and manufacturing (E-CDMO)
engineering data
For more than five decades, CB Svendsen has helped customers bring electronic products from idea to reality. What began as an electronics manufacturing company has evolved into a full-service Electronics Contract Development and Manufacturing Organisation (E-CDMO), supporting customers throughout development, industrialisation, manufacturing and lifecycle management.
As projects have become more technically advanced and customer requirements have increased, so too has the need for stronger digital processes.
For CB Svendsen, implementing Highstage PLM was not about replacing broken processes. It was about creating a scalable engineering platform capable of supporting continued growth, improving collaboration across departments, and strengthening the high level of quality the company has always pursued.
Supporting a changing business
Today’s projects are fundamentally different from those of a decade ago. Many customers now engage CB Svendsen much earlier in the product lifecycle, relying on the company’s engineering teams to support design, component selection, design for manufacturing, design for supply chain, verification, documentation, sourcing, production and after sales services.
With several hundred active projects and an increasing number of stakeholders involved across engineering, quality, purchasing and manufacturing, maintaining consistency across product data has become increasingly important. “As our role has expanded, so have the demands on how we manage engineering information,” explains Brian Axbøg, VP Engineering at CB Svendsen. “A PLM platform provides the structure needed to ensure that the right information is always available to the right people throughout the product lifecycle.”
He often compares product development to baking.
“Baking a single cake is relatively straightforward. Producing one hundred thousand requires a completely different level of planning, consistency, and control. The recipe must always be correct.”
Brian Axbøg, VP Engineering, CB Svendsen
The same applies to electronics development. As production volumes increase and products evolve over many years, accurate engineering data becomes a critical business asset.
A natural next step
Having implemented PLM successfully earlier in his career, Brian recognized early on that a modern PLM platform would become an important foundation for CB Svendsen’s continued development. The company’s ambitions for growth, combined with increasingly complex customer projects, made it the right time to establish a single digital environment for engineering information.
Rather than replacing existing systems, Highstage was introduced to strengthen the interaction between engineering, PTA, quality, purchasing production and service. Today, approximately 60 employees use the platform as part of their daily work.
Why Highstage
Several factors influenced the decision. Local European support was an important consideration, ensuring close collaboration and fast response when needed. Equally important was the ability to deploy the solution on-premises, allowing CB Svendsen to meet the requirements of customers operating in highly regulated industries where data security is paramount. Finally, native integration with OrCAD significantly simplified engineering workflows by connecting design data directly to the PLM environment and reducing manual administration. Combined, these capabilities align well with CB Svendsen’s technical requirements and long-term strategy.
A pragmatic implementation
The implementation was practical. Rather than spending years defining every future requirement before getting started, the project focused on establishing a solid foundation that could evolve alongside the organisation. Within the first months, the majority of core data structures, document templates, and engineering processes were established.
“The most important thing is to begin with a clear vision. You need ownership, management support and people who understand both the engineering processes and the data behind them. Once that foundation is in place, the system can continue to develop together with the business.”
Brian Axbøg, VP Engineering, CB Svendsen
Throughout the implementation, close collaboration with Highstage enabled the solution to be continuously refined and adapted as new requirements emerged.
One source of truth
Today, Highstage acts as the central engineering platform across the organisation. Engineering documentation, product structures, revisions, and change management are managed from a single source of truth, giving teams confidence that they are always working with current information. The result is not only improved collaboration but also greater consistency across departments. For engineering teams, it reduces time spent searching for information, validating revisions, and manually coordinating documentation. Instead, more time can be invested in activities that create value for customers.
Strengthening quality and traceability
One of the most significant improvements has been traceability. Every engineering change is documented with a clear history, making it easy to understand what changed, when it changed, and why. That level of visibility supports both internal collaboration and external customer communication.
“When discussing a product with a customer, we can work directly from the system. We are looking at the same information together. That creates transparency and confidence throughout the dialogue.”
Brian Axbøg, VP Engineering, CB Svendsen
Document generation has also become more robust. By linking documentation directly to controlled product data, revisions remain consistent across engineering documentation, reducing manual effort while strengthening overall quality assurance.
Supporting future growth
For CB Svendsen, the value of PLM extends beyond engineering. It provides an infrastructure that supports continued growth without adding unnecessary administrative complexity. By reducing manual processes and improving access to accurate engineering data, specialist resources can spend more time supporting customer projects, product development, and continuous improvement. Equally important, the platform strengthens collaboration across engineering, PTA, quality, purchasing production and service by ensuring everyone works from the same information.
Audit-ready by design
The benefits also became evident during external audits. With product history, revisions and documentation readily available, demonstrating compliance became significantly more straightforward. Rather than collecting information from multiple systems, the required documentation could be presented directly from the PLM platform, providing auditors with clear traceability throughout the product lifecycle. For an organisation operating in quality-driven industries, this represents an important operational advantage.
Building for the future
Digital transformation is rarely about replacing people. It is about giving talented people better tools. For CB Svendsen, Highstage PLM has become an important part of the company’s digital foundation, supporting the next stage of its development as an E-CDMO.
“The greatest value is having confidence in the data. When everyone works from the same information, you strengthen quality, transparency and collaboration across the entire organisation. That provides a much stronger foundation for future growth.”
Brian Axbøg, VP Engineering, CB Svendsen
Growing your engineering organisation and want one source of truth for product data?
See how Highstage PLM works at highstage.dk.
