The Internet and Web technology enables users to work together more effectively within the walls of a company, distributed facilities are able to coordinate their efforts, OEMs and subcontractors can share information across the supply chain, and companies can communicate efficiently with partners throughout the extended enterprise.

Collaboration between these various elements of the manufacturing organization is becoming a critical capability that can make or break companies. The need for collaboration is made particularly acute by growing trends toward globalization, decentralization, virtual enterprises, and increasing reliance on supply chains not only to produce parts but also to develop designs to meet the OEMs performance specifications.

Traditionally, the huge amount of information associated with product design is stored and controlled with conventional product data management (PDM) systems, which are directed at managing documents, drawings, and other product design files primarily within engineering departments. These types of systems are used generally in archiving files, accessing data, and controlling revision levels as engineers proceed through the design cycle.

PDM Technology Broadens

Recently, PDM has broadened to include the use of other technologies including web interfaces, portals, 3D visualization, and XML-based data exchange capabilities that facilitate tremendous levels of collaboration, both inside and outside of companies.

These collaborative tools provide an effective approach to defining and managing work processes, coordinate activities, and enable greater communication between workers, groups, departments, and enterprises. Driven by advanced capabilities for web-based communications and workflow management, the tools move beyond limited use in the design department to an enterprise process technology that enables companies to obtain the far-reaching business gains. In this way, PDM becomes a "collaboration platform" in global manufacturing enterprises, allowing users in distributed locations to readily access and route critical product development information. In supply chains in particular, new collaborative systems link OEMs, subcontractors, vendors, partners, and others that make up these virtual enterprises.

The overall e-commerce and e-business movement sweeping through industries has spawned the use of new terminology to describe these initiatives. CIMdata Inc. describes this newly expanded market as collaborative Product Definition management (cPDm). Others have adopted the term collaborative product commerce (CPC), which appears to be gaining acceptance in the market.

Such initiatives have gained considerable attention. However, e-commerce has not gained the widespread acceptance many have envisioned. Many organizations have been slow to implement these e-commerce programs, with the time, resources, and expertise required for the technology seeming to be beyond the reach of some, especially small and medium-size companies. Also a number of companies have found that the many e-commerce solutions lack true collaborative capabilities for complex product development.

Of course, these organizations nearly all use the Internet for e-mail between individuals and the web for researching information. But establishing a formalized, collaborative system for exchanging data, managing engineering changes, and coordinating information flow has often been beyond their means, since traditional PDM and related systems typically cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase, may take months or even years to get up and running, and usually require extensive programming to configure for a company’s processes and procedures. Many organizations thus were locked out of collaborative e-commerce because they lacked the time and money to plow into innovative systems.

Newer web-centric collaborative product development solutions change this direction by providing convenient and economical tools for rapidly implementing collaborative e-commerce. Using simple web interfaces and running on Windows, the systems are not only affordable but also easy to install and use, with users becoming productive quickly. Because the software can be implemented so quickly, companies can start with a few seats and then expand the number of systems incrementally across the enterprise.

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Dassault Systèmes has strategically committed to the Product-Process-Resource (PPR) model as the foundation for all its future applications. At its core, features represent the finest level of detail for design and manufacturing intent. PPR includes a set of mechanisms intended to link features from CAD/CAM into manufacturing-process planning across multiple configurations; and eventually with high-level business priorities like portfolio and platform management as well. Dassault Systèmes’ Product-Process-Resource model targets the linking of feature modeling to support knowledge engineering, relational design, and lifecycle modeling – a major undertaking intended to improve customer business practices.

In the architecture underlying PPR, a feature can be any object with attributes that explain its role in a given product model – not just geometric form features or even more general concepts of geometry and history grouping. The Dassault Systèmes’ approach moves information that in most CAD modelers appears only implicitly via application code, into explicit data structures.

Given adequate time for full maturation, the approach embodied by PPR will likely revolutionize product design and manufacturing by making it possible for smaller organizations to master highly complex design problems and meet the market with a level of diversity and "mass craftsmanship" unheard of today. In its full realization, the Product-Process-Resource (PPR) model will dramatically simplify the design and manufacture of discrete products.

While other vendors have emphasized feature-based design modeling, none have yet moved as far as Dassault Systèmes towards a comprehensive feature-based foundation underlying a wide range of enterprise applications. It remains unclear, however, how long Dassault Systèmes will be able to maintain its current lead, which was established relatively early in the technology cycle, as competitors respond.

Although hurdles lie in its path, Dassault Systèmes’ strategy should prove successful in serving the comprehensive – and relatively specialized – demands of engineering, design and manufacturing simulation, within the bounds of a single manufacturer and its closest partners. This is clearly a growth opportunity for Dassault.

Dassault, however, has yet to fully capitalize on the emerging and rapidly evolving opportunities of product commerce. Rather than focusing from the start on the external accessibility and cross-firewall collaboration so important for the interaction of companies partnering dynamically, PPR initially will provide its greatest contribution with heavyweight or tight integration internally within companies. Early next year, Dassault Systèmes will take an important first step towards making PPR play in the supply chain with the release of XML-based PPR modeling, which will make PPR more open by defining models in XML and gradually opening the schema to external use. Further in the future, Dassault Systèmes also plans extensions that directly target lightweight collaboration and exchange-based development environments.

This report is available to Sponsors of the collaborative Design Creation and Validation (DCV) and Product Definition and Commerce (PDC) programs from D. H. Brown Associates, Inc. Those interested in receiving the full, seventeen page and joining these programs should contact Ken Mewes, Vice President – Marketing, at kmewes@dhbrown.com or 914-937-4302, ext. 272.

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