PLM: Data, Search and Future User Experience
by Oleg on April 3, 2012 · View Comments
Disclosure: As a co-founder of Inforbix, I understand that my opinion about PLM Data and Search can be unintentionally biased. Nevertheless, I believe the topic itself is very important, so I decided to share my thoughts anyway.
PLM Data. A lot of data. You are probably familiar with that. The amount of data is growing. I can say the same about the complexity of the products and product development processes. It creates significant challenges for everybody in the company – designers, engineers, manufacturing, marketing, sales and support. How to overcome the level of complexity and provide customers with easy and intuitive tools? This is one of the challenges I mentioned in my presentation few months ago during AU 2011.
In this article which is going to be unusually long, I’d like to explore trends and show examples of applications specifically focusing on user experience.
TeamCenter Active Workspace
Siemens just released videos and information about so-called TeamCenter Active Workspace. Per my understanding Active Workspace is a first module to implement so-called HD-PLM vision Siemens PLM presented last year. I caught the initial info about Active Workspace was in October 2011. I captured it in my Inforbix blog. The discussion was started on twitter by @dorasmith. In addition, you might be interested to read an early review done by Kenneth Wong of Desktop Engineering. The short definition of Active Workspace was like this “Active Workspace is like Internet search, simplifying PLM complexity”. I was listening to the following video by Chuck Grindstaff of Siemens PLM talking about Active Workspace.
Finally it came to the release. In the following video, you can see a first review of the product.
I find user experience quite comprehensive. In my view, it is clear simplification compared to a traditional PLM environment. According to my understanding Active Workspace is running on top of TeamCenter platform (as a module). So, where it provides a clear user experience simplification, customers still needs to take care of IT, installation and implementation cost.
Dassault System 3DExperience and Exalead SBA
DS has a concern about user experience too. DS started 3DLive product about 5 years ago as an innovative way to collaborate, visualize and navigate through product information. These days, DS is presenting something they call 3D Experience platform that allows people to experience real product in a virtual environment. According to Dassault, it will change the way innovators innovate with consumers. You can see a visionary video below. This is still a vision, in my view.
3D Experience platform contains many elements supported by other DS products. One of them, Exalead is a platform for Search Based Applications. DS acquired Exalead two years ago. Since that time, I’ve heard lots of talks about Exalead as a platform. According to Dassault, Exalead platform and applications can be embedded into other applications or used a platform for building new apps. Known as “French Google”, Exalead was a company founded back in the beginning of 2000 with some core roots in Alta Vista search platform. In my view, Exalead is a powerful toolkit. With all power it comes with, Exalead is a very generic and not related to PLM. In the video below, I found an application developed by DS partner – NovaQuest, which can be positioned as much as close as possible to PLM.
Autodesk PLM 360
The story of Autodesk PLM 360 is just in a very early beginning. Autodesk is presenting PLM 360 as a major breakthrough into changing the way people work in PLM including delivery and implementation (Instant On the cloud) and ending up with a user experience. I presented some of my thoughts about PLM 360 on my blog before. Navigate to the following link to read more. From the standpoint of user experience, PLM 360 is completely browser-based (except of Workflow designer)
It also provides some interesting capabilities for product information navigation.
Opposite to Siemens PLM and Dassault, PLM 360 is running in the cloud. User interface is a strong point of PLM360. It is also very flexible and customizable. At the same time, because of the cloud, connection with the data in the company, remains one of the weak points and the gap that Autodesk needs to cover.
PTC, Windchill and SharePoint
The last version of Windchill product put a lot of focus on the user experience. PTC mentioned it many times in their presentations. You can see a video of Windchill 10 demonstrating all usability enhancements. The core concept of Windchill UI is to combine the best desktop experience with the best web experience. How successful is that? Take a look on the video and tell me, please.
On the side of search, PTC relies on SharePoint infrastructure heavily. In the following video, you can see how PTC mixing SharePoint search with Windchill products.
Inforbix Product Data Applications
The big idea of Inforbix is to change the way how people in manufacturing company can access product data located in disparate locations (file vaults, local computer drives, database, PDM/PLM applications and other sources). Inforbix doesn’t require you to migrate data into a single database. Inforbix runs from the cloud (private or public), scans product data and helps you to search, find connected elements and create different reports and visualization. Learn more here. User experience plays one of the central roles in Inforbix. The following video shows Inforbix Search user experience that helps you navigate and discover product data.
This video presents Inforbix Tables user experience helping you to slice and dice data in virtual reports.
What is my conclusion? User experience is very important these days. What we learned from the internet and mobile space, one “extra click” can kill your product. The new motto – “don’t make me think” can be easy applied as the most important requirements nowadays. The idea of user experience started to proliferate to enterprise space. PLM companies are clearly interested how to make improvements and create new generation of tools, which will not look like ’95 anymore. Just my thoughts….
Best, Oleg
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Cloud PLM and “Made in Germany” Sticker…
by Oleg on April 2, 2012 · View Comments
Few weeks ago, back to my trip to Munich PLM Innovation Congress, I published post – Will Europe Adopt Cloud PLM? Navigate back to my article to listen to the speech by Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda, announcing a European Cloud Partnership help cloud computing through public procurement. Since that time, I started to follow “European cloud” story more closely. The following article caught my attention – Cloud computing ‘made in Germany’ stirs debate at CeBIT. Take five minutes of your time and read this article. It sounds like German IT and specifically Deutsche Telecom is playing an interesting cloud game. Security is a strong point they want to leverage. Here is an interesting passage:
The head of the German communications giant, Rene Obermann, told visitors to the CeBIT this year that “the ‘German Cloud’ could present a competitive advantage for us.”. Having lived through first a Nazi dictatorship, then a Communist one, Germans are especially sensitive when it comes to data protection and Deutsche Telekom hopes to leverage this to its advantage. “In Germany, the data protection laws are very strict. But several operators do not come from Germany and do not adhere to these standards,” said Obermann. He is aiming at the 3.6 million prosperous German small and medium sized firms who have not yet taken the leap to storing their data using cloud computing. Only 12 percent have done so. “It’s an enormous potential,” said Obermann, vaunting the advantage of his firm’s 30 giant servers or “datacenters” across Germany.
It made me think about future cloud PLM potential of German market. Two major CAD / PLM companies are permanent residents in EU – Dassault Systems and Siemens PLM. Dassault has significant cloud ambitions. Earlier last year, during DSCC 2011 event in Las Vegas, Bernard Charles mentioned that DS spent about $2B to develop the best in-class cloud online PLM platform. At the same time, Siemens PLM so far didn’t show up any cloud development and plans. All this happens in parallel with last development of Autodesk PLM 360 and Autodesk’s ambitions to establish themselves as a “Salesforce.com of PLM“.
What is my conclusion? I think, we are in the early beginning of cloud PLM race. As we’ve seen in consumer web, mobile, search and social networking, competitors will be using various tools to protect their interest and establish a better market position for their cloud products. Will “Made in German” sticker become one of them? Time will show. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
picture credit domdeen / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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ENOVIA V6 Multi-CAD: Do Everything!
by Oleg on April 1, 2012 · View Comments
Note, this is NOT 1st April post . Multi-CAD and PLM. Endless story… Few weeks ago, I published my post The Anatomy of MultiCAD-PDM integrations. I recommend you to have a read before you continue with this article. Another blog, you probably want to review is the story about Autodesk Vault and Multi-CAD. This blog is also continuation of the discussion I started in the following posts – Immersive CAD management: is it the CAD/PDM future?, CAD Strategies: Unified or Diversified and CAD, PDM and PLM diversity.
So, this week, I’d like to make a next step and talk about Dassault Enovia and multi-CAD. Again, as before when I talk about Autodesk Vault, my focus is on the integration between PDM/PLM platform and CAD. I’m not focusing on CAD data translation, visualization. Don’t take me wrong- data translation is important. However, I’d like to keep my focus on how data-management platform interact with CAD applications.
A week ago, I sat down with David Segal of Dassault Systemes to talk about Dassault Enovia and MultiCAD. This blog gives you some ideas about how Enovia presents their Multi-CAD integration and openness. He kindly provided me with some slides about Enovia V6 multi-CAD and gave me explanations about how Dassault Enovia supporting different design applications.
In my view, the usual complexity, every CAD/PLM vendor has is about how to separate their own CAD solutions from “other vendor CAD” solutions. Dassault is calling it “authoring applications”. So, on the following slide, you can see how ENOVIA V6 chart pictures about data-management strategy. I had hard time to go and understand the difference between “comprehensive collaborative solution” and “collaborative data-management solutions” for MCAD and ECAD. What was important to understand is that Enovia is not limiting their offer to Dassault CAD applications only. In addition, interesting to see that CATIA V6 and SolidWorks are positioned on this slide in the same box.
ENOVIA multiCAD data management
Another aspect is related to mechanical and electronic design applications (so-called MCAD and ECAD). The complexity of products is growing. You can hardly limit yourself to only mechanical aspects of the design. In that context, Enovia V6 supports both MCAD and ECAD spaces. You can see a chart below explaining MCAD solution offering.
MCAD Data Management
Another one related to ECAD options.
ECAD Data Management
I’ve got mixed feeling about these slides. The simple message is clear. Whatever CAD you do have – Enovia supports it. At the same time, what I learned the user experience and functionality of the integration are very important. The level of diversification in design scenarios and practices is very high. So, to see what is supported is something that important to understand. It is always interesting to see some performance in action. Take a look on few videos below for more examples.
NX Collaboration
ProE Collaboration
ProE ECO Implementation
MCAD-ECAD with Cadence
What is my conclusion? I made my short conclusion in the title of the post – Do Everything! I can hardly find the name of design system / CAD not covered by the slides. It is a good sign, since it allows the flexibility for user to choose tools and don’t lock customer on DS tools only. However, don’t take it blind and compare functional details in case you decide to go to one of them. Blog post is a wrong place to make functional comparison, but details are important. Remember that. Moreover, to support different versions of CAD applications is as well important. I can see how Dassault is doing a lot to make ENOVIA capable to be connected to any design applications and looking forward to learning about your experience. Speak your mind…
Best, Oleg
Disclosure: This post was reviewed by David Segal (DS) before publishing.
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