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