SolidWorks UK: 19 November, 2008

Established in 1955 to manufacture Tweeny domestic waste disposal units, Haigh's beginnings can best be described as modest. The first Tweeny (taken from the Victorian name for a scullery maid) was assembled on the kitchen table at the founder's home at Arbour Hill, Ross-on-Wye, in October 1955. The first order for sales came in December of that year, and a factory was soon established on Camp Meadows, Ross-on-Wye, to manufacture for the steadily growing demand. The present factory, which occupies 4 acres, has grown from the first building of 500 sq. feet with a dirt track to it.

Today, the Haigh range is extensive, used in such diverse situations such as hospitals, catering establishments, chemical works, sewage treatment plants and shipboard waste. The Haigh range has been used to solve problems such as pathological specimens, secret documents and even old bank notes!! Our Automatic screening, conditioning, dewatering and compacting waste water ACE Screeners and Packages, are at the forefront of today's sewage and effluent treatment, to meet new EEC standards.

Haigh's products are now exported to many parts of the world and all aspects of design, manufacturing and sales are centred at the Haigh works in Ross-on-Wye. Many metal working processes are carried out - turning, milling, fitting, welding, sheet metal forming, lapping, assembly, laser cutting, robotic welding. There is also a spray shop and full electrical and repair shop. Design and development is carried out using 3-D computer aided equipment.

"... we wanted to improve accuracy and functionality by 'clever design'.."

Due to the nature of the products that Haigh produce, it has always proven difficult to outsource the design and manufacture processes. The expertise required to perform these tasks requires time to acquire, consequently Haigh’s operations are almost entirely performed in-house. Successfully managing all of the processes in one infrastructure requires that all the relevant design and manufacturing systems seamlessly integrate with one another.

As so often in engineering, the challenges are defined by the problems encountered in the past. In Haigh’s case, there are a number of issues that had costly implications that needed to be addressed. Before the implementation of the solutions provided by Cadtek Systems, component design (produced in 2D) would often undergo redesign on the shop floor by the manufacturing and process engineers as they tackled the problems of getting the components onto the press.

Manufacturing engineers found themselves having to interpret the designs as they took the drawings from 2D into 3D. Naturally this caused errors in the final component, jeopardising either fit or function.

Martin Price, Chief Design Engineer

Identifying the stage at which errors were being introduced would prove difficult and remedying the faults in a component would lead to increased scrap, delays in final product, and a general wasting of resources as the components were being designed in continual iterative loops. Martin Price, Chief Design Engineer, explained “Our 2D systems are very good, in fact we still use ME10 for 2D draughting, but we wanted to improve the accuracy and functionality by 'clever design'. We wanted the manufacturing side to trust the data we were sending them and, in turn, be able to feedback to improve the design for manufacture. We wanted to make our data reusable as we do have a lot of common components and allow better analysis of design by ease of visualisation.

Haigh’s requirements were not unique, it was quickly realised that a 3D mechanical design package would need to become a core business investment. The solution would need to include comprehensive component and assembly handling with well-rounded sheet metal capabilities. Additionally, full data management of newly created and legacy data was needed, as well as a way of passing on design intent electronically. Haigh also identified that they wanted the solution to be intuitive to use and easy to learn.  Investment, expansion and growth are never far away from Haigh’s business ethic and consequently any solution would need to be able to grow with the success of the company. Furthermore Haigh insisted that the solution should use software recognised as best in class products and be provided and supported by a leading system provider.

Haigh's solutions include structures around the unit such as ladders and gantries

Haigh Engineering chose SolidWorks and SmarTeam to address the challenges before them. The company also uses ME10 and E3 Series electrical software for routing the wiring in their products. Haigh Engineering chose Cadtek Systems Limited as their provider of choice to integrate and implement the systems, and to train all their staff.

Martin Price, Chief Design Engineer, explains the evaluation process, “we looked at all the leading systems available at the time, some were just too complicated, some had poor sheet metal capabilities or we would need to buy extra packages. We wanted one package to do everything.

What really convinced us to choose Cadtek Systems over other vendors, was that Cadtek were able to show us SolidWorks working in our own environment. We witnessed it doing exactly what we wanted, whereas other vendors would simply talk about how their solutions could work. “We are very pleased with SolidWorks, and we have found that SolidWorks are always adding new functionality that we as engineers require. This has proven that our decision was the right one.

We were up and running very quickly, obviously we still relied on our old system for a while because we had work in progress, but as new work came in we moved it on to the new system.” Martin states. The migration into SmarTeam was also seamless. All the legacy data was imported into the database during one evening, so now Haigh have full access to every component that they have ever created in one data vault. This vault will continue to grow as new designs are brought through the manufacturing process.