PARAGON WATER SYSTEMS: ZERO CLICKS FROM ARENA TO IFS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The last approval goes through and the data lands in IFS Cloud. Nobody clicks anything.
- User acceptance reached past engineering into manufacturing and sales, which is the part Conner didn't see coming.
- One part in the PLM can arrive in the ERP as two. That surfaced as a last-minute obstacle before go-live and got handled with CADTALK's logic.
MEET PARAGON WATER SYSTEMS
Paragon Water Systems has designed and manufactured water filtration in Tampa, Florida since 1988. Most of what Paragon builds carries someone else's name on it: residential systems, foodservice and commercial filtration, refrigerator inline filters, and its own carbon block line.
That ODM and OEM model shapes everything downstream. Paragon builds to other companies' specifications, against NSF, WQA, IAPMO R&T and ISO certification, so materials and labels change constantly and every change has to reach the ERP before the rest of the company can act on it.
Paragon's PLM is Arena PLM, from Arena, a PTC Business. The ERP is IFS Cloud.
Connor Anderson is a project engineer at Paragon. He graduated from the University of Kentucky, and this is his first job out of college. He had used Arena a little during an internship, which helped get him the role. A year and a half in, he was part of both the ERP and the PLM implementation, the lead contact for the CADTALK systems integration, and the business process owner for his team.
THE CHALLENGE
Arena PLM held engineering's data. IFS Cloud is what the rest of the company uses. Between them sat manual entry.
It's completely manual entry. You manually enter into one, and if it hast to go into the other, that's up to the engineer or whoever's responsible to enter that in. It's a loss of control in that case. Things are missed. Human error all the time.
Connor Anderson
Project Engineer, Paragon Water Systems
Whether that second entry happened at all fell to whoever was responsible that day. For a business whose materials and labels turn over as fast as Paragon's, every missed entry is a gap between what engineering approved and what the rest of the company can act on.
How much had gone wrong only became clear during the implementation, when the two systems were finally put side by side. Connor calls that stretch disheartening, and says the cleanup was worth it for the control Paragon has now.
His read on the problem goes past the data.
The foundation for departments is really the software you're working on. So if there's a disconnect between your softwares, there's a disconnect between the departments.
Connor Anderson
Project Engineer, Paragon Water Systems
THE SOLUTION
CADTALK came to Paragon through IFS. CADTALK is an IFS Gold Solutions Partner and is listed on the IFS Marketplace, so the integration answer arrived with the ERP itself.
The path is Arena PLM to CADTALK to IFS Cloud. Arena stays engineering's single source of truth, and Arena's change process stays in control of what gets released. CADTALK is an Arena partner, and the integration takes its cue from Arena's own approvals. Once the last approval clears, CADTALK takes the data and writes it into IFS.
What Paragon came looking for was control over the data moving from PLM to ERP.
PLM is our engineering department's way of controlling data, controlling the files that we have, bill of materials, all of those sort of things. It's our single source of truth, and so really we need all of that information to transfer to our ERP, which the rest of the company uses, cleanly and quickly. That need was absolutely fulfilled.
Connor Anderson
Project Engineer, Paragon Water Systems
What Connor found on top of that was room to shape the transfer itself, and it got tested before Paragon ever went live. Paragon shares its system with a second company and buys parts between the two, so some parts need a universal part number. One part in Arena had to arrive in IFS as two.
It surfaced as a last-minute obstacle. Connor credits two things for getting around it: the support response, and the logic CADTALK gave him to work with. In his words, it was never a one-for-one data transfer. It could be formed to Paragon's needs.
THE RESULTS
The handoff has no human step. Connor describes Paragon's approval process as its long lead time. What Paragon wanted to remove was the time after that, once approvals were finished.
Our long lead time right now is the approval process. We needed to cut out that time after the approvals are finished. Nobody needs to click any buttons. The last approval goes through and CADTALK takes it instantly and puts it into the ERP system.
Connor Anderson
Project Engineer, Paragon Water Systems
It keeps up with how fast Paragon changes. Materials and labels change very quickly to meet customer needs, and Connor names that pace as a big part of why the implementation landed across departments.
Departments understand each other's systems now. Connor's first answer on what changed was communication. The PLM directly affects the ERP, everyone can see it, and information being correct in a controlled environment became something the whole company cares about.
User acceptance is the part he didn't expect. Engineering was quick to accept that the data transfer was coming off its plate. Connor named the wider reaction, from manufacturing and from the sales team, as the unforeseen impact of the whole project, and as the thing that made a rollout of three systems at once work.
Why Paragon chose CADTALK
- Control over data flowing from PLM to ERP. Connor's own framing, and the thing Paragon walked in looking for. Arena stays the single source of truth and IFS Cloud reflects it.
- Room to shape the transfer. A one-for-one mapping wouldn't have covered Paragon's cases. The universal part number requirement was handled in CADTALK's logic instead of a development request.
- Support that answered on the last-minute obstacle. It surfaced right before go-live and cleared in time.
Looking Forward
Connor came in for control. What he kept is the ability to change what reaches IFS when Paragon's needs change.
We were mostly coming into CADTALK for the control. But what came out of it really was the
complexity, and that's one of my favorite parts about it. CADTALK's been our biggest tool for solving
issues that arise in that data transfer.
Connor Anderson
Project Engineer, Paragon Water Systems
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