Axldrone Speeds Development And Cuts Manufacturing Costs By 50 Percent

As an India-based company, axldrone specializes in engineering and manufacturing micro to medium-sized drones for a variety of applications, including agriculture, cinematography, surveillance, law enforcement, military, and relief operations.

The company’s logistics tracking management platform enables end-to-end control over its drones, including inspections, reporting, and data collection while maintaining a safe environment in and around customer locations. It also provides data processing and analysis.

Founded in 2019, the company began using SOLIDWORKS® early in 2023 because its engineers needed a robust solution with a short learning curve. It didn’t take long for axldrone management to realize the company needed a cloud-based solution to support better collaboration and data management across the organization. Management chose to add the 3DEXPERIENCE® Works portfolio to its existing SOLIDWORKS installation. The cloud-based solution enhances axldrone operations, including data and information access control, design-data security, revision and change management, project planning, and product release processes.

According to axldrone CTO Abhilash K J, “The key reason that we chose 3DEXPERIENCE Works solutions is the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is a cloud-based solution for collaborative, connected PLM [product lifecycle management], which connects our organization’s most vital resources—people, software, and data—in a unified, secure place to collaborate on designs while more easily keeping projects and people on track.”

Adding 3DEXPERIENCE Works to SOLIDWORKS enabled axldrone to shorten design cycles by 30 percent and cut time to market by 20 percent. Abhilash notes, “With SOLIDWORKS CAD, we made our team capable of thinking and innovating independently, which helps us to develop our designs quickly. Moving forward with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, we expect to realize additional improvements in the overall process. We can save time and work more efficiently because data is now available to support downstream departments; teams can plan, execute, and monitor project status in real time; team members can easily share tasks and define deliverables, dependencies, and key milestones; and everyone can efficiently collaborate from anywhere, at any time, and on any device.”

With 3DEXPERIENCE Works solutions, axldrone has formalized its data management and product development processes, resulting in fewer design errors and improved product quality.

“With tight revision controls, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform ensures all employees, suppliers, and partners can work with the latest product data. The ability to view, annotate, manage, and share designs from anywhere—all without having to worry about using the wrong revision or mismanaging the data—not only speeds time to market by collaborating with other design disciplines early in the development process but also improves quality overall,” Abhilash stresses.

3DEXPERIENCE Works solutions have also helped axldrone cut development costs by 25 to 30 percent and manufacturing costs by 50 percent. SOLIDWORKS DFM [design for manufacturability], configuration, and fitment tools, along with SOLIDWORKS and SIMULIA simulation capabilities, have helped axldrone reduce both the cost of physical prototyping and testing as well as the amount of rework required and scrap produced.

“When you combine the reduced infrastructure costs, IT overhead, software maintenance, and complexity associated with secure cloud technology with more efficient machining and 3D printing processes, we’re seeing cost reductions throughout the product development and manufacturing process.” Abhilash concludes, “The quality of our product is one of the key challenges for obtaining and maintaining a top market position.”