Crizaf S.r.l.

Crizaf is a leading developer and manufacturer of custom-engineered conveyor belts, separators, filling and storage systems, and weighing and counting systems. Founded in Italy in 1954, the company has grown to become a multinational organization with production sites in Italy, the United States, Brazil, and India; distributors in 30 countries; and a worldwide sales force. Crizaf products are used in a range of fields, including the automotive, container, cosmetics, electric, electronic, food, household appliance, medical/pharmaceutical, packaging, and recycling industries. For many years, the company utilized AutoCAD® 2D design tools and eventually moved to the Autodesk® Inventor® 3D design package. However, issues related to incompatibility with legacy 2D data led company management to become dissatisfied with it and seek out a better 3D design solution, according to owner Claudio Cassinari. “We have a team of four engineers who work on different parts of our systems, and we found working with Inventor to be complicated, messy, and an obstacle to effective teamwork,” Cassinari explains. “Our engineers constantly had to think about the best way to save a file for future use instead of focusing on designing our systems. We also had trouble making design changes late in the process. We had used Inventor and AutoCAD for many years, but ultimately lost confidence in the software. We were wasting incredible amounts of time and decided to look for another 3D design platform.” A Crizaf engineer had used SOLIDWORKS 3D design software in a previous job and suggested it could resolve the company’s problems. “We compared SOLIDWORKS against Inventor to see if SOLIDWORKS would make our lives easier,” Cassinari recalls. “We were surprised and pleased to discover that SOLIDWORKS software was easier to use and more compatible with our AutoCAD legacy data than Inventor. We also looked at Solid Edge®, but chose to implement SOLIDWORKS.” Crizaf standardized on SOLIDWORKS in 2015—implementing SOLIDWORKS Standard and SOLIDWORKS Professional design software—because the solution is easy to use, facilitates design changes, and encourages collaborative teamwork. “With SOLIDWORKS, we have resolved all of our problems and put our growth trajectory back on track,” Cassinari says.
 

FASTER DEVELOPMENT, EASY DESIGN CHANGES

Since implementing SOLIDWORKS software, Crizaf has improved its ability to leverage AutoCAD 2D data for new projects and has enjoyed greater flexibility and stability when making design changes. The move to SOLIDWORKS has allowed Crizaf to reduce design cycles and shorten time-to-market for its custom-engineered systems by 15 to 20 percent. “We’ve seen a big difference in efficiency and flexibility since moving to SOLIDWORKS,” Cassinari stresses. “Shortening design cycles and customer delivery times is critical to our success because of the trend in our business towards customization. Currently, 65 percent of our business is custom-engineered systems and 35 percent represents standard products. Requests for customization have increased in recent years and will continue to grow in the future. Fortunately, with SOLIDWORKS we have the agility that we need to deliver quality systems faster and the flexibility to make design changes, even late in the process.”

INCREASED ACCURACY, IMPROVED QUALITY, GREATER DESIGN REUSE

Because the move to SOLIDWORKS resolved the company’s data compatibility issues, Crizaf can more easily reuse portions of prior designs, leading to greater design accuracy, improved system quality, and a 15 percent increase in design reuse. “While each design is specific to a particular customer, many are similar in many respects but have key differences, such as using another color or material,” Cassinari notes. “SOLIDWORKS has allowed us to increase design reuse by 15 percent because we can quickly and easily adapt previous designs to meet new requirements,” Cassinari adds. “Using SOLIDWORKS, our product quality is definitely higher because we can be more accurate and precise during design, and can easily implement changes whenever necessary.”
 

BETTER TEAMWORK, CUSTOMER COMMUNICATION

In addition to helping Crizaf shorten design time, improve product quality, and increase design reuse, SOLIDWORKS supports the company’s efforts to foster internal collaboration and teamwork, as well as improve interaction and communication with customers. “Our team is working more effectively in SOLIDWORKS because we no longer encounter impediments to teamwork,” Cassinari says. “We are also better able to communicate with customers,” Cassinari continues. “For example, we now include a preliminary 3D design in all of our proposals—something that simply took too long before we had SOLIDWORKS. We produce higher quality design proposals and can use 3D design information to explain how a machine will operate when built. With SOLIDWORKS, everything is much clearer.”