THE PLM STATE

Bridge the Gap Between Agile PLM and Windchill (PDMLink)

Engineering Collaboration Infographic by Zero Wait-State

 

Roads and bridges serve an undeniable purpose in life, and have been doing so for as long as the means to create them existed and the will to do so was sufficient. Even before man began to mindfully create pathways, the travel of animals back and forth from one location to another, along the same path wore grooves in the earth that began to make travel more efficient, more easily remembered, and safer. In the same way routines wear grooves in our daily lives and habits are formed, both good and bad. Even the neurons in our brains form bonds of varying strengths depending on how often they fire together.

Once man began to take the matter of creation into his own hands he began to make choices about how he would like to travel from one place to another, how people should think about things (philosophy), how meals should be prepared and so on. This article is about choices. In particular, a very important choice for your company, if you currently use Agile PLM, and you want to integrate it to your Design and Engineering data.

The choice is this: Will you invest in Oracle’s Agile PLM Module “Engineering Collaboration” to manage all of your engineering data, or will you invest in an integration architecture known as DesignState to integrate a Product Data Management system like EPDM or Windchill (PDMLink)? Hold on—there’s no rush to decide, and in fact, I think they’re both great choices, and I’d like to present you with some thoughts that may help you make the best choice for your situation.

First of all, if you don’t have some sort of CAD Data Management solution in place, (Do I really need to mention this?) then you need to think about that first. Figure out what will work for what you want to do. If EC for Agile will work for you, then that’s a great choice because it kills two birds with one stone. If another PDM system is the right choice for your organization, great, there are options for integration out there.

Okay—so you’ve got a PDM system and now you’re trying to figure out whether you should continue to use it and find a way to integrate it to Agile or if you should scrap it entirely and migrate the data to EC. I’m personally of the opinion that if a migration is unnecessary, don’t do it. I’m not saying put something off that you’ll need to do later, no no no, if eventually you’ll need to migrate one way or the other, well, the sooner you get started the better, but, if you know that you don’t need to, then an integration may very well be the better of the two choices for you.

Ultimately, the choice lies with you. Build the bridge that makes the most since for your company. There’s plenty of information out there to learn about Oracle’s EC module, but if you’d like to learn more about DesignState for Windchill, we have a recorded webinar available for you to learn more information.

Collaboration between your Engineering department and the Business is the lifeblood of your company. This is where the ability to design to cost, create products that make sense for the market, and effectively handle compliance and supply issues lies. We’ve developed an Integration Framework called DesignState that allows you to keep your current PDM and fully integrate to Agile PLM.

Companies like Motorola, Zebra Technology and Harris Corporation have fully integrated their Windchill systems with Agile PLM using DesignState. 

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