Using PLM to Transform Manufacturing

By Louise Elliott

Since the early days of core PLM technologies as MCAD and PDM, firms wanting to deploy the tools have sought the assistance of a flourishing community of consultants—some independent and others within vendor consulting or service departments. Initially, the majority of problems involved customization, programming, and IT functions, as well as what to archive electronically and how to link digital files to remaining paper archives.

 

PLM deployment in the 21st century has changed significantly. Consultants report that today’s companies are no longer questioning whether to install PLM solutions, but when. And they want nothing less than business transformation from their investments.

“The consultants with whom we work tell us that clients are now turning to PLM for handling engineering change processes, product launches, process, and projects,” says Peter Schroer, CEO of Aras Corp. “Mid-market companies place less emphasis on CAD. With more design constraints coming from their customers, they are doing less innovation, and they want consultants with strong industry ties to help them with such issues as warranty and traceability, scheduling, and requirements management for a shorter design cycle.”

Many of the companies to which Schroer refers make components for OEMs that control product design or manufacture consumer packaged goods—where outlets such as Wal-Mart or Target set requirements as detailed as package size for efficient display.

“What engineers do is changing,” says Schroer. “They now have to think about the supply chain and packaging. They have to collaborate differently. Five years ago, collaboration meant synchronous sharing of 3D models. Now they have to collaborate asynchronously about schedules, cost, customers; factors that can make or break profit margins.”

That description of market demand holds true regardless of company size, and consultants are the people closest to the customers who have a great deal riding on PLM implementation.

New Roles for Vendor Consulting Services

Just how important to PLM product development and sales are consulting organizations? “We’ve integrated services engineering, which includes consulting, with R&D, and our focus, along with that of our clients, is on global product development,” says Kevin Wrenn, divisional vice president for Global Solutions for PTC.

   

Consultants can extend or tailor many PLM solutions to support specific industry or company processes. Image courtesy of Aras Corp.

The merger of consulting and product development appears to be an emerging trend, and PTC is not alone in using the knowledge its consultants have of customer needs—gained through on-going work with clients—in their own product development.

Bill Meredith, a director with UGS’ Product & Deployment Group, describes his job as bidirectional. “I focus outside of UGS for customer company strategic planning,” he says, “and I’m located in R&D and report to the vice president of Product Development. That means being able to pull architects and product managers into more customer-focused engineering.”

PTC works with companies in which, Wrenn says, “PLM implementation has changed over the last few years to focus on enterprise product development and processes. We see pressure to enable new technology for new business processes inside and outside a company, in which the infrastructure and technology cost as little as possible.” Such focus is the opposite of the traditional one of using a PLM tool kit to customize a costly system.

Meredith says that whereas five to ten years ago, consultants went into client companies with a three- to five-year plan to develop a customized implementation, today they work on “strategic plans to provide maximum alignment to Teamcenter’s out-of-the-box product. Globalization plays a big part these days,” he adds. “A company with which I’m currently working wants to distribute development and manufacturing globally, and needs more effective and reliable systems for that purpose.”

The Value of Experience

   

Integrated supply chain solutions can transform a company’s internal manufacturing processes. Image courtesy of IBM.

Life Cycle Solutions of Avon, MA, is a systems integration company that works with Aras Corp., PTC, and MatrixOne to provide PLM solutions to companies varying in size from $50 million to $32 billion in annual sales. Mark Silvestri, who is both CEO of the company and principal consultant, says that he’s worked at implementing PLM-related technology since Computervision introduced the first commercial PDM system. “Today executives see PLM as part of their business strategy. They aren’t just asking for an increase in operational efficiency as in the past, but rather for tools for business strategy and tactics; all starting with ideation and product development. And for tools to help with product portfolio management.”

He says he believes that the supply chain provides a great deal of companies’ information today. “The companies with which I work are looking for business transformation in terms of product development, change management, process management—seeking known sets of information to meet market demand for best products. Supply chain management is driving demand for secure collaboration.”

And collaboration has already changed the design engineering function. Wrenn of PTC says that with the current focus on global product development, including design and marketing, companies need to start with a streamlined and sensible digital product model. Next they need a product structure or architecture separated for different process or structural purposes (e.g., design and manufacture being done in different plants and different parts of the world), so that each location can do its own work with appropriately organized data, and still within an overall, understood context. Finally, they require collaborative architecture, which Wrenn describes as “a deliberate design of collaboration across distance via a process and data interface.”

Wrenn disagrees with Schroer about customer demand for specific industry knowledge, saying, “They want knowledge that will help them with globalization. A company that has been globalized for a long time may want to know more about discrete product development, while discrete manufacturers want information based on experience in globalization.”

Wide Distribution of Collaboration

Meredith of UGS has been helping companies deploy PDM and PLM since the early days of Metaphase. He finds that background very helpful today. “Metaphase was the gorilla of wide distribution, and that’s a rich heritage from the IT viewpoint,” he says. “Nowadays, though, companies want a greater and more complex scalability for collaboration. Not just networks in developed countries, but scaled to work in Southeast Asia, which still has generally poor telecommunications services. We find ourselves having to explain the overall value proposition to customers, beyond technology implications, and help them answer the question: How do you go from managing data in one place to managing a global organization?”

Answering that question in an industry that has very few overall standards tends to revolve around best practices. Meredith says that UGS defines “best practices,” a phrase in search of a general definition, to be the best digitally enabled solutions across their very large customer base. More than 50,000 companies use Teamcenter, with “millions of seats,” he says. “Customers value this approach because it’s both provable and available.”

The Role of Supply Chain Management

IBM’s Business Consulting Services is separate from the sales organization, and despite IBM’s sales and marketing partnership with Dassault Systemes, its consultants help customers put together solutions made up of many different tools.

Rather than seeing supply chain management (SCM) as a PLM part or adjunct, Mark Wilterding, partner and global PLM leader in the organization, says that “PLM ]is] a highly integrated part of SCM, including purchasing, logistics, and sourcing—based on the way IBM manages its own manufacturing processes.”

Wilterding says he believes that discrete manufacturing—and particularly tiered supplier industries such as automotive, aerospace, and defense need to connect to SCM from the process level to work with tier suppliers around the world. Process-based industries, he says, such as consumer packaged goods, are more involved in aspects of PLM, which he sees as very CAD-oriented.

Rethinking Roles for the Future

“Clients are now thinking of changing their concepts of where engineering fits into the tool set,” Wilterding continued, “and PLM is being transformed toward cycle time reduction, quality, short lifecycles, and fast turnaround. Some leading-edge companies are now rethinking the role of engineering, and gearing up toward greater efficiency.”

Whatever the terminology, he agrees with the others that PLM adoption is accelerating. “There’s been an inflection point in the last 18 months regarding attitudes about adopting PLM—particularly around the issue of innovation in a global economy. There’s more and more acceptance of PLM as a tool for global business management, although the spectrum is moving away from CAD and PDM, toward collaboration joining PLM and SCM. The challenge of where we’ll go forward is in flux. This chapter is still being written.”

Contributing Editor Louise Elliott is a freelance writer based in California. Offer Louise your feedback on this article by clicking here. Please reference August 2005 PLM article.

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Product Information

Aras Corp.
Lawrence, MA

Dassault Systemes
Paris, France

IBM
White Plains, NY

Life Cycle Solutions
Avon, MA

MatrixOne
Westford, MA

PTC
Needham, MA

UGS Corp.
Plano, TX