Is it Time to Move Beyond Vault Alone?

For years, Vault Professional has stood strong as the reliable heart of your Inventor and AutoCAD CAD data management. It’s been the go-to for keeping your design files organised, tracking every version with precision, managing basic product lifecycle states, and ensuring secure collaboration through user permissions. In many CAD-centric environments, it remains an indispensable tools, a solid foundation upon which your engineering teams operate.

But at your product development ecosystem expands and becomes more intricate, a crucial question arises: Is Vault Professional, on its own, truly keeping pace with the evolving demands of your entire product lifecycle?

The Strengths of Vault Professional: A Solid Foundation

Let’s be clear: Vault Professional excels in its core functions. It provides a robust environment for:

• Centralised File Management: Keeping your crucial CAD and engineering files organised and easily accesible.
• Precise Version Control and History Tracking: Offering a clear audit trail of every design iteration, minimising errors and confusion.
• Fundamental Lifecycle Management: Guiding your designs through essential stages like ‘Work in Progress’, ‘For Review’ and ‘Released’.
• Secure Collaboration: Managing user access and permissions to protect sensitive design data and allow approvals through lifecycle transitions.

For teams deeply embedded in CAD workflows, Vault Professional remains an essential cornerstone. However, the limitations begin to surface when we look beyond the immediate design phase.

When Vault Professional Starts to Show its Limitations

As your organisation grows and the complexities of product development increase, relying solely on Vault Professional can start to create bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Common indicators that your might be outgrowing with a Vault Professional-only setup include:

• The Spreadsheet Struggle: Change requests are being tracked manually through spreadsheets or endless email chains, leading to version control nightmares and missed updates.
• BOM Bottlenecks: Your Bill of Materials (BOM) requires manual re-entry into your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, introducing the risk of errors and consuming valuable time.
• Collaboration Silos: External partners like suppliers and even internal teams, like operations, struggle to access relevant product information and collaborate effectively.
• Data Fragmentation: Crucial non-CAD data, such as compliance documents, inspection plans, Change Documentation, reside in disparate systems, disconnected from the core product information in Vault Professional.
• Lifecycle Visibility Gaps: The product lifecycle beyond the design stage becomes fragmented, lacking consistent tracking and visibility across different departments and different workflows such as New Product Introduction before the design and planning product retirement after the design workflow.

If any of these scenarios resonate with your current processes, it’s a strong signal that your product development is yearning for a more integrated and comprehensive solution.

Recognising the Need for More: Key Questions to Ask

Take a moment to reflect on your current workflows. Consider these questions:

• Is your inbox a graveyard of change requests and approval notifications? Do you find yourself relying heavily on emails and meetings to track even minor product modifications?
• Are you juggling multiple versions of the BOM across different systems? Does the process of ensuring BOM accuracy feel like a constant battle?
• Is your quality control process disconnected from the design and engineering data? Are there delays or inaccuracies in communicating design changes to quality teams?
• Are your change management processes inconsistent, paper-based, or lacking a clear digital audit trail?

If you find yourself answering ‘yes’ to one or more of these questions, it’s highly likely that Vault Professional alone is no longer sufficiently equipped to handle the complexities of your product development lifecycle.

Fusion Manage: Extending Your Vault Professional Capabilities

This is where Fusion Manage steps in as the ideal complement to your existing Vault Professional infrastructure. It’s not about replacing Vault Professional, but rather about strategically extending its capabilities to address the very gaps we’ve discussed. Fusion Manage provides a powerful platform for:

• Streamlined Change Management: Implementing centralised, digital workflows for change requests, reviews and approvals, ensuring full traceability and reducing errors.
• Comprehensive BOM Management: Establishing a central item master and enabling the management of multi-level BOMs, seamlessly connecting engineering and manufacturing data.
• Enhances External Collaboration: providing secure portals for suppliers and other external stakeholders to participate in the product development process.
• Process Automation: Automating key processes across the product lifecycle, including New Product Introduction (NPI), Engineering Change Orders (ECOs) and quality workflows.
• Universal Data Accessibility: Making critical product data accessible to non-CAD users across the organisation, fostering better communication and decision-making.

Imagine the Possibilities: A Real-World Example

Consider this scenario: A design team finalises and releases a new part within Vault Professional. Instead of manual notifications and data entry, this release automatically triggers a predefined workflow in Fusion Manage. Procurement receives an instant notification about the new part requirements, and the QA team is alerted to begin their inspection planning. Simultaneously, the accurate and up-to-date BOM is automatically pushed directly to the ERP system.

No more frantic emails. No more data re-entry errors. Just seamless data flow and complete traceability across the entire product lifecycle.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

If your engineering team is feeling the constraints of managing increasingly complex product development with Vault Professional alone, it’s time to consider a more holistic approach. Combining the robust CAD data management of Vault Professional with the extended lifecycle capabilities of Fusion Manage, unlocks the potential for true digital transformation within your organisation.