CIMdata recently had the pleasure to attend Dassault Systèmes annual PLM analyst event at their headquarters in Vélizy-Villacoublay, France. As in previous years, these two days were well organized with presentations and demonstrations by key Dassault Systèmes’ management team members. Overall, CIMdata is quite pleased with Dassault Systèmes’ messaging and positioning of their 3DEXPERIENCE platform, as well as with the progress made realizing their vision. Throughout the event a strong passion and dedication to fulfil the vision was evident. With many levels of the company represented at the analyst event, the message was still very consistent. Dassault Systèmes appears to be in good shape to address the needs of changing industries.

Collaboration between aerospace and defense OEMs and their design chain suppliers has been identified as a chronic pain point by the OEMs, i.e., the point of friction impeding information flow through the product lifecycle. CIMdata research has revealed that, in general, A&D OEMs and their partners have no system in place to record and track collaboration inquiries. Establishing an inquiry and response tracking system between collaboration entities is a simple, low-cost investment that would go a long way to alleviating this chronic pain point.

Siemens PLM Software, in conjunction with Siemens AG, is taking a fresh approach to solving challenges in today’s energy industry. To drive further progress, the company recently held an Energy Executive Council event in Houston, Texas, with attendance from key influencers throughout the industry.

Earlier this month, Automation Alley hosted a group of southeast Michigan industry representatives to a “Tech Takeover” focused on “Designing Smart Products for the Internet of Things (IoT).” This Tech Takeover was kicked off by Peter Bilello, CIMdata’s President. The event was sponsored by Fisher Unitech.

In the logistics world, the “last mile” often refers to the challenge of getting people and goods to their final destination. Infor uses this phrase to describe how their industry-specific offerings deliver much-needed capabilities for their customers’ businesses. That last mile is the foundation of Infor’s strategy. Infor's work to date and their high customer adoption rates are impressive. But as they readily acknowledge, there is much more work to do.

Siemens MindSphere is an open IoT operating system and Platform as a Service (PaaS) which provides connectivity between the physical assets and their digital representations. MindSphere also serves as the platform on which domain-specific applications for connected intelligent products, processes, and services can be developed by value chain partners to make such systems perform optimally under changing conditions, as well as support remote condition monitoring, remote repair, and remote upgrading, while enabling complex decision-making and control in engineering and operations.

Aras announced they received a $40 million strategic investment led by Silver Lake Kraftwerk, a fund of Silver Lake Management, L.L.C. with participation from GE Ventures, the investment arm of General Electric. CIMdata recognized Aras as a mindshare leader in our 2017 PLM Market & Industry Forum and PLM Market Analysis Report (MAR) series. Today’s announcement shows that blue chip investors believe in Aras and want to help them become a market leader. CIMdata would like to congratulate Aras on this milestone and is looking forward to their next big move.

SAP has made great strides in expanding their PLM portfolio, delivering broader, more comprehensive solutions that span the ideation, creation, manufacturing, and service lifecycles. CIMdata thinks that delivering SAP PLM on S/4HANA, can help companies create and deploy the live innovation product development platform and IT environment crucial to success in today’s fast-paced, interconnected products and systems world.

Moving to new PLM platforms has usually meant using vendor-supplied toolsets, effectively limiting migration options and increasing migration costs and schedule risks. Through the use of open source migration tools, multiple staffing and schedule choices become available, lessening the risk to migration schedule—and decreasing time to value on the new PLM platform. Capgemini is a global PLM solution provider that can make this vision happen.

Anark Corporation and International TechneGroup have formed a strategic partnership to provide users a production quality 3D PDF solution for 3D data and document publishing, including model-based definition (MBD), validation, and exchange through the integration of ITI’s CADIQ and Anark Core technologies supported by their combined implementation expertise. CIMdata welcomes the Anark/ITI partnership and looks forward to seeing their joint MBE solution positively impact the PLM market. With this solution, CIMdata believes that data exchange has taken another step forward in capability to streamline data among product developers, their supply chain, and customers.