Carver Yachts went live with an extended version of the MAC-PAC XE Product Change Manager (PCM) application back in December 2003. The capabilities of PCM have provided Carver with electronic media and workflow management for change requests and change orders. This enables faster, easier distribution throughout manufacturing, engineering, finance, purchasing, and documentation departments. As a result of this automation, Carver is now realizing the following benefits:

• Associated administration by key resources was reduced 75%, including:
• The elimination of physically routing the request and change over Carver's large campus.
• Reduction in paper associated with the previous manual processes.
• The ability to systematically re-route the request and change.
• 30 % reduction in time and effort to execute product changes.
• Significant improvement in the discipline and control of the change request and notice process.
• 25% reduction in errors on the shop floor, by ensuring only approved changes are available.
• Better responsiveness and management of customer-driven changes, by reducing the turn-around time by 50%
• Improved metrics to measure the product change and release processes, such as:
• Bottleneck visibility
• Time spent per person
• Snapshot of ECR history
• Elimination of standing meetings required to manage the past manual processes.

The ability to quickly evaluate and execute design changes is an important aspect of Carver's competitive differentiation. As a manufacturer of luxury yachts, Carver is known for providing leading edge, desired amenities in its standard models, and for its willingness to make special optional changes at customer's requests. Once a change is approved, drawings and materials/manufacturing orders must be fully synchronized so the change can be quickly and accurately executed on the shop floor.

"PCM helped streamline the entire engineering process, and without it, building the newer, larger yachts would have put an additional strain on manufacturing operations", says Larry Volz, Carver's Chief Financial Officer.

PCM is available to virtually everyone in the company to submit change requests in support of customer-driven design changes for specific orders, model changes, and on-going product improvements. The ability to capture this information from any employee the organization supports Carver's business vision of being flexible and easy to do business with.

About PCM

PCM integrates with existing MAC-PAC XE and CAD systems to streamline, accelerate, and ensure proper execution of product changes and new product introductions while ensuring that affected drawings, documents and computer records are reviewed by all appropriate parties and updated in sync. PCM has been built with the combined needs of engineering, manufacturing, and IT in mind. It eliminates the need to physically route copies of paper drawings and documents, and automatically maintains a history of all change activity for later reference, analysis, and process improvement.

About The Carver Yacht Group

The Carver Yacht Group is a division of Genmar Holdings, Inc. and comprised of Carver Yachts, Marquis™ class and Nuvari™ by Carver. Carver Boat Corporation, L.L.C. is headquartered in Wisconsin, USA. Carver Yachts, founded in 1954, currently employs over 1,200 people in a state-of-the-art manufacturing complex expanding over 800,000 square feet in Pulaski, Wisconsin and manufacturers yachts ranging in size from 33' to 65'.

For more information regarding Carver Yachts, please call Kim Riley, Director of Communications, at 920.822.7275 or visit www.carveryachts.com.

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