It all started in a garage, with a couple of jig saws and plenty of innovative ideas. In the bracing sea air of Brittany, France, two life guards driven by the same passion set about building a holiday park with makeshift means, which would become a huge success in the Guidel region, near Lorient. On the strength of this success, Synchronicity was born in 1995, six years after the release of the legendary album by The Police of the same name. The success machine was in motion...
Synchronicity is now a leading player in the business of supplying open-air play areas to camping sites, parks and gardens, beaches, etc. The company's customers, made up mainly of local authorities run camping sites, schools and nurseries, are increasingly installing leisure areas for children. Synchronicity works with TopSolid’Design and TopSolid’Wood to make its oudoor furniture and toys.
With a headcount of 20, Synchronicity designs, manufactures, assembles and installs products through a network of resellers in France and Southern Europe (Portugal, Spain). Several brands, including Bikini & Bermuda, Sport & Co and Urbi & Orbi propose various product ranges, from conventional play areas, to sports grounds and urban equipment.
In this highly competitive sector, Synchronicity is a small organisation that is more flexible and reactive than its competitors, which often have more R&D resources, but lack flexibility. The development of this type of product must comply with draconian European safety standards applying to the access height, possible sources of injury, etc. More and more play areas must be certified and validated by organisations such as the TÜV, APAVE or Veritas, a fact that demands an extremely strict and thorough approach. |
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The design office gained strength in 1997 with the arrival of Mr. Mahé, who designed the layout of the very first creations on a good old drawing board. The computerisation of the design office really started in 1998/1999, with the introduction of digital controls in the workshop and the enthusiasm of Mr. Mahé, who was passionately interested in computers. There are now three people in the design office: Mr. Mahé, who manages the department, Mr. Le Deuff, who specialises in layout, cost estimates and production methods and Mr. Livory, who is in charge of documents and design. |
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Productivity has become a vital factor in the design office and it is now essential to use modern and competitive means of production. This is the reason why the design office needed to optimise design and production costs and to reduce the time to market.
The purpose of the modernisation of the design office was to:
- Make communication easier through parametric 3D design and all its benefits in terms of applications: synthetic imagery, drawings with exploded views, kinematics, etc.
- Reduce design cycles 5 to 10 fold
- Modularize standard components and store these in the TopSolid library of components so that existing designs could be reused and specific customer demands for special combinations met in record time
- Improve the certification of components
- Do away with repetitive tasks and obtain the numbers of parts, weights, dimensions, etc. in a single click.
Mission accomplished thanks to TopSolid’Design and TopSolid’Wood, which have been in use for more than 4 years now. After just two days training and without encountering any adaptation problems, the design office now uses TopSolid full time and plans to go even further with the integrated offer by using TopSolid’Pdm to manage its component references and TopSolid’WoodCam for digital control in the workshop. |
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