Thomas GmbH

From ring binder to digital process in record time

Within just a few years, internationally successful Thomas GmbH transformed itself from a middle-market metalworking company with cumbersome manual product data maintenance into a fully digitalized industry pioneer. And their companion once again for this extremely challenging and fast-paced software implementation: MAIT.

MAIT Germany Customer Success Story PTC & ThomasGmbH

Creo and Windchill enable further development and fulfill individual and demanding customer requirements

The Thomas Group is the world's largest independent supplier of tinplate and aluminum components for the aerosol, pharmaceutical, and cosmetics industries. The heart of the international company with around 500 employees beats in Langenselbold in Germany’s eastern Hesse region, half an hour's drive from Frankfurt am Main. Thomas GmbH was founded here in Kinzigtal in 1963 and it remains the headquarters of the international Thomas Group. The global player with subsidiaries in Germany, the USA, Spain, China, and Argentina produces and finishes stamped and deep drawn parts. These are used as robust connecting elements in the aerosol sector and as shiny gold and silver spray heads on perfume bottles or as matte-sheen cream jars. Thanks to its toolmaking facility in the company's own technology center, Thomas can also cater to individual customer requirements.

Sector Metalworking

Region Hesse, Germany

Company size 500 employees

It all started with CAD

Both the product specifications of the pharmaceutical industry and the requirements of the cosmetics industry are demanding and volatile. Also, customers are often looking for individualized solutions—but without being able to change the basic functionality of a spray head, for example. Oliver Heinz, Product Development Engineer at Thomas, knows what this means for the company: "For us, it's very often about making minor adjustments to existing products. 'Parametric design' as it's known is particularly well suited to this." But precisely this design principle was not in place at the middle-market German company in 2016. That’s why Thomas decided to introduce a new 3D CAD application. The software experts from MAIT helped to select and integrate the system. MAIT has been the preferred IT and software partner of the constantly expanding group of companies for decades. In the end, the choice fell on "Creo Parametric" from the world-renowned software manufacturer PTC. The versatile and flexible 3D CAD application enables the rapid design and further development of high-quality products and smooth communication with the manufacturing department, suppliers, and customers. Automating design tasks reduces the error rate and saves time. The Creo software also enables analyses, renderings, and animations—ideal prerequisites for even more productivity.

"By implementing Windchill as a PLM solution, we can now respond much faster to our customers' inquiries and requests for changes."

Oliver Heinz

Product Developer at Thomas GmbH

International demand calls for a radical shift to digital

However, digitalization at Thomas was far from over with the new CAD program. On the contrary: Creo was merely a stopover. Because new design software is one thing—but modern product data management (PDM) and product lifecycle management (PLM) is another, and perhaps even more crucial for a company like Thomas. The main reason why: Demand for pharmaceutical and cosmetic products is steadily increasing worldwide. Which means the Thomas Group is also growing. And just as every youngster's clothes get too tight at some point, the product data management system Thomas was using back in 2016 no longer "fit" properly either. The existing system, which consisted mainly of files and binders, was hardly suitable for international use. What was wanted now was for employees of the Thomas Group to be able to communicate easily and systematically at a technical level across sites worldwide. So if, say, the development of a spray head overcap was to begin in Langenselbold and end at the plant in Valencia, everyone involved in Germany and Spain had to be able to access the necessary product data without any problems—in other words, they had to "speak the same language" when it came to data management. The same applied for example to mounting cup designs that were to be used both in Germany and in the USA. During the subsequent software implementation, MAIT worked with the project managers at Thomas to achieve just that.

Modern product data management replaces files and binders

The MAIT project team opted for the "Windchill" software as a PDM/PLM solution right from the start. Hardly surprising: Like Creo, Windchill is a PTC product and is regarded as one of the leading PLM software solutions. It is also an integral part of the PTC product development system. "Thanks to Windchill, Thomas can easily manage all product features and the associated business processes throughout the entire product and service lifecycle across all areas of the company," says Birte Baumanns, head of the up to four-strong MAIT project team responsible for driving the software integration at Thomas from 2016. And the customer too is no less convinced: "By implementing Windchill as a PLM solution, we can now respond much faster to our customers' inquiries and requests for changes,” says product developer Oliver Heinz. Before this "software revolution", product managers often had to rely on their memory and rummage through piles of paper in search of missing information. No easy task with around 90,000 items of product data—and one that often took days or even weeks. "Today we can do it in just a few minutes. And not just because of the software, but because MAIT has customized the integration specifically to our requirements," adds Heinz. Windchill was initially implemented in Langenselbold, but was later expanded to include the sites in Spain and the USA, and is to be rolled out to all other locations in the future. In addition, MAIT also implemented another solution with a CAM system. With its open architecture, Windchill again offered ideal prerequisites for this expansion of the system.

New technical possibilities and fit for the future

How MAIT digitalized here