Talent Spotlight
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We’re excited to announce a new member to vdR’s PLM Practice - Adam Secousse
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Trip Report from the 2017 Aras Community Event (ACE)
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It’s Tuesday morning, March 21st and the Aras Community Event (ACE) in Nashville is getting underway. Attendees mingled about for breakfast, and early conversation as the opening keynote kickoff was about to begin. As you walk into the meeting center, it’s immediately noticeable that, unlike previous ACE seating arrangements, the seating was organized around roundtables instead of rows of chairs. Aras’ leadership and partners were mixed in throughout the tables and engaging the attendees.
Read MoreThe vdR Group Sponsors and Exhibits at ACE 2017
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If you are starting a new PLM initiative or replacing an old one, thinking about moving from PDM to PLM, or growing your existing Aras PLM implementation ACE 2017 is the place for you. Who attends ACE events? Whether you’re a business executive at a large enterprise, a manager at a mid-sized company, or the IT pro at a start-up, you’ll get valuable information and the insight necessary to achieve success with Aras
Applying the Agile Project Management Methodology
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PPLM: Ben, you recently participated in a significant Aras PLM implementation effort that spanned most of this past year. The Agile project management technique was used. Give us a net-net of what it meant to use this approach. Ben: Yes, it was a significant effort. In fact, I can’t imagine not having used the Agile approach. For this project, the so-called “water fall” approach would have been a disaster.
Read MoreCan PLM Measurably Increase Revenues?
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As a business owner for 30 years, I’ve developed a few guiding principles about making business decisions. One of these principles is based on understanding the impact of a decision on the P&L, and visa-versa, identifying what proactive steps I can take to affect changes to the P&L. A recently published white paper by Accenture parallels this idea (see next article below). It speaks to the benefits of PLM by highlighting its effect on time to market, reuse, scrap, quality, etc. It is informative, yet it prompted me to be more definitive. Can we map the contributions of PLM to the P&L … and what would that look like? So, I decided to take a stab at this.
Read MoreWhat’s the Value of CPQ?
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In part 1 of this series, we characterized the value of CPQ. We referenced an article that appeared in Forbes magazine, which did a great job of identifying the functional and operational benefits that a company could gain from CPQ. However, we wanted to drill into this subject further and translate these benefits into specific metrics. As the expression asserts … “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” To do this, we have identified five key performance indicators (KPIs) that we believe represent the essence of CPQ. Each is readily accessible and can be extended to develop an ROI.
Read MoreThe Business of Engineering and CPQ
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The spirit of the Business of Engineering is to focus on broader strategic issues. The steadily increasing complexity of product development fuels the need for coping with products developed across multiple disciplines while driving profitable outcomes. So when we received the question, “why not run CPQ as a standalone application?” it seemed like an ideal time to integrate CPQ considerations into the Business of Engineering theme.
Read MoreLiberate Revit Data through “Intelligent Parts” to Drive Company-Wide Efficiency
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You missed the webinar and that's OK. Watch the recording. The rigid and siloed structure of Autodesk’s Revit data has been a long-time source of frustration for companies in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) space. Revit projects and family data rarely “play nice” with enterprise-wide solutions such as ERP, product lifecycle management (PLM), or even simple document management. While many AEC companies have invested heavily in enterprise solutions, it has proved difficult to seamlessly harmonize with the Revit environment.
Read MoreWhat is CPQ and Why Should it Matter?
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CPQ helps companies configure product offerings, price them and produce quotes and proposals. It is functionality used by sales people and can be extended to customers via a self-serve portal. Ultimately, it is about minimizing the quoting effort and accurately conveying the specific requirements for downstream processes. As can be seen in the acronym itself, CPQ involves multiple disciplines. The elements of a quote include …
You Can’t Scale the Business without PLM
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Structuring Data for Reuse and Establishing Repeatable Processes - Look at the diagram below, a generic data structure that highlights that part and product data are comprised of numerous components. What’s not shown are the ongoing changes that occur. Parts change along with associated documentation, specifications, calculations, and so on. Hence, there are revisions and rolled up versions. In reality, this should be a three-dimensional image that reflects changes over time.
Read MoreWrangling Engineering Change Orders
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Earlier this month, Desktop Engineering published an article by Brian Albright that provides a refreshing perspective on a familiar topic – engineering change. Albright suggests that many of the strategies and techniques used to manage engineering change (EC) are quickly becoming obsolete due to increasing product complexity and market demands. While this concept is not new, the article looks at the root causes of this issue and explores actionable solutions. The urgency of the problem is highlighted by thoughts and comments from industry experts and day-to-day EC practitioners. These perspectives represent a range of organizations, including Arena, M-Files, Omnify, Oracle, Synergis and others. It quickly becomes clear that a new approach to information management – whether it be PDM, ECM, or PLM – is key to modernizing EC. However, Albright is careful to avoid picking sides. Despite this impartial analysis, PLM seems to break away from the pack.
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