On September 1 and 2 Autodesk held their second Accelerate conference at the Word Trade Center in Boston’s Seaport District. This new, bigger venue was necessary with attendance up by about 50% over the first event in 2014. Accelerate focuses on Autodesk PLM 360, their entry into the cloud product lifecycle management (PLM) market.

Heavy equipment manufacturers are confronted with increasing complexity—complexity in their products and product variations, and complexity in global production. As a result, they need effective collaborative manufacturing capabilities so that they can better integrate their product and production processes, planning, and strategies. Siemens PLM Software is addressing this need with new capabilities built on their Smart Innovation Portfolio. This includes being able to create plant-specific MBOMs from a single EBOM, the ability to transfer intelligent work instructions directly to the shop floor, and a closed loop change process between engineering and manufacturing.

Dassault Systèmes held their annual Industry Analyst event on June 10-11, 2015 at their global headquarters in Velizy, France. The agenda was full and included briefings from the executive team and a set of industry focused tracks covering the work they have accomplished in several segments. Overall, the takeaway for attendees was that Dassault Systèmes is making significant progress in its product offerings in all areas that are knitting together the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and its industry focused solutions, having concluded the first three years of investment into the innovation experience.

SAP recently brought together customers, partners, and SAP staff at their SAP Manufacturing Industries Forum on June 24-25, 2015 in Lombard, Illinois just outside of Chicago. The 500+ attendees represented a wide range of customers using SAP to support different aspects of their value chain. The multi-track agenda included sessions by SAP executives, leading customers, and the software and service provider sponsors of the event.

SPRING Technologies’ vision for native G-code cutter path programming is an ambitious undertaking. The CAM market is already overcrowded, as evidenced by the fact that after years of resistance, the CAM market has seen significant consolidation. Bringing a new CAM system to market overcrowded with contenders, and within an industry that is consolidating, may encounter limited demand. However, CIMdata believes there is a clear market need to increase the scheduling flexibility for manufacturers who use CNC machines and who must continuously re-align their resource allocations to meet changing customer demands. Addressing this need is a challenge for the current CAM-room process and CIMdata views SPRING Technologies’ G-code CAM solution as a potential solution.

While competitors may be able to respond with their own versions of a native G-code toolpath programming solutions, SPRING Technologies has a level of expertise and experience in much of the CAM-room process that is required to deliver on the vision. These capabilities may not exist in competitor organizations. SPRING Technologies’ performance to date is quite impressive and CIMdata looks forward to seeing how the market responds to this new innovative offering.

CIMdata believes that increasing complexity is a fact of life today and into the future—it is neither inherently good nor bad. When managed improperly, complexity causes issues with cost, speed to market, customer service, and inventory.

CIMdata recommends that companies implement an end-to-end strategy to manage complexity throughout the product lifecycle. This can enable them to maximize product value to their end customer while delivering quantifiable improvements and profitability to their business. A properly implemented, complexity management strategy will leverage flexible tools that support well-designed processes with strategic and tactical governance. 

Doing More with Less: Minimizing Waste and Cost, OTC 2015 Executive Briefing organized by Dassault Systèmes created discussions and insights into next-generation strategies and technologies for collaborative development and engineering, product lifecycle management, asset lifecycle management, and information management to address the need for greater efficiency in the Oil and Gas Industry due to continuing lower oil prices. Examples and the panel discussion gave solid evidence that technology solutions alone are not sufficient to achieve efficiencies in product development and design. Strategic intent for collaboration must be declared, robust decision-making processes should be put in place, and cultural barriers have to be addressed. Only then, can digital capabilities and solutions deliver their ultimate value.

Aras held their latest ACE conference from April 21 through April 23 2015. This annual event continues to grow; this year there were over 400 registrants from around the globe. The theme of this year’s conference was “RETHINK PLM.” The conference had a high energy level and focused on expanding the footprint of PLM.

CIMdata recently participated in a two-day PLM analyst meeting and briefing from Dassault Systèmes, in Germany. During these two days of meetings, Dassault Systèmes briefed the invited analysts on the progress they have made around their 3DEXPERIENCE Platform.

CIMdata recently attended the PTC LiveWorx event held at the Hynes Convention Center and the Westin Copley hotel May 4–7, 2015, in Boston, MA, USA. This event gave PTC’s customers the opportunity to not only hear about and explore PTC’s solution strategies for the Internet of Things (IoT), but also to showcase their own work, network with peers, share ideas, and discuss how they are addressing their challenges on their IoT journey.