Product category:
PLM and collaboration software
News Release from: Dassault Systemes
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 25 January 2002
Step change benefits from collaboration
technology
All four speakers at a recent series of SmarTeam European Customer Forums stressed the importance of collaboration and sharing product information throughout the entire enterprise product life cycle.
All four speakers at a recent series of SmarTeam European Customer Forums stressed the importance of collaboration and sharing product information throughout the entire enterprise product life cycle Whether it's called Product Data Management (PDM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) or the latest acronym - collaborative Product Definition management (cPDm) - two customers reported step change benefits from the technology
This article was originally published on Engineeringtalk on 29 Jan 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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They include forecast savings of about 18% for a typical vehicle tooling and equipment programme, and a 30% shorter design cycle for the manufacture of food processing equipment.
Avinoam Nowogrodski, CEO of SmarTeam Corporation, identified the enabling key technology: "The Internet has become a way of thinking and a cultural issue.
This has developed the extended enterprise, connecting the company with its customers and suppliers.
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"SmarTeam supports companies that are streamlining their design-to-manufacturing processes by managing product information and empowering collaboration within the enterprise and throughout the supply chain.
By placing a strong emphasis on the rapid delivery of measurable results with SmarTeam software, we now have over 1,700 customers and an annual growth rate of 100%.
We will maintain or exceed this growth by increasing our customer base, approaching vertical segments, expanding our partnerships with companies like IBM, SAP, Oracle and Autodesk, and improving collaboration with our parent company Dassault Systemes." Jordi Portella, Director of European Consulting Operations for CIMdata, a leading PDM consulting and research firm, outlined future trends and market direction, particularly the evolving view of the product life cycle.
He said that CIMdata is currently focused on the full product definition cycle across the extended enterprise.
"Product innovation is a key issue, along with the need to get people working together at the beginning of a project.
Collaboration is essential for achieving this.
Another key issue is managing data across the enterprise, not just in the engineering department.
So the real message for companies hoping to succeed is that they must have a common platform to share information across the whole enterprise and throughout the whole product life cycle." Portella also said that suppliers and industry are fumbling for consistent terminology, which is why there is a battle of acronyms such as ePDM, CPC, PDM, CME and PLM.
"This is normal in a period of change because people are trying to describe what they are talking about - the business values and concepts behind each vendor's vision." Most of the CIMdata presentation slides referred to cPDm - collaborative Product Definition management - which Portella says is a competitive necessity that offers a business approach for defining your vision which, in turn, guides your decisions.
Portella observed that the PDM market growth has been healthy since the late 80s, and in the past two years SmarTeam's market presence world-wide has increased substantially and is now established in the 'WW Top Ten'.
Its product capabilities and focus have been significantly expanded and Dassault and IBM have embraced SmarTeam's solutions as an essential part of their business.
Vice President of eCommerce, DCT in Sterling Heights, Michigan, Mark Yadach told the forum that: "PDM is the price of staying in business.
If we don't do it well our competitors will eat us for lunch.
So PDM is now a given in this business and collaborative commerce is needed to manage our core competencies." As a world-wide provider of welding and assembly equipment for automakers and first-tier suppliers, DCT must react quickly to frequent engineering changes.
That's the nature of the business in manufacturing industries where product innovation is a competitive necessity, production operations are continually being reconfigured, and response time is critical.
Brought into the firm to find ways to optimise DCT's internal processes, Yadach immediately identified opportunities for improving ways the company dealt with engineering changes, particularly in managing the company's 100,000-item bill of materials (BOM) that lists all engineering details of the components and sub-assemblies that comprise the complex manufacturing systems DCT produces.
This extensive information base is affected whenever the manufacturing system is altered due to a customer's product, process or preferential change.
Two years ago, Yadach recognised that "managing the BOM is the heartbeat of the company" and began an initiative to implement PDM and collaborative workflow software from SmarTeam.
Based on pilot experiences, Yadach projected that the streamlining effects of these tools would reduce the time to process engineering changes by up to 80%.
This reduction in turnaround time translates into substantial cost savings for DCT and its customers.
As a result, the company is expanding the use of these tools throughout its organisation and also using the technology to more effectively collaborate across the supply chain.
According to Yadach, their former procedure of processing engineering changes and managing the BOM information was conducted manually.
Moreover, each DCT department had its own way of maintaining the information, with change orders and related modifications to the BOM.
"Manual processes can no longer provide the reliability and accuracy of data that our customers expect," explained Yadach.
"There were too many opportunities for mistakes and miscommunication.
Change orders just add to the complexity of manual processes.
Things could easily fall through the cracks.
As a result, we needed a PDM tool to accelerate our transformation from manual data management to integrated automation of our data." Yadach went on to describe the world beyond traditional PDM, which DCT terms SmartXChange (SXC) and is its new initiative to provide collaborative program management support that can be extended to customers and suppliers.
He said that despite DCT's best efforts difficulties occur in launching vehicle programmes and managing plant operations.
SXC is positioned to cover a broad spectrum of the entire programme life cycle - all based on real-time collaboration.
It consists of workshop management tools, dashboard reporting, project collaboration tools and techniques, and BOM management tools.
The benefits include real-time status, reduced time to process engineering changes, and improved cost of tooling programmes.
To emphasise the point, Yadach cited several examples where SXC has been forecasted to achieve savings of about 18% for a typical tooling and equipment program.
Karlheinz Ribar, Corporate Development Project Manager for Buhler AG, described how a worldwide collaborative product development system has helped the manufacturer of food processing equipment shorten design cycles by 30%.
Buhler Group manages vast amounts of product development data associated with its wide range of equipment.
The company is a leading worldwide supplier of machinery for processing chocolate, pasta, flour, and other bulk materials in the food industry.
In the past, design information on the 1.4 million parts in over 700 of Buhler's product lines installed in thousands of plants around the world, was managed by separate groups.
A variety of manual methods and automated systems ran independently from one another with little consistency, continuity, or connection with one another.
Employees often did not know where data resided and wasted considerable time hunting for information, working with incorrect revisions, and recreating existing documents.
Compounding the difficulty was the challenge of sharing data throughout Buhler's global operations.
Bottlenecks also occurred in trying to work long-distance with subcontractors supplying parts to Buhler, and with consultants, architectural firms, and construction companies designing and building the large plants where Buhler machines are installed.
For the most part, information was shared via 2D drawings, reports, and other paper documents, with all the usual delays.
To radically streamline this operation, Buhler scrapped its former 2D system in favour of AutoCADů and its 3D Mechanical Desktopů system to more efficiently design its complex machinery.
And instead of trying to manage information through separate and disjointed systems, the company is consolidating its data into a single PDM system from SmarTeam.
"PDM is a strategic component of our enterprise IT infrastructure," explains Ribar.
"Buhler is building a worldwide collaborative product development system that extends into the supply chain and tracks critical information throughout the product life cycle." Ribar said that the system reduces the total cycle time from initial concept to customer delivery by 30%, thus increasing speed of delivery to customers.
The installation time for machinery at a customer's site has also been reduced from 8 weeks to 2 weeks.
Other benefits include up to 50% fewer change orders, easy access to data, and improved parts standardisation.
Currently, 350 people use the system but plans to connect all subsidiaries via data replication and web servers, with over 1,000 people throughout the worldwide enterprise using SmarTeam for system design and project management.
Web capabilities available in SmarTeam enable employees to access information remotely via the Internet through simple browsers.
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