Engineering Knowledge Search Across PLM and CAD Made Accessible to Every Department
Engineering data locked in PLM and CAD that only engineers could access. Six departments needed answers daily. We made it searchable by anyone, in plain language.
Global Heavy Machinery OEM
- Specs, tolerances, BOMs, revision histories, assembly details.
- The data was written in a language only engineers could read - assembly trees, parametric models, revision chains, tolerance stacks.
- Any employee in any department can type a question: "do we make a lower-cost part with tolerance X?", and get an accurate answer drawn directly from engineering data.
- Engineers stopped fielding routine questions and went back to engineering.
The Situation
Six departments needed engineering data every day: sales, procurement, manufacturing engineering, production planning, field service, and aftermarket. Specs, tolerances, BOMs, revision histories, assembly details. The data existed. It lived in PLM systems and CAD files that required specialized tools and training to navigate. In practice, only engineers could get to it.
Why It Was Hard
The problem wasn't access control. The data was written in a language only engineers could read - assembly trees, parametric models, revision chains, tolerance stacks. A salesperson asking whether the company made a part with certain specs had no way to query the system directly. Neither did procurement, production planning, or field service. Questions went out via email, chat, phone, and tickets. Engineers spent up to half their time fielding requests from other departments. Meanwhile, everyone waiting for answers was losing 30 minutes to 2 hours a day on questions that had answers sitting in the system, just not reachable.
What We Built
A plain-language interface sits over the PLM and CAD systems. Any employee in any department can type a question: "do we make a lower-cost part with tolerance X?", and get an accurate answer drawn directly from engineering data. No specialized software. No training. No ticket submitted to an engineer. The system translates business questions into engineering queries and returns something the person asking can actually use.
The Result
Six departments now get engineering answers directly, in seconds. Engineers stopped fielding routine questions and went back to engineering. Every non-engineering employee recovered 30 minutes to 2 hours a day. Engineering became a capability the whole organization runs on — without engineers having to be the ones providing it.
Engineering was spending half their time answering questions from other departments. Now the information is just there. Engineering engineers again. Everyone else has what they need.
— VP of Engineering
Is your engineering team spending more time answering questions than engineering?
Let's walk through how this could work for you.
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