Companies in high tech industries face increasing pressures and challenges to be the first to market with new, innovative products. Let’s face it, almost every product being brought to market will embed some sort of electronics into it. More than most manufacturers, they’re caught between the rock of lightning-fast technological advancement and the hard place of shorter product lifecycles and shrinking profits. They need an advantage that will allow them to tighten time-to-market while also bringing their global partners—whether internal departments or supply chains—together with seamless communication and collaboration. Many have found the answer in product lifecycle management platforms.
A PLM solution from Adaptive allows you to manage and coordinate your entire product lifecycle in one location, with one platform. With one common product development platform, you can break down internal information silos and bring your whole project together, focus on system-driven architecture and collaborative design, and run product and manufacturing simulations. Whether you’re an OEM or a supplier, or whether you’re focused on consumer electronics, security, computing, or semiconductors, we can help you streamline your operations to meet the demands of the high tech industry.
Here’s how we support every stage in the digital to physical lifecycle.
Design
Rapid response to cutting-edge technology starts with research and design. With a foundational PLM platform, every cue for innovation, such as customer requirements and complete project plans, is stored and easily accessible to inform new designs. This tightens the link between project plans and design deliverables, helping enable high-quality, on-time releases.
Three-dimensional design capabilities in the software range from early sketches to full renderings, as well as seamless electronics and mechanical collaboration. All design and engineering information—regardless of discipline—are stored in one location and accessible by anyone who needs to see or review it. In addition, manufacturers can create design libraries with reusable IP blocks to facilitate faster future development.
But, what if you have your own CAD or have multiple CAD systems in your environment?
Our solutions are designed to handle concurrent engineering with multiple CAD systems so your mechanical and electrical engineering teams can continue to use the CAD systems they prefer. A platform like 3DEXPERIENCE is designed to import CAD data from other CADx systems to enable further fine tuning and optimization for a particular design, allowing teams to leverage more powerful design capabilities beyond traditional CAD systems.
Simulation
Integrated simulation offerings also provide manufacturers with tremendous opportunity for delivering new products faster. Instead of creating physical prototypes and testing them over time, only to discover the designs aren’t robust enough and you have to start the design-prototype-test process again, you can run a wide variety of virtual simulations within the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, potentially saving hundreds of thousands of dollars and weeks of time.
Especially as product complexity increases, virtual simulation capabilities become more valuable. When an internal team designs the mechanical components of a product, the simulation of physical parts is a clear first step. But these days, high tech products aren’t only hardware—they include integrated electronics and software as well. High tech manufacturers need to simulate an entire product assembly, whether the components are designed by internal departments or suppliers in the global supply chain—and that’s what leading PLM platforms like 3DEXPERIENCE delivers.
Virtual Manufacturing
Simulation goes a few steps further in the product lifecycle with virtual manufacturing, which allows manufacturers to plan, simulate, and model global production processes directly in software. Virtually planning the full flow of production, from the impact of design to understanding how to meet global demand, means manufacturers can better respond to market pressures and needs—changing processes or timelines to take advantage of market opportunities or answer competition. Virtual manufacturing means you can even simulate manufacturing processes, including manufacturing approaches and material flow, before the production line or plant exists, so you can find or build the production process that best suits your product.
The DELMIA solution in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform provides a three-step approach to virtual manufacturing. First, comprehensive 3D processes and resource planning tools give you the ability to plan and optimize build-to-order and lean production manufacturing systems. Second, simulation tools virtually define and optimize manufacturing assets at the same time as manufacturing planning. And third, you can operate an accurate virtual production system to track activities, make schedule changes, launch new programs or product changeovers, and schedule maintenance operations.
Additive Manufacturing
When high tech manufacturers need to move beyond in-software simulation to actual prototype, or even production, parts, additive manufacturing (AM) can be the answer. AM, the process of compiling material to build up a part rather than machining material away, can refer to a variety of processes—from material extrusion and material jetting to photopolymerization—but the most popular and available of them is 3D printing. With the advent of affordable machines and innovative printing materials, many manufacturers now have AM devices on-site for rapid prototyping and simulation in support of iterative design.
The benefits of AM range from improved part and assembly strength to efficiency and cost savings in the manufacturing process. Because AM parts require less material to create and yield less waste, processes use less of expensive materials and make optimal use of material properties. In addition, AM parts result in designs with more complex internal structures that also preserve strength and structural integrity. Given that AM is also faster—parts can be produced in-house, around the clock—it can truly revolutionize traditional manufacturing.
Inspection & Metrology
Adaptive’s inspection and metrology solutions help you ensure your products meet design performance criteria and compliance requirements for reengineering or inspection applications. When you 3D-scan products, tools, or parts that need to be reworked and improved, you can create 3D, digital images that can be imported into a CAD platform and redesigned and analyzed for compliance with customer requirements, as well as a variety of standards. Inspection and reporting processes integrated into our solution also help you ensure your products meet design performance criteria and avoid unwanted warranty defect claims and returns.
Business Intelligence
To compete in the marketplace, high tech manufacturers have to innovate fast—to efficiently respond to new tech trends as well as rapidly changing customer requirements. Doing so requires business intelligence: everything you need to know about your products and organization. At the core of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is the power to look up a part across multiple databases, and give you one version of the truth for all product, customer, supplier, and operational data relevant to your business. With our platform, that information is no longer spread out or siloed. It’s collated and transformed so that large volumes of multi-source data can help you improve business processes, improve your bottom line, and gain competitive advantage.
Enterprise Collaboration
The speed of business today—especially in the high tech industry—mandates instant, trouble-free communication. In addition, having all of the right information at the right time is critical for an efficient PLM process. That’s why the 3DEXPERIENCE platform provides a comprehensive toolset for connecting content, context, and process across the office or across the globe—ensuring communication and collaboration about every aspect of a project, between every person, and at every stage of the product lifecycle. Our end-to-end solutions enable global collaborative innovation, online creation and collaboration, mobile collaboration, one single platform for IP management, scheduling collaboration, a lifelike experience, and a lower total cost of ownership and quick ROI.