plm

Made to measure The fashion world is sharing data and design to get goods to market faster

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Building the future Product life-cycle management technology has much to offer building design

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Green machines

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PLM is helping manufacturers manage their eco reputation

June 2011

BusinessTechnology

Circle of life Managing products from inception to market has got tougher. Find out how it’s done in this report on product life-cycle management

Distributed within the Daily Telegraph, produced and published by Lyonsdown which takes sole responsibility for the contents

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Business Technology

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the daily telegraph

June 2011

Product life-cycle management – in this issue

Foreword

Order out of chaos Pioneered by the car and aerospace industries, product lifecycle management is now influencing the development of everything from pharmaceuticals to the clothes we wear

By Brian Davis

Design engineers have come a long way from the drawing board, through computer-aided design and manufacture, to product data management and now product life-cycle management (PLM).

PLM helps turn chaos into order for handling the information avalanche involved in creating new products and processes, manufacture, support and disposal. PLM increasingly plays a vital role in creating the latest cars, gizmos, aircraft carriers, energy infrastructure and even the clothes we wear.

The concept is still little understood outside

the manufacturing community, even at board level. Nevertheless, it is now moving from big players to smaller firms along the supply chain.

Some say: “PLM is not actually software but a philosophy for business process reengineering.” Actually it’s a way of sorting the vast amounts of information shared along the supply chain throughout the product or process life-cycle.

Though pioneered by the automotive industry, aerospace and defence, PLM has major implications for the development of everything from Crossrail, the new railway for London and the south-east, to the latest pharmaceuticals, consumer packaged goods and much else

besides. PLM is a big vision but requires major culture change and board level commitment to avoid costly mistakes. As we increasingly outsource design and manufacture to partners across the world, PLM is vital for sharing product and process information with “a single version of the truth”.

The vendors promise that PLM will get new products faster-to-market, improve quality and compliance, and give competitive edge.

The big success is in the auto-industry where companies like Nissan have slashed the cycle for new model introduction from years to 10.5 months using PLM. However, most companies admit PLM is not an easy journey and there is a steep learning curve. The trick is to have a clear vision of the goal and take small steps. PLM is about business transformation – but we all know how most people resist change!

PLM for all?

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Looking good

5

A model approach

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Blowing in the wind

11

Comply or die

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It’s not an off-the peg solution Fashion stays ahead of the trend Builders catch on to PLM

Everyone wants to be green

Make the most of your system

Contributors Publisher Bradley Scheffer brad@lyonsdown.co.uk

Creative Director Martin Nolan studio@lyonsdown.co.uk

For more information on any of our supplements please contact us:

Brian Davis, editor, is an award-winning industry journalist and regular contributor to The Manufacturer and Professional Engineering.

Managing Editor Lucie Carrington lucie@lyonsdown.co.uk

Production Manager Nicki Sitaras nicki@lyonsdown.co.uk

Telephone: 020 8349 4363 Email: info@lyonsdown.co.uk Online: www.lyonsdown.co.uk

Martyn Day is contributing editor to Develop 3D magazine, AEC Magazine and a regular contributor to Building Design.

Editor Brian Davis editor@lyonsdown.co.uk

Project Manager Matt Nathan matt@lyonsdown.co.uk

Dr Charles Clarke is an independent CADCAM and manufacturing consultant and regular contributor to The Engineer and other industry journals.

John Stark of John Stark Associates is a leading PLM consultant.

John Pullin is a former editor of Professional Engineering, Construction News and The Engineer.

Cover illustration: Leandro Castelao

Sponsors

The heart of the matter Product life-cycle management should become a way of life across the business argues Karer Consulting For Christian Hehl, managing director of Karer Consulting in the UK, product life-cycle management (PLM) is more than just a set of software and a business tool: it’s a philosophy.

“It’s one of the three major processes within a company, alongside supply chain management and customer relationship management,” he says. “When a business uses PLM fully it has to understand all the processes that are connected to the product.”

This focus on the processes surrounding the product is not always what the PLM suppliers themselves are offering, Hehl says.

Early adopters in industries such as aerospace and automotive, he believes, often found that the PLM solution they bought drove the processes – rather than the business processes driving the way the PLM was brought in.

In these cases, product focus tended often to be limited to the design and development phase and was not suited to handling inputs from other key people, such as procurement, manufacturing and service departments, or even from the customers for the product or service.

“If you have the philosophy that PLM is one of the major processes within the company and you take the time to design the interfaces with the customers and with the supply chain properly, then you can get real customer and service data feedback into R&D, design and engineering,” Hehl says. “You are

using the knowledge from the whole company, its suppliers and customers to drive the requirement for product development.”

Information about products – not just design data, but about how they’re made and used, and what customers really think of them – has often tended to be stored in many places and many systems, and not to be integrated. PLM is the way to achieve this in line with business goals.

PLM is not an added extra.

It is an essential element of product development because it ties every other process together “As a consultancy, we think that it is important to look first at what is needed for the business as a whole and at how systems and processes can be integrated, rather than trying to replace everything with a ‘PLM solution’ that imposes it own demands,” Hehl says.

Karer Consulting is an independent consultancy and its expertise lies in designing and understanding existing processes, systems, data flows and interfaces within a business

Karer Consulting’s Process Reference Model

and how PLM ideas can improve them: getting under the skin of its clients to identify their individual needs.

Karer Consulting’s customers include some of the biggest names in European business, such as Siemens, the SICK group and Zumtobel, whose UK brand is Thorn Lighting, as well as smaller companies. Over the past 15 years, it has helped its clients to design and implement PLM solutions such as Siemens PLM Teamcenter, PTC Windchill and SAP. “The client’s input and experience are centre-stage, and we can look at how these companies are doing their business now and provide our expertise in best practice to help them,” says Hehl.

“They are the important people and we have to do what is right for them and their products. But because we are independent and from outside the company, we can have a broader view and help them do whatever it is that serves their business process best.”

Supporting and enhancing the business process is the important difference that PLM can make, Hehl believes. And that’s really a philosophy for success that applies not just in manufacturing, but much wider.

“I can see the ideas PLM brings expanding into service areas,” Hehl says. “Any business would benefit.” www.karer.com

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the daily telegraph

June 2011

Business Technology

3

Efficiency

No one size fits all It looks different from company to company but, properly deployed, PLM can save time, money and effort in a variety of business contexts

By Brian Davis

PLM is like that classic elephant and the blind men joke. Some feel around and think it’s about fast product design and sexy. Another swears it’s about competitive edge. Some think it’s hard and another swears it makes them greener or more informed with partners.

Some think it smells bad – but they probably didn’t plan it properly.

“We understood what 3D design could do for the business and wanted to expand the scope, as PLM records every aspect of a product and process with detailed documentation for its entire life-cycle,” says Richard Parker, engineering manager at SPP Pumps.

“PLM helped stitch the whole picture together where previously we had used a combination of different computer-aided design (CAD) systems and email. As a long established company, we’d got over 300,000 drawings, some going back 40 years.”

SPP invested £250,000 in a PLM system from PTC, based on Windchill and Pro/E (now Creo Elements Pro) software. As with

PLM helped stitch the whole picture together where previously we had used a combination of different computer-aided design systems and email

any business, resistance to change could be enormous. “So I focused on areas under my control, then rolled it out once I could show the benefits and give others the confidence to engage with it,” says Parker.

He won over the board by showing the confusion created by the old system in which masses of email files with multiple attachments clogged people’s inboxes. Now there’s one central vault of information for fast, easy access, and excellent documentation at every stage.

In 2006 Bentley Motors began discussions

Portakabin uses PLM for bespoke projects

on how to deploy PLM. “We asked over 160 people across the business whether PLM was the digital monster it was reputed to be,” says CAD strategy manager John Unsworth. “PLM is not something you buy off-the-shelf but a careful balance between people, processes and requirements.”

They mapped out 11 key initiatives for PLM, covering everything from styling data integration, supply chain optimisation, visualisation, improved data, manufacturing integration, dimensional and tolerance management to re-using knowledge. The aim was to eliminate vast amounts of waste from styling to manufacture with everything in one database “so decisions could be made when they matter”.

Bentley clearly understood the recipe for success. “We realigned all our business processes,” says Unsworth. “This took massive re-education and 18 months of hard work.”

Deploying Dassault Systèmes’ Catia V5 and Delmia solutions produced a significant reduction in late engineering changes and PLM now integrates styling with supply chain planning and after-sales.

Volvo sees an opportunity to make significant reductions in a product’s time to market by using PLM. PLM director Johan Svedberg emphasises the need for a clear strategy before executing PLM. “It is vital to find the right balance between local needs and what you need to have in common with the overall group,” he says.

Using a PTC solution with in-house data architecture, PDMLink and ProjectLink, Volvo will be able to optimise how it uses resources with a common architecture across the group, driving down production costs, increasing flexibility and accelerating new product introduction.

Kevin Ison, EMEA manufacturing marketing director at Autodesk, maintains that: “You don’t have to embrace PLM all at one go.”

In fact, he says, Autodesk was very wary of the term PLM until recently.

“We prefer to focus on the benefits of digital prototyping and associated solutions like Vault Collaboration, which can link multiple sites to a single database for small business enterprises, connecting to an ERP [enterprise resource planning] system.”

Portakabin uses Autodesk 3D Inventor and Vault to look after product data and multiple revisions with full traceability over the life-cycle of bespoke construction projects.

Director of engineering Ian MacKenzie says: “We needed a single reference point from concept, through configuration to disposal, whether supplying modules for schools, hospitals or whatever.”

PLM gives more design flexibility, better interaction with clients and competitive advantage, he says, but admits: “We don’t actually use the term PLM as labels aren’t important and many have never heard of it.”

Like the blind men and the elephant. It’s not the name that matters but the benefits you get from dealing with it.

Using PLM reduces late engineering changes

Industry view

Do your detective work in 3D The 3D technology of ShapeSpace reduces search time in your archive to seconds by locating any part based on its shape, rather than description Imagine an organisation with thousands of products broken down into tens of thousands of parts. Now consider their drawings repository, all tagged with non-uniform descriptions and part numbers, often shared across several departments and offices.

What a nightmare! How do they find a specific part in a hurry? Hope the description was entered intuitively? Rely on the accuracy of the part number? What about duplicates – aren’t they costly and confusing?

ShapeSpace solves the problem. ShapeSpace is a unique 3D search engine which enables you to re-organise, re-catalogue and eradicate duplicates in your massive drawings archive in hours. A task that could have taken months if performed manually will allow rationalisation, reduce search time to seconds and enable you to cross-reference duplicate parts. The efficiencies and savings produced mean that the return on investment can be achieved in days.

ShapeSpace is a great first step in successful PLM implementation. It ensures you will know, and can easily locate,

Some users begin by creating a ShapeSpace and realise that they don’t need to go for fullblown PLM solutions every part based on its shape, rather than its description. In fact, some users begin by creating a Shape-Space and realise that they don’t need to go for full-blown PLM solutions – ShapeSpace offers such efficiencies that it could be all you need.

We are confident that ShapeSpace’s functionality and analytical results will impress you. So much so that – for a limited time – we will come to your site, create a parts analysis of your inventory using ShapeSpace, and produce a free report demonstrating the value of a permanent installation.

To arrange a free ShapeSpace parts analysis call 0800 988 5593 or visit the website. www.shapespace.com

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Business Technology

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the daily telegraph

June 2011

Industry view

When fashion goes high-tech For fashion companies, speed and agility are not easy to maintain across extensive supply chains. Product life-cycle management helps them handle complexity in a demanding market A big difference exists between making a car and making a garment, but today’s apparel industry benefits from technology honed in the automotive sector. Product life-cycle management (PLM) is transforming the way some fashion companies manage their development process. It can help companies of all sizes and specialities confront the challenges of a market in constant evolution.

Daniel Harari, CEO of Lectra, the fashion solutions specialist, explains how the apparel industry’s tendency toward more fashion, faster, forces companies to innovate more quickly. Consumers want the latest fashion when it is most fashionable, but this implies more than good timing: clothes also have to be the right colour, size, fit, and cut.

And it is not just how fast new models are introduced or in how many variations that counts. Today the idea of co-ordination reigns. Individual pieces exist in relation to the greater vision of a collection. Companies must therefore offer a range of options with an astonishing number of combinations.

Everything is designed to fit together, from colours to sizes to accessories, thus generating the need to buy multiple items.

Anticipating trends As global brands acquire new markets, the options they must offer increase in both quantity and complexity; new customer bases mean more diverse body shapes. “Fitting is very complex – bodies throughout the world vary in shape, so one size definitely does not fit all,” says Judy Gnaedig, head of PLM business development at Lectra.

As companies confront the unique needs of their new global markets, they must also respond to local concerns. Fit and colour standards can vary as much within a single country as they do internationally. Staying up-to-date and being able to integrate this information into new designs determines a brand’s pertinence.

The fashion industry is no stranger to changing design trends. It copes well with fluctuating hemlines and shoulder pads that are chic one minute and laughable the next.

But now fashion must confront change on many timescales: a development process spread across hemispheres; the urgency to

Fashion is embracing technology in design

A single database enables changes throughout production

anticipate trends; ever-shorter seasons. PLM provides the framework that supplies both the data for informed decision-making and the tools for strategic change.

Collection development, speed-to-market and variety, and the challenges of a global market must be balanced to deliver products as fast as possible. PLM reduces administrative work, leaving designers free to do what they do best – design.

However, the apparel industry still struggles to accept technology in design. Many major companies are reluctant to move away

from an entirely manual creative process and embrace software that can help them control garment development from design to production.

Managing change Today’s extensive supply chains pose significant communication problems. Garments and collections are designed in one country and made in another, in places as far apart as China, Romania and India that don’t necessarily share the same language, methodology or work patterns. “PLM software can significantly impact this level of the development process,” Harari points out. “It allows global companies to work in multiple languages, while at the same time imposing standardisation across the supply chain, to reduce error and facilitate communication.”

Lectra Fashion PLM was developed to support brands, retailers and manufacturers in the twenty-first century. “The PLM process encompasses the whole development cycle, from raw materials to design and engineering to production. Lectra Fashion PLM is collaborative and spans all the phases necessary to product development,” says Gnaedig.

“Integrated CAD application software makes product design, pattern-making, and prototyping, from the initial creative idea to production, a smoother process.”

PLM constitutes a powerful structure for collaboration. “Data exists in a single version that can be instantly accessed by everyone, no matter where changes are made,” says Gnaedig. This single database is flexible enough to apply changes at any time throughout the remaining phases of production development, without danger of anyone working from outdated specifications.

Lectra’s fashion experience began in the French couture houses working with patternmakers at Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and Dior. They built on this expertise to develop a full PLM suite that not only facilitates product development, but also serves as an exploitable asset database. The database contains the entire memory of a brand, the touch and look and feel. It can be used to guide business in a new direction without harming the brand’s core values.

Lectra Fashion PLM is currently used by global brands such as Mango in Spain and Country Road in Australia. PLM is a powerful tool for strategic business direction as well as for day-to-day management. It provides a solid foundation for implementing change in an industry that is evolving at a bewildering pace. “PLM is all about change management,” Harari says.

“It is a very efficient way to adapt and change and share.”

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the daily telegraph

June 2011

Business Technology

5

Fashion

Systems that are dressed to kill In a fast-paced fashion industry using PLM to get products to market is the new chic

By John Pullin

We’re all fashionistas these days, and keeping us a la mode is a complex business.

Typically we want new clothes in our size, our shape, our style, in the latest colours, to match or mix, and we want them now. And next week or next month, we’ll want something else, new and different.

The business is complex, competitive and cut-throat. If the fashion chains get it wrong, the customers go elsewhere, probably just a few minutes later, to somewhere else along the high street or to another website.

This combination of complexity and competitiveness is why PLM vendors see the fashion and apparel sector as one of today’s big growth targets. They reckon their systems can handle it.

Insiders date big changes in the fashion business to around 10 years ago when global brands using the internet to manage worldwide supply chains developed the concept

The business is complex, competitive and cut-throat.

If the fashion chains get it wrong, the customers go elsewhere, probably just a few minutes later

of fast fashion. “Traditionally, there used to be two, maybe four, fashion seasons a year: summer, winter, maybe spring and autumn too,” says Elizabeth King, executive director of software products at fashion PLM specialist Gerber. “Now there are at least 12.”

Alongside this came an explosion in retailing opportunities and greater consumer expectation. “Consumers said they wanted more newness on the high street and that they wanted to be able to buy a bikini at Christmas,” says Judy Gnaedig, head of PLM business development for another fashion industry specialist, Lectra.

The changes had the effect of squeezing timescales while stretching supply chains in a sector where there were continual pressures

to maintain quality and to reduce cost: “Basically, you have less time to do something that’s a lot more complicated,” says Susan Olivier, apparel industry specialist at PLM supplier Dassault Systèmes.

Some complexities are inherent in fashion.

Clothes have to look and feel right on a range of human anatomies, as well as fulfilling their specific function. Even fairly basic items have a lot of individual components, probably made by different suppliers and all needing to be co-ordinated in colour and availability. There are lots of different sizes, matching items to bring together and a complex distribution operation involving retail outlets in every town and every country.

What PLM offers fashion companies, say all the vendors, is the ability to handle these variables and impose control over the many people involved in the process worldwide.

For each garment – or shoe for that matter, because the same things apply in footwear too – the central concept is of “a single version of the truth”. This means having a central file that contains up-to-date details both of the product itself and of the project to bring everything together on a retailer’s rail. PLM, the vendors say, is the only system that can do this.

But what kind of PLM? Gnaedig at Lectra insists that fashion and apparel goods are different from cars and planes. “The principles are the same but what we are constructing is so different. Each season we’re constructing hundreds of t-shirts and trousers and they’re all different and in different colours and sizes too. We have to approach PLM from a fabric point of view.”

King at Gerber identifies differences in the design phase, where creative tools far removed from those used in engineering are the rule.

“It’s very different the speed with which you take a sketched-out concept and then get down to the nitty-gritty of how many buttons, what size and where,” she says.

But if specialist suppliers are strong, then the PLM companies with a background in manufacturing such as Dassault Systèmes, Siemens and PTC are there too. Fashion is very much the chic area of PLM to be in.

Who wouldn’t want to be fashionable?

Geared for growth Outdoor clothing maker Haglöfs has invested in PLM to cope with a growth rate of 18 per cent a year With the business growing at 18 per cent a year and products that contain up to 140 different parts, Haglöfs realised it had to get to grips with its product information systems.

“We really needed to manage our product information,” says product creation general manager Johnny Claus. “We wouldn’t have been able to handle the growth without it.”

The firm already used Dassault Systèmes Enovia and has upgraded its initial investment to the latest V6 version. Dassault’s Susan Olivier suggests the business benefits of PLM are sometimes overlooked. Company IT chiefs “under-appreciate” the top-line gains that faster time-to-market, quicker discard of unprofitable ideas and “protecting the creativity of designers” can bring, she claims.

She believes too that the financial crisis sharpened the industry’s focus on the benefits that PLM can bring. “The crisis weeded out a lot of people,” she says. “Now there’s a definite change in the relationship between the branding retailer and the manufacturers, and they’re working much more collaboratively to get the inventory reduced and the time to market faster. PLM tools that manage the art and the science and also the global collaboration are now a must and we’re seeing a big spike in demand.”

Going for gold Lotto Sport Italia regards PLM as fundamental to its aim to stay close to customers and suppliers Sportswear and footwear group Lotto Sport Italia has been rolling out a PLM system across its different businesses since last September, starting with clothing and moving into footwear by the end of this year.

PLM had internal and external drivers at Lotto, maintains chief operations

officer Luca Tinucci: “We wanted to integrate better and better operations in our own offices and to stay closer and closer to our suppliers.”

Supplier companies are taking on extra responsibility for more sophisticated work and for delivering product faster. PLM gives Lotto control over the process and a high degree of visibility.

“Our vision is to have one system to support the process

from strategic planning issues and the brief from marketing, as well as to support the product data, and relationships with the suppliers.

We also want it to monitor production and workin-progress and to link in to business systems.”

Tinucci says that plans are working well and an extra bonus has been the sharing of information internally between different parts of the business, as well as with suppliers.

“PLM matches our vision and strategy 100 per cent so far.”

Medal winning technology

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Business Technology

June 2011

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the daily telegraph

Industry view

Conquer the chaos VerTex from BMS covers all bases, from conception to marketing, to planning and tracking buttons, bringing them together into one coherent system Just weeks after the royal nuptials, copies of Kate Middleton’s gown were on display in the windows of bridal shops around the world.

Designers were frantically scribbling down the details as she walked up the aisle of Westminster Abbey. Initial drawings were on their way to workshops in India and China before she said “I do.”

But getting nimble-fingered seamstresses to knock off a copy of the royal gown is one

It is easy to implement and is backed by the experts at BMS, who have decades of hands-on experience in the fashion technology sector thing – putting a complex design into volume production, in a range of sizes and with all the accessories, is quite another. For that you need computer assistance.

“Speed is vital in today’s fashion trade,” says Karina Kogan, CEO of Business

Management Systems (BMS). “Fashion brands no longer have the luxury of time – a typical product life-cycle used to be 12 months. Now it is less than a year and it will soon be just six months.

“Our VerTex product life-cycle management software brings the whole process under control from the initial concept, to marketing,” Kogan explains. “It takes the pain out of planning and forecasting. It tracks every element, from linings to buttons. It manages the fit process, creates a range of sizes, streamlines production and handles shipping.”

Bringing a fashion product to market can be a logistical struggle. Most manufacturers rely on a diverse supply chain that often involves several countries. They must adhere to various labour, material, and environmental regulations at every step in the process.

Without a concise way to deal with the mountains of data that are created in the process, it is easy to slide into pure chaos along the way.

Fortunately, a well-implemented PLM system like VerTex can relieve the stress, hassle and frustration inherent in the fashion industry. With scalable and customisable digital toolboxes, the VerTex system enables

users to see every part of their data stream.

It gives garment makers the power to turn mountains of raw information into reliable, concise data – the kind of data you need to make the right decisions about design, production and marketing of your products.

Above all, VerTex PLM creates a communications framework bringing the entire workforce together to collaborate effectively.

Unresolved issues are flagged in real-time so action can be taken before a problem becomes a crisis. In short, VerTex eliminates the most stressful and costly data control problems in the fashion supply chain.

VerTex was created specifically for the fashion industry, so it is Mac-compatible and

ready to use across multiple platforms. It is easy to implement and is backed by the experts at BMS, who have decades of hands-on experience in the fashion technology sector.

It is this expertise that has made VerTex the software of choice for leading fashion houses around the globe including Celebrity, Theory, Donna Karen International, Ellen Tracy, Helmut Lang, and Elie Tahari, among others.

So, the next time a global fashion event sparks an overnight demand, make sure your company is ready to react. With the VerTex system in place, you can conquer the chaos and bring complete control to your business. www.bmsystems.com

Fluent in fashion Using the latest technology and drawing on the expertise of industry veterans, Visual PLM.Net is designed to meet the unique needs of the fashion industry – allowing firms to see their business clearly In a competitive market product development is inevitably tied to profitability. Fashion demands the rapid delivery of new products and the realities of business dictate that they are designed, sourced and sold in more markets than ever before.

When it comes to managing this global information and supply network, insight is everything. To remain competitive in a difficult climate, companies of every stripe have come to consider product life-cycle management (PLM) as a vital tool for critically examining and streamlining their business.

Properly chosen, a PLM solution can support collaborative working and data sharing across distributed teams, speeding up the design iterations and complex processes that are vital to creating the best possible products and simultaneously reducing cost and time to market.

The right PLM solution is internet-based, intuitive and interoperable. The right vendor is one who understands your business.

This year, major European retailers and brands have followed more than 400 companies in the North American market in choosing a solution that marries peerless power and accessibility – on the ground and

at an executive level – from a vendor who is fluent in fashion.

They have chosen to see their business clearly with Visual PLM.Net. Deploying the latest technology and the unparalleled insights of a team of industry

The right PLM solution is internet-based, intuitive and interoperable. The right vendor is one who understands your business experts, Visual PLM.Net is a user-friendly, end-to-end solution specifically engineered for the clothing industry.

Whether it’s providing a granular management overview of worldwide business or an intuitive, flexible day-to-day development environment, Visual PLM.Net works seamlessly and transparently at every stage of the product life-cycle.

A broad range of capabilities means that

A la mode: success in the fashion business requires increasing speed and agility

the solution can be deployed as a stand-alone system, ready to optimise your ways of working, or be integrated with a wide range of expanded software suites and libraries.

From inception on the drawing board to arrival on store shelves, Visual PLM.Net’s web-based infrastructure and broad support for industry standard processes provide the power and strategic insight to deliver optimum business value from your product development.

At every level, too, our growing customer base has praised the user-friendly nature and day-to-day experience of working with Visual PLM.Net. With a fully customisable interface, batch processing functionality, a robust and powerful search engine, version control and an intuitive tab structure, Visual PLM.Net can accommodate the unique requirements of designers and executives alike.

The Visual PLM.Net brand is built on

proven foundations of technical expertise, process knowledge and an absolute focus on usability. A successful debut in the UK and European markets this spring brings with it our industry-leading global training and product support networks.

Some of the biggest names in fashion the world over now rely on us to improve the accessibility, compatibility and quality of the vital information that drives their worldwide product life-cycles.

For them, Visual PLM.Net delivers on the central promise of PLM, allowing them to streamline every stage of their business, collaborate smoothly and securely, and see a quantifiable difference to their bottom line.

Tony Walker is European sales director for Visual 2000 +44 (0)161 408 5553 www.visual-2000.com

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the daily telegraph

June 2011

Business Technology

7

Construction Crossrail on track for major life-cycle savings

ArchiCAD BIM model showing cut away sections

Construction industry wary of collaboration

London’s Crossrail project is an enormous undertaking. The express aim is to deliver the £15.9bn project safely, on time and on budget, with a comprehensive workflow and information management regime that will continue throughout the asset life-cycle.

When service opens in 2018, Crossrail trains will travel from Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east via new twin tunnels under central London. The project encompasses 90km of surface lines, 21km of new tunnels, upgrades to 28 surface stations, and nine new underground stations.

Architects and construction engineers love futuristic projects, but most lag behind manufacturers when it comes to 3D modelling and PLM

By Martyn Day

Manufacturers have been using 3D modelling, simulation and complex management systems to define and assemble products for decades, but construction has been dragging its heels.

The sector still lags behind in the drive to use digital workflow, 3D modelling and collaboration to improve efficiency.

A succession of government reports have identified the systematic failings within the UK construction industry. For example, there was Sir Michael Latham’s report in 1994 followed in 1998 by Rethinking Construction from Sir John Egan, former chief executive of Jaguar. Nonetheless, progress to address the problems has been incredibly slow. Faced with additional challenges such as carbon emission targets, the industry is now looking towards a radical solution.

PLM is not a term commonly used in the construction market. However, there are

Internal shot of BIM model

relatively new software tools coming on stream that use 3D modelling, analysis and collaborative technologies to offer benefits similar to those that PLM technology has afforded the aerospace and the automotive industries.

Under the label Building Information Modelling (BIM), architects and construction engineers can collaborate to develop a 3D database which contains all elements of the building, structurally, mechanically and electrically. This single model can be used for analysis such as clash detection, lighting and power consumption, and to derive construction drawings, bill of materials, life-cycle maintenance and ultimately demolition of the structure. With such a wide ranging change, Peter Wickens, chairman of Mott MacDonald Group describes BIM as “possibly the greatest revolution in the construction industry for over 200 years”.

Culture change Moving from producing thousands of individual 2D drawings to creating a common BIM dataset requires a considerable change in how people work together and inevitably affects the entire value chain. These changes also render standard industry contracts redundant and require new levels of trust and collaboration.

Typically, structural engineers will redraw the architect’s drawings to ensure accuracy before starting their own work, and charge accordingly. With BIM all firms share the risk in delivering the building on time and at the

agreed cost through collaborative framework arrangements. It’s a radical culture change which many in the industry fear taking on.

As a result, UK adoption of BIM is in the early stages. Merely 10 per cent of UK building projects today have used the technology.

Current champions include architects HOK and AEDAS, interdisciplinary practices such as BDP, and engineering and construction firms like Mott McDonald and Laing O’Rourke.

“BIM is a better, more efficient way of working ,” says David Light, BIM specialist for HOK London. “Clients understand a 3D model better than 2D drawings and the design work is all co-ordinated, leading to fewer errors and less wastage.”

However, Light also recognises that adopting BIM brings its own challenges. “Our CAD operators had to be up-skilled and there were increased hardware requirements to run BIM software. It’s important that new common working standards are established, and it’s still hard to find partners that have adopted BIM.” The government’s chief construction adviser, Paul Morrell, wants to accelerate UK adoption of BIM as recent research concluded that it could improve the return on investment of taxpayer money. Moreover, BIM could help cut the UK CO2 emissions by 29 per cent by 2022 and by 80 per cent by 2050. Morrell suggests that in the future, all bidders and contractors to government will be required to use BIM. Indeed, there are already Scandinavian and US government mandates to use BIM on all public projects.

Zaha Hadid looks to remove risk using bespoke programming Signature architects, such as Sir Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid, produce buildings of such complexity, due to their curvaceous forms and new materials that are only made possible using a combination of BIM, high-end 3D modelling and bespoke programming.

Zaha Hadid’s practice uses a wide range of 3D software to conceptualise and digitally define projects. Hadid’s is a leading user of Gehry Technologies Digital Project (DP), an advanced BIM modeller which features core technology from CATIA, a computer-aided design programme that is usually the preserve of the automotive and

aircraft industries. The firm uses BIM models help co-ordinate the team’s workflow, and to define the project geometry, fabrication, constructability and installation. On recent projects, DP has been used to model complex building cladding systems directly fabricated from a digital model in China.

Cristiano Ceccato, an associate at Zaha Hadid Architects explains: “DP allows us to design innovative, sophisticated, elegant structures on a grand scale in the knowledge that what we design can be constructed. Risk can be accurately assessed and reduced by avoiding errors from design clashes or inaccuracy.” MD

To help manage the highly complex engineering content across 31 contracts, Crossrail has implemented Bentley Systems’ ProjectWise software. This has been configured to apply the latest BS 1192 workflow which establishes a specific method for managing the production, distribution, and quality of construction information collaboratively. The system now manages about 500,000 CAD files that can be shared by more than 1,650 engineers in multiple office locations. By late-2012 it will be handling over 1.5m documents among more than 2,500 engineers.

Crossrail estimates that ProjectWise saves 26 man-days of work per month for each of the 31 contracts – which adds up to 9,672 man-days per year. Automation of the CAD quality assurance process is estimated to save a further 50 man-days per month. MD

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Business Technology

June 2011

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the daily telegraph

Industry view

Transformation not tinkering Product life-cycle management lets businesses make wholesale changes to structures, costs, products and productivity. But it requires vision and determination

As consumers demand more new and innovative products, pressure is growing for manufacturers to deliver them to the market faster and more cheaply. Since business is also increasingly global, fluid and complex, organisations must become more adept at managing their businesses, particularly their product life-cycles, to create sustainable competitive advantage.

Siemens argues that product life-cycle management (PLM) offers a business model that can boost the introduction of new products and halve time-to-market. Through its PLM software division, it has established a powerful track record with leading companies such as Aston Martin, BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Proctor & Gamble, Unilever and JCB. PLM has become a key business enabler that supports top-line growth and cost-containment.

Dr William Magill, the PLM principal consultant at Siemens IT Solutions and Services Ltd, says: “PLM is about business transformation rather than only software. Though enabled by the underlying technology, PLM is about adapting the way a business operates and affects the whole life-cycle.”

Why use PLM? A need for more product innovation, reduced time-to-market and control of costs drive businesses to look for increased efficiency and better integration with partners and suppliers.

Happiness is efficiency

These factors combine with external drivers such as competitive pressure, regulatory and legislative compliance, market trends and customer influences, to highlight the need for PLM. “PLM optimises the whole business cycle, not simply discrete functions,” says Magill.

“It’s a moving target as technology moves forward, globalisation increases and people have to connect and share information in more and more ways.”

By establishing a single data source for collaboration, PLM makes it possible to compare, balance and optimise product requirements, linking performance and manufacturing considerations with design intent. It digitally connects customer, marketing and regulatory requirements to designs, documents, specifications, models, test results and other types of product information required at different stages of the life-cycle.

“PLM is about adapting the mindset within business, and ensuring that everyone buys into the vision,” says Magill.

The right approach “A good way not to succeed is to give £5m to your IT department and tell them to get on with it!” says Magill. “PLM is not an IT problem but about business transformation. You need to sketch out where the journey will take you in high-level terms, with a full life-cycle vision for the whole business.

“If you simply replicate processes that are already in place, the outcome won’t be any different,” warns Magill. The organisation must also be aligned with the new process and information backbone, or the system will revert quickly to where it was.

PLM initiatives should not be kept secret, says Magill. “Senior management buy-in is vital. Agents of change must be identified in all key areas of the business and be closely involved. Keep the big picture in mind, designing PLM implementation so that applications, processes and organisations are complementary. Then take incremental steps in six to nine month phases, with some quick wins that move you forward to the next step.”

“PLM is about outcomes,” says David Marsh, partner manager at Siemens IT Solutions and Services. “It’s a way of thinking and working that connects people in an increasingly wide variety of organisations.”

With increased innovation and productivity, optimised resources and reduced costs, the benefits are clear to see. PLM can help you to shape, influence and innovate in your market with the right product at the right time at the right price.

What’s not to like?

Service you can re

If you are buying a product with a long life-cycle, such as a plane, issues are critical. Who better to look after the aircraft than the p “Power-by-the-hour” contracts - in which the customer pays for the time that a product is in service - are reshaping aerospace and defence deals. This performance-based logistics (PBL) trend is likely to have a growing impact in other areas of complex, long-life equipment.

PBL makes strong commercial sense from the manufacturer’s perspective: research shows that up to 70 per cent of a customer’s through-life costs are spent on services. In a study of the US auto-sector, Accenture found that support and maintenance services can generate “up to seven times as much profit as do sales of original products over the lifetime of products’ use”.

The message has not been lost on the Resource Group, a leading Siemens PLM Software partner, which is focused on the benefits of using PLM for maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) of the aerospace sector and other complex products.

“The life-cycle of an aircraft is upwards of 30 years,” says Colin Rudd, PLM services manager. “Though a new aircraft may cost a significant sum, most of the money is spent later on. Typically, once the aero-engines are sold to the airlines, they become responsible for MRO and subsequently outsource to maintenance organisations.”

But, says Rudd, with “power-by-thehour” contracts, the original equipment

manufacturers (OEMs) are extending their involvement in the product life-cycle. “PLM helps to facilitate this process for long lifecycle products,” he says.

PLM can help manufacturers to provide long-term support by continuing to manage product knowledge of each physical build throughout its life. Faced with shrinking profit margins at the point-of-sale, OEMs can gain a further revenue stream over a longer period by offering MRO support in-house.

“PLM offers detailed knowledge about support and service, which allows the manufacturer to quote with confidence”, says

Guess how much? PLM helps firms manage their maint

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the daily telegraph

Business Technology

9

Industry view

A driving force The motor industry, at the forefront of shaping PLM, has been instrumental in driving down costs and spreading best practice Motor manufacturers and suppliers face increasing complexity on all sides bringing vehicles to market. There are thousands of components, multiple new models and a constant need to innovate in a highly globalised supply chain. There is also the need to cut the carbon footprint, to improve safety and sustainability, and to increase performance while giving consumers more for their money.

A tall order? All of these tasks can be achieved with product life-cycle management (PLM).

The motor industry has helped to shape PLM, moving from the drawing board to computer-aided design, and from product data management to PLM in only a couple of decades. “PLM is a philosophy and business change engine, not simply a set of software tools,” says Mark Parry, director of Majenta PLM, the leading Siemens UK PLM Software partner.

Now PLM is reshaping the automotive business too.

It’s one thing to buy the kit – quite another keeping it airborne

maintenance and repair people who built it?

Rudd. This approach is well aligned with the move towards predictive and condition-based maintenance. These trends generate more information to manage with PLM, so that critical parts stay in service for longer, reducing waste and costs.

Feeding back knowledge Aerospace system suppliers often need to commit to long-term, power-by-the-hour support contracts, which carry high risk with real costs that are difficult to predict.

But, says Rudd, “PLM presents technicians with the knowledge to hand to provide

Digital backbone “PLM provides a digital backbone with one version of the truth,” says Parry. “When a new component iteration comes along, everybody is better informed and knowledge and best practice can be shared and reused.”

ely on

tenance

June 2011

through-life support very effectively”.

PLM encourages collaboration and produces comprehensive information and 3D model visualisation that can be fed back into new product design. It also provides an established knowledge bank as the systems continue to operate long after service engineers and design teams have moved on.

Siemens Teamcenter software offers state-of-the-art capability for MRO and asset tracking, recording all the product configurations that have been designed and built.

Teamcenter can handle large, complex design changes with concurrent engineering and manufacture in mind, “so design changes are reflected by the way you manufacture and build new product,” says Rudd. As configuration changes are made during maintenance, Teamcenter also ensures that accurate details are recorded.

PLM can eliminate the guesswork in service quotation and decrease service time and costs by delivering better product knowledge to technicians. The use of PBL with PLM ensures a good price for the customer for long-service products, and gives the supplier the confidence to make a reasonable estimate of future service and support costs under “power- by-the-hour” contracts. Stock levels also become leaner with detailed MRO information to hand.

Better knowledge-sharing improves the quality of products and encourages new product innovation. Nevertheless, Rudd emphasises, “PLM is not just a design tool but enables through-life support”.

in the car industry. As consumer tastes shift, manufacturers are under pressure to reduce time-to-market, align production to demand and increase customisation. This is a challenge when software, electronics and regulatory compliance continue to increase complexity.

No need to compromise The old approach to design required a physical buck (prototype) for which every design change was costly, time-consuming and painstaking. Today, designers can make multiple iterations on a digital prototype, sharing ideas and best practice globally and throughout the supply chain.

PLM enables design changes early in the design cycle, which allows for digital packaging and tolerance analysis, virtual commissioning and simulation.

“Digital prototyping allows you to optimise rather than compromise,” says Stapleton.

New programmes, products and manufacturing projects can be jump-started by reusing knowledge and proven methods across the enterprise. Many companies using PLM are achieving double-digit productivity improvements by gaining access to product designs, manufacturing processes and other content that can be reused in future vehicle programmes.

Where it all started...

Globalisation has increased complexity exponentially. “Today, manufacturing is often on the other side of the world. PLM real-time collaboration offers seamless communication between continents, on a 24/7 basis, removing the complexity of language and time barriers,” he says.

Majenta enables digital collaboration with more than 750 automotive suppliers, handling about 2,200 file exchange transactions a month. “PLM ensures that product data transfer is seamless and always up to date, and thus everyone is making decisions using the most up-to-date information,” explains Trevor Stapleton, a Majenta director.

Improving the flow of knowledge also accelerates the time to market. Red Bull Racing, for example, states that before it used PLM up to 75 per cent of a designer’s time was spent doing mundane, repetitive tasks. These were automated with PLM. The same savings can be applied to major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs)

“PLM also offers a fountain of knowledge for young engineers to get up to speed quickly with best engineering practice,” says Parry.

Majenta ensures that suppliers have access to best practice and processes in a controlled environment, either by implementing PLM or using a hosted PLM solution. This ensures that even the smallest supplier can service the OEM to the most exacting standards of design and engineering.

“PLM is a journey,” says Parry. “You have to think seriously about your business transformation requirements, rather than focusing on the software implementation alone. For successful implementation and lasting change, these projects require buy-in from the whole business and a good communication plan. PLM is as much applicable to small business as the major OEMs – the benefits can be enormous.”

Indeed, of the 68 million vehicles produced worldwide in 2008, Siemens PLM software was used on more than 64 million.

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Business Technology

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the daily telegraph

June 2011

Industry view

Power to change The energy sector has been slow to appreciate the potential of product life-cycle management, but disasters such as the Fukushima nuclear accident have prompted a change of heart When it comes to using product life-cycle management (PLM) data, the energy and utilities sector lags behind most others. There has been a culture of confrontation and secrecy between operators, contractors and the supply chain. But things are changing.

“PLM is the missing link in the utilities sector,” says Adam Summers, energy and utilities director for Siemens PLM Software.

The aerospace and defence industries, on the other hand, have embedded PLM strategically for 20 years to capture data at source for large-scale product and project traceability, knowledge management, in-service support and regulatory compliance.

Summers says that reliance on enterprise resource planning (ERP) and enterprise asset management systems for financial life-cycle management, “simply don’t give utilities the full scope of benefits offered by PLM”.

By using PLM, the utility sector can rely on a single source of plant, product and process information for long project and product life-cycles, which can be used to manage innovation across all stages, for better safety, efficiency, productivity and increased topline revenue.

Industry wake-up call Recent incidents such as the Fukushima nuclear accident and BP’s Maconodo disaster highlight the problem in stark terms. Both demonstrated the need for detailed data on every aspect of a major project from concept, through design, build and operation to maintenance and life-cycle performance.

In the face of increasing global demand for new energy resources, Summers says: “PLM can manage the configuration of energy and utility assets to track all components during long-term asset life-cycles, as well as to determine the impact of changes to plant and maintenance, and why decisions were made.”

Culture change Siemens Teamcenter PLM solution offers the capability to increase revenue while keeping costs in line; to extend and maintain the safe use of long-life assets; to ensure safe and secure delivery of products along the supply chain; to connect global teams; to optimise risk management in volatile markets; to facilitate worker safety; to ensure quality and regulatory compliance; and to capture and protect intellectual property. A major French

Entre nous: PLM works in the energy sector too

nuclear power company has been deploying Teamcenter for a decade to manage generic nuclear reactor design.

Regulatory safety compliance is paramount. “One of the key things which keeps directors awake at night is safety and compliance,” remarks Summers. PLM also offers significant benefits in terms of culture change, as it captures and embeds processes and new ways of working to enable effective business re-engineering. Faced with an ageing workforce, PLM also helps to capture knowledge before vital skills are lost.

Ensuring efficiency Risk management is vital in ensuring that investment is cost effective and deployed for safe and efficient high performance.

Neil Dunsmuir, vice-president of EMEA marketing, Siemens PLM Software, says that Atomic Energy Canada uses PLM to simulate robotic operations in a virtual environment,

to ensure the adoption of the fastest and safest procedures. “PLM helped the company to reduce costs using a virtual environment, while also producing documentation records for safety purposes.”

PLM offers considerable benefits in terms of collaboration, and it is fundamental in delivering efficient energy projects, such as the new offshore wind-farms, to time and cost.

Leading contractors such as Balfour Beatty are using Teamcenter to improve collaboration, to add more value, and to work more closely with energy operators and other parties. The aim is to ensure that everybody is on track with the right information, at the right time, working as team.

PLM optimises configuration management throughout the life-cycle of a plant – as designed, as planned, as built and as maintained – providing a clear understanding of why certain decisions were made and the potential impact of any future changes.

Exporting success When retailers try to break into emerging markets, they don’t want to have to reinvent the wheel. With PLM, they don’t have to These days, brand and private label manufacturers and retailers have to streamline operations to squeeze every bit of margin out of sales. Continuous efficiency improvement, increased collaboration along the value chain and reduced complexity go hand-in-hand with accelerated innovation.

Product life-cycle management (PLM) offers “four key value propositions” for companies operating in retail and consumerpackaged goods (CPG) markets, according to John Kelleher, the UK consumer industries manager for Siemens PLM Software.

1. Global brand portability The main issue for CPG companies such as PZ Cussons, maker of Carex and Imperial Leather, is to be first to trade in new and emerging markets such as China, South America and Eastern Europe. CPG companies want to take existing brands, and convert and repackage them for sale as rapidly and cost-effectively as possible.

PLM supports brand portability by providing a “single version of the truth” for all product information. This helps brand development in terms of the recipe, packaging, artwork and manufacturing specification.

“Then it’s a matter of ‘cut and paste’ of key elements to match the needs of new markets,” says Kelleher.

Although the product formulation may remain the same, ingredients may change to meet regional, religious or dietary needs, or the language, graphics or images on packs may have to be adapted. But the brand owner can keep most of the established product configuration. Do it right, and the brand gains the edge in the race for first-to-market.

2. Value chain synchronisation When companies target global markets, it is a challenge to hook the value chain into the brand owner’s product development process as seamlessly as possible. Involve the supply chain in product development as early as possible to leverage the best advantage from a sourcing and cost perspective.

“PLM offers value chain synchronisation that enables more informed discussion and decision-making,” says Kelleher.

3. Critical path management PLM plays a vital role in critical path management of new products. Take a major retailer working with 25 own brands and 500 supply

chain partners. Synchronising new product development in such a disparate value chain can be very difficult.

But PLM helps to identify best practice for every partner so that it can be repeated elsewhere. With complex task management on a high level dashboard, brand managers can check that products are on time and budget, and identify potential bottlenecks across the globe. A leading retailer reduced its new product development (NPD) life-cycle by 30 per cent by using PLM in this way.

Fashion items, for example, must be fresh, so processes start as late as possible. “Predictability and confidence in the critical path is fundamental to success in the fashion business. To meet demanding store deadlines, the back-end process often has huge additional costs in terms of air freight, staffing, and labour time,” says Kelleher.

4. Design for sustainability Major organisations such as Unilever have set themselves a target to double turnover by 2020 while maintaining their existing carbon footprint across the value chain. This fundamental change is aimed at reducing waste, and improving the scope for recycling and energy efficiency.

Be the first to market

PLM is useful for ensuring compliance with REACH, RoHS, WEEE and other environmental directives, as well as applying best practice to portfolio management, product development and manufacturing integration.

“There’s no one piece that drives sustainability,” says Kelleher. PLM enables a company to examine the sustainability of all stages in the product life-cycle and to investigate its impact on economic, environmental and social values.

Product development has to be driven by innovation, market demands, efficient manufacture, profit and sustainability.

PLM can help to achieve all these goals.

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the daily telegraph

June 2011

Business Technology

11

Sustainability

The future is green

Keeping ahead of the game Motorola is using PLM software to raise environmental standards

Under pressure from governments and consumers, manufacturers are turning to PLM to prove their eco credentials

By John Pullin

Everyone wants to be green – or at least seen to be green. At one time, a corporate focus on the environment could be viewed as a “nice-to-do” public relations gambit. Now it’s inescapable. Consumers want to know, and regulators want to know too: what exactly is inside that product? How is it made, by whom and under what conditions? What’s the carbon footprint, energy signature and its recyclability?

PLM and related systems can help manufacturers and service companies comply with ever-increasing regulation and legislation.

There are also spin-off benefits. Much of the work is on systems that identify and certify what materials are being used in a product and can demonstrate what effects a change of materials might produce.

“This is the right target to attack,” says Tom Shoemaker, vice-president of product marketing at PLM software group PTC. “If a company is interested in where they can make a difference, and then focuses on product materials rather than housekeeping items, like switching out the lights, they can hit 80 per cent of possible benefits.”

PTC is building environmental data into the latest version of its Windchill PLM system

under the name “product analytics”.

The analytics system attaches detailed environmental information to the bill of materials that accompanies each component or product through its development phase, and on into its service life. This information can be updated at any time and is also matched to the regulatory requirements.

Environmental compliance on hazardous substances demands loads of form-filling.

The system automates this process and also helps manufacturers keep their suppliers in line.

For a complex product such as a major sub-assembly for a car, there could be hundreds of components and many suppliers.

The amount of information is huge and keeping track of it is tough, let alone ensuring environmental compliance.

SolidWorks and Autodesk have both also brought materials expertise into their mainstream design technology. SW Sustainability from SolidWorks and the Eco Materials Adviser in the 2012 edition of Autodesk Inventor both give designers a view of the environmental impact of their designs on a range of measures including carbon footprint, energy usage, water and air pollution.

This isn’t precision data, nor is it meant to be. “There’s a lack of precision about

Blowing in the wind PLM technology is kicking up a storm in the renewable energy sector enabling firms to develop state-of-the-art wind turbines

By Brian Davis Aerodynamicists team up with geophysicists, composites engineers and production specialists to design, build and operate some of the most advanced wind turbines ever devised.

UK firm quietrevolution is in the race to develop a more efficient wind turbine using a 3D PLM system from Dassault Systèmes to enhance design and manufacture. The company is using 3D simulation technology to optimise the shape of its vertical axis rotor blades. Engineering and assembly details are verified using a digital model in advance of real production, and is apparently boosting productivity by up to 30 per cent.

Founder Richard Cochrane says: “PLM has significantly improved our ability to complete the design-to-manufacture process of an advanced structure. The technology allows us to design, sign-off, investigate tooling feasibility, build

products and share 3D designs with our supply chain partners, leading to more efficient production.”

The advantage of their elegant 120-degree twisted blade means the rotor works whatever the wind direction and is particularly suitable for urban environments. The PLM software helped shrink the development cycle and optimised energy output.

Cochrane says: “3D virtual engineering helped us evaluate options to optimise the aesthetic and energy generation efficiency performance of our wind turbine. As a tool for concurrent collaboration and centralised engineering control, the PLM software allows us to avoid delays caused by production bottlenecks.

This helps save time, allowing us to concentrate on devising better wind energy solutions to power our business growth.”

By John Pullin

environmental data which means we always say that differences of plus or minus 20 per cent are not necessarily significant,” says Jamie O’Hare from Granta Design, the Cambridge-based company behind Autodesk’s new system. Rather, these systems offer design engineers pointers to potential environmental problems and encourage them to try substitute materials.

“We see this as the start of a discussion,” says Sarah Krasley, Autodesk product manager for environmental systems. “The aim is to make it easy for non-experts and experts to communicate the choices in terms people can understand.” But these systems can also flag up where there might be a problem with environmental regulations. What’s more, by early deployment in the design process, before much of the development cost has been incurred, they can stop some expensive mistakes at least.

Global electronics and telecoms group Motorola has PLM systems from several companies in place in its diverse operations. Now it is using the product analytics package in PTC’s Windchill PLM system – but not for PLM as such. “It’s our environmental system,” says Gerald Sprague, technical lead for environmental systems in the group.

Motorola was early into environmental compliance. “At the time we were a supplier into the automotive industry,” says Sprague.

“They wouldn’t accept parts without the environmental content being known.”

Now that’s not just commonplace but for many items a legal requirement across the world. Motorola’s data collection and reporting systems are now customised to take account of the toughest benchmarks for each material from all the worldwide regulatory standards, including RoHS, REACH and the rest.

That helps Motorola stay ahead of developing regulations. Sprague says: “Some customisation is always likely to be needed. But we’re interested in more automated reporting systems and are working with PTC on a database system that will help provide all the information needed and present it painlessly to both internal and external resources.”

Sprague won’t put a figure on how much investment in systems to deliver environmental compliance has cost Motorola over the years.

“But we know the cost of not doing it: it means loss of business. When the government says ‘do it’, you do it.”

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Business Technology

June 2011

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the daily telegraph

Industry view

Compliance without tears Web-based ComplyPro helps bring clarity to complex projects, enabling managers to keep track of myriad requirements, from contracts and planning to architectural design Achieving assurance and compliance objectives is a major headache in complex, large-scale projects like Crossrail or HS2, the planned high-speed rail link from London to the West Midlands.

Transport projects can tend to overrun on time and cost. Project creep is a common nightmare. These projects feature large supply chains and involve numerous, often combative, independent contractors. Project costs can climb quickly if work has to be repeated and large penalties can also be incurred when deadlines are missed.

The traditional means of recording compliance on spreadsheets or paper-based manual systems are time-consuming and error-prone and can lead to substantial delays. Furthermore, project teams often work on different systems and are geographically dispersed.

UK-based firm Comply Serve has designed an innovative solution called ComplyPro to handle this thorny issue. In the first instance, it addresses compliance and assurance of rail and transport projects, including Crossrail, the new rail link for London and the South East due in 2018. But it promises to have a far wider impact.

In 2005, Comply Serve spun out of Swedish software company Telelogic to develop an automated compliance solution that could manage complexity in major infrastructure projects. At the time Chris Rolison, now CEO of Comply Serve, was running a division at Telelogic, delivering solutions for managing “engineering requirements” across a number of rail companies, including Transport for London (TfL) and Network Rail.

ComplyPro captures the project specification at the early stages and manages it through a formal engineering process.

Then more detail is added during design.

“That’s where complexity comes in, as thousands of project requirements are created,” says Rolison. Compliance of design and delivery has to be demonstrated in line with contracts, planning and consents, technical cases, assurance, environment, architectural design, standards and regulations.

Comply Serve first provided its web-based solution for the Crossrail programme in 2006.

One of Crossrail’s first tasks was to capture and manage the project sponsor specifications, which include the Department for Transport, TfL and environmental bodies, to

Plan early to avoid the pitfalls

conform with the Crossrail Act 2008.

However, the complexity of today’s integrated rail systems means it has become almost impossible to manage all the assurance and compliance tasks using ‘manual’ spreadsheet-based methods – and still deliver the overall assurance evidence on time, says Rolison.

This is because “there are often hundreds of sub-projects in a large and dispersed supply chain infrastructure with programmes that involve complex integrated systems,” he says.

The key is to track project requirements progressively through the design and build phases ensuring that compliance keeps pace with project delivery. Rolison calls this pro-

We saw the problem and have evolved a solution which is driven through a deep understanding of project needs – it’s not just about technology gressive assurance – designed to deliver the evidence that a safe and effective system can be handed over to the rail system operator, in accordance with all requirements, on time.

In the past, this was a huge and chaotic task, involving hundreds of contractors all working independently. Keeping it all in check purely through contractual boundaries involved major compromise to specifications.

And over time, “the squeeze on time and money tended to overwhelm issues of quality and conformance,” says Rolison.

Faced with project creep, this turmoil has a detrimental impact on quality as time runs over and costs climb.

Furthermore, compromises during delivery stages have an impact on maintenance performance throughout the lifetime of the infrastructure.

Comply Serve recognised the scale of the problem and Rolison led a team to tackle the compliance challenge head on.

“ComplyPro has been developed specifically to ensure that major infrastructure projects stay on track, not just in terms of time and budget but also to specification,” he says.

Design and build compliance is proved electronically with real-time reporting, so outstanding issues can be viewed across the supply chain and rectified quickly. The system manages the complexities of project hierarchy with a powerful workflow capability, making the process of compliance easy for designers and build contractors alike.

Conventional document management systems don’t allow all of those involved to see compliance issues in real time, says Rolison.

On track: getting the trains to run on time is more complicated than it looks

“We saw the problem and have evolved a solution which is driven through a deep understanding of project needs – it’s not just about technology.”

He recognises that compliance and assurance, though mandatory, is cumbersome.

The audit trail, for example, means tackling myriad complex spreadsheets so the client finds it difficult to see issues as they occur.

“Traditional compliance and assurance systems are offline, and are not treated as an intrinsic part of design and delivery processes,” says Rolison.

ComplyPro changes all that. “We provide a collaborative, easy-to-use, web-based system which joins up everybody across the project organisation, from the programme director through to the second tier supplier.”

The system gives the parties a single view of the project specification. There is always lots of change in big infrastructure projects, and estimating the impact and cost of change is resource-intensive and expensive.

ComplyPro can identify issues quickly and shares the information across a wide collaborative environment.

“This can reduce the assessment of the

impact of change from weeks to hours, in concert with more accurate cost assessments,” says Rolison.

Early adoption of ComplyPro on the East London Line rail upgrade main works project gave the project’s commercial team an unprecedented overview of when and where changes were required as they arose, resulting in a dramatic reduction in the manpower required.

The complex project was brought in on time, within budget and with significant impact in terms of change management and conflict reduction – where previously projects had suffered from a culture of “claim and blame”.

Crossrail is now in the latter stages of detailed design and construction is under way.

Others are following its example internationally. Danish Rail is using ComplyPro on the Banedanmark re-signalling project and further projects are under way in Scandinavia, France and the Middle East.

Comply Serve also plans to move into allied markets to handle compliance in large projects in aerospace, oil and gas, energy and utilities where the same issues apply. www.complyserve.com

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the daily telegraph

June 2011

Business Technology

13

Compliance

Chinese whispers create design dilemma In the modern, global marketplace, companies that fail to share production data accurately will struggle to survive

By Charles Clarke

Sharing data between different elements of the production process has been a dilemma since the early days of computer-aided design (CAD). Until recently, it was a problem largely confined to the machine shop or analyst’s office. It reared its head among designers only when an existing CAD system was dumped in favour of a newer, better model and legacy data became an issue.

However, with the advent of globalised, collaborative manufacturing and product life-cycle management (PLM) systems, datasharing has become a massive challenge.

The data solutions company TrancenData Europe has found that 20 per cent of a typical numerical control programming job is spent preparing data for processing. The figure rises to 70 per cent for stress testing; highly qualified engineers are spending two-thirds of their time second-guessing design intent.

One major issue is that there is no shared view of how PLM should work. Some organisations simply want to share data within the enterprise, while others want to share information at every stage with suppliers, customers and so on.

Do or die In today’s manufacturing world, collaboration is more than a competitive differentiator, it’s a business must, says Marc Halpern, the

Ten keys to success

By John Stark PLM implementation is like a steeplechase – don’t fall at the first hurdle 1. Ignorance is not bliss. The biggest barrier to success is lack of understanding of PLM at board level.

2. Be specific. Like any strategic initiative you must identify critical PLM success factors.

3. Measure up. An organisation that fails to measure the impact of PLM initiatives and take continuous action to improve performance will fail.

4. No secrets. PLM wins must be shared and promoted on a regular basis.

5. Don’t keep a low profile. The PLM initiative must be championed at board level and enthusiasm for it spread to all levels.

6. PLM is not simply about technology. PLM is about business transformation and maximising revenues from products, not just creating and controlling product data.

7. Problems arise. Be prepared for setbacks and rejection. PLM deployment involves significant change management. Setbacks are inevitable, so plan for them.

8. Get real. Some PLM initiatives fail because organisations are not clear about the real needs of the business. If the PLM team doesn’t understand how your business works and the plans for the future, no new system will help.

9. Risk avoidance is key. One of the most valuable benefits of PLM is risk management.

Managing a product across its life-cycle allows a company to take control of what happens at each stage from concept to disposal.

10. Don’t delay. Whatever the economic climate, PLM offers a value-adding investment if you plan to remain competitive, make a profit and develop successful products.

Companies race to match design data

research vice-president of the Gartner Group.

“Demographic and economic trends make collaborative design a requirement for global manufacturing enterprises that expect to survive and remain competitive over the next 10 years. They have to be able to work across diverse applications that share data.”

Over the years, there have been a multitude of approaches to data-sharing. One of the first efforts was IGES, which used common file formats that could be read by everyone. This was essentially the industry standard for 30 years and, if you were lucky, it worked 95 per cent of the time. However, IGES tends to fail under pressure – that is, when users hadn’t the spare capacity to fix it.

The effectiveness of STEP, the modern common file format for 3D data, is patchy at best. What is more, IGES and STEP are basic geometry translations that offer none of the model intelligence characteristics of a modern PLM system.

Industries such as aerospace and cars have used PLM to sort out their data-sharing issues Mike Evans, of the Cambridge-based research consultancy Cambashi, points to the trend for globalised 24/7 engineering where a single project is developed around the clock and around the world. From a data management perspective, this means passing around a single copy of the master geometry of a product between global collaborators. This narrows the room for misunderstanding and human error as everyone receives the same information.

Sophisticated PLM systems from vendors such as IBM, PTC and Siemens offer this kind of global functionality. Industries such as aerospace and cars have used PLM to sort out their data-sharing issues.

However, PLM requires significant investment and, according to the PLM user group, some data management problems are still unresolved.

Who owns the data?

Collaborative engineering tends to happen in two distinct ways. When major corporations such as Boeing have control of all the engineering, they can usually view everything and intellectual property issues are rare.

However, it is common for different people in the value chain to make individual parts of a product so they need different rights of access to view the data. This results in the thorny issue of digital rights management.

Companies need to be aware of this when considering investment in PLM. There are numerous data translators on the market and companies that will convert one proprietary data format into another.

These systems are not, however, 100 per cent reliable. And unfortunately, Murphy’s Law dictates that a general purpose data conversions utility will let you down when you simply don’t have time to tackle the job in any other way.

14

Business Technology

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the daily telegraph

June 2011

Industry view

Efficiency drive Faster to market and right first time – product life-cycle management is bringing enduring benefits to businesses of all size and shape

Christian Hehl

Mark Harrop

Leon Lauritsen

managing director,

managing director,

director and partner,

Karer Consulting (UK)

WhichPLM

Minerva Group

‘Making business processes fit ‘With PLM, you’re potentially ‘Smaller companies still have the the PLM system is wrong’ saving hours, days or even weeks’ same challenges as bigger ones’ What do you see as the biggest benefits that PLM can help businesses to achieve?

What are the benefits that investment in PLM can bring to companies you deal with?

What are the business drivers that encourage companies to adopt PLM?

We see it as one of the three main processes within a company, being the focus of the product information. We see it working alongside the other major processes of supply chain management and customer relationship management. With its focus on products, PLM can help to deliver products faster to the market, to get them right first time, and to ensure they comply with regulations. A lot of products these days require full traceability, so that last point is increasingly important.

We specialise in the fashion and apparel industries and the key benefit is a reduction in the time it takes to bring products or services to market while maintaining the right level of quality. If you look at business systems such as ERP (enterprise resource planning), you’re often shaving off just a few seconds in generating a bill or other paperwork. With PLM, you’re potentially saving hours, days or even weeks. And when you extend that across the whole international supply chain, you begin to see compounded benefits accumulating over time, and then it becomes a really huge advantage.

The top ones are the time pressures to get new products to market without adding a lot of extra resources, and the lifetime of products actually is constantly being reduced. But more widely in the developed economies we have lost a lot of the production and that means we have to be more innovative all round. We have to be world class in innovation. And that is a driver too.

What is the best way to implement PLM within a company?

Our view is that there is often with PLM projects too much emphasis on designing functionalities and not enough on understanding the processes that already exist within the business, and integrating and improving them using the PLM tools. The key is to understand the products and services that are at the heart of the company and the people and business processes at work.

How does that approach differ from the way that PLM has been tackled in some companies in the past?

At Karer Consulting we believe that all companies are different and there is never likely to be a “one size fits all” PLM system. Our job as consultants is to understand our clients’ business processes and to use the elements of PLM to enhance the business as a whole, throughout the entire lifecycle of the products. Making business processes fit the PLM system is wrong; we should use the PLM system to improve and augment the processes. Our first question to our customers always is: “What is it that you want to achieve?”

PLM had a fairly chequered history in its early years. Is PLM now here to stay?

I believe very firmly that it is, but I think you have to regard PLM as a series of processes that surround the product, its creation, its deployment and through its entire life-cycle.

In the past, maybe it was too centred on the design and development side. Now we can see the benefits are much wider.

And I can see it will spread to new sectors, such as consumer goods and even financial services. They have products: PLM can work for them too. www.karer.com

Are businesses in fashion and apparel well informed about PLM? It varies, which is why our consulting arm, PDP Limited, was established – to help companies get the best return on their investment. That impartial service involves not only finding systems, but implementing them, and it’s something we have done for some of the biggest names in our industry. There are some 45 to 50 vendors offering systems that can be used by our industry today. Larger enterprises may be well-informed about the potential benefits of PLM because solutions have historically been marketed to that demographic. Now we are beginning to see more solutions pitched at the SME sector alongside a reduction in their total cost of ownership. More affordable out-of-the-box solutions can generate substantial return on investment for those smaller businesses.

Your company offers a PLM benchmarking service. How does that work?

We’ve been in this business for more than 20 years, and we saw a gulf between the promise of PLM and consumers’ understanding of the true capabilities of the various fashion-specific solutions. It works both ways, though; some of the larger PLM vendors don’t necessarily know a lot about processes unique to the apparel industry, and retail and fashion-focused suppliers aren’t always up to speed on how big PLM firms worked.

So we built a bespoke software “comparison engine” and put it on our industry news and tools site, to enable companies in the industry to cut through the marketing bluster and compare what was actually on offer in terms they can understand.

Where will benchmarking now lead to?

We’ve developed a full benchmarking service and so far 13 PLM suppliers have participated demonstrating real faith in their solutions. We share the high-level results of those benchmarks, enabling prospective customers to get real, in-depth knowledge based on independently verified and objective facts. We’ve also conducted an in-depth customer survey, and recently we have begun providing executive recruitment services for both PLM suppliers and retail and fashion businesses. Our newest ventures are in PLM certification and training, and in providing core reference data on the web. www.whichplm.com

So does that mean that PLM is essentially a design and development tool for innovation?

No, in fact I believe there has been too much focus among the PLM vendors on research and development. Of course it is important, but you also need to bring in colleagues from procurement, you need to know about environmental regulations and many other things. What PLM should be about is bringing products to market faster and how we collaborate with all the people involved internally as well as externally, not just the blue sky thinkers and not just the mechanical design people.

How well served has the PLM market been by the current systems developed by the major PLM vendors?

There are several issues here. One is that smaller companies still have the same challenges as bigger ones; they also have complex products and they have pressures to get them to market quickly. But the PLM systems from the big vendors have a cost structure geared to the big companies and that’s a problem. And there are lots of different modules, and you find the bit you want isn’t in the package you bought, so that’s more cost. Then there are problems in the culture and understanding. A lot of these systems originated in engineering, built up from original computer-aided design packages.

Procurement people and marketing don’t think the same way.

At Minerva you have been pioneering a different business model for PLM. What is different about it?

We were working with the major PLM vendors and we saw smaller as well as larger companies were having a difficult time.

We could see that the PLM business was driven by very narrow competition and that prices weren’t really coming down. And then we discovered this PLM software called Aras.

It is open source and what that means is that it is free to download: fully functioning, based on modern technology but free. It’s really starting to rock the boat now. www.minerva-plm.com

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the daily telegraph

June 2011

Business Technology

15

Industry view

Bringing virtual product data into manufacturing reality Coupling PLM to manufacturing execution systems invigorates your entire operation, reduces the risk of error and results in better products, as CIMPA has shown It is well known that product life-cycle management (PLM) shortens time to market, improves product performance and drives down production costs, but what is less appreciated is that it also multiplies the power of the software systems that work under it, notably manufacturing execution systems (MES).

PLM operates almost entirely in the digital domain. Engineers create the product, visualise it and test it using powerful simulation software. When the product is industrialised and released to manufacturing, feedback and data are used to sort out design issues and improve product life. But however sophisticated the software is, it is never such an exact match with reality as to make manufacturing simply a question of loading the machines and switching them on.

Materials display unexpected properties, manufacturing tolerances do not match the specifications and real-world timings can be very different from the uniform, controlled and predictable universe of cyberspace. Link PLM to MES, however, and the whole system becomes much more powerful than the sum of its parts.

“Product design and industrialisation can proceed in parallel to the design in the digital space, feeding information to the MES in the real world,” explains Christophe Cochard,

vice-president, Centre of Competence, at CIMPA. “PLM benefits by input of real-world tolerances, timescales and working practices, and the MES benefits from early visibility of the design.”

As a subsidiary of Airbus, CIMPA has developed its expertise in the most demanding manufacturing environment of European

PLM focuses a consistent information-driven approach throughout all phases of a product life-cycle and puts the product into the centre of all activities, a basis for innovation, lean development and production aerospace. Building a complex product in a global, multi-company environment with severe consequences for technical failure requires total control over all information in the product life-cycle. PLM services like those

offered by CIMPA ensure the required information is available at the right time and in the right place. Airbus and other companies use these services to maximize their processes at optimal cost, without compromising on safety.

Integrating MES into PLM has proved to be a vital tool for feeding shop-floor experience back into the design process and ensuring that lessons learned in the service life of previous products are not lost when new products go to manufacture, says Clint Bird, senior consultant at CIMPA. “Our experience has shown these benefits are applicable to all manufacturing industries, and not only those with complex systems,” he says. “Having PLM puts the product at the centre, and MES feeds data up from the shop floor.”

PLM works with data from all stages of a product’s life, from design to disposal, but this goldmine of production data may not reach the engineers who build the next model if the MES is not closely coupled with PLM, Bird says.

“The long-term benefit of combining PLM and MES is in collecting and analysing all the real-time data and getting it fed straight through to the system so engineers can improve best practice. It is easy to remember that things went wrong in the last model, but the detail can get lost in the next life-cycle.”

The PLM system helps remove the barriers between silos of data, so wasteful and costly duplication can be eliminated, over-processing cut out and redundant testing prevented.

PLM: almost entirely in the digital domain

But the main benefit of the close coupling of PLM and MES is that it results in a better product, and in a safety-conscious era when relatively small defects in design or manufacturing can lead to a major product recall, that is likely to be a very significant reduction in risk. www.cimpa.com

Free and highly effective Making its PLM software open source is paying dividends for one developer and the consultancy working with them Leon Lauritsen is keen to be provocative about PLM. “We can be extremely annoying,” he says.

And the people he is particularly happy to irritate are the major PLM vendors who are now his competitors.

It wasn’t always so. Lauritsen is a director and partner of Minerva, the Danish-owned IT and business consultancy Group and he and his company worked for many years alongside the big names of PLM, installing and supporting systems in some of the biggest companies in Europe as well as in small firms.

It was the smaller firms that initially challenged Lauritsen and Minerva Group. PLM systems from the big vendors, he says, were complicated, expensive and often difficult for people outside the product design and engineering parts of a business to understand.

Yet small companies need PLM: they have complex products, difficult supply chains to co-ordinate, demanding customers and high levels of risk.

“But the big issue is cost,” he says.

Then Minerva came across Aras, a fairly small-scale PLM developer – until, in 2008, it changed its business model. While other PLM vendors were maintaining their high prices,

Aras went in the opposite direction and made its system open source. Essentially, it means that you get it for free: no capital cost, no sales people. You go to the website, click on the links and download it free of charge. All the documentation is free too.

It is fully integrated into other people’s systems or you can do your own customised configuration and your own customised links “You can imagine the reaction,” says Lauritsen. “People said if it was free it couldn’t be any good. But they were wrong. It was good: a fully functioning out-of-the-box PLM system that you could use as much of or as little of as you wanted. It is fully integrated into other people’s systems, computer-aided design systems, and ERP (enterprise resource planning) business systems or you can do your

Small firms benefit from open source PLM software

own customised configuration and your own customised links.”

Aras is a very different business model from the PLM norm and at its heart is a different system architecture too: in simple terms, what you want to do with the system drives the way it operates, rather than the fixed needs of a hierarchical database. It is, says Lauritsen, typically 30 to 50 per cent faster than conventional PLM systems.

There are other differences, and money does come into it at times. If you want regular support, you pay for that, and breakdown support and training too, all of which Minerva provides to Aras users.

But you can do it entirely for free and you can do it your way.

So who has been taking advantage of Aras? It’s not the smallest businesses, Lauritsen says.

“It’s mostly been bigger companies who know what they want, who’ve been using the mainstream PLM from the bigger vendors; people who spent a lot of money and found it didn’t solve their problems.”

From 100 new customers a month in 2008, it’s now up to 900 and still growing in a period when the big PLM firms have struggled to find new leads.

“This is really the only new thing in PLM,” says Lauritsen. “All the rest is same-old, sameold.” Provocative, indeed. www.minerva-plm.com

16

Business Technology

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the daily telegraph

June 2011

Industry view

Liberate your untapped potential In implementing PLM, it can be easy to miss opportunities to reuse existing resources. So how can you make the most of your digital capital?

You may be involved in, or about to embark on a PLM implementation. It might be your first or you might be into your second or maybe even third generation deployment, building on and learning from the sometimes painful experience of earlier activities.

Chances are, you have already cast an eye over the technology and software vendors who will be courting your interest and budgets. And with the economy slowly recovering from the downturn, now might seem like the right time to invest in renewing your business processes and information systems, which is essentially what PLM offers you.

But before you part with your cash, have you stopped to think whether at least some of the business aims behind your PLM strategy, such as improved product quality, cheaper production or faster market introduction, can be achieved by viewing your existing data (and not your systems) as a digital capital resource? One that can be used more effectively in your organisation?

You own it, use it By digital capital, we mean the wealth of data produced during your product definition phases, such as CAD models, assemblies, attribute information and so on, which is used to produce the design but typically remains under-utilised elsewhere in organisations.

With businesses beginning to recognise this asset, PLM vendors are now responding with tools which focus on the re-purposing of your digital asset with some compelling propositions.

Making it better, sooner Let’s take manufacturing as an example.

There, one of the key activities is developing work instructions to explain how to physically make your product. Depending on its complexity, this explanation can run from a small number of job cards through to several hundred page documents containing detailed descriptions, illustrations and photographs of the product being assembled.

A fundamental problem with this approach

Expand your digital asset across your business

is that it assumes the design is mature, finished or maybe even manufactured so it can be trial assembled and photographed, making the planning activity dependent on the design office.

Even when ready, the effort required to produce the planning information can be considerable, for design as well as manufacturing, and any subsequent change to the product or processes can mean significant reworking.

The issue of translation and interpretation of instructions in a different language may also be a consideration if you are thinking about off-shoring some or all of your manufacturing and assembly.

So how can the re-purposing of your digital asset with new tools drive benefits?

For manufacturing, it can allow the planning activity to start much earlier in the development process, well before the design has been finalised, providing opportunities to improve quality, costs and manufacturability.

This is done by using the design data directly to produce not 2D drawings but 3D simulations of the product assembly.

By basing this on the actual design data, the planning information can be synchronised with changes, dramatically reducing the first run production and rework effort.

Through providing a graphical rather Release

Typical Serial Process Product Development Process CAD/CAM/PDM/PLM Opportunity with Re-Purposing Product Development Process CAD/CAM/PDM/PLM Interactive Documentation Compelling return on investment

Product Documentation

Rework

Release Finalise Savings/Return on Investment

than textual basis for these planning instructions, you can also solve the problem of language translation if you decide to relocate your production facilities.

The customer experience If we look beyond production and into the area of customer services, which usually attracts little focus for improvement from businesses and PLM vendors alike, further significant contributions can be made.

Surprisingly, for many people, a typical way of producing technical publications, such as the information diagrams or assembly

By providing a graphical rather than textual basis for planning instructions, you can also solve the problem of language translation if you decide to relocate production instructions you find in your self-assembly furniture, is to trace a photograph of the product with illustration software to produce the final artwork.

This obviously requires significant skill and knowledge in techniques and product and, as with the manufacturing example, it depends on there being a physical product to reference.

Similarly, it involves significant upfront effort and may require considerable extra work as changes and different product configurations feed through. Added to this is the risk that the resulting illustrations may be incorrect or missing some key features.

If, as with manufacturing, we use our source digital information to produce the technical information directly, and earlier in the development phase, we can produce

much richer customer documentation, much faster, for less cost, in a more reactive manner and with the confidence that it is an exact representation of the product.

Why stop there? Expand the customer experience to include interactive parts catalogues, service and maintenance guides and training materials, all serving to demonstrate your commitment to customer support.

Quantifiable benefit The far-reaching impact and extended timescales involved in most PLM implementations often mean that it is difficult to fully quantify the benefits in terms of a return on investment, so it is viewed as a more strategic activity.

However, the re-purposing of your digital capital for areas such as those we have discussed here provides a tangible and more easily quantifiable benefit.

When you include the other areas which could gain from this approach, such as marketing, training and product maintenance, it becomes one of those “Why didn’t we look at that before?” moments.

So, whatever your drivers for business and process improvement, it’s worth taking stock of what digital capital you have in the business and looking at where this can be reused to support those laudable aims behind your PLM strategy.

Altran Xype are part of the Altran group of companies, with 17,000 employees worldwide. We are a leading supplier of independent PLM consulting services, software engineering and engineering information systems training to many blue chip companies. We also supply and implement the product documentation software 3DVia Composer to many of them as part of an efficient PLM solution.

Altran Xype www.altran-xype.com