The importance of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) inside your company

PLM is the process chosen by companies to manage the lifecycle of their products. Lifecycles are usually divided into following phases: creation, introduction, growth, maturity and decline. Ranging from how a company manufactures a product to how it markets it, lifecycles are crucial for business strategy and for leveraging Kotler’s famous 4 Ps (product, price, place and promotion).

Originally posted on Cadlog blog

How Siemens helps customers manage lifecycles successfully

Siemens’ software for product lifecycle management is called Teamcenter. Teamcenter was originally created by UGS Corporation, a company which later became part of Siemens Digital Industries Software.

By connecting people and processes across functional silos, the system allows companies to solve all the complex challenges that occur during product creation in a quicker and more effective way, therefore facilitating success.

Its intuitive interface allows people from a broad spectrum of the organization to take part in the various aspects of product development more easily than ever.

Let’s take a look at 4 important aspects that can help you take control of product data and processes:

• BOM Management. A bill of materials (BOM) is a list of materials and directives required to manage products or services. When departments maintain individual, separate BOM definitions, it can lead to blurry data, less visibility, time delays and costly errors. By choosing Teamcenter, companies can put a BOM management strategy in place that enables a single product definition for all the employees who interact with it.
• Change Management. An efficient change management is crucial for product innovation. By providing a clear overview of the teams, data size and company processes, Teamcenter allows you to analyze the scenario holistically and plan accordingly.
• Document Management. Documentation is expensive to produce and often has a very long life inside a company – sometimes even longer than the product itself. When done right and in accordance to the needs of the service business, product documentation can become quite profitable. Teamcenter comes with tools that help complex teams during the creation of specifications, reports, 2D/3D illustrations, spreadsheets and test results.
• NX Integration. Formerly known as “unigraphics”, NX is an advanced high-end CAD/CAM/CAE. Thanks to being integrated with Teamcenter, all the available CAD/CAM/CAE resources can be seamlessly incorporated in a single PLM environment, allowing companies to focus on their most precious asset: product knowledge.

 

The Aston Martin Red Bull Racing Success Story

Let’s take a look at how Aston Martin Red Bull Racing successfully leveraged Siemens’ technology to maintain competitive advantage on the Formula One racetrack. As we can imagine, the main focus of a Formula 1 team during the racing season is continual improvement. This effort starts on the track, continues in the pit and ends behind the scenes where the design, simulation, manufacturing and assembly phases take shape.

Aston Martin Red Bull Racing has decided to put Teamcenter and NX at the center of their engineering endeavors. During races, a high volume of data needs to be analyzed in order to extract useful elements for improvement. These elements then go through a process of virtual development prior to eventually manufacturing them physically. As the first time that such upgrades are put into practice is often during the actual race, it’s important to be able to assemble the car efficiently the first time.

First, NX is used to develop the various parts. Then, the parts are tested with the team’s CFD solution or in the wind tunnel. Finally, the parts go through a final phase of design and validation. All this is done inside Teamcenter’s managed environment.

According to Alan Peasland, Head of Technical Partnerships: “For us, the innovation process is relentless, unyielding and publicly demonstrated on the track each race weekend. As an innovation partner, Siemens Digital Industries Software assists us in building on our existing knowledge and technological expertise and goes one step further in our search for performance and reliability. In this industry, success can depend on a fraction of a second.”