Coit and Hewes Boosts Efficiency and Supports Growth with 3DEXPERIENCE Works Solutions

Coit and Hewes LLC is a leading manufacturer of premium rubber and plastic replacement parts used on agricultural harvesting equipment for many types of nuts and fruits, including almonds, pistachios, walnuts, olives, peaches, and apples. Garry Coit and Leroy Hewes headquartered their company in Modesto, near California’s Central Valley. They are committed to providing high-quality harvest supplies at reasonable prices to ensure more efficient and productive harvests.

For more than a decade, Coit and Hewes has relied on SOLIDWORKS^® to design replacement parts and associated tooling. The company also integrated CAMWorks^® software to machine molds, fixtures, and tooling. However, the manufacturer often ran into issues regarding its product data management (PDM) server that was maintained offsite by an IT services company. Employees couldn’t access data—sometimes for numerous days—whenever the server had to be reset. Coit and Hewes even lost data several times between 2017 and 2021.

The continual data management issues related to the aging PDM server and concerns regarding data security prompted Coit and Hewes to consider purchasing a new server when they learned about 3DEXPERIENCE^® Works data management capabilities on the cloud-based 3DEXPERIENCE platform. 

Coit and Hewes used the 3DEXPERIENCE data migration tool in early 2024 to move roughly 5,000 files from its 10+ year-old server to the 3DEXPERIENCE Works platform.

The 3DEXPERIENCE Transition Assistant tool includes access to a Sandbox test platform, allowing users to adjust settings and find the optimal attributes to support search functions following migration. Users can make tweaks and change settings after test runs using the Sandbox to achieve a successful migration without impacting the data itself.

After a few test runs and setting approximately a dozen attributes and properties to support the 3DEXPERIENCE search engine in the cloud, the entire Coit and Hewes vault was successfully migrated to the cloud overnight.

“Following the migration, it was clear that every file and revision scheme came over cleanly, which saved us a ton of hours of labor,” Mechanical Engineer Sam Melo, CSWP notes. With all files and revision controls managed transparently in the cloud, Coit and Hewes has improved its data management function. The company has also leveraged the 3DEXPERIENCE platform’s data management capabilities to deploy powerful efficiency-boosting search tools and improve data security and access—all while saving money. “Our 3DEXPERIENCE subscription costs are less than the monthly fees we were paying to maintain a PDM server,” Melo stresses.

With powerful search tools for legacy data and employees able to access the 3DEXPERIENCE platform via a browser from any location, Coit and Hewes is well positioned to realize productivity gains to support future growth. “I spent hours and hours and hours looking through folders in our old setup,” Melo continues. “Now if I need to make a mold to make a part, I can search on the part number and the tooling pops up. The decision to migrate our data to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform in the cloud was made to support growth. With all of the time savings that we’re enjoying and the ability to take our laptops home and still have access to all of our data via a browser, we’re gaining the productivity necessary to continue to grow our business.”