After changing roles from a Business Analyst to a Data Engineer at 5B, a solar array manufacturing start-up, I pitched and build multiple projects. The one I started with, was integrating our engineering and supply chain databases (Entreprise Resource Planning (ERP) <> Computer Aided Design (CAD) Software integration). The aim of the project was to:

1. Reduce Engineering to Order (ETO) Time by 5-10%.
2. Reduce manufacturing downtime and sourcing costs due to human error in cross-referencing 50+ products for each new product configuration.
3. Change from an ETO process relying on technical knowledge (Production Lead) to a scalable systematised ETO.

The results was custom software with Google Apps Script, allowing users to import data from both databases into google drive, compare product meta data and build an importable ERP Bill of Material (BoM) from the CAD BoM. You can find below a product demo:

While the efficiency and error reduction targets where achieved, this product failed to fully systematise the CAD <> ERP process ETO. Indeed, it still required expertise to run the Google Script, and I ended up handing it off to my replacement. Finally, In the research phase before deciding to build our own, I found this SolidWorks <> Odoo ERP Integration tool that was pretty similar to what I ended up building, which would be an alternative to in house code software to solve this problem (specifically for Solidwords <> Odoo) :