Tag: digital transformation

23 Feb 2021

The Missing Link Between IIoT and Manufacturing Success

Every manufacturer wants to improve their production processes. More and more of them in recent months and years have become convinced that digitalizing operations and making use of industrial internet of things (IIoT) data will be the latest trend to yield results. In fact, IDC reports that IIoT spending in discrete manufacturing will exceed $150 billion by 2022.

The problem is, nearly three-quarters of those manufacturers are going about it wrong.

A new white paper from Dassault Systèmes, “Digital Manufacturing and the IIoT” examines how manufacturers can achieve success with a single platform—and avoid the dreaded pilot-project purgatory.

Where It Goes Wrong

The point of IIoT is to derive actionable insights from a multitude of collected sensor data. But that statement hides a problem: IIoT technologies and systems are independent platforms that collect information from their own sensors and report on it. Without a unified platform gathering data from your various IIoT technologies, all you’re doing is digitalizing your traditional processes—complete with silos and communication problems. You need more.

Unfortunately, according to a recent McKinsey report, only 30% of survey respondents transitioned diverse IIoT deployments into unified, large-scale rollouts. That means most of the rest were stuck in pilot-stage purgatory.

How You Can Get It Right

The missing link in the chain between IIoT data and manufacturing success is the unified platform. The industry has come to recognize the value of unified platforms at the product design level, which allow concepts to be shared, tracked, and discussed with all stakeholders via one unified interface. The next step is understanding the value of a unified IIoT platform that allows manufacturers to access, monitor, and control production processes and offers a consistent way to handle the data challenges you deal with across supply chains.

Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform was created to aggregate and coordinate data streams from the multitude of applications manufacturers rely on. It keeps the focus on the customer’s experience by ensuring availability of manufacturing insights based on accurate information. And because it unifies all data from every stage of the product lifecycle, 3DEXPERIENCE helps you improve internal processes while simultaneously allowing you to deliver better products to market.

For more details on how to ensure your IIoT efforts translate to success in your organization, read “Digital Manufacturing and the IIoT” or contact Adaptive to find out more about how the 3DEXPERIENCE platform can help.

25 Jun 2018

2018 Adaptive User Conference Review

The 2018 Adaptive User Conference is now over. This year’s conference matched customers with industry experts, Adaptive employees and Dassault Systèmes all-stars to share visions and strategies about the future of PLM. We also mixed in some nice networking and dining experiences topped off by a dinner at the cozy Staller Winery. We look forward to planning an expanded event for next year. If you attended the event and want to share your experiences, feel free to comment below or send me an email.

Day One Conference Summary

Kevin Baughey, Dassault
Kevin Baughey, Head of Product Development, ENOVIA brand, Dassault Systèmes

The event was kicked off by Adaptive CEO Eric Doubell who greeted the attendees and discussed how Adaptive works with customers to meet their product lifecycle management needs.

Eric introduced keynote speaker John Hayes, President of Engineering.com who presented the Six Reasons Why Your Product Design Practices Won’t Survive in 2020. John’s an engineer turned journalist who conducts ongoing research into the latest engineering trends. In his opinion, we are experiencing an exciting time in technology. Today’s technology disruptions are bigger than CAD was in the 1990s. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a great example of how technology is disrupting everyday life. For instance, the evolution of miniaturized sensors can instrument any products you make. John went on to discuss Digital Twin as a mainstream strategic technology. He acknowledged Dassault Systèmes for creating a platform which knits technologies together to share a common view of data. John also discussed other leading trends including Augmented/Virtual Reality, Machine Learning, and Products as a Service.

The conference continued with a presentation from Ramesh Haldorai of Dassault Systèmes who discussed how companies are using the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to accelerate the digital design process. Kevin Baughey, Head of Product Development for the ENOVIA brand discussed how to achieve true concurrent engineering through digitalization. Next, Scott Pokriefka of Dassault Systèmes explained how the POWER’BY strategy enables users of CATIA V5, SOLIDWORKS, and other design software connect to and leverage the power of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

After lunch, Bill Ruccio discussed how to develop an effective Quality Management process on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Bill’s presentation was followed by a customer presentation from Luis Dominguez of Atlas Copco and how they’re implementing quality processes in their PLM environment. Ramesh Haldorai and Kevin Baughey followed with a joint presentation on Modeling and Simulation Mechatronics Behavior. Kevin went on to discuss how to measure process effectiveness using ENOVIA PLM analytics.

The day wrapped up with a lively roundtable discussion about PLM cloud implementation challenges. How to deal with customizations and developing PLM deployment roadmaps were both popular discussion topics.

That evening we enjoyed a visit to the Staller Winery. This quaint, family-run winery hosted a wonderful wine pairing dinner.

Day Two Summary

Day two kicked off with a keynote presentation by Razorleaf Chief Architect Jonathan Scott. He presented an excellent overview of how to start your model-based enterprise and digital thread journey. Jonathan defined the model-based enterprise and what a digital thread should be. He then went on to discuss how companies could implement these digitalization strategies.

Jonathan’s keynote was followed by Matt Derov of the SIMULIA brand who presented ways to manage simulation data and processes. Kevin Baughey joined us again for a presentation about linking design intent to the plant floor and discussed the differences between engineering bill of materials (EBOM) and manufacturing bill of material (MBOM) processes.

Representatives of Oceaneering discussed how they were able to deploy the 3DEXPERIENCE platform across their global engineering organization. They were followed by Dave Pimblett of the Dassault Systèmes DELMIA brand who demonstrated how to expand the model-based enterprise to manufacturing operations and scheduling.

Mike Koepp of Adaptive wrapped up the conference with a talk on ways to link the physical world to your digitalized world using 3D printing and 3D scanning.

Demonstration of CATIA Virtual Reality SystemConference attendees also had the chance to try their hands with the new IHP Virtual Reality system from Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA brand. Florian Bardet and Maria Sullivan of Adaptive demonstrated the workstation-based system. Customers were given the chance to immerse themselves into a 3D model using VR headsets and wands. Jason Rose of Markforged demonstrated the Mark II 3D printer by printing sample parts with their innovative ONYX material.

Overall, it was a great conference. The two-day event encouraged open discussions between users and product experts. We also had a nice opportunity to network in a relaxed environment and explore the scenic Wisconsin countryside. We’ll soon begin planning for next year. I hope that you can join us.

30 Jun 2017

Part 1: Understanding PLM, PDM, and More

We’ve all heard the buzzwords: digital transformation, product lifecycle, product data, PLM, PDM, systems engineering, models-based engineering and so on. It can be confusing, trying to figure out which technology or trend will have the biggest impact on the business. It’s also easy to imagine you’re missing out on a new, hot trend. But before we worry about whether we’re ahead of the curve or behind it, let’s be clear exactly what we’re talking about.

Defining Terms

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) as a term has been around since the 1950s—it is not a new concept, but recently, more organizations are looking at this process as a place for improvement. A product lifecycle is simply the stages a product goes through from the initial concept to end of life—whether that’s a complex manufactured product like a rocket or a simpler product such as a house or a winter coat.

Product lifecycle management is the set of processes and/or procedures used to manage all of the product’s information throughout the lifecycle—from inception and planning; to design, engineering, and manufacture; to service and disposal.

At Adaptive, we have defined the product lifecycle to start with the digital design process and continues into the physical side of manufacturing for prototyping, testing, first article inspection, and quality control.

Is PDM also PLM?

But what about product data management (PDM)? Where does that fit?

As the words imply, PDM involves managing the information about a product, from models and drawings to bills of materials (BOMs) and more. But PDM shouldn’t be equated with PLM. PDM is about the data involved in managing all the data around the development of a product – product specifications, version control and more. PLM calls on the data in PDM to manage the entire digital design process.

Systems Engineering

Systems engineering is also sometimes confused with PLM, but that focuses on how to design and manage systems (which almost always include products). It’s the overall organization and oversight of a system, as well as the people and processes that ensure all aspects of a system are considered and integrated into a whole. PLM, which focuses on everything about the product, can sometimes help automate design processes related to systems engineering. But generally speaking, systems engineering has a broader scope, as it also includes the coordination of teams, logistics, and other responsibilities outside of the product stream.

Models-based Systems Engineering

Within systems engineering is the concept of models-based system engineering (MBSE). MBSE establishes a “model” to analyze and document key aspects of the systems engineering life cycle which includes system requirements, analysis, design, and validation and verification activities. Similar to a PLM, it is intended to improve communications within engineering teams and other stakeholders, it provides early identification of requirements issues, improves specification of allocated requirements to hardware and software resulting in fewer errors during integration and testing and provides requirements traceability, reduces project risks and lowers costs, and more.

Digital Transformation

The idea behind digital transformation is to establish a process for organizations to track the entire cross-functional cycle of product development capturing and integrating key data points to establish traceability and manage how a product is conceived, created, tested, and brought to market. In essence, the data trail creates a “digital thread” that captures the evolution of that product.  Of course, this doesn’t happen all at once and needs to be taken in discrete steps that build success upon success.  In some cases a digital thread will extend beyond the walls into the supply chain, this is the ultimate nirvana. However, many organizations are not quite ready for that just yet and it is more talk than anything. However, the concept of establishing a digital thread goes hand in hand with PLM and systems engineering strategies.  The transformation part happens when there is a more collaborative approach in an organization when everyone is working off the same data and making better business decisions. We will be writing more on this topic later.

In Conclusion

As you can see, product development covers a broad spectrum in an enterprise as it tends to touch many functional departments as work gets completed across an organization. In some cases a business problem on the surface may not “appear” to be a PLM issue, but in many cases due to collaboration needs, managing product changes, and tracking all documentation it quickly becomes something a PLM strategy can affect.

Stay tuned for our next post where we will dive a little deeper into Understanding PLM Fundamentals…