How One Platform Helps Geberit Standardize Engineering While Empowering Teams?

As products become more sophisticated, engineering organizations face a growing challenge: maintaining consistent design methods while giving engineers the flexibility they need to innovate. For global manufacturers, this challenge becomes even greater when multiple development sites, disciplines and product lines must work together seamlessly.

For Joachim Humberg, IT Application Analyst at Geberit, finding that balance is part of his daily mission. Supporting six ceramic development sites across Europe, he helps define and deploy CAD methods that allow engineering teams to work efficiently while ensuring high-quality, standardized data across the organization.

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Supporting Engineering Across Six Development Sites

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As part of the CAD methods team, Joachim supports engineering organizations distributed across six European ceramic development sites. His role goes far beyond software administration: it requires understanding how engineers actually work and continuously adapting methods to support their needs.

I support six sites across Europe. The only way to know what they really need is to be there [..] on site, or via Teams.

Staying connected to engineers is essential. Rather than designing processes in isolation, Joachim’s team regularly visits development sites, interviews users and observes their daily challenges before evolving engineering methods.

This close collaboration ensures that standards solve real-world problems instead of creating additional complexity.

Practical Engineering Beats Perfect Theory

One lesson Joachim has learned over the years is that engineering methods only create value if people actually use them.

A technically perfect process that slows engineers down or feels disconnected from daily work will eventually be abandoned.

If a method isn’t practical enough to survive in daily use, it doesn’t matter how technically correct it is, we have to put it away.

This philosophy guides every method his team develops.

Because Geberit supports multiple manufacturing processes, including conventional casting, high-pressure casting and advanced surfacing, different departments naturally have different priorities. Instead of forcing separate workflows, the objective is to create robust, stable methods that every team can understand and apply consistently.

The result is a balance between flexibility and standardization that scales across the organization.

One Platform, One Engineering Language

A key enabler of this approach is the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, which provides a shared engineering environment across every development site.

Previously, departments often followed different workflows and working habits. Today, engineers work within the same platform, access the same data and follow common engineering methods.

According to Joachim, one of the biggest advantages is that everyone now speaks the same technical language.

Using dashboards, collaborative applications and shared engineering data, teams can review projects together, track progress and access information in real time.

Rather than managing disconnected files or isolated workflows, engineering knowledge becomes available across departments through a single source of truth.

Balancing Engineering Freedom with Data Consistency

Standardization should never mean restricting engineers unnecessarily.

Instead, Joachim sees his role as finding the right compromise between giving engineers creative freedom and maintaining reliable engineering data.

Balancing engineering freedom with consistent data quality is a really important part, that’s the tension I work with every single day.

Better standards actually increase autonomy.

When engineering knowledge is embedded into the platform, teams require less day-to-day support while still producing consistent models that downstream departments can trust.

Instead of enforcing rigid rules, Joachim’s team builds standards together with the engineering community, continuously collecting feedback to refine methods that remain both practical and easy to follow.

Engineering for a Material That Never Stands Still

Ceramic product development introduces challenges that differ significantly from many manufacturing industries.

Unlike rigid materials, ceramics change shape during production through shrinkage and firing. Engineers must anticipate these transformations long before manufacturing begins.

Using scan data alongside CAD models, teams continuously compare manufactured parts with digital designs, identifying deviations and adjusting models for future production cycles.

Simulation teams also rely on these models to predict material behavior.

Because simulation cannot begin until engineering delivers accurate geometry, designers must produce high-quality models quickly enough to give simulation specialists the time they need to validate the product.

Modern Ceramic Products Require Cross-Disciplinary Engineering

Today’s Geberit products combine traditional ceramic expertise with increasing levels of embedded electronics and smart functionality.

Features such as heated seats, automatic lid opening and integrated electronic systems have transformed products that were once purely mechanical.

To support this evolution, electronics developed with Altium, integrated inside the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, become part of the same collaborative engineering environment.

Mechanical engineers, electronics specialists, production experts and simulation teams all contribute to a common digital model.

This shared platform simplifies communication while helping teams manage increasingly complex tolerance requirements between ceramic components and embedded electronics.

Standardization Creates Faster Collaboration

One of the most valuable outcomes of Geberit‘s approach is faster collaboration across engineering disciplines.

Working within a common platform allows multiple engineers to contribute simultaneously to the same assemblies while enriching the shared product definition with information useful for manufacturing, simulation and downstream processes.

The value extends far beyond 3D geometry.

Engineering data becomes a rich knowledge base that supports the entire product lifecycle, allowing different departments to access the information they need without recreating or duplicating work.

As standards mature, engineers also become increasingly autonomous, reducing the need for constant support while maintaining consistency across the organization.

Preparing Engineering for the Future

For Joachim, digital transformation is ultimately about creating an engineering environment that can continue evolving alongside increasingly complex products.

Supporting users, simplifying methods and continuously improving standards all contribute to a common objective: helping engineering teams work more efficiently while remaining ready for future challenges.

His recent participation in the CATIA Champion Program reflects that same mindset of continuous learning.

Beyond sharing Geberit’s experience with the broader engineering community, the program creates direct access to Dassault Systèmes experts while offering opportunities to exchange ideas with professionals from other industries.

For Joachim, innovation grows through collaboration, practical experience and a willingness to keep learning.

Conclusion

Geberit‘s experience makes one thing clear: practical engineering standards and team autonomy aren’t in conflict: they reinforce each other. By building methods that engineers actually use, and grounding them in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, Joachim Humberg’s team has created a shared foundation that keeps six development sites aligned, accelerates collaboration across disciplines and keeps the organization ready as products grow smarter and more complex. That’s the real value of getting standardization right.

FAQ

• How does Geberit support engineering across multiple development sites?

Geberit uses the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to provide a common engineering environment where six ceramic development sites share the same workflows, standards and engineering data.

• Why is practicality so important when defining CAD methods?

Engineering methods must be simple enough for everyday use. Practical workflows encourage adoption, improve consistency and help engineers work more efficiently.

• How does 3DEXPERIENCE improve collaboration?

The platform enables teams to work within a shared environment where engineering data, dashboards, applications and product information are accessible across departments, improving communication and traceability.

• What makes ceramic product development particularly challenging?

Engineers must anticipate material behavior such as shrinkage and firing during the design phase while delivering accurate models quickly enough for simulation and manufacturing teams.

• Why are engineering standards important?

Well-designed standards improve data quality while giving engineers greater autonomy. By embedding knowledge into the engineering platform, organizations reduce manual support while maintaining consistent product development across teams.