CIMdata Barcelona reveals oven ready collaborative design to manufacture applications emerging

Modern collaborative design technology is now being successfully used across design and supply chains to define and develop products for manufacture now that vendors are coming out with ‘oven-ready’ applications. So says CIMdata, the US-based PDM and related technologies consultancy. At its 2001 European conference in Barcelona, ‘cPDm – A Business Approach to Product Definition through the Supply Chain’, Ed Miller, the firm’s president said that ‘oven-ready’ software, with 90% there and the rest ready for fast tailoring, is working. Whereas earlier systems from the PDM vendors had tried and failed to produce ‘out of the box’ software that for direct installation and running, the industry has recognised that companies have different processes and product structures that make this impractical. The ‘oven-ready’ approach means that an industry template is provided and local differences quickly accommodated to meet a company’s specific needs. Miller listed eight key application areas: CPC (collaborative product commerce), decision support (harnessing better knowledge access including product designs, documents etc), programme management, software and electronic component management, ‘digital manufacturing’ (including designing manufacturing processes in conjunction with the product), maintenance and service support, customer requirement management and asset management. Oven ready is happening across al of these. On the exhibition side of the event, it was clear that vendors are recognising the importance of managing the transition from design to manufacture – including manufacturing planning and passing product designs across to manufacturing – and that collaboration is critical for this. Their aim is similar to the concurrent/simultaneous engineering initiatives popular 10 years ago, but with new technology. And because this falls between the traditional manufacturing and design divide, there is now competition between suppliers like SAP, on the MRP/ERP side, and PTC on the CAD/CAM/PDM front. Alan Griffiths, managing director of PDM/CAD consultancy QIC Solutions says: “This is healthy for users as competition drives down price – but more importantly, two great bodies of knowledge are being concentrated on this key area.” “Paradoxically,” he adds, “the PDM industry seems to be consolidating and fragmenting at the same time. The large service providers are building whole practices on different aspects of PDM capability. For example, EDS has formed – via the acquisition of SDRC – a fifth division called PLM Solutions (product lifecycle management) which brings together customers with IMAN, Metaphase and Sherpa systems and has annual revenues of over $1billion. “As this market matures and grows, EDS is hoping to do for product development/introduction what SAP and its integrators did for manufacturing, administration and logistics.” Meanwhile smaller suppliers, he notes, are focusing on niches: Tecnomatix, for example, with its eMPower for manufacturing process simulation and management; SmarTeam with PDM and its SmartBOM, SmarTeam Hub Server, mySmartTeam and the rest for SMEs; and LSC with procurement and logistic support. The bottom line for potential users is that the same fundamental requirements exist in extended enterprises as have existed for ever in larger corporates – and that’s now being accommodated. SMEs inevitably have to look at smaller pieces of the overall process and need to be able to key in online to inter-company systems to take part. The good news is that for second and third tier suppliers, their customers, the Tier Ones, are beginning to provide real value through the collaborative systems they’re deploying – not just using their purchasing power to beat them up on costs. However, the other side of that coin is you do have to play the game their way. With a reasonable internal investment to become web-accessible, it is now possible to do this and take part in wider collaborative development and manufacturing that really works. As Griffiths says: “All users still need their own internal systems to manage their processes and product information, and for configuration management, but these are becoming more cost-effective.”