It’s widely recognized that Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) brings benefits in four main areas:

• Financial Performance - for example, PLM should lead to increased revenue from earlier market introduction of products, and to reduced product development costs
• Time Reduction - PLM should, for example, reduce project overrun time, and reduce engineering change time
• Quality Improvement - PLM should help, for example, to reduce manufacturing process defects, reduce the number of returns and recalls, and reduce the number of customer complaints
• Business Improvement - for example, PLM can lead to an increase in the innovation rate, increase the part reuse factor, increase product traceability, and ensure 100% configuration conformity

As a result, many companies are now looking to implement PLM, or to extend or improve their existing PLM implementation. However, experience shows that it can take longer to make progress than expected. The reasons for this often include:

• A need to broaden the understanding of PLM issues among business executives
• The difficulty of identifying the best approach to PLM and justifying the business case

To overcome these issues and enable faster PLM progress, John Stark Associates developed the Ten Step Approach to PLM to help companies:

• Build a business case for PLM to gain management buy-in to proceed
• Uncover hidden needs and opportunities for PLM beyond the obvious
• Identify the best PLM approach in close alignment to business objectives
• Gain clearer understanding of the ROI potential of PLM
• Define and prioritize a clear PLM roadmap
• Implement PLM most readily and cost effectively, preventing false starts and setbacks
• Improve overall PLM success

There are a number of situations where the Ten Step Approach to PLM may be warranted. A company may for example be:

Looking at PLM for the first time..

• How and where do we start?
• How can we improve the chances for success?
• What should be in our PLM concept?
• Where does PLM fit with other enterprise initiatives?
• The vendor of our CAD system suggests one PLM concept; the vendor of our ERP system proposes a completely different concept, which is right?

Creating a PLM Business Case..

• What should we include?
• What figures are realistic?

Expanding PLM from workgroup to enterprise..

• What do we do next?
• Where can we gain the biggest benefit?

Struggling with multiple CAD, PLM, ERP or other enterprise applications..

• How do we handle multiple systems resulting from globalization or acquisitions?
• How can we get our support costs under control?
• What is the optimal solution?

Facing challenging business drivers demanding much greater effectiveness and efficiency..

• How do we outsmart the competition this time?
• How can we produce more great products ? faster?

The Ten Step Approach to PLM is applicable in companies of all sizes in almost any industry and can be beneficial at all stages of PLM investigation and use. It is as applicable during the initial introduction of PLM as when extending an existing PDM implementation. It can be used to review current PLM performance, to clarify PLM concepts, to choose between different options, or to gain a deep understanding of an individual option.

The Ten Step Approach to PLM includes the following ten activities:

1. PLM Status Review, Data Gathering
2. Executive PLM Education and Awareness
3. Best Practice Positioning
4. PLM Concept Generation and Analysis
5. PLM Roadmap and Plan Generation
6. Business Benefits and Business Case Development
7. ROI Calculation
8. Management Report Preparation
9. Executive Presentation
10. Executive Decision Support

Experience shows that these ten steps help in understanding where PLM can be applied to a business most effectively. They help to get that all-important executive approval for the PLM initiative to proceed. The Ten Step Approach is a tried-and-tested methodology that has been used in many companies, at different stages of PLM progress, in many industries. The ten steps make it clear to everyone involved what has to be done, with clear deliverables at each step to show what has been achieved.

IBM Siemens PLM Case Study

Siemens Home and Office Communication Devices (SHC) is a leading company for home and office communication devices. The company sells its products in more than 50 countries.

Business challenge
Siemens Home and Office Communication Devices (SHC) has several engineering and manufacturing disciplines are located at one single site, which is unique in Germany. Mechanical design development, mold tooling development, manufacturing and assembling are all done in Bocholt, Germany.

The pressure from the market in the Electronics and Electric (E&E) and Consumer Goods industries is very high. For Siemens, the stress of competition requires the company to reduce development cycles and time-to-market of new goods. Added to this pressure, the variety of products increases year over year, adding to design and manufacturing complexity.

Within Siemens, it was recognized that internal processes and products had to become more transparent, and ongoing improvements in quality were required. Finally, the company needed to enhance supply chain integration and collaboration to meet its market challenges.

As a result of these external market and internal company pressures, Siemens recognized that improving its development and product life cycle management process was a key to the future success of Siemens SHC. Siemens had been working for approximately 10 years with a 3-D CAD system: Euclid 3. All possible improvements to the system had already been exploited, and it could not be upgraded further. Siemens therefore sought an outside partner to help it choose and implement a new product life cycle management (PLM) system.

Solution
Siemens SHC engaged IBM Global Business Services to implement CATIA V5 and SMARTEAM as the new PLM platform for continuous product development process improvement. The IBM team implemented 45 seats of CATIA V5 (voluminous configuration), 45 seats of SMARTEAM, and PLM Software and Services valued at about €1.85 million plus RLC. CATIA V5, which has a set of predefined product and process templates, helps to quickly complete even sophisticated design tasks with a high level of accuracy.

Today Siemens has a completely linked set of data, from the early design phase to numerical control (NC) manufacturing. When making a modification in the design department, the mold tool design development and the NC department can modify the old data by a simple CATIA update, to include the newest modifications.

Benefits
With CATIA V5 and SMARTEAM, Siemens Home and Office Communication Devices has improved design innovation, taken advantage of existing know-how and tightened design-to-manufacturing processes to streamline development and reduce costs. Additionally, the tool helped make the mold tool development and NC manufacturing competitive with low-cost suppliers from places like China.

Customer:
Airbus UK

Industry:
Aerospace & Defense

Deployment country:
United Kingdom

Solution:
Grid Computing, Innovation that matters, Openness, Product Lifecycle Management, Supply Chain Management, Transforming IT

Business Challenge
To meet tight deadlines for delivery and reduce design and manufacturing costs by constantly improving working processes throughout the aircraft lifecycle.

Solution
IBM Global Business Services provided a flexible, scalable team of experts that included strategic business consultants, aircraft industry specialists and project managers to define and implement transformation programs in business, financial and organizational disciplines.

Business Benefits

* Improved collaboration with suppliers eliminated data re-entry, saving €18 million on collaboration with suppliers
* Improved concurrent engineering reduced lead time on wing by 41 weeks (36 percent reduction)
* First flight of world’s largest passenger aircraft completed on time
* Program kept on schedule
* Innovative practices introduced for concurrent engineering and collaborative working.

Why it matters
To meet tight deadlines while also cutting design and manufacturing costs for the new Airbus A380, Airbus UK and an IBM team created new business, financial and organizational processes. The changes transformed the airplane manufacturers’ methodology, enabling Airbus UK to cut cost and time out of design and manufacture, improve collaboration with suppliers and deliver key components on schedule to ensure the A380 aircraft’s on-time first flight.

Key Components
Services
IBM Global Business Services

Airbus leads the world in developing new technologies and pushing the boundaries of knowledge in the aerospace industry. Nowhere is this more evident than in its design and development of the A380, the world’s largest passenger jet. Airbus is a highly complex business, employing advanced technologies and processes, some of which have specifically been developed for this project. In such a large-scale, innovative design and manufacturing operation, much attention is paid to keeping costs under control.

One of the most complex parts of the aircraft is the wing assembly, an element for which Airbus UK has the design and manufacturing responsibility. The company realized early in the A380 program that new processes would be needed to achieve the aggressive timeline for the airplane. “We needed to radically transform our approach to the A380, and saw value in bringing in an objective external consultancy to help define and implement new ways of working,” says Iain Gray, Managing Director of Airbus UK.

Ideas tank
Airbus UK commissioned IBM Global Business Services to bring together a team of experts to analyze designs, design processes and manufacturing operations. “IBM is uniquely placed to advise and help us transform Airbus UK,” says Gray. “It has enormous breadth and depth of knowledge, with expertise in business, financial and organizational disciplines as well as the aircraft industry and computer technology.”

The core IBM Global Business Services program team includes strategic business consultants, aircraft industry specialists and project managers. This team is expanded as required by drafting in consultants and specialists who bring a complete cross-section of business and technical skills relevant to the specific problem being addressed.

“IBM has an important ongoing role in delivering performance improvements. It is extremely valuable for us to be able to call on such an integrated team of specialists to conduct thorough analyses of problem areas and respond quickly with solutions to help us keep things on track.” — Iain Gray

“We value the partnership with IBM for its objectivity and willingness to challenge our thinking. They are an enormous think tank we can draw on,” says Gray. “The IBM Global Business Services team shares our commitment to the Airbus programs and is highly responsive. We call on specialists in particular disciplines to address particular problems, and they inject pace into finding and implementing solutions using proven processes.”

Designing out cost
“Initiatives from IBM Global Business Services help us drive cost out of design and manufacture, improve collaborative working, and transform the way we work with our many subcontractors,” explains Gray. Improved collaboration with suppliers eliminated data re-entry, saving €18 million. The IBM team has also helped Airbus UK improve concurrent engineering, reducing lead time on the wing by 41 weeks (36 percent reduction).

Sometimes, initiatives originated directly from the IBM team. Airbus built complete 3D models of A380 components to analyze clash conditions in airframe systems and structure before committing to cut metal—for example, to ensure that there were adequate clearances for slat and flap mechanisms on the wing and the landing gear. Such large-scale 3D modeling involves an enormous volume of number-crunching, which would normally trigger the purchase of large processors. Seeing this situation, IBM consultants introduced Airbus to the concept of GRID computing, which pools unutilized processing capacity in hundreds of distributed workstations for use with processor-intensive applications. A prototype was developed, and IBM has now completed the implementation of GRID technology, saving Airbus a considerable investment.

In the area of business transformation, IBM Global Business Services is deploying an experienced team of human resource and organizational specialists to help Airbus UK transform from a development organization to one undertaking large-scale serial production.

A key factor in the success of the A380 program is educating several hundred people across Airbus UK and its many subcontractors in the new tools, processes and collaborative working. With a vast pool of resources, IBM responded very quickly to Airbus’ training needs, building and delivering tailored courses that reflect the processes and technologies defined at the strategic level.

Ongoing partnership
With design developments and performance improvement a permanent feature of any successful airliner program, IBM provides value across the product lifecycle, which could span several decades. “IBM has an important ongoing role in delivering performance improvements,” concludes Gray. “It is extremely valuable for us to be able to call on such an integrated team of specialists to conduct thorough analyses of problem areas and respond quickly with solutions to help us keep things on track.”

Check out the latest PLM jobs from various Fortune 500 companies here.

CLICK HERE - PLM JOBS

PLM Forum - Click Here

Even with my Blackberry Curve - I can still access and interact with a lot of mobile-ready web content. When I recently added my email account from work to deliver emails to my Blackberry while away from my desk, I began the realize some real possibilities.  A lot of my emails are Teamcenter related, some of them notification messages with the hyperlink to the Rich Client and Web Client versions.

My question then was - why hasn’t Siemens yet provided a mobile version of Teamcenter Thin or Web Client? Or - has any one who does web programming attempted to try and develop a mobile client for Teamcenter Engineering or Teamcenter Express?  What does it take - a new CSS stylesheet and maybe some custom forms programming?

The call for papers for PLMWorld 2009 is underway - perhaps if you or someone you know has an idea or a proposal - send us an abstract - go to http://event.plmworld.org/index.php and if accepted - you will not only get to present to your colleagues, but your registration fee to attend this conference will be waived.

Maybe someday I will be able to login to Teamcenter on my Blackberry!

PLM

What’s in a product lifecycle management (PLM) system? Some authoring tools, computer-aided design (CAD); large dollops of simulation and visualization; lots of manufacturing data systems (e.g., computer-aided process planning (CAPP) and configuration management); heavy-duty infrastructure stuff (database management systems (DBMS) and data communications); and plenty of behind-the-scenes infrastructure utilities, such as web-based user interfaces and application programming interfaces (API).

No one-size-fits-all exists in terms of PLM components, data requirements, or implementation, but here’s a brief description of the essential components for an effective PLM system.

Authoring Tools
CIMdata Inc. (Ann Arbor, MI) uses the label “information authoring tools” for applications ranging from mechanical and electronic CAD, to computer-aided software engineering (CASE), to technical publishing (such as the office suites running on your computer). Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) is another. By defining and planning manufacturing sequences up front, including geometries, machining parameters, and resources, CAM systems can generate, postprocess, and document the NC programs for cutting tools, as well as validate these NC programs before actual production.

Bill of Materials Processor
A centralized BOM system lays out product structures and provides a unified view of all product designs and part information. (Parts include standard parts, purchased parts, proprietary parts, and versions of existing parts.) Because of PLM’s enterprise-wide and long lifecycle focuses, the BOM processor should be capable of ad-hoc querying, multi-database querying, BOM comparisons, and both the simulation and analysis of BOM versions.

Configuration Management
Configuration management primarily tracks changes, identifies revisions, and controls effectivity. It involves identifying functional and physical characteristics of design, process, and informational objects; controlling the objects; tracking and detailing changes; providing auditing procedures; and both data and metadata searching capabilities. As noted by SAP, configuration management should control products during lifecycle phases, such as “as-designed,” “as-built,” and “as-maintained.”

Much of configuration management involves the change control aspects related to document management: data vaulting, storage, and security. Vaulting, for example, ensures data integrity by managing the check-in/check-out of documents—and related documentation—from electronic storage. (Check in/out itself includes the administration functions of tracking who, what, when data are used.) Such functionality needs to apply to the entire document structure of a product, from full assembly to the associated document hierarchies of individual drawings.

The Data Model
This is the crux of PLM. The data model shows and manages the inter-relationships between products, processes, and resources. In a report last year, AMR Research, Inc. (Boston, MA) pointed out that linking PLM modules and existing systems requires more than just bill of materials (BOM) data. It also requires “an object model that [PLM and the other enterprise systems] can agree on.” Linking these together, continues AMR, “is a more sophisticated version of the age-old argument between PLM and enterprise resource planning (ERP) of ‘Who owns the BOM?’” Why is this so important? Answers AMR, “explicitly modeling the product line in PLM—as the product manager views it—captures ambiguous information and defines the interface between PLM and other systems.”

Database Management
PLM is basically the mother of all enterprise databases, and yet it can be thought of as a database with a variety of software tools to collect, disseminate, present, and otherwise manage the data and metadata to be contained in the PLM system.

The DBMS must be relational and object-oriented enough to capture and manage the vast variety of data types, properties, behaviors, and relationships of data that exist in an enterprise. These include not only the obvious initial documentation—BOMs and material specifications, CAD drawings, numerical control (NC) programs, work instructions/process plans—but also the data that comes from downstream processes, such as change notices, quality reports, audit files, office documents—anything that can be put into electronic format. Not surprisingly, such a DBMS must also feature sophisticated change control, effectivity management, database security, data synchronization, and database administrator-specific tools.

Integration
No PLM system is an island of information unto itself. To ensure data interoperability between the PLM system and the rest of the enterprise, enterprise application integration (EAI) technologies within the PLM system must support the broad range of “open” “standards” defined for hardware, software, and data interoperability. While the list of standards is enough to make anyone’s eyes glaze over—and this includes both defacto industry standards as well as the proprietary APIs from software vendors—suffice to say that EAI technology must include out-of-the-box integration and the tools and data exchange conventions to create secure integrations when they are needed.

At the very least, as AMR points out, PLM integration must include the semantics to synchronize structured, semi-structured, and unstructured information across applications; the mapping between high-level processes and individual applications; and the ability to present this information through some user interface or portal.

Process Planning
CAPP helps optimize and validate manufacturing operations, rooting out inefficiencies in production sequencing and production equipment. CAPP feeds into factory modeling and simulation, and ultimately into the selection of capital equipment.

Incorporated within CAPP is group technology for classifying, searching, and managing the attributes of parts, processes, and tooling. Additional CAPP tools might be necessary to address industry-specific tasks. For example, automotive body-in-white assembly planning requires specific functionality, such as matching weld points to operation/station assignment. CAPP search capabilities, to pick one function, are not just the province of design or manufacturing—certain product classifications for example, are relevant to purchasing, as well as the software tools to view designs (in 2D and 3D) and disclose characteristics (size, material, manufacturing process).

Program Management
Program management might seem peripheral to PLM, but it has everything to do with product lifecycle and management itself: program and project management functions within PLM establish a work breakdown structure (a hierarchy of tasks and sub-tasks) to complete a program/project. This is not workflow; this functionality involves critical path analysis, costing and budget management, progress tracking, human resources, and a host of fundamental business processes.

Simulation
PLM-based simulations let users dynamically analyze all the part and process data contained in the PLM system. Simulation lets designers and engineers see products in action, and how they’re produced and assembled. PLM users can access the appropriate data to try out different designs and production alternatives to optimize product designs (what the customer is buying) and production processes (how the enterprise is making what the customer is buying). Simulation systems can focus on piece parts, finished products, specific production operations (such as stamping operations or tool management), or full-factory modeling system (including the factory layout and the interactions of material and part movements, production equipment and assembly operations, and people).

User Interface
Getting data in and out of PLM is basic. Doing that easily is mandatory, along with viewing and modifying information, data mining, ad-hoc querying, and other data manipulations. Plus, there’s authoring new products, processes, and the like from that data. PLM’s user interface needs to support all of these tasks. The user interface must also support collaboration by providing the functionality required to share comments among users, maintain discussion history, and conduct conferences (from webcam and WebEx meetings to document display and redlining, whatever the document, to shared whiteboards).

Visualization
Visualization tools let users anywhere in product development, manufacturing, and the supply chain see and modify product and process designs without having the authoring tools that created those designs. Visualization utilities include viewers that can display the vast variety of design files, from basic PDF displays to document displays to photo renderings to dynamic simulations. Along with that should be, as expressed in SmarTeam literature, “multiple user redlining options, enhanced printing and manipulation tools, including sectioning, mass properties, measurements, bird’s eye, and more.”

Web-Enabled Networking
To support geographically distributed project and supplier teams, the PLM infrastructure much be able to streamline communications between all the participants, regardless of geographic location or time zone. This infrastructure should also be accessible to all participants, even “mom-and-pop” manufacturers, preferably at no or little additional cost.

These days, the Web and Web-based applications provide the data communications infrastructure and user interface for easy and secure data gathering and sharing. Collaboration involves a variety of other networking technologies, points out CIMdata: audio conferencing, teleconferencing, synchronous visualization tools, data translators, and “system administration tools to control access and manage collaborative data and relationships.”

Workflow
Workflow, according to CIMdata, is the technology that gets people interacting with information. Workflow automatically routes work from one stage to the next, initiates actions, tracks project status, expedites engineering changes, moves financial decisions along, and provides relevant data to those who need it. As MatrixOne points out, PLM must be able to “execute workflows that simplify and speed response to what is becoming a build-to-order marketplace.”

The workflow engine should be capable of guiding users through the process of creating and modifying workflows, including defining workflow participants, business objects to be distributed, trigger events, roles, and decision trees. Ideally, the workflow functionality within PLM should include an “enterprise modeler” for defining, documenting, and modifying business processes both within an enterprise and within its supply chain.