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Recently, CIMdata had a chance to review think3’s released PLM solution, TD PLM 2009.1 (the “TD” stands for “task-driven”). TD PLM is a new web-based PLM solution that, according to think3, has been designed to support a company’s entire product lifecycle, from concept through to end-of-life. think3 has built this 3-tier Microsoft .NET solution from the ground up and has incorporated a number of notable features, including a task-driven, zero-footprint Web graphical user interface (GUI), tag-based search and classification, Shell integration, and a reasonable set of built-in localization tools that support global deployments. Upon reflection, what struck us more than anything else, is the task-driven approach think3 took in the design of TD PLM’s overall user experience. In many ways, the task-driven user interface (UI) paradigm, which we also see in the latest release of Microsoft Office, has the potential to impact how all PLM solution suppliers approach the design

 PDF Today’s manufacturing industries are under continuous pressure to deliver competitive products faster. At the same time, they must reduce the cost of development and the cost of product ownership, protect their intellectual property while working in shared environments, and sustain business growth and competitiveness. In order to achieve this goal, collaboration across the product development lifecycle is critical. Unfortunately, collaboration introduces many complications that must be addressed in order to ensure the integrity and consistency of product development information and processes that span increasingly-complex business environments (e.g., environments that bring together multiple companies, each with their own systems and processes). Effective collaboration throughout a product’s lifecycle requires the ability to accurately integrate and share product data that is created and used within multiple applications—and that environment must be sustained for as long as the product is in use; sometimes even longer. Addressing these issues requires establishing a consistent source of knowledge

PTC announced that Mathcad 14.0 content can now be managed with Windchill 9.1. This continues and expands PTC’s embedding of Mathcad across its product suite. This new capability will enable users to search for Mathcad content that spans multiple worksheets using Mathcad file attributes and common mathematical and Greek characters. PTC also stated that once a Mathcad reference is established within Pro/ENGINEER (or even from within another Mathcad file), Windchill systematically maintains this relationship. Thus, regardless of where users check-out a top-level design or worksheet, they can be guaranteed to also check-out any dependent Mathcad files. Additionally, a preview function will allow any authorized person to see a static preview of every Mathcad worksheet revision that is checked into Windchill, e.g., a reviewer or partner in the supply chain. This integration and management of Mathcad worksheets adds good value to the PTC portfolio of products by expanding a company’s ability to

As part of CIMdata’s annual PLM market research and analysis, we evaluate the major PLM solution providers and review the progress of their PLM programs and activities. One company that many users don’t fully appreciate as a leading PLM provider is IBM. For several years, IBM has been growing its PLM capability and practices and today offers one of the widest ranges of sales, services, and support for PLM. With its global presence, PLM Centers of Excellence and large trained PLM services staff, IBM has established itself as one of the leaders in the PLM industry and CIMdata wanted to review its overall program and put it in context within the PLM industry. IBM has had a strong commitment to PLM and has been providing products and services in support of PLM for more than 30 years. Until the late 1990s, IBM was the primary marketing and sales channel for Dassault

During a recent visit to Oracle’s home page (www.oracle.com) we were unable to find an obvious web link to PLM. Fortunately, with some intelligent digging, one can find a link at the bottom of the “Applications” column entitled “More Applications.” There it is, “Product Lifecycle Management,” right in between “Procurement” and “Project Portfolio Management.” This started us thinking … “How far and how integrated has Agile’s organization and PLM solution offerings progressed since Oracle acquired the Agile Software Corporation some eighteen months ago in July 2007?” For Oracle, the Agile acquisition was fairly small in size from a financial prospective—the $492 million spent was relatively small compared to many of Oracle’s other acquisitions. At the time of the announced acquisition we commented that Oracle’s move was positive, that we believed it reflected a continuation of the consolidation activities that have been transforming the PLM market landscape, and that it reinforced the

Recently, CIMdata had the opportunity to participate in Siemens PLM Software’s Siemens Innovation Leadership Summit, which was held November 9-11 in Scottsdale, Arizona. This was a “restricted invitation” event attended by industry executives and produced by Siemens PLM Software (Siemens) to facilitate the sharing of strategies and experiences among their customers. Overall, we thought it was an excellent event with executive-level participation from both customer speakers and attendees. The seniority of attendees was as high as we’ve seen at any PLM-focused event that we’ve had the pleasure to attend. A wide range of industries and products were represented by both attendees and speakers, with speaking executives from automotive, aerospace and defense, lighting, bearings, test equipment, high-tech, automotive racing, engineering services, software, and business consulting firms. Not surprisingly, the uncertain worldwide economic situation was a major topic of concern among participants. This issue was addressed by numerous presenters and attendees, and PLM’s role

 PDF For more than 25 years CIMdata has reported on the product lifecycle management (PLM) industry. For most of this time, the primary focus of the “mindshare leading” PLM solution suppliers that make up the majority of the market has been targeted toward large discrete manufacturers. Much of this has been due to the historical roots of most of the major PLM solution suppliers, which encompasses various discrete product development activities, especially mechanically-oriented computer-aided design tasks, bill of material creation and management, engineering release and change control, and related activities. This history has resulted in a well-educated set of PLM solution suppliers and industrial organizations, many of whom are still predominantly mechanically- or electromechanically-oriented. Currently, we’re seeing a growing focus on many non-discrete industries (e.g., food and beverage, consumer packaged goods, petrochemical, specialty chemical, etc.) where specifications are the foundation upon which the product lifecycle operates—not bills of material. For Selerant

 PDF Over the past several years, MSC has been building market awareness around their solutions that are targeted at product development enterprises. These have stressed the role of simulation data management in expanding analysis and simulation beyond their traditional user base of analyst specialists and engineers. We have heard some people in the user community wondering if MSC is losing sight of their deep roots in developing new and compelling technologies and solutions that support the day-to-day needs of analysts and engineers to deeply evaluate and simulate new products. It is CIMdata’s opinion that this has not been the case at all and we will provide some of the reasons that we believe support this conclusion. A very good example of building out the technology is MSC MD (multi-discipline), a solver framework that has been developed, and continues to be refined, to support multi-disciplinary, coupled analysis and simulation. It builds on

 PDF Common Requirements Challenges All organizations produce myriad information about their products. However, transforming that information into accessible knowledge is difficult. In product development, understanding how a product is intended to function and how to apply that understanding to create an appropriate product is knowledge; and capturing, managing, and reusing that knowledge effectively is a competitive advantage. The history of the design process is embodied in CAD models. However, this history doesn’t convey all of the knowledge about how or why the product was created in a specific way or what requirements such as specifications, standards or regulations drove that development. Requirements play a critical role in product development today. The reach of requirements extends from conceptual ideas that are based on customer needs to the techniques used to create a product on the shop floor. A hierarchy of interrelated requirements, or requirements that define a next level of requirements, exists and must

SAP AG today announced its intent to acquire Visiprise, Inc., a privately-held provider of manufacturing execution software solutions delivering integrated manufacturing operations to companies of all sizes. Acquisition of Visiprise is part of SAP’s "Perfect Plant" strategy and supports their PLM roadmap and its goal of helping customers achieve operational excellence and product and service leadership. SAP anticipates that the acquisition will be completed in July 2008 pending necessary regulatory approvals in the United States and Europe. The combination of SAP Business Suite applications, the SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (SAP MII) application and Visiprise Manufacturing should help customers deploy end-to-end, "plan to make" processes across multiple plants through an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) and manufacturing execution systems (MES) solution. CIMdata believes that integrating MES with ERP is a core precept for the merging of PLM and Automation. SAP’s acquisition of Visiprise is a solid step toward providing their customers with