Making the value of technology clear
The study shows that architects must design concepts with strong aesthetics and build their company reputation while also recognizing the need to meet practical project objectives like project cost and schedule. Unfortunately, poor communication and increased design complexity, which emerged as two of the most common challenges to meeting project objectives and outcomes, make this difficult. Beyond this, almost two-thirds of survey respondents report that design complexity has increased over the last five years.
Insufficient Collaboration and Design Integration Approaches
Designers recognize that working collaboratively across disciplines helps manage increased design complexity. However, the most common forms of collaboration include email, in-person meetings, PDFs, and hard-copy sheets. These methods are inefficient and error-prone. In addition, despite the fact that about two-thirds of respondents report that design integration across disciplines is critical or important to project success, the design integration approaches they typically use, like collecting 2D or printed documents, are also insufficient.
The Multidisciplinary Design Opportunity
Although the AEC industry faces increased complexity, the design and construction community has been hesitant to adopt new technologies and integrated data platforms. Our research shows, however, that surveyed companies are exploring and migrating to multidisciplinary design to drive efficiency, improve project outcomes, and reduce cost (among other drivers).
Multidisciplinary design marries the efforts of different disciplines into a cohesive process. This increases efficiency and provides impact visibility to designers. They can assess the impacts of choices on a design's cost, more efficiently deal with clashes and geometric constraints, and better tackle complexity driven by code upgrades, material improvements, and energy performance.
The Multidisciplinary Design Transition
The study finds that full multidisciplinary design adoption is still relatively low in the architecture and engineering community, with only 22% of respondents using it on all projects. But about two-thirds of respondents have a positive perception of this methodology, and over one-half of companies are using it on at least some projects.
Although there are barriers to adoption, including organizational, technical, and business concerns, companies report valuable benefits. Over two-thirds of companies who have adopted multidisciplinary design for all projects report more complete designs and fewer errors and omissions. About one-half report increased efficiency and improved constructability. The opportunities are compelling and available. The eBook shares the full details of our findings.
The design and construction industry is highly fragmented. Companies range in size and the cross-section of industry segments they serve. Project
participants often span regional, country, language, and cultural boundaries. Multiple disciplines rarely share common offices, which only exacerbates the challenge of communication. With increasing project complexity and shrinking access to well-trained resources, communication is strained. The industry must uncover ways to become more effective.
Greater Collaboration is the Key
Architecture and engineering companies must increase their ability to effectively collaborate across design disciplines. Traditional collaboration approaches are insufficient. Fortunately, there are proven benefits to digitally integrating designs across disciplines. Typical integration methods must also improve, and the data demonstrates that the AEC design community is moving towards more enhanced collaboration workflows leveraging tools based on BIM. The role of BIM is also maturing to be a system of record. Although the domains of design are vast, our research concludes that companies are exploring and migrating to multidisciplinary design to drive better project outcomes and profitability.
Multidisciplinary Design Remains Novel in the Maturity Cycle
Full multidisciplinary design adoption is still relatively low, but those adopting it are achieving significant benefits. The overall perception of multidisciplinary design and BIM is positive, yet it faces a number of challenges. Most companies are not willing to trade off significant design functionality for those benefits. We expect to see greater adoption of multidisciplinary design as systems mature, but also expect that companies must maintain an open approach to BIM tools to accommodate an environment consisting of multiple authoring tools.
*This summary is an abbreviated version of the research and does not contain the full content. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Graphisoft (registration required).
If you have difficulty obtaining a copy of the report, please contact us.
[post_title] => The State of Collaborative Design in AEC
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[post_content] => We spoke with Hexagon following a recent event launching their Nexus platform. Hexagon already offers a wide range of solutions supporting the product lifecycle, including design and engineering; production; and metrology and inspection portfolios from its Manufacturing Intelligence division and others including the newly acquired Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) and quality management (QMS, ETQ) solutions. This release gives Hexagon a platform to connect across their solutions, and solutions from others, to execute and automate workflows that cross application boundaries.
They’re taking a data-centric approach to connecting heterogeneous solutions, providing contextual data to streamline across steps in the process and create a common digital thread. Hexagon is calling Nexus a “digital reality platform.” They compare it with a digital twin. They say it’s different, though, because it is connected in near-real-time with products and machines to integrate information support automation in addition to user-driven tasks. In their words, Nexus “connects applications, hardware, and anything creating data in a democratized manner.”
An example we explored during our call was an electronics designer changing a printed circuit board in their PCB design tool that would share the relevant change with a mechanical designer in the CAD tool. In addition, they pointed out it could autonomously run a simulation in the cloud to validate the resulting change, for example heat exchange. The example helped me grasp the fact that Nexus is intended to share data directly between different applications and tools, not just pass the information to the next user in a traditional workflow. That level of data integration is highly valuable.
The platform provides central services like visualization and analytics and will be offered as Nexus Platform Services. In addition, they’re busy developing Nexus Applications on the platform, including several announced in the launch event and a roadmap of solutions in development. They will also provide partners with the ability to develop applications for Nexus and plan to create an active ecosystem of applications and services offered through Nexus. In the future, they intend to open application development to customers so they can create their own connected workflows.
Hexagon has a wealth of solutions for manufacturers, and now has a platform and strategy that will allow customers to get the most out of them in a connected, data-centric, cloud-based platform. Thank you Stephen Graham and Robin Wolstenholme for taking the time to provide more detail and answer our questions, Michelle Boucher, Julie Fraser, and I appreciated and enjoyed it.
[post_title] => Hexagon Launches Digital Reality Platform, Nexus (Insight)
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[post_content] => What are some keys to success with Industry 4.0? And what does mindfulness have to do with it? Listen to this fireside chat with Julie Fraser, hosted by the Industry 4.0 Club’s Mike Ungar and Mike Yost to start thinking about your ecosystem for success.
An ecosystem is the environment in which a variety of compatible organisms - or organizations - coexist. Some elements go together and some do not. For Industry 4.0, each player must review fit and ability to support each other over a longer period of time. Rather than thinking of vendors and customers, moving to view each other as partners is a start.
What does that entail? How can manufacturers identify partners that will truly partner and support them? What can the solution providers do to bolster their customer-partners’ success?
In this video, you’ll get to hear what Julie and the two Mikes think and have seen. You’ll also hear about a trend that’s beyond the “talking about” stage and into the “take action” stage this year. Industry 4.0 technologies will support this earth-level ecosystem issue. Julie also takes some questions from the LinkedIn Live audience.
Thank you, Industry 4.0 Club, for the opportunity to have a conversation on all of this!
[post_title] => An Ecosystem Enabling Manufacturers and Industry 4.0 Providers to Flourish with Julie Fraser
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[post_content] => I recently got an update briefing from iTAC Software AG, which was eye-opening. It appears you can now get deep out-of-the-box MES/MOM functionality plus low-code ways to extend the software. This company has offered #MES for many years but has recently expanded on many fronts.
The original company philosophy of bidirectional integration with equipment has served iTAC well in its core discrete industry segments. That’s been strengthened by adding Cogiscan to the iTAC group. Customers have advanced in their ability to be agile and respond to change also, as the group also includes DUALIS GmbH IT Solution advanced planning and scheduling.
Some of the newer functionality is compelling.
[post_title] => iTAC MES/MOM Adds Low-Code, Logistics, and Edge Analytics (Insight)
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[post_date] => 2023-03-16 09:00:55
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[post_content] => 
How can high tech manufacturers improve manufacturing engineering? We surveyed 177 people directly involved with manufacturing engineering and found that modernizing processes and technology drives higher manufacturing engineering productivity and performance. These improvements are crucial to profitability as customers demand high quality, personalized products at increasingly faster time to market; all despite rising product and manufacturing complexity.
Unfortunately, high tech companies face challenges in process design as products, manufacturing processes, including:
Current Processes can be Improved
There is significant room for improvement. The majority of companies validate process plans with time-consuming and expensive physical prototyping. Physical prototypes bring abstract designs into the real world so engineers can identify issues and improvement opportunities. Most companies also use spreadsheets, which are prone to errors and file-based so they are not conducive to collaboration. These approaches lead to late discoveries and expensive process validation.
Leverage Visual Approaches
Trading physical prototypes for digital validation reduces time and cost. A significant number of companies already use some form of virtual representations. Static visualizations can help engineers see an issue in the digital world before committing to a physical prototype or manufacturing equipment.
Adopt Simulation
Beyond static images, virtual simulation helps designers go beyond “seeing” to virtually experiencing the production process. While only about one-quarter use either 2D or 3D simulation, it’s a promising technology and a potential for significant planning and validation improvement.
Increase Quality
Responding companies also indicate that they can reduce ECOs by over one-third. They do this by improving manufacturing process design using virtual technologies. Top Performers are more likely to find physical manufacturing issues in a virtual model than Others who are more likely to discover them in physical prototypes and actual production.
Get Started
It’s time to improve manufacturing engineering productivity and performance. Companies can follow the lead of the Top Performers to increase maturity in how they plan, validate, and communicate manufacturing plans. To increase maturity, manufacturers should adopt the best practices of the Top Performers, including using integrated solutions such as 3D and simulation for manufacturing engineering.
*This summary is an abbreviated version of the research and does not contain the full content. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Dassault Systèmes DELMIA (registration required).
If you have difficulty obtaining a copy of the report, please contact us.
[post_title] => Transforming High Tech Manufacturing Engineering
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[post_content] => 
Why is effective bill of material management critical to digital transformation? What should you look for in a BOM management solution? Our white paper serves as a reference tool for manufacturers selecting a system to improve the maturity of their BOM management practices.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full buyer's guide please visit our sponsor, PTC (registration required).
This white paper is an update to our original buyer's guide published in 2020.
This Buyer’s Guide is a reference tool for manufacturers selecting a system to improve the maturity of their BOM management practices. The guide is composed of sections covering software, service, and vendor requirements, along with some special considerations. These are all important factors that impact implementation success and ROI.
Each of these sections includes a checklist with key requirements to investigate when selecting software to enable and improve BOM management. The guide also touches on special considerations for companies to keep an eye on by industry. It also shows how digital BOM management plays a critical role in supporting digital transformation initiatives, including the digital twin, digital thread service transformation, Industry 4.0, and more.
Clearly, a user should be able to enter a BOM manually from a screen by selecting a combination of materials, components, or lower-level assemblies. Systems should also be able to accept and validate an input file, for example, a spreadsheet or XML file, to import / upload BOMs from another system or in a “mass load” scenario. Finally, the system should be able to develop BOMs from underlying engineering tools for efficiency and to prevent manual transcription errors, also known as the “bottom-up” approach.
Of these, the most complex scenario is the bottoms up creation from a Computer Aided Design (CAD) tool. This scenario requires the BOM management solution to digitally interpret the contents of the CAD structure. CAD systems typically contain a lot of information about a product, making good CAD integration a primary need.
[post_title] => Onshape Live 23 Reveals Significant Progress
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[post_content] => There is more exciting news from GE Digital on its newest Proficy MES version. In a previous discussion, we learned that all of the GE Smart Factory Portfolio are becoming available not only on-premises but also on cloud or hybrid. As a fully-hosted managed service for MES-as-a-Service, MES can always be up to date with improvements from lean or continuous improvement (CI) efforts. GE claims up to 30% lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and reduced maintenance while improving security.
The composable architecture now supports OEE, production, and quality management. With cloud hosting, smaller manufacturers can also deploy MES effectively. Another aspect of this release that supports quick results and lasting value is the dozens of out-of-the-box configured screens. These are ready to support production, quality, and performance measurement workflows in process, discrete, and mixed-mode environments.
No-code capabilities also enable customers to tailor the MES to their specific needs. This can be crucial in supporting frontline workers’ adoption of MES. The quality module also offers a way for operators to comment on issues as they arise.
All of these enhancements are to an MES that is already deep and broad. Progress toward the cloud in manufacturing software is continuing. GE offers that option for those who want it, but also on-premise and hybrid for those maintaining those environments. Thank you, Sumit Pal, for sharing this with us!
How can manufacturers overcome their product data gaps to improve new product introduction and drive product profitability? Jim Brown joined Propel’s Converged Live webinar, The Product Information Disconnect: How Collaboration Drives Business Value and Customer Loyalty, to preview his latest research on the product information disconnect and how to solve it.
View the webinar on demand to hear Jim Brown and Propel's Mark Boles and Tom Shoemaker in this open conversation to:
Image Source: CoLab
[post_title] => Update on CoLab as the Design Engagement System (Insight)
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[post_content] => We just learned a lot in an interesting update briefing on Mendix from Siemens. Jim Brown was introduced to #lowcode almost 20 years ago and was excited about the potential when Siemens acquired Mendix. They’ve kept their promise and let Mendix compete in their traditional industries, such as financial services and insurance. They’re also using it themselves across Siemens, sharing that they’ve now adopted Mendix in 11 business and operating units. My update, though, was on the progress Siemens has made in applying Mendix to industrial applications. As I wrote in “Filling Digital Transformation Gaps with Low-Code,” there’s a huge need for new applications to meet industry40, IoT, IIoT, and digital transformation needs. Lowcode creates development agility and supports collaboration so manufacturers can efficiently modernize legacy systems and deploy new applications. Mendix’s ability to deploy in multiple places like, mobile devices and at the edge, helps make that achievable.
In addition to general lowcode enhancements, Siemens has made a lot of progress applying lowcode to their Xcelerator portfolio. They’ve introduced new capabilities and templates to make it easier for customers to extend, integrate, and customize Xcelerator applications. Some interesting general capabilities the provide for lowcode developers come from AWS including text-to-speech. But they’ve also created industry solutions that help industrial companies jumpstart solutions for functions like supply risk management, complaint management, carbon footprint optimization, and more.
The last part of the update was very exciting. They shared that they embedded Mendix into the Opcenter backbone so customers can personalize and extend user experiences - including operator dashboards and screens – based on standard, OOTB templates. The solution is released in January. They shared some examples including Mendix templates for quality Inspection, smart warehouse, workforce management, and field service. This allows customers to adopt existing MES capabilities and rapidly tailor them using lowcode. Mendix capabilities also allow manufacturers to run Opcenter in an offline mode.
All this represents both a big investment and significant proofpoint of Siemens’ integration of Mendix into their core business. Thank you Subba Rao, Shaun Ennis, and Jon Heidorn for taking the time to share the updates.
[post_title] => Siemens Shows Progress with Mendix Lowcode for Industrial Applications (insight)
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How can manufacturers improve manufacturing engineering performance despite increased complexity? We surveyed 177 people involved in manufacturing engineering to find out. The results show that the leaders in manufacturing engineering have increased maturity in the way they plan, validate, and communicate manufacturing operations. These Top Performers waste less time on non-value-added activities, find issues sooner, and spend less on physical prototypes. The eBook shares the best practices they use to do it.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Dassault Systèmes DELMIA (registration required).
Current Processes can be Improved
There is significant room for improvement. The majority of companies validate process plans with time-consuming and expensive physical prototyping. Physical prototypes bring abstract designs into the real world so engineers can identify issues and improvement opportunities. Most companies also use spreadsheets, which are prone to errors and file-based so they are not conducive to collaboration. These approaches lead to late discoveries and expensive process validation.
Leverage Visual Approaches
Trading physical prototypes for digital validation reduces time and cost. A significant number of companies already use some form of virtual representations. Static visualizations can help engineers see an issue in the digital world before committing to a physical prototype or manufacturing equipment.
Adopt Simulation
Beyond static images, virtual simulation helps designers go beyond “seeing” to virtually experiencing the production process. While only about one-quarter use either 2D or 3D simulation, it’s a promising technology and a potential for significant planning and validation improvement.
*This summary is an abbreviated version of the research and does not contain the full content. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Dassault Systèmes DELMIA (registration required).
If you have difficulty obtaining a copy of the report, please contact us.
[post_title] => Edge2Web Moves from Tools to Manufacturing Intelligence Application on AWS (Insight)
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How can PLM, traditionally an engineering-centric solution, drive innovation, agility, and operational excellence throughout the entire product lifecycle? Attend this webinar to learn how the right PLM can help manufacturers focus on the big picture, not just engineering, to develop profitable products. Hear from:
What do manufacturers need in MES to be competitive both today and in the future?
Hint: it goes well beyond strong functional support and into what may sound like buzzwords, but are truly crucial architectural elements. In this paper, we group them into three elements: digital thread-ready, personalized, and leveraging a comprehensive digital twin. Each of these supports various aspects of industrial competitiveness.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Siemens Digital Industries Software (registration required).
Recommendations and Next Steps
We’ve seen ENOVIA and NETVIBES present together at a number of events. It’s clear that it’s not just a matter of convenience or economies of scale to speak about two brands at a time. It’s a demonstration of the synergies that help DS make significant progress in evolving the 3DXEXPRIENCE Platform to become more of a business-oriented platform, where NETVIBES extends ENOVIA information and provides value well beyond engineering by bringing in additional data to provide an enterprise-level digital twin. There is still a lot of work to do, but this is the clearest evidence we’ve seen of an organic evolution from an engineering-centric PLM solution to meet broader business needs that appeal beyond Engineering to the executive suite.
Thanks to Joe Horine, Susan Lenzi, and Nancy O’Flaherty for your organizing the event and to Stephane Declee, Morgan Zimmerman, and a host of other leaders and subject matter experts for sharing your progress and vision.
[post_title] => ENOVIA and NETVIBES Show Transition to a Business Platform (Insight)
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Manufacturers continue to move product data and product-related processes to the cloud. What’s driving them? What value are they looking for, and what are they achieving? We surveyed 270 companies that design, engineer, or manufacture products to find out.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Autodesk (registration required).
Achieving Significant Benefits
The Cloud Makes Work Easier and More Flexible
The next most common benefits are those that make work easier. Moving product-related data and processes to the cloud allows remote and flexible work, supports business agility, allows easier access to data, and enhances collaboration. These are very valuable for today’s distributed product design and development teams. They are also important as companies have adapted to changing markets and ways of working to cope with recent global disruptions like the pandemic. Additional benefits include enhanced talent acquisition and retention, greater supply chain connectivity, better data and knowledge retention, and continuous process improvement.
[post_title] => Improve Service with Equipment Monitoring
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[post_content] => I caught up with a really interesting software company that I’ve been following named Soley. I shared a bit about them after our first discussion last year and I was impressed with their unique solution. At that time, I saw how they used cloud, analytics, and collaborative decision-making to understand the impact products have on the value chain. They’ve formalized the approach, which they now call product mining, to help analyze product portfolios to gain efficiencies. They leverage complexity analytics, value patterns, and decision intelligence to create and analyze a graph model (aka enterprise digital twin) that allows their customers to gain transparency into portfolio complexity and inefficiencies so they can reduce ballast and side products. Thank you Maximilian Kissel and Sven Litke for the update.
[post_title] => Update on Product Mining Company Soley (Insight)
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How well is collaboration working in the AEC industry? We surveyed 393 people whose companies design, engineer, or construct the built environment to find out about collaborative design in AEC, including multidisciplinary design and BIM.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Graphisoft (registration required).
The study shows that architects must design concepts with strong aesthetics and build their company reputation while also recognizing the need to meet practical project objectives like project cost and schedule. Unfortunately, poor communication and increased design complexity, which emerged as two of the most common challenges to meeting project objectives and outcomes, make this difficult. Beyond this, almost two-thirds of survey respondents report that design complexity has increased over the last five years.
Insufficient Collaboration and Design Integration Approaches
Designers recognize that working collaboratively across disciplines helps manage increased design complexity. However, the most common forms of collaboration include email, in-person meetings, PDFs, and hard-copy sheets. These methods are inefficient and error-prone. In addition, despite the fact that about two-thirds of respondents report that design integration across disciplines is critical or important to project success, the design integration approaches they typically use, like collecting 2D or printed documents, are also insufficient.
The Multidisciplinary Design Opportunity
Although the AEC industry faces increased complexity, the design and construction community has been hesitant to adopt new technologies and integrated data platforms. Our research shows, however, that surveyed companies are exploring and migrating to multidisciplinary design to drive efficiency, improve project outcomes, and reduce cost (among other drivers).
Multidisciplinary design marries the efforts of different disciplines into a cohesive process. This increases efficiency and provides impact visibility to designers. They can assess the impacts of choices on a design's cost, more efficiently deal with clashes and geometric constraints, and better tackle complexity driven by code upgrades, material improvements, and energy performance.
The Multidisciplinary Design Transition
The study finds that full multidisciplinary design adoption is still relatively low in the architecture and engineering community, with only 22% of respondents using it on all projects. But about two-thirds of respondents have a positive perception of this methodology, and over one-half of companies are using it on at least some projects.
Although there are barriers to adoption, including organizational, technical, and business concerns, companies report valuable benefits. Over two-thirds of companies who have adopted multidisciplinary design for all projects report more complete designs and fewer errors and omissions. About one-half report increased efficiency and improved constructability. The opportunities are compelling and available. The eBook shares the full details of our findings.
The design and construction industry is highly fragmented. Companies range in size and the cross-section of industry segments they serve. Project
participants often span regional, country, language, and cultural boundaries. Multiple disciplines rarely share common offices, which only exacerbates the challenge of communication. With increasing project complexity and shrinking access to well-trained resources, communication is strained. The industry must uncover ways to become more effective.
Greater Collaboration is the Key
Architecture and engineering companies must increase their ability to effectively collaborate across design disciplines. Traditional collaboration approaches are insufficient. Fortunately, there are proven benefits to digitally integrating designs across disciplines. Typical integration methods must also improve, and the data demonstrates that the AEC design community is moving towards more enhanced collaboration workflows leveraging tools based on BIM. The role of BIM is also maturing to be a system of record. Although the domains of design are vast, our research concludes that companies are exploring and migrating to multidisciplinary design to drive better project outcomes and profitability.
Multidisciplinary Design Remains Novel in the Maturity Cycle
Full multidisciplinary design adoption is still relatively low, but those adopting it are achieving significant benefits. The overall perception of multidisciplinary design and BIM is positive, yet it faces a number of challenges. Most companies are not willing to trade off significant design functionality for those benefits. We expect to see greater adoption of multidisciplinary design as systems mature, but also expect that companies must maintain an open approach to BIM tools to accommodate an environment consisting of multiple authoring tools.
*This summary is an abbreviated version of the research and does not contain the full content. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Graphisoft (registration required).
If you have difficulty obtaining a copy of the report, please contact us.
[post_title] => The State of Collaborative Design in AEC
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How well is collaboration working in the AEC industry? We surveyed 393 people whose companies design, engineer, or construct the built environment to find out about collaborative design in AEC, including multidisciplinary design and BIM. Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Graphisoft (registration required). Table of Contents Profitability…
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