Adobe Success Story

Accuracy and collaboration drive success
Businesses worldwide turn to Porkka for its proven commercial-grade refrigeration and cold-room systems. In addition to delivering outstanding products to hotels, restaurants, and medical laboratories, Porkka further differentiates its business by offering extensive customization options—over 80 variations of cooling systems—to accommodate each customer’s engineering, environmental, and regulatory requirements.

Central to ensuring streamlined product design and delivery is the ability for Porkka to quickly exchange detailed design documents with customers, installation specialists, and suppliers. “Ongoing communication and collaboration on design details is critical to delivering products that are right for our customers and their environments,” says Ari Kahrola, project manager at Porkka Finland. “When you’re installing a complex, modern refrigeration system in a restaurant in a 400-year-old building, the more insight everyone has into design details the better.”

To support its work, Porkka is using Adobe Acrobat 3D software to convert design documents created in Autodesk AutoCAD, as well as engineering project documents created in other applications, to platform-and application-independent Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The Adobe PDF files can be shared among review teams and incorporated into user manuals, marketing collateral, and technical data sheets.

Benefits

• Expanded access to engineering designs using Adobe PDF
• Accelerated collaboration by as much as 75% between Porkka staff and external partners
• Improved customer and partner understanding of company solutions
• Reduced costs and enhanced services by minimizing errors, incompatible file formats, and complex setups for end users

Project Details

Focus on design, not administration
Previously, Porkka relied on paper-based processes to communicate project details with dispersed teams inside and outside the company. “We wanted to adopt digital processes to eliminate many of the delays we encountered,” says Kahrola.

The company uses Autodesk AutoCAD to create customized product designs and drawings. Architects, design engineers, and Porkka marketing staff need to access design drawings, which are included in proposals submitted to prospective customers. Additional uses for finalized designs and other project documents include incorporating the materials into technical leaflets, marketing collateral, and user manuals.

The problem with the AutoCAD files was that there was no assurance that people outside the company’s engineering organization could reliably open and view them. “It’s difficult to know which version of software our outside partners have, and we cannot require our customers to purchase costly CAD or viewing applications just to work with us,” explains Kahrola.

As a workaround, Porkka tried to import the DXF files from AutoCAD into Microsoft applications for sharing with extended teams. Unfortunately, the large files were difficult to e-mail and did not always reliably display content. “Adobe PDF has become an integral part of our workflow because we can present engineering details in a reliable, more secure and easily accessible format,” adds Kahrola.

Using Acrobat 3D, Porkka can covert to Adobe PDF 2D designs, 3D models, and project engineering documents from a range of applications. The resulting Adobe PDF files are substantially smaller than native application files and provide more interactivity, such as enabling reviewers to add digital comments to materials using free Adobe Reader software. An added benefit is that multiple file types can be converted to Adobe PDF and combined into a single PDF file, making it easier to distribute and manage project documents.

“Improved collaboration facilitates higher quality designs and streamlines product development,” says Kahrola. “Documents in Adobe PDF are easily transmitted and accessible regardless of design complexities or the type of systems customers and partners use.”

Accelerating design and review cycles
Porkka is leveraging enhanced features in Acrobat 3D to better serve clients and reduce costs. “With Adobe PDF, we accelerated collaboration processes by as much as 75%, compared to sending native application or proprietary files. We’ve also seen a huge decrease in the size of files to transmit. Design documents in Adobe PDF can be as much as 95% smaller than the same details in native application files.”

Porkka typically sends several versions of drawings for a product in a single Adobe PDF file, clearly marking each drawing with explanations and notations. Recipients can quickly find the detail they want by electronically searching the files. The company also safeguards content in many of its documents by creating Adobe PDF files in which viewers cannot change core content.

Global project teams
In addition to using Adobe solutions to improve design collaboration and review, the company plans to use Acrobat 3D to improve creating technical manuals. Porkka cold room designs are produced in seven languages. If feedback from users in England is needed, Porkka staff produces design documents and guides in Finnish, translates the content to English, and then sends the files to the U.K. office, where digital comments are added to the Adobe PDF file and returned to headquarters.

Porkka’s marketing staff also often reviews engineering designs in Adobe PDF prior to finalization to better understand product components and provide comments. “By delivering 2D and eventually 3D models in Adobe PDF, we can reach across groups without worry about whether or not they can view information,” says Kahrola.

Formula for success
For Porkka, the primary advantages of using Acrobat 3D are having more control over the design process, enhanced engagement with customers and suppliers, and faster design cycles. “We’ve increased the accuracy of designs and decreased cycle times,’ says Kahrola. “The improved processes help drive our success.”

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