General Motors bundled PLM is plug in and go

General Motors says that its work with UGS and Hewlett Packard to develop ‘PLM (product lifecycle management) Appliances’ is not only improving engineering development, but has slashed roll out costs and timescales globally. “GM has deployed the PLM Appliance at multiple production sites around the world, and measured significant savings in terms of reduced start-up time and lower ongoing support costs,” says Terry Kline, GM global information officer for product development. “It has allowed us to drive common processes and systems around the world to leverage GM’s global footprint. In addition, the solution is highly repeatable, enabling us to easily roll out new implementations.” GM started work with HP and UGS just over two years ago, and went live with its first PLM Appliance six months later, since when it has been through two upgrades without incident. Now, the development is being made available to others through a family of bundled and templated products. What they’ve created should have great appeal not only for users in aerospace, defence and automotive industries, but for mid-range manufacturers wanting to put engineering data at the heart of their businesses, without the cost and complexity of earlier PLM. In brief detail, you get pre-configured, pre-tested engineering data systems built with UGS’ Teamcenter PLM software, on Microsoft Windows Server System running on HP ProLiant servers or HP-UX on HP 9000s along with HP OpenView software, storage and networking switches, all bundled with planning, implementation and support services from UGS and HP. The result is impressive: Michael Morton, GM’s global director of product development, says the company wouldn’t have been able to roll out its systems and get global synchronisation across its 19 sites and 10 joint venture and partner sites so rapidly without it. “It’s fully tested by GM; we know how it connects to our network and there are no real unknowns. So it can be shipped into an organisation and it runs very quickly. From my perspective at GM, it’s saved us at least six months in bringing sites up.” The deal now is that a system can be delivered to site, “they plug it into the wall, it’s quickly up and running and we can manage it remotely.” He makes the point that whereas in the past it’s been tough going into a data centre and building a system, this bundled solution runs virtually out of the box, “and users can be productive very rapidly.” Chris Kelley, UGS vice president for open solutions, says: “It’s not just bundled software and hardware: there’s a template approach to the very important services and configuration sides of PLM.” He argues that improves not only pricing and delivery times, but also repeatability. “Configuration is more under control and more visible up-front. “We’ve identified a couple of configurations out of the box, and the approach means we can do more of the work in the lab that normally has to be done on site to keep costs down and robustness up.” Gareth Evans, who oversees PLM and collaboration at Hewlett Packard, explains that there are two strands to the templated service side: first defining the template though ‘yes but’ conversations. “That’s a necessary evil to give flexibility in a mass customisation context, and it fits with HP’s global view of the adaptive enterprise.” The second part is about ensuring site readiness – of everything from the network infrastructure to people and change management. “If there are multiple divisions then they need to work together to ensure the right configuration.” Evans sees the latter as key, particularly for ongoing upgrade to follow module revisions. “Without the templated approach you get resistance to upgrading: then over time companies get behind and they’re into a major rethink.” Evans sees the approach enabling OEMs and subcontractors to be more flexible over systems choices for specific projects. “That’s one of the dynamics we’re seeing… I’ve got my big PLM system, but maybe we can use this PLM appliance with this team for this project.” Kelley says entry level prices are around $70,000 and that out of the box implementations are taking around 10—12 weeks – a far cry from PLM implementations of not so many years ago.