The 3D computed-aided design (CAD) world continues to be co-opetitive. Many of the situations where fierce competitors end up using each other’s tools in their competing products are circumstantial, i.e., those products were using tools supplied by a software company before it was acquired by a competitor. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series started with the assertion that product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions are becoming increasingly important to enterprises in a strategic sense. However, not all PLM products are created equal, especially in light of their different origins. Read the rest of this entry »

Tecnomatix became part of the Siemens PLM family of products in 2007, having been created in 1983 in Israel to offer manufacturing process management (MPM) solutions. It acquired Unicam Software (a provider of software to manage the production of printed circuit boards) in 1999 and USDATA (a provider of the production control solution FactoryLink and manufacturing execution system Xfactory) in 2003. In 2007, USG Corporation acquired Tecnomatix and combined its products with their MPM solutions.

Version 10 of Tecnomatix was released in 2011, and Siemens PLM recently announced the release of version 10.1 at their annual user conference for the Americas, Siemens PLM Connection. During the event, I had the chance to talk with Shaun Ennis, strategic communications and analyst relations (AR) manager, as well as with other Siemens PLM executives. Read the rest of this entry »

SOFTWARE SELECTIONS AND GO-LIVES

Los Angeles County selects SAS to provide analytics services and applications
Industry tags: BI/business analytics
“Los Angeles County will use SAS predictive analytics and data mining solutions as well as SAS BI solutions to fight organized fraud within the Department of Public and Social Services. Uncovering more than 200 probable fraud cases = BI and business analytics at their best.”—Jorge García, TEC BI Analyst

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SOFTWARE SELECTIONS & DEPLOYMENTS

European manufacturer of construction chemicals selects IFS Applications
Industry tags: Process manufacturing, mining
“Polish corporation Atlas Group, which operates 18 business entities and 5 mines in Poland and internationally, has selected IFS Applications as its corporate-level ERP system. The first areas slated for implementation will be financials, distribution, manufacturing, maintenance, controlling elements, consolidation, trade management-commerce portals, WMS, and document and quality management. Atlas Group is a typical “sweet spot” IFS client, as the product provides good functional support, particularly in process manufacturing and mining.”—Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Research Analyst

• TEC profile for IFS Applications
• Compare process ERP software now!
• Compare mining software now!
• Press release

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Part 1 of this blog series started with the assertion that product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions are becoming increasingly important to enterprises, to a strategic degree. However, not all PLM products are created equal, especially in light of their different origins. Read the rest of this entry »

In this day and age of globalization, ever-shorter new product introduction (NPI) cycles and overall product lifecycles, partner collaboration, and whatnot, product lifecycle management (PLM) software solutions have lately increased their strategic significance to enterprises. In his recent Forbes blog post contribution, PTC’s CEO Jim Heppelmann touts PLM as a new path to shareholder value. He argues that the PLM repository of data should be an enterprise system of record rather than mundane transactional enterprise resource planning (ERP) data. Read the rest of this entry »

In the deluge of news revolving mainly around the Big Five product lifecycle management (PLM) vendors, i.e., Siemens PLM, Dassault Systemes, Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC), Oracle Agile PLM, and SAP PLM, hardly any noise comes from smaller PLM providers in the lower end of the market. To be certain, many smaller PLM players, who had been catering to the mid-market, such as former MatrixOne or Agile Software, have lately been gobbled up by their larger counterparts.

Thus, in addition to Arena Solutions and its pure on-demand PLM offering as well as Aras’ open source PLM offering, the only other viable choice for smaller enterprises remains Omnify Software. Privately held Omnify Software is headquartered in Tewksbury, Massachusetts (US), with another US office in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

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In Why Some People Don’t Like PLM, Graham McCall said that some product lifecycle management (PLM) users’ reluctance to share knowledge with others is the obstacle toward higher acceptance of PLM. I thought his point made perfect sense, and my instant reaction was to ask myself: How can this problem be resolved? Ideally, a PLM system is a platform for people to work together. This means that knowledge sharing is mutually beneficial—by sharing knowledge with others, you also get hold of others’ knowledge. This sounds like an incentive for PLM users to share their knowledge, but when it comes to the real PLM environment in production, this is not always the case.

My thought stopped there for a while and then came back to me after I attended the Siemens Industry Software Analyst Conference because I felt things that I saw at the event were quite relevant to the cure I was looking for. Read the rest of this entry »

A few months ago, when Siemens PLM Software unveiled its High Definition Product Lifecycle Management (HD-PLM) technology, designers and product developers in aerospace, automotive, and other similar industries were probably excited about this new offering as they saw the opportunity to enhance their decision making.

I was also excited, and saw HD-PLM as a sign that PLM vendors were starting to pay more attention to the user experience (as discussed in a previous blog post). The topic I’d like to discuss in this post is this: Will HD-PLM be beneficial to the fashion industry? After all, the fashion industry seems very different from industries requiring heavy engineering work. Read the rest of this entry »

There wasn’t a lack of big news in the product lifecycle management (PLM) industry in the past few weeks. On May 20^th, Siemens PLM Software unveiled High Definition Product Lifecycle Management (HD-PLM) at the World Exposition Shanghai China 2010 (Expo 2010). On June 7^th, PTC told PTC/USER 2010 attendees that a virtual launch event for Project Lightning was schedule on October 28^th, 2010. Two days later, Dassault Systèmes announced the acquisition of Exalead (read the press release). Since the month of June is packed with three major PLM events in the world (PTC/USER World Event, Dassault Systèmes SwYm Conference, and Siemens PLM Connection) in a row, it is no surprise to have some big PLM news  for the sake of marketing. However, this time I also see some new things beyond marketing purposes. Read the rest of this entry »

A little while ago, in her post Beware Supply Chain Excel Users—YOU are DOOMED!!!!, my colleague Khudsiya Quadri warned Microsoft Excel users that Excel is not a good option when enterprise applications are expected to be used. Reading her post and the comments that followed is a good exercise in learning different perspectives from different people. However, in my post, I’ll refrain from agreeing or disagreeing, but rather I’ll open another discussion that is also related to Excel—the user interface (UI). Read the rest of this entry »