Project Background

Founded in 2004, Hunan Blue Sky Intelligent Equipment Technology Co., Ltd. is a national high-tech enterprise specializing in the research and development, production, sales, and engineering services of intelligent equipment products. The company focuses on the integration of smart manufacturing production lines and automated logistics dispatch systems with intelligent production management systems. It provides non-standard customized robotic solutions for welding, assembly, coating, loading and unloading applications, as well as comprehensive solutions covering logistics handling, conveying, palletizing to three-dimensional warehouse storage for clients, helping domestic and international companies achieve upgrades in "automation, intelligence, unmanned operations, and informatization".

The company has attracted a large number of outstanding talents within the industry and possesses a R&D design team composed of highly skilled senior professional engineers. It has invested in building two major manufacturing bases in Changsha and Changde. The company's hardware facilities are fully equipped, including laser cutting machines, gantry milling machines, high-precision CNC machine tools, robotic welding production lines, advanced painting production lines, etc., possessing high-standard whole machine processing and manufacturing capabilities.

The company has passed certifications for ISO9001 quality management system, ISO14001 environmental management system, and ISO45001 occupational health and safety management system. It is recognized as a specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative "little giant" enterprise in Hunan Province and a little giant enterprise in Changsha City. With dozens of invention patents and utility model patents leading in the industry, the company continuously innovates to enhance product competitiveness.

Over the years, with nearly 20 years of technical accumulation in the field of intelligent manufacturing, excellent product quality, and good customer reputation, the company has established and maintained long-term partnerships with many leading enterprises domestically such as Zoomlion, Sany Heavy Industry, CRCC Heavy Industry, Taiyuan Heavy Industry, CRRC, AVIC, Geely Auto, BYD Auto, Yunjian Military Industry, Shaoguan Steel, Shengtong Group, Muyuan Group, etc., winning widespread trust and recognition. Striving to create cost-effective automated intelligent equipment and provide superior service for customers is the consistent pursuit of all Blue Sky employees.

Project Objectives

By implementing the PLM system, the company aims to significantly enhance its product design and development system, ensuring it aligns with the overall requirements of enterprise informatization.Through PLM implementation, the company will establish a research and development data management system that complies with information management standards and build a comprehensive enterprise product data center, providing ERP systems with complete and accurate foundational data.The PLM system will bring design workflows and project schedules under standardized software-based management, ultimately helping to shorten development cycles, improve design quality, and reduce development costs.Furthermore, the PLM implementation will foster long-term strategic partnerships between the company and its suppliers.Ultimately, successful deployment of the PLM system will realize the “Three Standardizations” (standardization, modularization, and platformization) in product design and development, comprehensively elevating the company’s capabilities and strengthening its core competitiveness.

Focus on Project Objectives:

By implementing the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system, establish a collaborative platform integrated with CAD and other application software to enable convenient creation and sharing of product documents within defined permission controls, and allow rapid retrieval of technical documentation.

Implement a solution to digitize the vast volume of legacy paper-based drawings and bring them under electronic document management, standardizing electronic drawing formats and enabling real-time tracking and recording of users’ activities and progress.

Achieve seamless and efficient integration with CAD and ERP systems.

Establish a complete and scientifically structured innovation system for design and development, standardizing design and development workflows.

Improve product development efficiency by enabling effective configuration management, change management, variant design, derivative design, and version control.

Provide an enhanced platform for managing engineering BOMs (Bill of Materials).

Establish a unified and standardized coding system, along with standardized product families and part families.

Reduce the complexity and cost of engineering changes, thereby lowering overall design costs.

Ensure the security of all electronic data in accordance with enterprise requirements.

Enable all design team members to access and share all design documents and information via web browsers on a unified platform, facilitating remote collaborative design, concurrent engineering, and joint completion of product development tasks—ultimately shortening new product development cycles.

Pre-Sales and Project Initiation Application Management

Based on research and discussions regarding Blue Sky Intelligent’s current business operations, the PLM system implements structured classification and standardized management of pre-sales proposals. Through system configuration, key data—including pre-sales proposals, pre-sales teams, and customer companies—are managed in a structured manner. Each pre-sales proposal is linked directly to a project initiation application, ensuring that project initiation is driven by approved pre-sales proposals and establishing an unambiguous, traceable connection between the two.The project initiation application module is configured to separately manage R&D requirements originating from pre-sales proposal orders and those from internal self-initiated (directly initiated) projects. Furthermore, through workflow modules, the system enables end-to-end process management—from the pre-sales phase through to project planning—ensuring seamless transition and comprehensive oversight of the entire initiation lifecycle.

Pre-Sales Management

Fully Standardizing the Product Development Process through SIPM/PLM Project and Workflow Management

Leveraging the robust project management and workflow management capabilities of the SIPM/PLM system, project templates have been categorized and standardized based on Blue Sky Intelligent’s actual business scenarios. These include templates for:Customized product lines、Customized products (single equipment)、Standard products、Logistics-related R&D projects、By mandating the output of deliverables at each task stage, the system ensures completeness and comprehensiveness of project documentation. Additionally, project planning can be rapidly initiated by reusing these predefined templates.

Classification and Management of Project Templates

Project Monitoring and Management

The system enables multi-dimensional, comprehensive online tracking of project progress, ensuring transparent and visible project status monitoring.

Project Monitoring and Management

Project Tracking and Statistical Analysis

Product Management

Through an in-depth survey of the different products and business scenarios at Blue Sky Intelligent, SIPM/PLM has designed targeted management solutions for two major categories: product lines and individual products. This is especially useful during the design phase when dealing with large volumes of design data and a broad scope of operations. The solution involves:Dynamically configuring association pages for different product categories to manage the overall BOM (for multi-equipment management) and continuously updating production line documents associated with product lines.Configuring other product category associations with projects, linking product ledgers to their respective projects, thereby connecting project-driven product design data. This enables SIPM to effectively manage diversified and personalized products, providing R&D departments with a unified product data management platform.

Product Line Management：For managing product line businesses, configurations include associating sub-items under the product line such as:Project Total Equipment BOM List、Preparation Procurement Ledger、Equipment Layout (General Drawing)、Basic Design Basis General Drawing、Process Flow, Workstation Rhythm Summary Table、Workpiece Drawings、Project Design Standards、Simulation Process、Other Documents。These configurations facilitate structured management of various process data under complex and extensive product lines, establishing a unified product line design data management platform. By configuring the association with the "Belonging Project" tab, it links each equipment's BOM at different stages (M1-M4) back to the project, ensuring that design documentation driven by project tasks is consolidated within the product line.

Project Total BOM List Management：In the context of product line business management, SIPM/PLM manages all equipment information under a specific product line through an associated structure, configuring the Project Total BOM List for ledger management. Under each piece of equipment information, associated equipment document lists (required design deliverables for that equipment) and technical documents are linked. Real-time tracking and monitoring of the delivery status of required design documents for each equipment ledger are achieved using fields like "Status Alert," "Status (indicating the current design phase)," and "Progress." When deliverables are made according to the stage-specific requirements listed in the document checklist, fields such as "Status Alert," "Status," and "Progress" on the total BOM list ledger are updated in real time.

Project Master BOM List Tracking and Management

【Status Alert】 indicates the execution status of required document uploads for a given piece of equipment, displayed as either "Overdue" or "Normal." For example, if the planned completion date for M1 (as defined in the equipment’s attributes) is today, but the required M1 documents have not yet been fully uploaded by today, the status alert will show as "Overdue." Once all required documents are uploaded, the system automatically updates this field to "Normal."

【Progress】 shows whether the document submission is "In Progress" or "Completed." "In Progress" means that the required documents for the equipment have not yet been fully uploaded according to the checklist; "Completed" indicates that all deliverables have been successfully uploaded as required.

【Status】 reflects the current design phase (from M1 to M4) based on the completion of required document uploads. For instance, once all M1 documents are uploaded, the actual M1 completion time is automatically recorded as the timestamp of the last archived document, and the status automatically advances from M1 to M2.Note on retroactive additions: If additional documents are later added to the M1 checklist after the project has already progressed to M2 (e.g., four M1 documents were originally required and completed, but during M2 it is discovered that more M1 documents are needed), the system will not revert the status back to M1. Instead, the status remains at M2, even though new M1-related documents are being uploaded.

Pre-Procurement Ledger Management：Based on actual business requirements for product line management, a  tab is configured and associated with the product object to manage the list of equipment scheduled for procurement under the product line. Under each procurement item, additional tabs— and —are configured. This setup enables task-driven generation and monitoring of deliverables corresponding to the procurement equipment list, ensuring timely output and oversight of required procurement documentation.

Pre-Procurement Ledger Management

Effective Control of All Design Data through the BOM as the Core Link

Structural Design BOM Management:Through an interface between 3D design software and the PLM system, product structural BOM information is automatically generated, enabling seamless integration between the design tools and the PLM system.

Component Management:All components have been clearly classified and standardized within the PLM system. Materials are associatively managed with their corresponding drawings and documents, facilitating easy retrieval and systematic reference.

Reporting Management:In alignment with Blue Sky Intelligent’s business requirements, SIPM/PLM supports exporting reports—including equipment BOMs, project master BOM lists, and pre-procurement lists—in the company’s current Excel template formats.

Project Master BOM Report

Pre-Procurement Ledger Report

Equipment BOM Report Template

PLM and ERP Integration

Through PBOM (Production BOM) release management, material and BOM data from the PLM system are first published to an intermediate database within PLM. From this intermediate database, the material and BOM information is then transferred to the ERP system, enabling seamless integration of product data from PLM to ERP.

PBOM Release Management

Upload Materials and BOM to ERP

Change Management

SIPM/PLM provides comprehensive change management functionality for product design data throughout its entire lifecycle. Through the SIPM/PLM Change Management module, all product design changes are accurately recorded. Each change detail is linked to a change order and associated with the relevant changed data objects; multiple changes are tracked via multiple change orders.This enables Blue Sky Intelligent to implement full traceability of design changes—from pre-sales through project initiation, and from project planning to task execution. It also supports end-to-end change management within PLM, including change initiation, execution, process monitoring, and change history tracking.

Coding Management

Through the PLM system's coding management functionality, the company's coding rules are standardized and embedded into PLM. Users obtain codes by invoking these predefined coding rules, ensuring the uniqueness of each code.

Invoke coding rules to generate codes

Enterprise Knowledge Management

Through a knowledge base, the company’s knowledge system is categorized by department and standardized within the PLM system, facilitating rapid knowledge transfer and real-time sharing across the organization, thereby reducing the cost of knowledge dissemination.

Knowledge Base Management

Document Template Management

Summary:

The successful implementation of the PLM system has provided Hunan Blue Sky Intelligent Equipment Technology Co., Ltd. with an efficient platform for pre-sales solution management, project initiation and project management, process management, product R&D data management, and change management.

It enables end-to-end management within the PL芒 system of product data throughout the entire lifecycle—from pre-sales proposals, project initiation, and project planning, through project execution and deliverable completeness verification, to handover to production.

It establishes associative management of product data and document/drawing data, using the product as the entry point and the BOM as the linking mechanism.

It supports full-process tracking and historical management of engineering changes within the PLM system—from change initiation and execution, through workflow monitoring, to controlled output of change content.

It ensures complete consistency between drawing documentation and material information, implements online review and approval of drawings, and establishes the PLM system as the sole authoritative source for future drawing distribution.

It enables seamless transfer of parts and BOM data from PLM to ERP.

The deployment of this PLM system provides Blue Sky Intelligent with a platform for accumulating intangible assets—such as product data, drawings, documents, and knowledge—which, through consistent adoption and sustained use, will undoubtedly become a significant corporate asset in the future.