Collaborate or Die: Accelerating Change In a Disruptive World
David Prawel

PLM is an intriguing vision indeed. Marketing departments worldwide buzz with the latest claims of the virtues and value of their software and the brave new world of productivity and profit enabled by the PLM vision. But successful PLM has proven elusive. Not only are the processes embodied in the vision highly complex, but successful PLM depends in large part on effective communication and collaboration, which is proving quite hard for manufacturers to do well.

A recent survey of 650 manufacturing executives by Industry Week (www.industryweek.com) highlights the mission-critical nature of collaboration. Sixty-two percent of purchasing executives listed supplier collaboration as the most effective contributor to increased profitability and reduced cost. More than 97% of product development executives selected collaboration with customers as the most effective strategy for meeting customer requirements and bringing innovative products to market. And, greater than 35% chose collaboration with customers as the key strategy to reducing product development time to market. Another new Aberdeen report (www.aberdeen.com) study found that best-in-class companies -- those that meet time-to-market, cost reduction, revenue, and quality targets 80% to 100% of the time -- engage in more forms of collaboration; work with more external partners; and use more specialized collaborative PLM tools -- across the product lifecycle.

Effective collaboration is one of the keys to winning in the business of manufacturing and innovation. Enterprise PLM and PDM business processes are built on 3-D product data. And it remains extremely difficult for the various constituents of a modern manufacturing value chain to share product data. Little wonder then that collaboration is so difficult to get right.

Much has been written about problems sharing CAD data. Studies have estimated that billions of dollars each year are wasted in the automotive business alone due to poor CAD data interoperability. A large portion of the blame goes to geometry problems relating to the CAD modelers themselves. International standards like IGES and STEP have emerged to help alleviate interoperability problems, but these standards are often limited in scope and slow to evolve.

An additional limitation of existing solutions is that they are built for CAD people. Many interoperability problems have nothing to do with CAD models themselves, but present a huge impediment to effective collaboration. People can’t work together if they can’t access and share their product data.

A typical manufacturing organization could have as many as 100 potential users who could benefit from their company’s 3-D product data, but simply can’t use the data. The 3-D data is often available in their PDM system, but the tools either aren’t available or are too difficult to use by people who aren’t trained in CAD. These numbers are likely much higher if one accounts for the extended enterprise, such as suppliers and customers. CAD software is too complex and too expensive for these non-CAD professionals to use. Manufacturers spend a lot of money creating valuable 3-D product data assets, but the clear advantages of using 3-D can’t be realized if the data isn’t available to anyone who could benefit from it.

Many multi-format CAD model “viewers” are available to help non-CAD professionals access and use their 3-D product data. Informative Graphics (www.infograph.com) and Actify (www.actify.com), for example, provide multi-format viewing products that enable non-CAD users to access, view and markup dozens of 3-D formats.

In addition to 3-D format and business process problems, many companies have created significant internal barriers to better interoperability and reuse of 3-D product data. One of the biggest of these lies in the business process—how RFQs are bundled with 3-D models and other docs and submitted, whether an organization’s business processes are mature enough to leverage 3-D product data, and so on. Efficient collaboration requires the right data available to the right people at the right time, in a form they can use it.

For example, very few companies have standardized their design methodologies so all designers use the same design principles, making is easier for their models to be shared and understood by their fellow designers and engineers. Most companies have experienced CAD designers who have developed their favorite best practices, but investigation always reveals 50 best practices for every 50 designers.

Corporate management must exert more leadership to solve this problem. They need to take a page or two from Toyota’s Production System, and understand that one of the biggest reasons Toyota is doing so well today is because it standardized its complete operation. This enables Toyota to then continuously improve its operations and enables its people to work together more effectively.

As well, Delphi Steering developed and standardized its design methodology. Delphi (www.delphi.com/ddm) now makes its design methodology available to third parties in the form of training and certification programs, much like how Six Sigma methodology is available from different service providers worldwide.

Another strategy for improving collaboration is making the data more broadly available and useful to more people in the organization. New lightweight 3-D formats are now available that greatly expand the availability of 3-D product data throughout the extended engineering factory, value chain, and supply chain.

Adobe and Intel with U3-D
Adobe (www.adobe.com) and Intel (www.intel.com) have a strong position in this area. Adobe recently announced Acrobat 3-D, which enables 3-D CAD models to be integrated into their widely used Acrobat products. Adobe plans to capitalize on their success with the PDF format in the broader marketplace — who can argue with tens of millions of users—and their knowledge of how to create a de facto standard. They and Intel are key sponsors and driving forces behind the 3-DIF consortium (www.3dif.com), which appears to have settled on U3-D (Universal 3-D) as an industrial standard.

Adobe leverages the U3-D format in Acrobat 3-D, using 3-D authoring technology from Right Hemisphere (www.righthemisphere.com). Users of the free Acrobat 7.0 PDF reader are able to view 3-D PDF files. Licensing Acrobat 3-D (less than $900) will enable PDF users to markup, annotate, and animate 3-D models in PDF, along with embedding them in editable PDF forms. And toolkits are available from companies like Right Hemisphere that help third-party developers create and embed 3-D PDF capabilities into existing applications. Right Hemisphere also provides plug-ins for end users that automate the process of publishing interactive 3-D PDF files containing such things as animation, annotations and even GD&T, without programming. Click here to download a sample live PDF form. Last spring, Adobe acquired TTF, a French producer of CAD data translation and modeling software, ensuring better CAD data import and 3-D modeling capabilities for Acrobat 3-D, and highlighting Adobe’s seriousness about this market.

Image of interactive 3-D PDF form with GD&T information, courtesy of Right Hemisphere (www.righthemisphere.com). Created with Right Hemisphere's Deep Exploration CAD Edition and PMI Module.

UGS and the JT Open Consortium
The JT format has been in the market for many years, and has recently been repositioned as an open standard for CAD data exchange. It has gained much momentum, even among CAD users who don’t use software from UGS. UGS is the main sponsor of the JT format, and initiated the JT Open Consortium (www.jtopen.org) to help proliferate it in the market.

JT is very flexible and scalable, enabling it to suit a broad range of applications. It can handle geometry with different tessellation levels, manage large assemblies and meta-data such as textures, PMI and GD&T data, and 3-D comments. JT2Go, a free JT viewer, provides functionality similar to other 3-D CAD viewers. And toolkits are available to help third-party developers embed JT into existing applications. JT is a very good choice for a broad range of applications, but as it increases in scope, it also grows in footprint. It may not be long before it ceases to serve the needs of the “lightweight, ease to share” viewing market demand.

Microsoft and Dassault Systèmes —3-DXML
In November 2004 Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) and Dassault Systèmes (www.3ds.com) signed a strategic cooperation agreement setting the stage for a common 3-D data format called 3-DXML, which is supported in CATIA V5R15. This joint effort shows that both software companies assume XML will become the future standard for 3-D product data exchange.

In summer 2004, Dassault Systèmes selected XVL from Lattice Technology (www.lattice3D.com) as the 3-D geometry representation within 3-DXML. XVL provides very highly compressed 3-D modeling capabilities, support of many CAD formats, and compatibility with XML and XML Schemas. 3-DXML is intended for non-CAD users in downstream functions, such as purchasing, maintenance, training and documentation, but currently enjoys only limited third-party support.

Autodesk and DWF
Autodesk (www.autodesk.com) has the largest installed base in the CAD market by far. They released DWF (Design Web Format) several years ago, enabling Autodesk and competitive CAD users to translate 3-D data with free DWF writers and visualize the data with free DWF viewers, which have been available for many years. DWF has primarily supported CAD users collaborating with CAD users. But this may be about to change. Last month, Autodesk released Autodesk Design Review, a new design review workflow tool that purports to make it easier for non-CAD users of DWF or DWG to participate in round-trip collaborative processes and projects. Also of note, UGS and Autodesk recently announced cooperation aimed at mutual support of their JT Direct and DWF formats. It remains to be seen what will come of this partnership.

McKinsey & Co. (www.mckinsey.com) recently did a global survey in which executives identified innovation and the free flow of information to be the primary forces behind the rapid pace of change in global business. Executives cited innovation in product, services and business models as the single factor which most influenced the rate of change. And the second most common response was greater ease in obtaining information and developing knowledge.

There are many issues limiting our ability to collaborate better and make the PLM vision more of a reality. And there are many existing and emerging solutions. But one thing appears clear and consistent – global manufacturers have to get it right, before their competitors do.

David Prawel is founder and president of Longview Advisors, Inc., a global consulting firm focusing on 3-D and CAD software business and applications in the manufacturing industry. www.longviewadvisors.com.