THE PLM STATE

Help! How do I make sense out of the technology options available for data management in the SW community?

scuba_class

Help! How do I make sense of the technology options available for data management in the SW community? - A Manager level dive into the Product Development System Infrastructure world.

This article will focus on the top 3 Product Development System infrastructures that are; best in class, actually work (this is from field experience, I was leading a team that successfully deployed them), and can scale with your business.

 

 

"Why to" understanding the need for a good Product Development System( PDS)

While engaged with Cryogenic Industries, I had the pleasure of working with their CIO, Ted Pardo, and resident product development technology guru, Craig Fennessey.Ted Pardo owned the high level IT strategy for product development infrastructure and Craig provided the engineering skills to know if the strategy would actually work by digging into the details. Ted kept referring to the files created in engineering as Company Digital Assets. He was concerned about how to create, control, secure, and leverage those assets across the company’s operating divisions - to drive product development costs down and drive time to market down as well, one reducing costs and the latter increasing revenue. Let me take a minute to paint that "Why to" picture in graphical format.

as_is

 

 

to_be

 

What this means to people:

● Less money spent in development, makes Engineering Management look good

● More money made during production makes Sales and Manufacturing Management look good

● Those two things make company stakeholders, like Ted the CIO, look and feel good and they make the competition look bad when the earnings report comes out!

I mentioned diving into this world in my title, so let’s use a scuba diving theme here to take you on this journey. We are going underwater into the world of Product Development Infrastructure, but with me as your dive guide.

Let’s look at what a specific best in class Product Development System (PDS) can look like, but in stages. Just like we should probably not go to 100ft on our first dive, we are going to look at this at different depths, from the simple to the more complex, but don’t get worried this is a management level overview, I am only going to cover of the 3 most common scenarios and then I will have you back at the surface.

Before we go to the first stop at 15ft, I need to cover a couple things, consider this the safety talk on the dive boat before we go into the water.

The tricky part of this is not so much the technology pieces, but the skill and ability of your process/technology services partner to know your business and how it runs in manufacturing, so that the Upfront PDS, drives the MRP or ERP manufacturing system with the right digital information from the engineering assets.

● They need to understand your manufacturing model - Are you a job shop? Build to stock? Configure to order? Engineer to order? This understanding is critical to how you set up the system. If a partner does not ask to know this about your business – be concerned.

● They need to ask about and know how skilled your current people are in regards to PDS technology -

● They need to know what processes you have in place that are already working and what are not and what ones you need for your business model.

● There are more questions so I will cover those in the next article of the series on choosing a technology services partner

 

One of the more refreshing things about the SW community is that many of the manufacturing models are not that complex, so you can get a system up and running in a much shorter time frame, so your time to value is less and the investment cost is less than for a company with a much more complex environment. However the fundamentals of this discussion can apply to the more complex environments, so if that’s you, please read on.

Another word of caution before we go to 15ft, if you have no idea what the term associativity means, or you need a refresher, please stop and read my article , PDM 101 2 basics http://networkedblogs.com/hJDS8 It is critical to know what associativity means so that you know why you need special functionality in the data management tool to control your SolidWorks engineering digital assets.

 

" What to" - What PD systems that work well look like

We are ready to Dive now. We will be going to 15ft, 30ft and 60ft.Obviously there can be more than 3 configurations to a product development system, however we are going to look at the 3 most common from a “working in the field” perspective, and that should give everyone an excellent first dive experience.

 

pds_15ft

 

 

pds_30ft

 

 

pds_60ft

 

So it comes down to those 3 common infrastructure scenarios –

  • I did not cover the pdmworkgroup tool from Solidworks, that is imbedded in the Premium and Professional packages, because it does not have a relational database behind it and therefore it is not worthy of consideration. Sorry workgroup. Also, I think SolidWorks should have called Enterprise PDM, SQL PDM, because EPDM does not have full Enterprise functionality- see 60ft Scenario with PLM - and the Enterprise name scares a lot of SW people from adopting it, which is just silly since it can be implemented in the 15ft Scenario in a day.

They real key is engaging with the right services partner who knows how to apply

  • People assessment
  • Process assessment
  • And quality technology that has a reasonable cost of ownership, windows ease of use, and its architected for the SMB SW community. Enterprise PDM fits that bill.

Proper combination of these three things, configured to your manufacturing/design business model will provide the business results you should expect in the TO BE product Life cycle graph shown in the begining of this article.

 

"How to" - suggestions on how to the take the next step in discovering if you need a better PDS than you have now

Sticking with the dive theme- here are three options, each with a deeper level of engagement.

0-15ft - Take a tour of our website, particulary the PLM state Blog articles, check out the information in the hubs and anything else that is of value to you, you tube videos, demos, recorded webinars, our data migration slide deck , etc.

15-30 ft - If you would like a personal go to meeting session over the web, where we look at your manufacturing business model and your current PDS infrastructure, Let us know and we can set one up for you.

30-60ft - If you really like what you see on our site and you want to engage with us at a deeper level, quickly, Let's set up an on-site meeting at your facility. This is a paid for service to cover travel and meeting costs and we will deliver a management report with recommendations based on your specific business model and current environment. We will look at all three factors, People, Process and Technology. I would also recommend we come on site with your SolidWorks Var, as we work with the Solidworks var community to deliver a comprehensive system, which includes proper use of the SolidWorks tool. see prevous blog - regarding getting your 3D models right http://networkedblogs.com/hJDS8 for more info on that subject.

Thanks for reading and the next blog in this series will be a more in depth look at selecting the right services partner and I may even dive into how to know if your SW reseller is earning their subscriptions dollars – that should get some attention!

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