CP Manufacturing Inc.

For more than four decades, CP Manufacturing has led the world in waste material separation technology—designing, building, and installing hundreds of waste recycling facilities and related material separation machinery and equipment. Founded in 1977, CP Manufacturing is the primary manufacturing division of the CP Group, which evolved out of CP Manufacturing, the company that designed the world’s first aluminum-can flatteners and densifiers. Over the years, CP Manufacturing has acquired several companies and set up international offices to provide more complete sorting solutions. It has established itself as the world leader in manufacturing advanced systems and equipment for the recycling and waste industries.

As a leading innovator in the waste management and recycling equipment industry, CP Manufacturing is known for its superior engineering and advanced disc-screen separation technology. As demand for CP’s custom-engineered plants and equipment continues to grow, the need to streamline processes, increase throughput, and expand product development has become critically important for supporting rapid, ongoing growth, according to Engineering Manager Jason Kerns.

“Although our interest in 3D, when we moved many years ago from AutoCAD® 2D design tools to the SOLIDWORKS® 3D product development environment, was initially related to improving the visuals in our sales proposals, we’ve since come to realize the possible productivity gains associated with utilizing integrated SOLIDWORKS 3D solutions and the automation potential of the SOLIDWORKS Application Programming Interface [API],” Kerns explains. “Since our initial implementation of SOLIDWORKS tools, we’ve heavily leveraged the SOLIDWORKS API—particularly with respect to the SOLIDWORKS PDM [product data management] Professional system—to automate a host of distinct processes, and have added SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional photo-realistic rendering software to our SOLIDWORKS Professional design, SOLIDWORKS Premium design and analysis, SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional product data management, and SOLIDWORKS Composer technical communication solutions.”

DEVELOPING RECYCLING SYSTEMS FOUR TIMES FASTER

While the initial migration from AutoCAD tools to SOLIDWORKS software   doubled   the   speed   of   the   company’s   product   development  cycles,  CP  has  since  tapped  the  power  of  the  SOLIDWORKS  API  to  further  automate  and  accelerate  the  development of recycling systems to become four times faster at product  development.  “SOLIDWORKS  has  really  complemented  our  efforts  to  expand  our  recycling  systems  footprint  globally,”  Kerns stresses.

“We’re   doing   more   business   in   other   countries   and   have   introduced an innovative clean-up system for broken glass,” Kerns adds. “We’ve had to move into a new facility that’s three times as large, have doubled the size of our engineering department, and have  dramatically  increased  product  development  throughput.  With  SOLIDWORKS  integrated  solutions,  we’ve  been  able  to  support  rapid,  sustainable  growth  without  missing  a  beat,  primarily  because  of  our  ability  to  automate  sales,  marketing,  design, and production.”

AUTOMATING PROCESSES VIA SOLIDWORKS PDM API

Utilizing  the  SOLIDWORKS  PDM  API,  CP  has  automated  many  of  its  product  development  and  manufacturing  workflows  and  tasks,  and  has  integrated  SOLIDWORKS  PDM  with  its  Epicor®  enterprise  resource  planning  (ERP)  system.  Examples  of  CP’s  SOLIDWORKS   PDM   automation   include   automatic   creation   of  SOLIDWORKS  models,  associated  visuals,  and  equipment  lists  from  information  entered  into  a  sales  layout;  automatic  generation of DXF® files to drive CP’s laser cutters, press brakes, and  water-jet  cutters;  automatic  notifications  sent  to  Electrical  engineering whenever BOM changes require motor horsepower modifications; and automatic upload of BOM information directly into  CP’s  ERP  system  to  drive  preproduction  planning  with  no  need for manual intervention.

“Working with our reseller, DASI, and the API team at DS [Dassault Systèmes] SOLIDWORKS, we’ve been able to leverage the SOLIDWORKS API to the greatest extent possible to support our specific development processes, as well as to automate manual and repetitive tasks,” Kerns notes. “The flexibility that we enjoy to automate processes with the SOLIDWORKS API saves us a ton of time and money.”

TAKING CUSTOMERS INTO VIRTUAL RECYCLING WORLD

Adding  SOLIDWORKS  Visualize  Professional  software  to  its  SOLIDWORKS Composer technical communication software and the Demo3DVR virtual reality plug-in for SOLIDWORKS provides CP  with  a  wide  range  of  capabilities  for  creating  compelling  photo-realistic  visuals  and  immersing  customers  and  prospects  inside  virtual-reality-based  representations  of  the  company’s  recycling facilities. CP now communicates digitally and virtually, and  has  completely  eliminated  paper  from  its  development  processes, including the use of SOLIDWORKS eDrawings® on the shop floor for checking measurements and dimensions.

“Whether  we  need  to  create  a  custom  rendering  to  support  a  sales  call,  conduct  a  virtual  flythrough  to  facilitate  a  customer  design review, or set up a virtual reality station at a trade show so prospects can enter a virtual recycling facility, the combination of all of our SOLIDWORKS visualization solutions really helps to set us apart,” Kerns points out.