Enable Your CM Processes for Mission Critical Process Management

Next week I will join the BOM summit 2009 which will occur at Chicago, Illinois, hosted by Razorleaf. We will discuss the business process coverage from Bidding to Service. The industry-specific needs and methodologies

Razorleaf will host a multi-day event for companies interested in understanding the methodologies and capabilities behind the ENOVIA SmarTeam BOM module and Engineering Express package. Product managers from Dassault and solution architects from Razorleaf will present the software’s capabilities, demonstrate detailed methodologies, and facilitate discussions among a uniquely focused peer group. Attendees will present and share their industry-specific BOM needs, further enriching the event.

The event is a follow-up to last year’s successful BOM Summit. One attendee had this to say about BOM Summit 2008:

“I think it [the event] was invaluable, frankly. I would highly recommend that anybody come. I think that the format was extremely appropriate and had a lot of value. The information that you could focus on here without having other interruptions… I would definitely come again.”
- Maureen Murphy
Engineering Services manager at AS&E

http://www.razorleaf.com/events/bom-summit-09/

NPI and PLM

When we talk about PLM we usually talk about Concept to Manufacturing or even Concept to Service / Retire business process. so how do NPI fits in? is it part of PLM implementation.

What is NPI?

NPI – New Product Introduction or NPD – New Product Development or even NPDI – New Product Development & Introduction as defined in Wikipedia:

The complete process of bringing a new product or service to market. There are two parallel paths involved in the NPD process: one involves the idea generation, product design, and detail engineering; the other involves market research and marketing analysis. Companies typically see new product development as the first stage in generating and commercializing new products within the overall strategic process of product life cycle management used to maintain or grow their market share.

So what is the difference between PLM process and NPI process? Is NPI part of PLM?

NPI deliver methodology of how to control the PLM process, from Concept to Manufacturing. Not from the individual item view, but from the high level project view.

NPI is a Phase-Gate approach: for each PLM phase I have a GATE, in order to pass a GATE I need to meet several predecessors.

 

Usually companies will create a procedure and a check list of the predecessors needs to be met in order to pass each gate, then a manual control process is been implemented to manually signoff each gate checklist form.

As we believe your PLM system should offer you a simple way to manage complex processes and enabling you to grow with your PLM implementation based on your maturity and schedule, we believe your PLM system should offer you 2 solution levels to meet NPI:

• The basic solution aim to replace the manual procedure with an electronic one:

A project plan has a GATE control business process, in order to approve a GATE you need to complete checklist of tasks (replacing the manual GATE checklists)

NPI Phase-Gate Workflow within ENOVIA SmarTeam demo:

 

• The more advanced approach will be to manage the complete NPI process with all tasks, predecessors, successors, dependences and due-dates.

This will be managed within a NPI program management approach. like in every complex process implementation, end-users acceptance is critical. This is why we believe each user should work from within his native user environment. The project manager should control the NPI program from within MS project and the team members (the engineers) need to work from within the PLM system. This enables full control of the user tasks, deliverables and attachments for each task. this will also enables connecting item release processes and ECOs into the NPI program tasks

NPI program management within ENOVIA SmarTeam demo (part 1):

NPI program management within ENOVIA SmarTeam demo (part 2):

The first steps a mid-market company should take when deploying PLM

The PLM vision is wide and can touch almost every hidden corner in the company. This is why we recommend our customers a phased approach or what we called as: “start small and grow as you go” (if you want it is like eating a sandwich – better to take small bites than try to have it all and choke… )

Most of the companies are starting by managing their design environment. Establishing a solid PLM foundation with CAD Data and Document management. Then Expanding to cover the process from concept to manufacturing with item centric approach, collaboration around the BOM and Process/Change Management – based on the same modular PLM platform. Then Reaching PLM to the entire Enterprise with Global collaboration and effective decision making process.

I could say that, as wider the deployment is, the grater the benefits and the end-users acceptance are. Starting the deployment with concept to manufacturing solution will tie most of the end-users to this process and will deliver a huge benefit and users acceptance (because people see value from work been done by others – the secret of collaboration…). I am saying that even if in each business process you deploy first the most simple and intuitive solution and not necessarily the most advanced available, as long as again based on the same terminology: you can “start small and grow as you go” within the same PLM platform. (e.g. manage first requirements as documents in the system only after leverage the complete requirements management solution)

So, 1^st get the process managed, get the people on board, only than enhance each area to a more advance solution.

Obviously, deploying PLM require a culture change within the company. I believe that if the solution own the following 3 elements, the impact on the company will be minimal and most beneficial:

• Deliver proven and modular Out-Of-The-Box packages (ready2go best practices)
• With complete flexibility and openness required to tune the Out-Of-The-Box packages to the company processes
• And with doing all that at low Total Cost of Ownership

PLM at high-tech/industrial mid-market companies

When looking at high-tech/industrial mid-market companies, in order to succeed in this market Those companies have to innovate new products faster (time to market of 3-6 months in high-tech), streamline operations and collaboration. They need to achieve global development excellence and efficiency by leveraging core competencies of the value chain to ensure on-time, on-cost and quality product delivery. Integrate regulatory compliance into product lifecycle processes to reduce business risk and sell products in global markets.

In order to achieve that, adopting PLM will streamline their processes especially across the following areas:

• Requirements & Specifications
• Collaborative Engineering
• Standardization  & IP Reuse
• Mechatronics – Multi-disciplinary product development integrating mechanical, electrical/electronic and software components
• Business Processes & Change Management
• Standard components Engineering
• Linkage between product development and Project Management
• Real-time Collaboration & IP exchange internally and across the value chain and the eco-system

The main benefits those companies will see are:

• Increase product innovation – By adopting NPI methodology within a single engineering platform, from concept to manufacturing
• Encourage global product development excellence – By leveraging streamlined global Innovation Networks and concurrent multi-disciplinary mechatronics product development
• Improve profitability – By leveraging existing products/components and creating modular new products that facilitate re-use in multiple applications
• Shorten time to market and improve return on investment – By lowering development, manufacturing and purchasing costs while delivering improved product performance
• Increase control on costs, quality and delivery dates – By integrating quality and change management processes and enable real-time decision making for all levels
• Ensure 100 percent customer satisfaction – By operate demand-driven and Integrate customer requirements and specifications throughout the engineering process

Item-Centric product data management

Lately I see more and more usage of the term ‘Item-Centric’ PDM / PLM. Is every PDM application that can support BOM (Bill of Material) also can say it is ‘Item-Centric’ ?

What do you say, ‘Item-Centric’ = BOM ?

Is it that simple ?

Item-Centric product data management – What is it really?

I will try to specify few elements that are MUST for a real Item-Centric PDM / PLM. After that you can judge yourself which application really provides Item-Centric PDM / PLM, and which just knows to have a simple BOM from the design.

 

The 1st element that is critical to understand will be the fact that when talking about Item-Centric PDM / PLM, we are talking about managing the development process from Concept to Manufacturing, and not just design to BOM. The reason I am saying that is an Item-Centric PDM / PLM means bringing a Top-Down Engineering approach which means I am starting with Item (from Concept), reusing items structures, planning top-down up to the module level and only then going to design bottom-up. any solution that starts bottom-up from the design is not Item-Centric.

Next important element will be Item Maturity Management. When working Item-Centric, the Item maturity represent the development business process maturity and unlike a design maturity (that usually will be based on Check-in/Check-out/Release/Obsolete of the design) the item maturity really represent the development maturity (e.g. In Work, Approved by Engineering, Limited Released for purchasing only (LLI support), Released to manufacturing, Delivered, In Service…). also the movement (Promote/Demote) within this maturity process need to be performed based on the company development process rules and not just sequential.

But, the most important and critical is the ability to automatically apply the company business rules needed for getting into a new maturity state, e.g.:

• Does specifications needs to be released and frozen?
• Do I allow InActive/Obsolete children?
• Do I need all children to be in minimum state (e.g. Released, Approved by Engineering)
• When I demote an Item, how can I be sure I am not breaking maturity of a parent?

Usually, this part will be where you will need to invest a lot of customization (in applications that do not support real Item-Centric).

When implementing an Item-Centric PDM / PLM you need to be able to support different configuration views (e.g. Conceptual BOM, Engineering BOM, Manufacturing BOM, Serialized BOM…) the minimum will be E-BOM (Engineering BOM) and M-BOM (Manufacturing BOM). Is this enough? when working Item-Centric I need the capability to synchronize between those different configuration views, synchronize with embedded business logic (what needs to be synched and what is not), Item-Centric means I’m managing mechatronics (Multi-disciplinary product development integrating mechanical, electrical/electronic and software components – Unified BOM including Hardware (mechanical, electrical / electronic) & Software. This means I need to be able to automatically synch the unified BOM from multiple sources concurrently (Mechanical, Electronics, Software, Standard components, Outsourcing, Excel…) = Concurrent Engineering.

Also, do not forget different configuration views needs to be frozen based on different maturity states (E-BOM needs to be frozen when ‘Approved’ by engineering, but M-BOM is still open for modifications by production engineering.

 

So, to summarized – if one is selling you an Item-Centric PDM / PLM ask him:

1. Do you support Top-Down Engineering?
2. Do you support Item Maturity?
3. Can I model my development process into the Item Maturity?
4. Does the Item Maturity support Out-Of-The-Box business rules?
5. Do you support Configuration views (E-BOM, M-BOM)?
6. Can I automatically synchronize between the Configuration views?
7. Can I manage Mechatronics? unified BOM including Hardware (mechanical, electrical / electronic) & Software?
8. Can I Freeze Configuration views based on Item Maturity?

If the answers are YES to all those questions, you’ve got a real Item-Centric PDM / PLM in hand, if NOT…

ENOVIA SmarTeam Engineering Express – The worldwide road show…was close to your door…

2008 has been an interesting start not only for customers who decided to go for ENOVIA SmarTeam Engineering Express (SNE), but also for those who are promoting it all over the world: Naeem Dalal product marketing manager in Dassault Systèmes Israel and the solution manager of SNE, and Gilad Friedman Director of ENOVIA channel Sales, Dassault Systèmes Israel. Both guys have toured the world since February 08, delivering a one-day sales-oriented training dedicated for Sales people and project managers, followed by a 2-days technical training dedicated for Pre-sales and implementers.

The sales training focuses on the knowledge around selling the Express offering for the SMB market while discussing the main PLM challenges of these customers in the past and nowadays around their BOM management (EBOM, MBOM and more). Such experience has been acquired by the VARs who attend the training and are very knowledgeable about SmarTeam implementation.

The 2 days technical training combines a general overview of the solution, and a drill down into the “Concept to Manufacturing” process, through hands on exercises, thus showing how to execute the five major phases of the process easily and quickly using the out-of-the-box offering of ENOVIA SmarTeam Engineering Express.

The road show around the globe started in Stockholm, Sweden, then continued to North America:  Toronto, Cleveland, Detroit and LA. In AP region, the tour started in Singapore, then continued to Taipei, Beijing, Tokyo and ended up in Bangalore and Pune in India.

The tour will soon continue to Latin America, end of July!

The feedbacks so far are very positive, and attendees are very keen on starting new opportunities with SNE in their regions. Many even mentioned that they are interested in adopting some parts of the solution in their existing customer’s implementations.

Here are some of their quotes:

“I love it. We have the best platform to explain to potential customers — a lot of requests from customer will be fulfilled by the functionality of the new product. We think it is very good work; I am really impressed how fast the performance is.”

“I think it is a very good package; can’t wait to see the customers…”

“I think Express will give customers a ready-to-go solution which is quite beneficial; it is really a differentiator comparing to the competition.”

BOM management – are you using Excel?

If you needed to take a guess… just a guess.. what is the most common ‘enterprise’ application that is used for managing BOMs in SMB companies?

I am wondering whether this was the first thing you have thought about (I know, you can guess it from this post title )…

The most common ‘enterprise’ application that is used for managing BOMs in SMB companies is Excel

Is it the right way? why not, some of you will say… Excel is a great tool (agreed by the way…) it is easy to use, it is flexible, but is it controlled?

Let’s look at some critical data management aspects concerning BOM management:

• Look at the following picture, How to Identify the “Right” BOM? Can you help me…

• I need to change the screw, where is it used…

• What about increasing data reuse? or standardization of components? or security?

• And then… as always… what happened when I have a change…

 

So yes, using PLM to manage your BOMs will be less flexible as using excel and the reason for that will be that a PLM system will take care of your data consistency and your configuration control.

Because of the fact that BOM management is a major challenge in a lot of SMB companies and is very time consuming (time which most of those companies does not have…), we gave special attention to those challenges within our SNE solution (ENOVIA SmarTeam Engineering Express). I think the 3 most important benefits will be:

• Product/BOM Maturity management (with the configurable, embedded business logic to model your company business maturity process and conditions)
• BOM structures synchronization. to enable concurrent and controlled BOM editing (with the configurable, embedded business logic to model your company roles of moving from Design to E-BOM, from E-BOM to M-BOM, Reuse BOMs…)
• Easy to use BOM editing and compare

 

and in the end… do not forget… COLLABORATION !!!

ENOVIA SmarTeam Engineering Express (SNE) – What do people really think?

As part of my work you can imagine I am meeting a lot of customers, potential customers, resellers and PLM professionals all over the world. it is always nice to hear what they think about what we in ENOVIA SmarTeam delivers to the PLM market. I have already wrote to you about Technicom review of ENOVIA SmarTeam Engineering Express in my previous post ENOVIA SmarTeam Engineering Express Review by TechniCom.

This time I have the opportunity to give you the view of a PLM professional, Jonathan Scott.

Jonathan is a senior PLM consultant from Razorleaf Corp. and has vast experience in PLM, methodology wise and technically.

So, here is Jonathan’s view… this is what people really think…

Dassault Introduces Engineering Express (SNE)

Those of you keeping up with Dassault’s latest announcements related to ENOVIA SmarTeam have certainly heard of SmarTeam Express. This relatively new offering (first introduced on top of V5R16) is a fresh approach to PDM. Several players in the PDM market have tried to offer watered-down versions of their software in an effort to make it easy to adopt PDM. The trouble has generally been that either a) there is no easy way to get from the junior version of the software to the senior version without rip-and-replace, or b) the junior version is missing really critical capabilities (like an API or a database). For their part, Dassault chose to make their offering a streamlined, not crippled, version of ENOVIA SmarTeam. The difference is obvious; you can do anything with the Express offerings that you can do with good old ENOVIA SmarTeam – the Express version just takes some of the distractions out of the way up front.

Dassault’s first installment of the Express lineup was SDE, or SmarTeam Design Express. SDE is targeted at CAD designers and CAD workgroups, in organizations large and small. The offering is a collection of pre-configured ENOVIA SmarTeam elements, including a focused data model, some great customizations, well-designed Profile Cards, and optimized settings. The “streamlined” part of SDE is that users don’t have to think about (or even see) information in the system not related to CAD work. Project tasks, contacts, bills-of-material, and other advanced system capabilities are turned off, allowing users to focus on revision management and relationship management of CAD data. It’s important to note though that “turned off” implies that these other features can be turned on if and when the time comes.

That brings us to SNE. SNE is SmarTeam Engineering Express (SEE is a Dassault designation for another piece of software, so SNE was selected instead). SNE is built on the same data model as SDE, making it easy for new users of the system to add capabilities by removing or applying various Express behaviors and configuration elements. SNE targets the overall engineering process, as a superset of the CAD design process. If I was to offer a slogan for the combined SDE/SNE package, I would say that it, “manages product data from concept through manufacturing”. That includes change processes, BOMs, CAD data, and related documentation.

The Expresses each ship with a methodology guide describing the answers to not just the “how-to” questions, but also the “why” questions. With this, Dassault is providing a powerful tool, a quick-start approach, and best practices built right into the software. What’s really clever about SNE is the way that it incorporates more than just mechanical design. For instance, SNE includes a process for managing ECAD (electrical CAD) files and BOMs side-by-side with MCAD (mechanical CAD) and software design information. The complete product structure can be managed and manipulated in a revision controlled environment (let’s see ERP do that).

SNE contains an even larger set of useful automations and customizations than SDE. Best of all, the latest versions of these Expresses were designed to work together. So what started as a good idea, “provide a streamlined PDM tool with best practices built-in”, has become even stronger in the second addition to the Express line-up. SNE is available on top of V5R18 (at no additional cost, I should mention). Based on the successes and capabilities of SDE and SNE, I am optimistic about the value of the other Express offerings Dassault has in the works.

You can find the article also in Razorleaf web site: http://www.razorleaf.us/dotnetnuke/Newsletter/June2008/tabid/156/Default.aspx#922

ENOVIA SmarTeam Engineering Express Review by TechniCom

TechniCom has published at 19/06/2008 a software review for ENOVIA SmarTeam Engineering Express the report was written by Ray Kurland. This report was published in ‘CAD-PORTAL for engineering professionals’:

Here is a short summary from the report, you can find in the end the link to the full report.

Enjoy :

“In my opinion, SmarTeam Engineering Express delivers an economical, robust, quick-start scenario for item-centric PLM, including workflow processes, quickly extending collaborative benefits across engineering disciplines. It is part of a family offering from ENOVIA SmarTeam that includes Design Express, as well as the full SmarTeam offerings.”

“Taking a data management product to the step beyond design management is difficult. While design data includes the necessary parts and assemblies of the product, the design is often discipline dependent and not knowledgeable about the manufacturing processes required. Discipline dependent means that the designs from other than mechanical systems need to be incorporated into the final product. These typically include control systems and logic, electronics, and software. In my opinion, SmarTeam Engineering Express delivers on these needs with an economical, robust, quick-start scenario for item-centric PLM, including workflow processes, quickly extending collaborative benefits across engineering disciplines. It is part of a family offering from ENOVIA SmarTeam that includes Design Express, as well as the full SmarTeam offerings.
For the mid-size customer, SmarTeam has a unique position in the industry. It supports multiCAD systems from the major vendors. SmarTeam Engineering Express was specifically designed for mid-size customers, is highly CAD centric, supports collaboration both inside and outside an enterprise, manages items and BOMs particularly well, uses pre-defined best practices workflows, requires easy administration, easily expands to more PLM capabilities, such as standard compliance, supply chain management, implementation for multi-site organizations and more, can be rapidly installed, and can easily interface to any ERP system, such as SAP, Oracle, and others. Its primary competitors, Teamcenter Express and Windchill, both began life as large scale PLM systems and both retain some of their large scale heritage, meaning they are more difficult to install and operate than SmarTeam, are more difficult to customize, do not support the same level of out-of-the-box offering, EBOM synchronization, MBOM synchronization and more.”

for the full report:

http://www.cad-portal.com/articles/article_images/90/SmarteamEngXprs_article.pdf

ECR / ECO is not only about the process

I have just read a post in Jos Voskuil blog concerning change management in SMB. You can read the complete post, but in general Jos had conducted an Engineering Express training for ENOVIA SmarTeam resellers. During the training people were wondering whether SMB companies should implement change management (like the big companies…), because the process is creating an overhead that compromises flexibility…well…the truth is that change management (ECR/ECO) is not only about the process!

Moreover, managing ECRs is about traceability, about data management and reducing cost, it is about improving decisions, accuracy and quality of our products. The last time I heard, SMB companies need that also… in a matter of fact… isn’t it why we implement PLM?

So let’s start look at the reasons why we need change management (ECR/ECO):

We all know that if a change will be done during concept or planning phases of the project will cost 1$, the same change in development phase will cost ~100 times more, if this change will happened during manufacturing probably it will cost ~1000 times more… in euros not dollars… it is clear I need to make sure I have as less changes in the product as I move forward from concept to manufacturing in order to achieve that, I need to have the ability to completely understand the items affected from the change (when I worked at Elta, before we implemented change management in our PLM system, we had ~3 ECRs in average for each change. people were working with ECR paper form and doing one for the part they needed to change but what about other parts affected by this change?).

I need to understand all the content of this change (the problem/affected items, the solution items, any references for the change, the change data).

Do I need to be Compliant with standards and regulation like CMII? EIA-649? MIL-STD-973A?

A lot of times you will find parallel change requests on the same item (e.g. I am performing a change on an item and on its assembly also, another engineer is now wishing to perform a change on a different item under the same assembly) can I join the effort and conduct a single ECR for both? probably yes… if I would have only knew about the parallel ECRs…

I need to have the traceability when I am looking at an item which ECO is the origin of this item, what was the change request that was approved for that, is that what was actually implemented in the part?

In order to improve my processes and make better decisions, I need to be able to get statistics and analysis data about the ECRs we are doing (which member of my team has ECRs with the reason of drawing errors? how much? can I start give my team members objectives, measurable objectives for improving the quality of our designs? If the customer keeps giving us changes, can I retrieve all ECRs with the reason of customer request, calculate the changes cost and ask the customer to pay? or do I just lose money… does SMB company has a lot of money to give away…? let’s say I would like to reuse a product developed 5 years ago, probably some of its components have newer versions, how can I easily gets all ECRs opened on this product in the past 5 years and retrieve the newer versions created based on those ECRs?).

Can I do all that by using manual forms? or the new generation data management system called emails?

By implementing change management with ENOVIA SmarTeam Engineering Express I can easily understand the items affected from the change, making sure a change is complete and being done ones. By using all links navigation I can easily navigate to where the problem item is used, what are the documents/analysis/tooling/… related to it that are affects. I can also understand the full content of the change (the problem/affected items, the solution items, any references for the change, the change data):

I can be easily compliant with standards and regulation like CMII, EIA-649, MIL-STD-973A. I can also have single and comprehensive ECR instead of parallel ECRs that will save me money and will improve my quality:

I will have the traceability when I am looking at an item which ECO is the origin of this item, what was the change request that was approved for that, what are the original (affected) items that this item is based on:

I can improve my processes and make better decisions, I will be able to get statistics and analysis data about the ECRs we are performing:

I also will be able to get an ECR report to even see it manually like I used to:

Ahhhh… So I guess the overhead that compromises flexibility actually will make my development process easier, will make my decisions better, will reduce my development time and will save me money… a lot of money… just for the example, a company with only 10 engineers creating around only 1 change a week can save by implementing this ‘pure overhead’ change management around 150,000$ a year!

I actually will be able to deliver my products earlier to market (maybe before my competition?). Isn’t it what PLM is really about???

Now… does it really matters if I have 2 or 3 or 5 nodes in the process?