Brothers Japec and Jernej Jakopin have a passion for boating, design, technology, and innovation. Since they founded J&J Design in Slovenia in 1983, the company has produced nearly 300 designs for 55 production boat builders from 22 countries, yielding more than 60,000 boats and yachts. Over the years, the company’s designs have won more than 100 boat of the year, design, and environmental awards, as J&J Design has built a reputation for quality, efficiency, and innovation. The fi rm’s most recent creation—the R40 flybridge motoryacht— was designed for a large boat manufacturer. This latest yacht utilizes new production technology and features unique lower and main deck accommodations that are coupled with a sporty, seaworthy hull of superior handling. As J&J Design’s relationships with major boat builders have developed, so has the need to directly integrate its design operations with its customers, according to R&D Manager Martin Staric. “We’ve used a couple of CAD systems to design our boats in the past, but in 2014, a customer really pushed us to use SOLIDWORKS software, which is its standard design and manufacturing platform,” Staric recalls. “Although we had worked successfully with them in the past using drawings and STEP files, they wanted to automate the design-to-manufacturing process by linking us directly with their SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional vault. The number of projects that we have with this customer was growing, so we had to use SOLIDWORKS.” J&J Design implemented SOLIDWORKS Standard design, SOLIDWORKS Premium design and analysis, SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematics Professional electrical design, and SOLIDWORKS Product Data Management (PDM) Professional software initially to honor a customer’s request. However, once the firm installed SOLIDWORKS, something interesting happened: Management discovered that most young engineers already know SOLIDWORKS as their main 3D design tool, which made integrating with this customer much easier. “Our young engineers learn SOLIDWORKS at university, so they can come on board and contribute almost immediately,” Staric notes. “We were also impressed with the value of SOLIDWORKS in terms of the level of performance for the price.”
FASTER DESIGN-TO-MANUFACTURING, FEWER ERRORS
Since implementing SOLIDWORKS solutions, J&J Design has seen the transition from final designs to its customer’s manufacturing operations move faster, with fewer design errors and less rework on the production floor. “Because we’re both on the same SOLIDWORKS platform, things move more quickly and there are fewer mistakes,” Staric stresses. “Roughly 80 percent of our SOLIDWORKS usage involves one customer, and in many ways we’ve become part of their design department. “Design data is like a language,” Staric explains. “When you speak the same language, there’s not only less confusion and fewer misunderstandings, but also the ability to focus on resolving the design and engineering challenges that we encounter instead of data conversion and file translation problems.”
