Case Study: Berchtold Corporation achieves 75% faster quoting and 50% lower prototyping costs with SolidWorks

Supporting Rapid Growth in Operating Room Equipment Development With SolidWorks Premium

Berchtold Corporation, the leading North American manufacturer of operating room equipment, needed to move from 2D AutoCAD to 3D CAD to support rapid international expansion and streamline custom-configured surgical suites. After evaluating several packages, both design teams independently chose SolidWorks and implemented SolidWorks Premium for its ease of use and robust parametric assembly and configuration capabilities.

Leveraging SolidWorks assembly configurations, the SolidWorks API and Visual Basic to build an automated quoting application—plus SolidWorks PDM, Simulation, eDrawings and PhotoWorks—Berchtold reduced quoting time and improved quoting accuracy by 75%, cut Teletom prototyping costs by 50%, automated roughly 70% of assemblies, and supported sustained annual revenue growth of 20–30% (from about $12M in 1997 to $75M in 2005), while significantly increasing profit margins.

Berchtold Corporation

Ted Atchley

Project Designer