Key takeaways:

• Understanding the components of product cost over the product lifecycle is key to maximizing ROI
• The biggest opportunities for cost reduction often lie at the intersections of functions within an organization
• TCS takes a holistic view of costs and uses industry, technology, and process knowledge to solve difficult cost management problems

PTC made a huge move to support their manufacturing customers in getting smart and connected with their acquisition of ThingWorx, a leading provider of “Internet of Things” development tools and infrastructure. This acquisition, and two other recent announcements by Autodesk and Google, show the importance of smart, connected devices in just about all product markets.

For several years, the Aras Corporation (Aras) has included no-cost version-to-version upgrades in their enterprise subscriptions, independent of how the solution has been customized and implemented. This is a rather bold guarantee given the historic challenges the industry has experienced with upgrading highly customized PLM deployments. With more than 300 upgrades behind it, CIMdata felt it appropriate to find out how Aras’ guarantee was playing out, and discovered that there was much more to the story than just a contractual guarantee.

The increasing complexity of ships and other marine structures, the increased speed of design and construction demanded by customers, tight budgets, longer in-service life spans, more complex configurations in multi-ship projects, a much more complex and difficult worldwide regulatory climate, and other factors continue to put high demands on companies to improve their product development environment to take more advantage of modern practices such as those offered by PLM.

Shipbuilders and other marine companies require solutions that are tailored for the special needs of the marine industry that they can implement quickly so that their investment in PLM can help them achieve and maintain a competitive position. The value is delivered by the full Siemens PLM Software shipbuilding solution suite (not only by the Shipbuilding Catalyst)—the catalyst helps you get to the value more easily and quickly.

On January 29, Dassault Systèmes announced their intent to acquire Accelrys (NASDAQ: ACCL) for $750 million in cash. Accelrys is a leading provider of what they term “scientific innovation lifecycle management” software to support development in chemistry, biology and materials.

CIMdata recently attended the 16th annual SolidWorks World conference which took place on January 26-29, 2014 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California, USA. Dassault Systèmes’ strategy is clear—make value extensions, additional solutions, and capabilities offered by the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform available to the SolidWorks’ community.

Over 400 INCOSE  members attended the recent International Workshop 2014 and MBSE Workshop events held in the Los Angeles, CA area from January 25-28. An intense two-day weekend workshop was focused exclusively on Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE). MBSE is one of the key strategic initiatives of the INCOSE SE Vision 2020.

Key takeaways:

• Outside of the software engineering domain (where the model-based principles were initially developed and applied starting in the 1980s), cross-domain MBSE is still in the very early stage of industry adoption, similar in nature to mechanical CAD and CAE technology in the early to mid 1980s
• Early adopters of MBSE are starting to implement this approach within selected programs and domains with positive metrics of success; albeit not without the normal challenges of major process change and related organizational training
• System modeling languages such as UML/OMG SysML and Modelica are rapidly maturing to meet the needs of the systems engineering community
• Standards for MBSE data exchange, interoperability, and data visualization (e.g., OSLC, OSLC4MBSE, FMI and DoDAF) are rapidly emerging and maturing

Oracle held their second annual Value Chain Summit February 3-5, in San Jose, California. The event once again attracted a few thousand Oracle customers who were interested in better understanding Oracle’s various supply chain technologies and where they are heading. 

The trend towards global business platforms will have a significant impact on the type and rate at which acquisitions and mergers take place moving forward as the PLM industry continues to build out its strategies and capabilities to meet the rapidly evolving business needs of current and future clients. The providers that strive and thrive will be those that define an appropriate long-term vision and who execute their strategy in the most efficient and effective manner possible.

LeverX has been involved with SAP PLM since its inception. Dr. Victor Lozinski, Co-Founder and CEO of LeverX, was the original SAP PLM Product Manager. In addition to implementing the various SAP PLM related solutions, LeverX is deeply involved within the SAP community that leverages the product lifecycle to improve business performance. LeverX has a unique relationship with SAP when compared to other SAP PLM implementers. Over the last decade, SAP has contracted with LeverX to manage and support many SAP internal developments, testing environments, and demo environments used for PLM, ERP, and Supply Chain as well as related SAP solutions. LeverX reported that they are also a preferred vendor for many SAP organizations around the world. The responsibility LeverX has within the SAP I2P and PLM ecosystem shows how significantly SAP trusts and uses LeverX. Trust like this had to be earned.