset.