Global Truck Manufacturer Updates its Legacy Parts Management System with Low-code/No-code Software Application for Easy Catalog Management
Case Study
Global Truck Manufacturer Updates its Legacy Parts Management System with Low-code/No-code Software Application for easy Catalog Management
About the Client
A Fortune 100 manufacturer of trucks and buses used a third-party software product to manage its parts information, including information about components, suppliers, and designs. Approximately 200 employees used the system to create, add and replace parts, manage the parts approval process, and search for parts information. An additional 600 users used the system to access parts information and generate reports. The parts management system had been heavily customized to meet the company’s specific content and workflow needs, and was maintained by the software product vendor at a significant annual cost. Modifications to the product required considerable time, effort and cost.
Business Challenge
With new truck specifications being added regularly, new configuration, rules and parts catalog had to be incorporated rapidly. The monolithic architecture and extensive customizations struggled to cope with this business need. The increasing cost of product maintenance contract was an added burden. The company investigated the feasibility of replacing the product with a custom solution to suit its present and future needs. The primary criteria for its decisions were:
Development effort and time: New Application to be ready before maintenance renewal is due.
Initial cost to build: Development cost should fit within the existing fiscal year budget.
Ongoing cost of ownership: Freedom from vendor lock in and flexibility to use any provider (internal or outsourced) for ongoing product enhancement and maintenance.
In addition, the client required the accumulated technical debt to be resolved, including limitations in how information could be classified and enriched with reference data.
Trigent Solution
To ensure a successful replacement of the parts management system, Trigent conducted a detailed requirements analysis. The process defined the workflows for creating and managing parts while addressing integration and compatibility challenges across key enterprise systems. This included the PLM application, service parts database, production configuration system, ERP, part tracking, and NAFTA compliance systems.
Trigent leveraged a specialized low-code/no-code platform to accelerate the development timeline while ensuring ample time for detailed requirements gathering. This approach enabled Trigent to meet the client’s objectives of rapid delivery and cost efficiency. The platform’s powerful low-code/no-code solution capabilities allowed Trigent to automate large portions of the development process, all while preserving the flexibility needed for deep customization and seamless integration.
Trigent analysts worked with the client team to understand and define system requirements and dependencies. An important part of this process involved identifying those requirements that were predicated on what the previous system demanded rather than actual business need, and had become an institutionalized “work around”.
With the final requirements defined, Trigent translated them into a set of specifications that leveraged the low code platform’s visual development tools. Using it, Trigent rapidly generated the application’s business logic, data structures, and user interface components, significantly reducing manual coding efforts. By leveraging a low-code development environment, Trigent was able to dramatically cut both the time and cost associated with traditional software development, which typically involves lengthy coding phases consuming 60-70% of the overall project effort.
Additionally, the low code platform’s model-driven approach allowed Trigent to involve fewer specialized developers, further reducing development costs and expediting the project’s completion.
Enabling Advanced Search through Low-code/No-code Solutions
One important new requirement for the application that emerged was the ability to allow users to easily and intuitively conduct complex searches. for example, to identify parts that share multiple attributes while excluding others. This requirement led to the creation of distinct capabilities for classification and categorization, which had been collapsed in the previous system. Classification answers the question “What is it?” (For example, a bracket).
However, an object’s class is insufficient to represent the richness of categorization, which allows groupings of objects similar in some chosen criteria, such as height, weight, region, or manufacturer. In the new system, categorization facilitates indexing and querying, letting users rapidly conduct complex searches, and allowing individuals to create their own categories based on parameters they set in queries.
The company may choose to maintain the system internally, using the low code platform to enable its IT Team and analysts to make system changes without writing code.
The company can expect ongoing maintenance costs of approximately 15% annually of the cost of system development, a fraction of what it was paying to maintain the previous system.
Client Benefits
Trigent’s development of the system met all of the client’s critical goals for the project
- Time to delivery - Trigent delivered a system for implementation within eight months of its first requirements gathering meeting with the client.
- Initial cost to build - The cost of development was equivalent to what the company would have paid for its annual maintenance contract for the installed product.
- Ongoing cost of ownership - Trigent provided a one-year quality warranty against any critical system defects. The new application built using low-code/no-code solution does not tie the client to any vendor's proprietary knowledge, giving the company freedom to choose the most efficient and cost-effective options for ongoing maintenance and support.