Life-Like experience… Think of PLM in the future

We all remember "Minority Report" and can imagine how PLM will look like if we will be able to extract our user interface from the 2D screen. Think of the tools we use to work with information and connect with one another. Now… see how close the technology is for getting there and how simple this could be…

This demo — from Pattie Maes’ lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry — was the buzz of TED. It’s a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment.

Go ahead and see for your self:

http://www.ted.com/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html

ENOVIA SmarTeam Express PLM Solutions Help Mid-Market Companies Innovate During Economic Downturn

In one of my latest posts I have wrote about the current economic downturn and Today’s Dilemma… Where and how to invest the next $…

Few day ago a new white paper was published by Tech-Clarity, offers action plan and insight for Manufacturers to achieve efficiencies and productivity Gains… entitled: ‘Innovating Through an Economic Downturn: A PLM Action Plan for Small to Mid-Size Manufacturers Facing Difficult Times.‘ Following interviews with several DS ENOVIA SmarTeam customers, this paper provides a set of recommended guidelines for small-to-mid-sized companies, including investment in a well-planned, step-by-step approach to Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) that will enable organizations to achieve efficiencies and productivity gains during the downturn and prepare them to rapidly respond to new opportunities as they arise in the recovering economy.

Here is a summary presentation of this subject:

The Smart Angle – Your PLM Strategy in Facing Today’s Economic Challenges

and here is a quick summary of the Tech-Clarity white paper ‘Innovating Through an Economic Downturn: A PLM Action Plan for Small to Mid-Size Manufacturers Facing Difficult Times.‘:

In today’s climate of reduced budgets, experience has shown that when companies invest in product innovation, product development and engineering process improvement, they are building the foundation for future success. ENOVIA SmarTeam, a leading provider of PLM to the mid-market with over 7000 customers worldwide, has packaged its PLM expertise and experience into quick-to-deploy, preconfigured best practice Express offerings that give small and mid-sized manufacturers maximum value for their PLM investment.

Small and mid-sized manufacturers that have embraced this approach have cut a clear path to ensuring their continued operations and strength due to the improvements they achieved with their PLM strategy. Industrial equipment and consumer goods manufacturer Werner Company, consumer goods and industrial electronics company SEC Lighting and aerospace industry supplier Weaver Manufacturing indicate in the paper how by implementing modular, affordable and phased ENOVIA SmarTeam PLM solutions they have made internal process improvements during downturns in their business cycles that have prepared them for the current economic downturn as well as for future opportunities.

Illustrating the efficiencies gained through adopting ENOVIA SmarTeam‘s PLM solutions, Roman Vachal, marketing manager for SEC Lighting remarked, ‘Our product development speed is much faster, and we found time and cost savings because we need fewer people for product-related documents and data. Improving our data management eliminated defective products, production errors and claims caused by human errors during development and production stages.’

‘For manufacturers, a normal reaction to an economic contraction is to scale back operations, invest less on process improvement and cut product development and innovation, yet my research and ENOVIA SmarTeam customers’ practical experience has shown that a continued investment in product and process innovation pays off in the short and long term,’ said Jim Brown, founder and president of Tech-Clarity.

In a webcast to be hosted by ‘Managing Automation’ on 3 June, Jim Brown of Tech-Clarity will discuss the paper’s findings and share his recommendations to small and mid-sized manufacturers on how to thrive despite the economic downturn. Weaver Manufacturing will be on-hand to relate to their experiences as recounted in the paper.

The Tech-Clarity white paper ‘Innovating through an Economic Downturn: A PLM Action Plan for Small to Mid-Size Manufacturers Facing Difficult Times‘ is available for download and web cast registration from:

http://www.tech-clarity.com/overviews/innovate_economy.htm

PLM isn’t just for big companies anymore

Here is a talkback by Ed Miller, president of CIMdata Inc. published in Manufacturing Business Technology,02/24/2009

By Ed Miller, president, CIMdata Inc. — Manufacturing Business Technology,02/24/2009

Historically, product life-cycle management (PLM) was practical mostly for large, distributed enterprises with the extensive resources needed to invest in and deploy the systems, understand the approach, improve the technologies, validate benefits, and establish organizational practices to make PLM effective. Companies that originally invested in PLM often were the big OEMs in industries such as automotive and aerospace, with complex global facilities and far-reaching supply chains.
For the most part, PLM solutions for these large organizations are all-encompassing enterprise systems focused on issues that affect multiple domains such as program management, engineering, manufacturing, purchasing, asset management, and quality. Typical functionality includes program management; CAD file management, CAD integrations, bill-of-material (BOM) and bill-of-information (BOI) creation and management, document management, visualization, strategic sourcing, and extensive workflow management capabilities to automate various complex processes.
Recognizing a tremendous market potential, PLM suppliers have and are continuing to adapt these same capabilities for small and midsize companies that aren’t content to let PLM remain the domain of industry behemoths. These smaller companies desire the same support for global collaboration and creation of innovative approaches to their own product development problems.
Although these companies have many of the same requirements for PLM as their larger counterparts, they also have these differing characteristics:
• Limited information technology (IT) resources;
• Limited process improvement resources;
• Demand for low total cost of ownership;
• Demand for fast business impact; and
• Demand for minimized risk.
As a result, PLM for small and midsize companies must be provided in the form of:
• Cost-effective solutions (software and services) with low initial cost, and low ongoing costs;
• Limited installation/implementation support requirements to reach production operation; and
• Packaged solutions with pre-configured processes to provide templates and guidance in achieving best practices with the solutions.
For small and mid-sized companies that design or engineer simple parts or components, configuration management support typically isn’t a critical PLM requirement. As a result, with these types of companies PLM solutions are implemented to support data vault management, workflow automation, and applications that sustain specific needs in the engineering or manufacturing process—e.g., change management, engineering release and quality assurance.
For companies that design or engineer medium to highly complex products such as engines, turbines or machine tools, these capabilities often are supplemented with configuration management support.
PLM solutions for small and midsize companies are delivered to such companies from various suppliers. Major PLM players all have such systems, generally licensed and supported by networks of value added resellers (VAR). In addition, smaller niche PLM providers and regional suppliers often are aimed primarily at small and midsize companies, frequently in certain industries.
Key factors for small and midsize enterprises to consider include the ability to deliver out-of-the-box applications and easily tailored solutions based on best practices that support the organization’s product and process related information creation and management requirements.
Above all, the PLM solution must be simple enough to be clearly and easily understood. If not, companies should keep looking for a solution that meets their basic requirements. Such a search takes time and effort, but the work soon pays off in benefits that give competitive advantage to forward-looking companies of all sizes that implement PLM.

One-to-One: SmarTeam and the Small to Midsize Manufacturer

Here is Jim Brown’s Blog Post on ENOVIA SmarTeam

www.mbtmag.com/plmblog

Jim Brown

One-to-One: SmarTeam and the Small to Midsize Manufacturer
January 9, 2009

I had the chance to talk with … some of my friends at SmarTeam the other day about their support of small to midsize businesses (SMB). To be proper, these are my friends from Dassault Systemes ENOVIA SmarTeam which is a part of the ENOVIA set of solutions. But to me, it will always be SmarTeam. They laid out a very well thought through approach to helping smaller manufacturing companies achieve PLM benefits despite some of the inherent challenges of the SMB. Given this continued strategy, I expect that SmarTeam will have continued success in the SMB market, and more importantly their customers will have more successes with their PLM strategies.
What’s Special about SMB?
SmarTeam understands the challenges that smaller businesses face when they approach an initiative like PLM. In fact, they quoted some of my benchmark work from Aberdeen Group back to me in helping describe, which is always interesting when you see how companies use your research in practice. Some of the key points that SmarTeam recognizes about SMB are: 

• Differences in Organizational Structure – for example, individuals tend to wear more hats and operate in much flatter organization structures
• Finance and Risk – clearly, these companies don’t have the same resources that their larger competitors do, and are willing to accept much less risk in their initiatives
• Processes – these companies frequently do not have the same enforcement of standardized processes that larger companies do, and tend to be more dynamic by nature

What do They Offer the SMB?
Why is it important that SmarTeam understands the environment SMBs work in? It’s not, unless SmarTeam is willing to tailor their solutions to help companies overcome these barriers to implementing PLM. SmarTeam’s "Express" offerings are designed to do just that. These Express offerings are designed to offer: 

• Out-of-the-box functionality – standard best practices and engineering methodologies 
• Modularity and Scalability – the ability to implement only the functionality needed, with the ability to add in new capabilities readily in the future 
• Low TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) – low cost to procure the software, but also to implement and maintain it

The approach that SmarTeam takes fits very well with the concept of the PLM Program approach to Implementing PLM. For any company, but particularly for a smaller company, it is important to pick and choose the right sequence of PLM initiatives based on company strategy. Companies have seen the most success, according to my benchmark research at Aberdeen and my personal experience, when they develop a PLM strategy but then implement it in smaller, incremental steps. This is exactly the approach that SmarTeam is trying to support by providing a scalable solution that incorporates best practices for common processes like change management or design collaboration, and provides an infrastructure that can be leveraged to add in new capabilities over time. This helps to reduce project risk and to allow smaller investments with shorter payback, so the PLM Program can pay for itself as it progresses through a series of reasonably sized, predictable projects. Couple that with a Microsoft-centric architecture to reduce risk and total cost, and it sounds like a very good option for smaller companies.

Today’s Dilemma… Where and how to invest the next $…

The global market today seems to offer a lot of challenges with the world wide economic crisis we are in.

The Challenge…

In the Ideal World you would expect companies to invest today for future profitability and growth.

But today’s economic arena is not ideal… with the current global crisis you can see business slowdown – decrease in incoming orders and projects, decrease in credit and funding – Where to spend the next $ and companies are saving Money – Projects stopped? Layoffs?

When a company experiencing layoffs, it has critical impact on the company soundness. People layoffs cause losing of IP (Intellectual Property) and delivering less innovation. In time… this causes losing the company competitive edge.

So…

Is it all bad? All we can do is just wait?

At 2002 The The McKinsey Quarterly published a research called: Learning to love recessions written by Richard F. Dobbs, Tomas Karakolev and Francis Malige.

“To see how recessions can be used to advantage, we studied nearly 1,000 mainly industrial US companies over an 18-year period (1982–99) that included the US recession of 1990 to 1991.

1. We identified companies that either remained industry leaders … or became successful challengers…

2. We then investigated the attributes of successful companies, both during the recession and in healthier economic times.”

Look at what they have found out:

“Most companies battened down the hatches during the recession of the early ’90s. But the more successful competitors pressed their advantages.”

“…successful leaders, seeking to extend their position through innovation…”

The Opportunity… PLM

The recommended strategy for those days would be…

Invest today in whatever will bring you the biggest value to maintain your competitive edge and drive you to sustainable revenue growth once the uncertain times have past

Here is a news flash!!! – The crisis will end!!!

It will take 1-2-3 years but the crisis will end. The question that each company should ask itself should be: Where will I be when the crisis will be over?

Some companies will not be there when the crisis will be over. Some will still be there but will not be able to revive. and some… will be there… with a competitive edge that will make them rise over all the competitors. Those that will use the hard times to be prepared for the day it will end. Those will be the new leaders.

PLM gives you just that. in those tough times, PLM is the enabler for you to make it happened:

• Manage and capture IP !

• Streamline processes !

• Increase innovation while reducing costs !

 

… and… manage your risk during the crisis

 

Be there… ready… with a competitive edge

Infiniti Research Announces the Release of "PLM Software Market 2007-2010" Report

Infiniti Research announces the release of its new report titled “PLM Software Market 2007-2010”. According to TechNavio, Infiniti Research’s IT market intelligence platform, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions have evolved from being more than just product data management (PDM) solutions to applications and software that help create, disseminate, and manage the use of product and plant information and processes throughout the entire life-cycle and across the extended enterprise.
Yvonne Herkemij, Director of Infiniti Research says

“with globalization and increase in competition from SMBs – especially in discrete manufacturing – enterprises have begun to adopt PLM solutions to remain competitive. In addition, expansion of enterprises and regulatory compliance requiring companies to create and store detailed product information are factors driving the adoption of PLM solutions”.

Have a look at my latest post Which industries would benefit more from adopting PLM?

“companies in the manufacturing industries must adopt PLM, their competition already doing that!. Companies within the emerging industries should understand that ‘The sooner the better’, adopt PLM before the competition and gain advantage in the market – more innovative products to the market, shorter time to market, shorter development process, better usage of the company IP (Intellectual Property) and the ability to reuse it while innovating.”

ENOVIA SmarTeam PLM Solution Drives Success at Leading Mid-Market Customers

I am now at Tokyo, Japan in the ENOVIA Customer Conference AP. I will share some insights from the conference in few days. Today in the ENOVIA Customer Conference, Global PLM Consulting Firm CIMdata Reports on Impressive Customer Experiences, Including Tesla Motors, Viking Range, PIAB AB, Aerosud Aviation, and INFAC.

 

The paper examines the business issues faced by mid-sized companies as they pursue success in their markets, and reviews the value that leading customers from various industries, geographies and disciplines have gained by using ENOVIA SmarTeam’s best practice design, engineering and enterprise PLM solutions.

Based on the press release:

CIMdata interviewed some of ENOVIA SmarTeam’s best-in-class customers to identify their unique business challenges in product development and reasons for implementing a PLM solution. Among the select customers notable for their reputations in product excellence are Tesla Motors, a specialized OEM auto manufacturer; Viking Range, a manufacturer of consumer appliances; PIAB AB, a developer of vacuum solutions for industrial product manufacturers; Aerosud Aviation, a key supplier to aerospace OEMs; and INFAC, a major electronics supplier to automotive OEMs.

“Mid-sized companies can benefit tremendously from the implementation of PLM strategies and solutions. They can overcome size and resource constraints and effectively respond to the growing complexities and demands from their customers to better compete in the global marketplace,” says Ed Miller, president, CIMdata. “DS’ ENOVIA SmarTeam is one of the industry’s leading PLM solutions focused on the mid-market. It has a long history of success combined with an extensive customer base, many of whom have demonstrated clear value with ENOVIA SmarTeam. We appreciate DS’ investment in bringing PLM to the mid-market and are impressed with the ENOVIA SmarTeam customer experiences that we’ve had the opportunity to review. For this reason, CIMdata recommends that SMBs evaluating PLM solutions seriously consider ENOVIA SmarTeam.”

ENOVIA SmarTeam’s mid-market solutions aim to enable companies to achieve product excellence, quick time to market and low total cost of ownership by optimizing design and engineering processes throughout a company’s product development cycle. With ENOVIA SmarTeam, customers enjoy improved efficiency and control over product knowledge. Customers also gain quick and broad visibility into product and process information across the entire organization, beyond engineering. Leveraging its inherent modularity and scalability, ENOVIA SmarTeam supports mid-market customers, smoothly and easily extending to additional functions, teams, sites and users.

“ENOVIA SmarTeam helps our customers, numbering over 6000 to date, to produce quick-to-market, high quality and cost-effective products. It’s usually very difficult for companies to claim to meet all three of these requirements simultaneously. Supported by our strong global channel of dedicated, professional local value-added resellers (VARs), ENOVIA SmarTeam enables our customers to avoid compromise, and produce the excellent products that enable them to be leaders in their markets,” said Alex Zeltcer, general manager, ENOVIA SmarTeam, Dassault Systèmes.

The CIMdata white paper is available at http://www.cimdata.com and on the http://www.3ds.com web site.

PLM in China

You could notice I was not writing in here for the past two weeks. The main reason was that I visited our people at China/Taiwan. Our meetings held at Guangzhou in south of China. My visit was very short, but very interesting. Now that China is moving from “Made in China” to “Created in China”, PLM for sure has great potential in a lot of Chinese companies. Even before China moved to engineer the products and not be just the world’s greatest manufacturer the PLM potential in China was promising.

According to Daratech Inc. in Cambridge, Mass from 2005:

China’s manufacturing sector grew 16 percent in 2004, and is expected to grow 15 percent annually over the next five years, according to the report.

Since 1990, PLM software has helped Chinese manufacturing enterprises grow, according to the report.

Daratech estimates that the Chinese PLM market saw sales of approximately $191 million in 2004 with a 30 percent growth in 2005, which would bring the market to almost $250 million.

Compared with the more established American and European markets, the Chinese market is still in its early stages and so far has greater growth potential than established markets have, the report said.

Revenue is lost in China to the illegal use of engineering software, especially 2-D and 3-D CAD. Daratech estimated that illegal users could outnumber legal users by 5 to 1. The report predicted that illegal use will decline.

according to CIMData article:

Dassault Systèmes PLM Solutions Help China’s Industries Go Green

With its digital 3D end-to-end PLM solutions, Dassault Systèmes helps manufacturers use resources more efficiently. Before producing anything in the real world, Chinese companies can design, simulate, test and produce products in 3D. This allows them to optimize a product’s technical, cost and environmental criteria, avoiding wasteful production.

So, with warm wishes to our people in China/Taiwan for great PLM success, here are some pictures from Guangzhou my phone camera captured (unfortunately only on the way to the airport… )

PLM 2008 summit in Israel – Summary

 

At 8th July the PLM 2008 summit was held in City Tower hotel, Ramat Gan, Israel.

The summit organizer has publish a summary of all session. You can find it in the following link: PLM2008 Summary

Unfortunately this summary is in Hebrew, so for those of you that do not speak Hebrew here is a translation of the summary for my session:

…”SMB companies share the same challenges as the big companies, in addition they face their unique challenges like Limited information technology (IT) resources, Limited process improvement resources, Demand for low total cost of ownership, Demand for fast business impact, Demand for minimized risk … ENOVIA SmarTeam is the leading PLM solution for the Mid-market. With 12 years in this market and more than 6200 customers world wide … it is the only solution designed especially for the Mid-market …we have taken those best practices from our 6200 customers and implemented them into the latest releases of ENOVIA SmarTeam with the express ‘quick start’ solutions. this gives a unique value to our customers getting real out-of-the-box with complete flexibility and scalability in a single system … our PLM vision includes enabling the collaboration within planning, engineering and throughout the entire organization”…

…”The Concept to Manufacturing process starts from conceptual and requirements definition, through top-down planning and specifications, re-use, change management, standard components engineering, mechanical design, electronic / electrical and software design, outsourced design, design to engineering BOM, product maturity management and release processes, engineering BOM to manufacturing BOM, production planning and release to production with exporting the manufacturing BOM to ERP”…

…”Dassault Systèmes has determine the phrase: “See What You Mean” and based on this we have taken the path from data collaboration based on trees, tables, catalogs into a 3 Dimensional experience, making it life like (as close as we can to the way it is in real life)… why don’t we see and experience things as they are… we have taken the 3D and the video games technology and make it available for PLM – real, live, on-line access to all PLM data by anyone from anywhere”…

…”This innovative interface allows the users to easily find, filter and navigate in all PLM data graphically within 3D live representations of the data…it also enables real time 3D collaboration among several participants using red lining, contextual snapshots and co-reviews… BOMs also been represented in 3D or any PLM data…it also enables innovative decision support with an easy to use compass and color 3D coding”…

 

As part of my session I have presented 3DLive and we also had live working environments in the booth for Engineering Express and 3DLive on a touch screen. you can see more details in my previous post The new PLM paradigm – 3DLive, what is it really about?

Dassault Systemes Honored as 2008 Microsoft Partner of the Year for Global ISV Technology Innovation Special Recognition Award

Yesterday Microsoft award Dassault Systèmes as 2008 Microsoft Partner of the Year for Global ISV Technology Innovation Special Recognition Award.

Here is a short summary:

DS proudly announced it has won the 2008 Microsoft Partner of the Year Award for Global ISV Technology Innovation Partner of the Year Special Recognition Award.  The company was chosen out of an international field of top Microsoft Partners as delivering market-leading customer solutions built on Microsoft technology.

“Dassault Systemes’ ground breaking work in security, online collaboration, and the application of 3D modeling to geo-location distinguishes them as a true software industry innovator. Their solutions take 3D computing to a new level and show the full power of the software-plus-services strategy,” said Walid Abu-Hadba, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Developer and Platform Evangelism.

The complete press release can be found at: http://www.3ds.com/news-events/press-releases/release/1812/1/?no_cache=1