PLM and APQP – How PLM Supports this Key Auto Industry Initiative
CIMdata has recently completed a study detailing the role that Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) plays in supporting and optimizing the Advanced Product Quality Process (APQP) framework and the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) - defined Production Part Approval Process (PPAP) and other Quality Management System processes.
The execution and management of APQP and the associated compliance documentation required to meet ISO and OEM quality standards can be overwhelming. A development environment based on PLM business processes to manage APQP, PPAP and other automotive industry specific business requirements has been shown to deliver substantial business benefits including on-time and on-budget new product launches and an improved ability to manage an entire vehicle product development program and all of the associated information requirements.
Unlike standalone APQP tools, using PLM to manage product development processes enables companies to create single source of all product definition information, linking the APQP data to all of the product definition data and manage the processes used to create, manage, report on and share information company-wide. This enables suppliers and OEMs to take full advantage of intellectual assets and ensure that they practicing highly effective collaboration.
The CIMdata report, entitled “PLM and APQP – How PLM Supports this Key Auto Industry Initiative.” If you are interested in reading the entire report, you may download a copy by clicking here.
Frost & Sullivan Lauds Dassault Systèmes for its Pioneering Technological Innovations in Digital Manufacturing
Frost & Sullivan selected Dassault Systèmes and DELMIA as the recipient of the 2007 Company of the Year Award within the North American product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions space.
Recognized as the leader in the global PLM solutions market, the company is known for its pioneering technological innovations in digital manufacturing that help customers innovate throughout the product lifecycle.
“Innovations at Dassault Systèmes have been inspired by consistent focus to provide value-added solutions and services to the end-users and have taken on new meaning with the introduction of DELMIA Automation solutions,” notes Frost & Sullivan Industry Manager Kishan M. Bhat. “DELMIA is the premier brand of Dassault Systèmes for digital manufacturing solutions, focused on two unique software applications that streamline manufacturing processes, DELMIA PLM and DELMIA Automation.”
The solutions assist industries where the optimization of manufacturing processes is critical, including automotive, aerospace, fabrication and assembly, electrical and electronics, consumer goods, plant, and shipbuilding sectors.
“DELMIA Automation has strengthened the core of the Dassault Systèmes PLM offering,” states Bhat. “With this innovative automation solution, the company has taken digital manufacturing to new heights by integrating the mechanical definition of the factory with the control logic built in the programmable logic controllers (PLC).”
Process and manufacturing industries are leveraging these solutions to increase their throughput and obtain advanced visibility into the process and manufacturing lifecycle on a virtual commissioning platform.
The DELMIA Automation virtual commissioning solution enables greater efficiency in validation and the control engineer can leverage the virtual model of the machine or cell to explore as many ‘what if?’ scenarios that are otherwise extremely difficult to validate.
“A critical success factor for the market adoption of virtual commissioning is the speed and ease-of-use in building the virtual environment,” remarks Bhat. “DELMIA Automation’s re-useable smart devices allow any company to build a library of smart devices that describe the behavior of a device, without the need to re-write that behavior. As a result, less time is spent in building the virtual environment while using pre-validated components at the same time.”
The entire DELMIA suite of applications comprises leading digital manufacturing solutions that integrate with the PLM solutions from Dassault Systèmes, like CATIA, ENOVIA, and SIMULIA.
Leading manufacturers in the automotive, aerospace, shipbuilding, consumer-packaged goods (CPG) and hi-tech industries have deployed the PLM offering from Dassault Systèmes and have continuously raised the bar on operational excellence.
The company also provides efficient integration with enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions to complete the business lifecycle management.
Each year Frost & Sullivan presents this Award to the company that has demonstrated excellence within its industry based on numerous factors including business development, competitive strategy and market leadership. The Award recognizes outstanding management, consistent growth, and positive social and economic impact on local and national communities and customers.
Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.
About Frost & Sullivan
Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company, has been partnering with clients to support the development of innovative strategies for more than 40 years. The company's industry expertise integrates growth consulting, growth partnership services, and corporate management training to identify and develop opportunities. Frost & Sullivan serves an extensive clientele that includes Global 1000 companies, emerging companies, and the investment community by providing comprehensive industry coverage that reflects a unique global perspective and combines ongoing analysis of markets, technologies, econometrics, and demographics. For more information, visit www.awards.frost.com.
Contact:
Stacie Jones
210.247.2450
Stacie.jones@frost.com
Dassault Systèmes Named The PLM Leader In 2006 CIMdata Market Analysis
DS Named Overall PLM Direct Revenue and Mindshare Leader; Shows Highest Growth in cPDm
Dassault Systèmes recently announced it ranked first in direct and mindshare PLM revenues in the 2006 CIMdata survey of comprehensive PLM companies. Ann Arbor, Michigan-headquartered CIMdata is one of the world’s leading PLM consultancies.
“Dassault Systèmes is the 2006 overall PLM revenue leader among the top tier of comprehensive PLM companies – the players that customers typically acknowledge are driving the market,” said Ed Miller, president of CIMdata. “The company has made many strategic moves over the last few years to expand their PLM offerings as customer needs have evolved. As our analysis shows, the market has noticed by rewarding Dassault Systèmes with very high recognition, growing revenues, and a strong market share.”
CIMdata’s PLM Market Analysis calculated Dassault Systèmes “market footprint” at $2.9 billion, or over $800 million more than the nearest competitor. The report defines market footprint as the company’s direct and partner-generated PLM revenues. The PLM Market Analysis also ranked Dassault Systèmes as the leader in direct revenues at $1.5 billion, or almost $300 million more than the nearest competitor. The report also ranked DS first in revenue of the PLM Mindshare leaders. Mindshare leaders are the companies with the largest and most innovative PLM implementations, and those perceived by customers as thought and technology leaders. In addition to Dassault Systèmes’ revenue and mindshare leadership, CIMdata’s analysis indicates Dassault Systèmes grew its collaborative product definition management revenues by 59 percent, the fastest among its main competitors fueled by both internal growth and its acquisition of MatrixOne.
“Perhaps the most gratifying part of this report is seeing that Dassault Systèmes is the company most often associated with the term PLM,” said Philippe Forestier, Dassault Systèmes’ executive vice president, Network Selling, and the company’s leading executive in the Americas. “Not only is our share of the collaborative product definition management sub segment growing faster than any of our competitors, but CIMdata also documented a 10.4 percent increase in overall PLM spending in 2006. We are happy to know that the market Dassault Systèmes leads has such momentum.”
The PLM revenue figures include the main functional areas of PLM, from design authoring to enterprise collaboration to digital manufacturing, plus complementary applications from companies and their partner networks. To rank among PLM mindshare leaders, companies must have a comprehensive product and service offering that covers the entire product development cycle and supporting business processes.
Virtual Commissioning to Thoroughly Validate PLC Code Quickly & Easily with DELMIA Automation
A Business Transformation for Controls Engineering
What is Virtual Commissioning? Virtual Commissioning allows one to debug the code in an actual Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) that will be on the shop floor, weeks or months before the integration of all the devices – from tooling, robots, clamps, safety devices and electrical to hydraulics and pneumatics – is complete.
By building a virtual environment in DELMIA Automation that is the exact reproduction of the logical behavior of a machine or a production cell and being able to see this virtual cell come to life as it interacts with the PLC, a control engineer can save weeks off the debugging process. In addition to being more efficient in the validation, the control engineer can leverage the virtual model of the machine or cell to explore as many “what if?” scenarios that are otherwise very difficult to validate.
What if one robot is running slow? What happens when the line transitions from product A to product B? Weeks before integration of all components and systems happen, the control engineer can test how the machine will react to an operator hitting the emergency stop, test how the machine will start again after the emergency stop to resume full production rate.
One critical success factor for market adoption of Virtual Commissioning is the speed and ease-of-use to build the virtual environment in V5. DELMIA Automation’s re-useable Smart Devices allow any company to build a library of smart devices that describe the behavior of a device and never have to re-write that behavior. This means less time spent in building the virtual environment while at the same time using pre-validated components.
After having used the virtual model to reduce the ramp-up time of a production line it can be used in the future to validate maintenance operations and change-overs. Prior to replacing a machine in a line that is in production, a control engineer can validate the PLC code on Thursday rather than having to wait, as it is often the case today, until late Sunday afternoon when the machine is finally available. Then working all night Sunday prior to production start on Monday morning.
But even before the application of DELMIA Automation for maintenance, the behavior of the production system in V5 together with the PLC is so realistic that it can be used for risk free and timely operator training. After having done the operating procedures of the machine in V5 you have the feeling you can walk up to the real machine confidently start it up.
Summary of Benefits:
- Validate all your diagnostic code without being on the shop floor
- Visualize and validate the process, driven by the PLC code prior to integration
- Validate as many “what if?” scenarios as needed and fully debug controls
- Train operators on all the “what if?” scenarios
- Works with any PLC on the market such as Schneider-Electric, Allen Bradley, etc.
- Simplicity and ease-of-use allow a wider usage and adoption of the technology
- Helps achieve a significant reduction in risk and start-up time
- Provides virtual production training with simulation
- Reviews safety aspects in 3D
- Benefits all manufacturing industries
Figure 1: Validating the production performance with the actual PLC and DELMIA Automation
RAND Worldwide™ Launches “Delivering on the Promise of PLM”
Web seminar series highlights knowledge-based tool use for CATIA process optimization
On May 17, 2007 RAND Worldwide launched Delivering on the Promise of PLM a comprehensive CATIA V5 Web seminar series.
Delivering on the Promise of PLM is a sequence of five weekly one-hour sessions that highlight the use of knowledge-based tools to optimize CATIA V5 processes. Each weekly presentation is delivered by one of RAND’s highly experienced Professional Services team members, combining more than 100 years of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) expertise. The series discusses a variety of topics. It starts with the most basic implementation of common knowledge in part and product design and progresses toward the more sophisticated skills and tools that users need as the design moves through analysis, manufacturing and delivery:
May 17, 2007:
Part 1 - Creating Knowledge-Based Designs, presented by Robert Garrison
May 24, 2007:
Part 2 - Analyzing Knowledge-Based Designs, presented by Iouri Apanovitch
May 31, 2007:
Part 3 - Manufacturing Knowledge-Based Designs, presented by Wes Russell
June 7, 2007:
Part 4 - Distributing Embedded Knowledge, presented by Christian Isaacs
June 14, 2007:
Part 5 - Leveraging Customer Knowledge, presented by Joseph Konecny
Each seminar is followed by a live question and answer discussion, where RAND’s expert speakers are available to a call-in audience.
“This series offers value to any organization, small or large, that is using CATIA V5 and looking for ways to benefit from automating some of its part or product design processes,” comments Joe Oswald, Executive Vice President, PLM Operations North America and Europe, RAND Worldwide. “Our audience will have access to decades of experience, from some of the industry’s most knowledgeable PLM experts who will provide the necessary information users require to fully leverage design data for continuous product improvement.”
Formatted specifically for a target audience of CATIA V5 management and end users, the online seminar series combines a presentation format with real world approaches to enhancing product development. The series discusses early modeling decisions to leverage design data for the future, streamlining and standardizing FEA processes to optimize designs, extending the delivery of data beyond traditional drawings and reports, and capturing and reusing information for continuous product improvement.
Oswald adds, “The objective of the series is to provide every attendee with the essential knowledge and skills they need to introduce automation and data optimization into their CATIA V5 environments.”
To learn more about Delivering on the Promise of PLM, to view a previously recorded session or to register for upcoming events, please visit www.rand.com/promise.
Enser Corporation: Engineering – Manufacturing - Staffing
60 Years of Solving Tough Engineering Problems!
Founded in 1947, ENSER Corporation started as a tool design company designing jigs, fixtures, gauges, dies, and special machines. Over time, we naturally progressed into product design, conversion of manual drawings to CAD, Finite Element Analysis and Turnkey services.
ENSER offers unparalled expertise, commitment and "peace of mind" that when you call with a question, ENSER will be there to assist. We assist in product design, development, and analysis of all necessary manufacturing equipment and tooling. We visit hundreds of manufacturing facilities each year, helping clients in the development of manufacturing equipment and processes of their respective products. At ENSER, we offer a keen insight into how different companies attack similar problems using the latest technology and quality assurance programs.
As a company, we have made an enormous investment in technology to better serve our clients' needs. We are a leader in the implementation of the latest software, workstations, and communication devices. The advances in Internet technology allow us to send and receive information on demand. This provides us easy access to our clients' computers to update bills of material as well as check production schedules and the history of previous designs.
Our clients come from a diverse group of industries: automotive, power generation, food products, industrial products, pulp and paper, consumer products, machine tools, medical products, chemical processing, and electronics. We have helped a wide variety of companies increase their productivity and reduce set-up times using modular designs, quick change tooling, and ergonomic workstations.
We have steadily increased the services we can deliver to our clients and offer consulting, temporary or permanent contract staffing, CATIA support, and CAD independent design support.
Our latest expansion was in the area of Document Management, Product Lifecycle Management and Dynamic Publishing. We are dedicated to support these areas and have in house application engineers well versed in implementing all of the products we provide.
If you would like to know more about Enser, please feel free to contact us at 856-829-5522 Ex. 30 to request information or discuss your requirements.
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