Speeding Up Time to Market

Galgon Industries uses state-of-the-art Cisco internetworking technology to compress every one of its supply chain cycles--from materials to talent. This is-turn has helped shorten the all-important time-to-market cycles of its hi-tech clientele.

"All our business processes have been streamlined. Planning cycles are up to 30 percent shorter. The dollar value of our materials pipeline has shrunk by 40 percent, and our planning lead time has be shortened by as much as eight weeks."

Jeff Foreman
Vice President of Operations
Galgon

Background

A leading contract manufacturer for the high-technology industry, Galgon Industries provides its blue-chip clientele with a full range of services, from mechanical design to tooling and assembly to direct fulfillment of end customer orders. Headquartered in Fremont, California, Galgon maintains a remote design and manufacturing facility in Scotland and employs more than 300 people.

Challenge

In the electronics industry, time to market is king. Design cycles need to be constantly shortened, supply chains reduced and simplified, and problems resolved at "Internet speed." To meet increasing customer time-to-market demands, Galgon determined it needed to support real-time, concurrent engineering activities with customers in a variety of locations and between its two major facilities.

The company also required more immediate communications of its service capabilities to clients and prospects, a cost-effective way to provide engineers with access to previously created tools, and a means to extend its networked resources to clients, vendors, and its own telecommuters.

"Ours is a very competitive industry, and we needed to be able to play on a level field with some very large competitors," said Jeff Foreman, vice-president of operation at Galgon. "As it turns out, our customers would be hard pressed to find a partner as advanced as Galgon in so many areas, thanks largely to our aggressive use of technology and networking."

Solution

Galgon has put into place a Cisco technology-based internetworking infrastructure, encompassing local area network (LAN)/wide area network (WAN), remote access, and Virtual Private Network (VPN) capabilities. A dedicated T1 line now connects Galgon's facilities in California and Scotland, anchored on each end by a Cisco 3810 multiservice access concentrator for cost-effectively integrating data, voice, and video traffic. A Cisco 2514 series router provides the connection to the Internet and allows customers to securely access Galgon's internal Web and FTP servers and document databases. The company's network backbone interconnects using four redundant Cisco 4500 routers, and Fast Ethernet LAN, based on eight Cisco Catalyst 2900 series XL 10/100 autosensing switches.

As a company that works across multiple time zones, Galgon has always emphasized reliability, particularly after some lengthy travails with equipment from other vendors. "The reliability of our Cisco equipment has been amazing," said Alex Vertlib, Galgon's IT manager, whose 10-person staff remotely administers the network via VPN or ISDN lines. "We've never had to repair a single piece of Cisco equipment and have never even had to call the Cisco support line because the documentation is so good."

Results

Galgon's networking investments provide the company with a major time-to-market advantage. Instead of constantly exchanging 3D CAD files between its facilities and its customers, engineers in different locations now collaborate via the Internet or Galgon's intranet to edit designs in real time. By supporting video data, the Cisco 3810 access concentrators have also allowed Galgon to add video conferencing capabilities to its customer links to enhance decision making.

Galgon has also leveraged the Internet to communicate its services to a wider audience. Even more importantly, the company now enables client engineers from around the world to access its extensive library of tools, again with an eye toward shortening design cycles and accelerating time to market. Even hiring cycles have been shortened as the Internet has brought Galgon an exponential increase in the number of qualified job applicants. Once on the job, employees can dial into the corporate intranet from any place, at any time.

These same networking technologies have enabled real-time supplier communications and material coordination, which have significantly compressed the supply chain and reduced Galgon's inventory exposure. The company also benefits from shorter cycle times, from shipment to collection.

"Our strategic investment in technology and networking has had a compacting effect across our entire business," said Foreman. "All our business processes have been streamlined. Planning cycles are up to 30 percent shorter. The dollar value of our materials pipeline has shrunk by 40 percent, and our planning lead time has been shortened by as much as eight weeks."