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 PDF Today Dassault Systèmes announced that they have completed the purchase of Seemage. The products developed by Seemage will support Dassault Systèmes’ push into 3D product documentation within Dassault Systèmes’ 3DVIA initiative. CIMdata considers this to be a synergistic acquisition that will provide Dassault Systèmes with a very strong base upon which to support the needs of industrial companies to leverage their 3D product definition information throughout the extended lifecycle of their products—including support for marketing, sales, installation, training, support, maintenance, and other non-engineering activities. The Seemage contribution includes strong capabilities to leverage 3D (and 2D) information into all kinds of static and interactive “documents.” Seemage has established a strong reputation as a provider of CAD-neutral data viewing and exploration combined with publishing this information into MS Office, Adobe Acrobat, and other popular formats. The 3DVIA products that evolve from Seemage (as well as Virtools, another Dassault Systèmes acquisition) should be enabled

 PDF On 15 May, Oracle announced their intent to acquire Agile Software Corporation for a total of $495 million. They expect to finalize the acquisition in mid to late-July of this year. CIMdata is positive on this acquisition and believes that it reflects a continuation of the consolidation activities that have been changing the PLM market landscape and reinforces the trend toward increased PLM focus from the major suppliers of ERP solutions. Agile also announced that they expect their FY07 revenues (ended in April 2007) to be around $134 million. They are one of the leaders in providing lifecycle management-focused PLM solutions, and CIMdata recognizes them as one of the five key “PLM Mindshare Leaders.” Agile has consistently been recognized in the PLM market for their solid focus on solutions for high-tech based businesses. In recent years, they have expanded their suite of offerings to include solutions focused on some other industry sectors,

 PDF Design Chain Issues Collaborative product development supports shared decision making through improved communications across the extended enterprise, with the goals of improving change processes, broader use of design information in decision processes, reducing product time- to-market, removing costs, improving quality, and supporting product innovation. Change is constant and to continue to improve their competitive position, companies which once designed, manufactured, and serviced their own products are now dramatically reorganizing the way they do business. Manufacturing companies face the challenge of extending their current capabilities outside the enterprise to include customers, suppliers, sub-contractors, and even competitors. Outsourcing functions such as design, manufacturing, and services have provided many companies with cost advantages. However, to do this, well-established communication channels, control procedures, and management practices, progressively built up over time, must change to take advantage of new processes, organizational structures, and enabling technologies. Another issue is that geographically-distributed companies potentially have a competitive edge, as their

 PDF Innovation results from applying best practice processes to product creation. In order to be innovative, an organization needs to understand its intellectual assets or knowledge base as well as how to use and apply these concepts to create new or improved products, processes, services, and markets. Fostering innovation requires an environment that supports access to information, the ability to view and interpret that information, knowledge management, and collaboration on that information to maximize the use of as much knowledge and talent as possible across the enterprise. In today’s challenging global markets, enterprises must innovate to improve their market position, to bring significant value to their shareholders, customers, and employees, and in many cases to survive. It is important that this innovation occur across all aspects of the organization—product, process, and organization—to improve competitiveness, quality, and overall business performance. Continuous innovation consistently results in right-to-market products and services. According to K. Pavitt

 PDF The widespread movement toward engineering collaboration represents a major trend for companies wanting to improve teamwork among people in different locations. A variety of technologies to support collaboration are now commercially available including synchronous meeting solutions, co-modeling systems, visualization software, digital mockup, and many others. For the most part, these tools use Web technology and the Internet to allow people in different facilities across town or around the world to interact, resolve problems, reach consensus, and otherwise work together online. Using these technologies is much quicker and more effective than telephone, fax, or mail delivery. They are much more economical and efficient than getting everyone together for face-to-face meetings. Collaboration technology is especially useful in integrated product development where designers in different facilities must work on the same project. Impressive Time Savings Collaborative tools have been used to resolve problems in a few minutes that otherwise would have required days of time in

 PDF There has been a lot of confusing discussion recently, particularly among people in the CAD user community concerning the definition of collaboration and the real value of the technologies that support it no matter how it is defined. The root terminology problem seems to stem from the haphazard use of the term “collaboration” in the marketing materials of the CAD and PLM vendors. It is probably not possible to get all of the various solution providers to adopt a single definition of collaboration because this would not serve their marketing needs. PLM vendors now use the term collaboration to mean any activity in which people have to communicate and share information. The term is applied to PDM systems that promote data sharing through workflows with automatic notifications of required actions and organizing data so that it can be easily found. The term is also applied to real-time, online meetings in which

 PDF As CIMdata announced in yesterday’s edition of its CIMdata PLM Late Breaking News, Siemens AG has announced their intent to acquire the UGS Corporation for US $3.515 billion, pending all necessary governmental reviews and approvals. After this acquisition, UGS will become a unit within Siemens’ Automation and Drives (A&D) Group, a €12.8 billion business unit headquartered in Nürnberg, Germany. Siemens and UGS stated that the long-term strategic views of the two firms are quite consistent and that the acquisition will allow them to blend Siemens’ and UGS’ complementary programs to deliver “Totally Integrated Automation” solutions to the market. They report that they plan to finalize the acquisition by the end of the first quarter of this year. CIMdata is positive on this acquisition and believes that it has the potential to be an excellent move for Siemens, UGS, and the industry, but there are some significant challenges that must be

 PDF ANN ARBOR, Michigan, November 3, 2006 — Document management is a foundation element for any enterprise. The term “document” is a broad definition that includes files and information of many different types, formats, and media, all of which must be managed in a consistent manner. Managing documents includes capturing them, categorizing them using meta-data information, placing them in secure repositories, providing search mechanisms and schemes, and providing access to documents based on a user’s role and authorizations. Some of the challenges in doing effective document management include: Ease of use Establishing one logical repository (which may incorporate multiple physical repositories) Incorporation of powerful authorization and security methods Easy adaptation to customer needs SAP has always had a robust document management capability. However, the capabilities were not always easy to use or adaptable to customer needs. In order to address these issues, SAP has developed SAP® Easy Document Management, which enhances the powerful document management capabilities

 PDF isicad 2006, organized by Ledas Ltd. (www.ledas.com) and supported by SibCongress and Sib3, and held 31 May–2 June in Akademgorodok, Novosibirsk, Russia provided a forum for Siberia-based Russian companies to learn more about PLM and to share experiences with those who have already begun adopting PLM solutions and technologies. More than 300 individuals attended isicad 2006 (the second isicad forum) including more than 200 users and approximately 80 solution providers. Twelve companies demonstrated their solutions at the isicad 2006 exhibition hall. They included PLM, CAD/CAM, services solution providers, and technical publishers. The forum attendees represented about 135 organizations, including 85 industrial companies—users and customers of PLM and ERP solutions, 40 PLM and ERP solution providers, with the remaining representing education institutions, analytical agencies, mass-media companies, etc. During the three-day forum, more than 40 talks were presented covering the topics of PLM, CAD/CAM/CAE, PDM, ERP integration as well as customer implementation case

 PDF Effective product design cost estimating (PDCE) is an important factor in determining whether a company should commit to building a product. Failure to accurately estimate the cost of a design will have a significant negative impact on a company’s market success and profitability. Underestimating the cost may require additional expenditure of resources, cause delays in bringing the product to market (missing the prime selling window) or result in having to charge a price higher than the market for that product will support. Benefits that can be achieved through more effective PDCE include: Improved ability to determine if a product can be marketed successfully – meet price expectations Ability to more quickly and accurately respond to requests for quotations – improve the success rate of winning bids Provide costing solutions to companies making quotations prior to accepting work orders – set proper expectations and eliminate cost uncertainty Reduce the effort to determine product cost –