Engineering control: rebuilding CAD automation for TNA

The Challenge

TNA is one of Australia’s most successful global players known for food packaging and processing systems so effective that chances are the next bag of chips you open would have been manufactured using their equipment! Their automation backbone for drawing management was built in-house by an experienced engineer who had long since departed the company, leaving behind a complex group of add-ins interfacing with Autodesk Inventor, Vault, ERP systems. It became challenging for the IT department to support this application using internal resources. At the same time, changes in the IT infrastructure and a growing list of desirable enhancements led to a necessity for a major upgrade.

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What we Delivered

Modern CAD re-engineered their entire software suite, including analysing and cleaning up the existing codebase, to bring it under full control. The code was restructured, bugs were fixed, and the tools were adapted to reflect and meet their current workflows and IT requirements. The system now runs better than before with improved maintainability and zero reliance on any one person.

Highlights

The project transformed a fragile legacy system into a robust, and stable application. By restoring control over the software and aligning it with their modern workflows, we removed critical risk and enabled the engineering team to operate with renewed confidence and efficiency. What was once a ‘black box’ is now a transparent and well-supported tool at the core of TNA’s operations.

• TNA has gained full ownership and visibility over complex homegrown software.
• Increased system stability and futureproofing of the code base and dependencies.
• Key-person dependency was eliminated by upgrading and documenting code.
• Enhanced CAD workflow integration and automation.

“Nikita gave us confidence back in our CAD automation. Now our custom CAD apps are structured and maintainable.” Paul Coleman, Autodesk Systems Administrator @TNA.