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Ajmal Perfumes Reduces Time-to-Market by 50 Percent with Autodesk Digital Prototyping Solution
Published Sep 5, 2013
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Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) a leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software, announced that Ajmal Perfumes is using Autodesk Digital Prototyping software for competitive advantage. By adopting a 3D design workflow, Ajmal Perfumes has shortened it’s time to market, increased its manufacturing capacity, and is able to deliver more complex product design.
Ajmal Perfumes is a fragrance manufacturer and retailer headquartered in Dubai’s Hamarain Centre. The company manufactures and retails its own brand of fragrance products for the body and home, mainly across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The company has ambitious plans to expand into Asia. It has been in business for six decades, and has two production facilities supplying more than 300 products to over 150 outlets in eight countries. Each of these products demands specific and effective packaging to attract customers. In line with the challenges across the fragrance industry, the packaging and mechanics of the atomizer can be quite complex, requiring special design skills.
Ajmal Perfumes invests heavily in research and development, viewing this investment as key to maintaining its leadership position in the industry. In 2004, it set up a new state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Dubai in order to keep up with demand. The 10 million USD, 150,000-square feet facility houses manufacturing units, a fully automated packaging division and an extensive R&D wing. The plant serves as the fragrance house's main source for its complete product range. As one of the best of its kind in the region, the facility explores new techniques to produce creative, quality raw materials and fragrances to meet changing customer preferences and current international trends.
Previously Ajmal Perfumes used 2D design software for new perfume bottles, applicators and packaging, with a design team of three taking a working week to design a single new product. However, after ramping up production to around 200 new designs every year, a more efficient solution was required. According to Abdulla Ajmal, General Manager, Ajmal Perfumes, "The old software presented several problems: it was very difficult to understand and it was extremely time consuming and process intensive. In addition, the output was two dimensional."
Ajmal Perfumes performed a need analysis before it started looking for a solution. "We needed a platform that would allow for fast and easy modeling," Abdulla recalls. “The software had to be compliant with industry standards and provide support for other MCAD files. Cost was also taken into consideration. Once we decided on the Autodesk software, it took us six months to plan, train and rollout. Autodesk Authorized Reseller ImageGrafix made sure that we did not face any problems during the implementation."
Ajmal built its 3D pipeline on Autodesk Inventor and Autodesk 3ds Max Design software products. This Digital Prototyping solution offers a comprehensive, flexible set of software for 3D mechanical design, product simulation, tooling creation and design communication. It enables the production of accurate 3D digital prototypes that help in the design, visualization and simulation of products before they are physically made.
"Autodesk solutions have provided us with substantial time savings over our previous implementations. The new arrangement is 50 percent faster and allows us to move on to new projects a lot quicker," says Abdulla. "Most importantly, we are now able to visualize designs in 3D, which allows us to eliminate any flaws that appear and deliver a design that is more or less in its final production form. Both Inventor and 3ds Max Design software have been extremely beneficial for us. Autodesk technology lets us visualize a design before we actually make it. This allows us to make changes, without having to invest anything more than time. I think that is invaluable."
The design team can now deliver new design presentations quickly. The software allows Ajmal Perfumes to present multiple options easily and quickly, as well as make changes and final production design faster to implement and present.
Autodesk software also allows the Ajmal design team to create more complicated designs.
"We plan to continue using Autodesk software," Abdulla explains. "In fact, we hope that the future sees a greater integration of design software and production facilities. We believe that general improvements in software and the introduction of additional tools will help make the creation process even easier."
Posted by
VMD - [Virtual Marketing Department]
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