PLM Software
to be cloud-based offerings in order to leverage advantages in lowering up-front costs, speeding deployment, and easing maintenance and support.
“In general, traditional PLM has been recognized as achiev- ing results for larger manufacturers,” said Ed Martin, senior industry manager, Manufacturing Industry Group, Autodesk Inc. (San Rafael, CA). “Many Fortune 100 manufacturing companies have, by and large, adopted PLM to varying degrees within their business processes. But I would say even the larg- est manufacturers haven’t broadly adopted PLM outside of their core engineering processes. This is particularly true outside of what I would call the product piece of the product lifecycle management realm. The ability of small- and medium-sized businesses to adopt traditional PLM is even more limited.”
Lowering Costs of PLM
Manufacturers are trying to extend the usage of PLM into more business-critical processes, particularly downstream into manufacturing, Martin said, where it’s less thoroughly adopted, even at larger companies. As the cost equation has improved with cloud-based systems like Autodesk’s PLM 360 announced in 2012, more small and medium-sized manufac- turers are becoming more interested in deploying the technol- ogy, he added.
“The challenge for smaller companies, of course, is the expense, not only the software but of the services required to implement and maintain PLM being a barrier to adoption,” Martin noted. “One of the trends that I believe we’re leading is toward lower-cost, more flexible solutions that are faster to implement and can solve some of these problems effectively. One of my favorite sayings is, ‘You don’t want to spend $1000 to solve a $100 problem.’ When you add up all those $100 problems—there’s a lot of money out there. “Prices are pretty well understood anyway in the market- place, and we’re very transparent about what our pricing is,” Martin said. “But it’s not just the price for licenses—it’s the cost to implement, customize and maintain, because really what PLM is, it’s a business process. Excess complexity is not just an issue for smaller businesses, it can cause challenges for larger organizations as well. Companies in different indus- tries, and even individual companies within an industry, have specific needs for their business processes that may or may not be matched by the out-of-box functionality that’s offered, so the ability to be able to customize that quickly and easily is something that’s very important.”
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ManufacturingEngineeringMedia.com | April 2013
In Siemens PLM Software’s Tecnomatix digital manufacturing solution, the Jack virtual human is used to perform feasibility analysis of manual truck assembly operations prior to production.
Lower costs of entry will likely make cloud-based PLM much more attractive to smaller-sized companies that other- wise wouldn’t be able to afford the technology, noted Richard Mizuno, a partner at the consulting firm Kalypso (Houston, TX). “I think on the platform level that’s probably been one of the more innovative introductions in the PLM space in recent years,” Mizuno said of Autodesk’s PLM 360. “It provides a different price/value point for the potential adopters of PLM that maybe haven’t been in the market before. It’s opened up an opportunity for companies that hesitated to adopt PLM because of infrastructure and cost concerns.”
Security Worries Cloud the Picture
Concerns over the security of manufacturing intellectual property still nag some observers, although many software de- velopers say it’s not really an issue anymore. “First, the main players need to get comfortable with the technology,” noted Steve Schuchard, CAD technical manager at PMC (Dearborn, MI), an authorized reseller for Autodesk’s Factory Design Suite solutions and also for Siemens PLM’s Tecnomatix digital manufacturing software. “There are a lot of cloud services out there now, including ANX. I think the [auto] OEMs will never fully put their product information in the cloud.” Others say that the security issues on the cloud have been largely solved, with both hardware and software security mea-
Image courtesy Siemens PLM Software
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