This case study shows how Pentair’s PLM Systems Manager, Carlos Moreno drove a highly successful PLM effort globally across the company’s multiple business units by recognizing realistic priorities for the program from the start. To systematically reduce risks, early planning concentrated on the target of collaboration, to set a realistic scope and to establish careful phasing. Implementation benefited from a framework addressing four priorities for decision making — operational excellence, functional alignment, cost containment, and technology advancement.

The success of the program establishes PLM as a strategic tool that enables innovation, extending payoff well beyond cost savings, process, and knowledge reuse. For Pentair the far greater payoff from the implementation was developing a clear understanding of common process for each of its business units. Eighty percent of the benefits flow from the common shared definition, simplification, and collaborative communication of development processes... (click title above for more.)

Number of pages in report, 12.

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New interface approaches and some insightful new technology are stimulating a rebirth of "Direct Geometry Editing." What had in the past been called explicit geometry and thought to be passé with the advent of parametric history-based CAD more than two decades ago is back with a vengeance.

To be accurate – the rebirth is not so much in the creation of model geometry, but in editing techniques used to modify existing data, whether parametrically generated or not. In 2007, there is a resurgence of direct geometry edit functions being offered across the industry in almost every major CAD application. The positives and negatives of when to use one approach over the other, especially in a CAD application that remains fundamentally a parametric history-based modeler, will likely become a raging topic throughout the industry over the next year. Number of pages in report, 5.

Simulation Data and Process Management, or SDPM, represents a critical element of a broader strategy that must address process management and optimization, multi-disciplinary collaboration, and the full integration of simulation software applications in product development.

CPDA conducted an in-depth analysis of the SDPM offerings from Altair, CoMeT Solutions, ESI, Fluent, MSC, and Siemens UGS and evaluated their approaches. The review first differentiated the capabilities of their frameworks during both the conceptual and detailed design phases and then evaluated their specific simulation data management aspects. Overall, vendors have made significant progress in providing advanced tools for simulation data and process management. The unrecognized chaos of simulation data scattered across individual desktops should be fully organized with an effective SDPM approach. Number of pages in report, 21.

Integrated TotalBOM management from Class Technology relies on a single database that extends to all aspects of product definition, from conceptual design to the details of manufacturing steps and material routing. In general, Japanese OEMs start targeting costs in conceptual design; they are then tracked jointly with suppliers.

Toyota, for example, begins with function specifications that define the marketing and product concepts in the Specification Management System, or SMS. Indeed, in Japan, the integrated BOM in general targets different functions across the lifecycle, with particular emphasis on the full reconciliation of design/engineering with manufacturing as essential. By comparison, most firms in the U.S. concentrated far more narrowly on design functions, and relatively recently extended their efforts to address the full integration with manufacturing. Number of pages in report, 3.

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