Jim Brown contributed his views on integrating Product Innovation Platforms / PLM to ERP in a recent guest post for Cideon Software. The post pays specific attention to how to integrate the 3DEXPERIENCE platform with SAP. The post shares the increasing importance of integration, the need for a repeatable approach, and some key considerations about finding a partner…
- 2.2 times more likely to optimize the part design to improve consistency during production
- 59% more likely to use tools that automatically link design and analysis data
- 2.5 times more likely to use tools that automatically update the composite definition as changes are implemented
Table of Contents
- Executive Overview
- Identify the Meaning of Complexity
- Prepare for Growth in Composites
- Realize Opportunities with Composites
- Address Challenges
- Identifying Top Performers
- Understand Production Requirements
- Support Design Decisions
- Select the Right Technology
- Conclusion
- Recommendations
- About the Research
- About the Author







IoT Competence Transforming Competitive Landscape

Don't Go it Alone!
Few companies, if any, should develop IoT infrastructure on their own. The transition to an IoT-enabled business is a valuable, but challenging journey. It’s important to recognize that it’s a business transformation and partner with the right advisors and technology providers. Most companies’ IoT initiatives will demand a wider selection of more advanced IT skills than they can afford. Even those with advanced skills will likely benefit by focusing internal efforts on use cases and changing relationship with customers and focus on core competencies and the big picture.



Quality Management and PLM
The Value of Quality and PLM Overlap
Quality Management and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) are both proven disciplines that help companies improve quality and product profitability. These two initiatives are highly complementary, but are typically owned by different departments and traditionally managed as separate processes. This often leads to disparate Quality Management Systems (QMS) and PLM systems implemented with little integration supporting quality and product innovation.
Product and Bill of Material (BOM) Centricity
- Business Process Focus
- Data Relationship Management
- Internal and Supply Chain Collaboration
Why Quality Management Belongs in PLM
Single and Consistent Source of Product Data
PLM and QMS are both valuable solutions, but together can result in significant data and process duplication. The most practical way for most companies to get a single, rationalized quality management and PLM solution is to leverage PLM to support quality along with product innovation, product development, and engineering processes.





Midsize Manufacturers Stuck in Between
Midsize consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, their suppliers, and their partners face continuous pressure in today’s competitive, global marketplace. They have to adopt strategies combining product innovation and agility to survive. But developing and launching successful products today is complex. It requires deep customer insights, technical knowhow, and collaboration. Midsize companies have to overcome this complexity to compete with larger competitors. They have to connect closely with consumers and introduce new products quickly and efficiently to meet their needs. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software can help. It drives better product development performance by managing product-related data, processes, and projects. While smaller companies may be able to control, access, and share product data with relatively simple content sharing tools, larger companies rely on full-featured PLM to help automate processes and share data across global supply chains. Midsize companies may find themselves in-between because:- Product and organizational complexity drive them beyond basic PDM capabilities
- A full-featured PLM implementation may feel out of reach
Get Started with the Right PLM Solution
Core PLM can quickly add value to midsized companies by helping them combat complexity, improve productivity, and stay closer to customers. Recognize the potential value of a fully featured PLM with all of the bells and whistles, but be honest with yourself about whether your company can afford the time and effort to get there (at least right away).

Table of Contents
- Executive Overview
- Support Business Goals with the Right Design Tools.
- Examine the Value of Simulation
- Identifying the Top Performers
- Understand the Simulation Process
- Identify Improvement Opportunities during Preprocessing
- Prepare for the Solver
- Streamline Postprocessing
- Look for the Right Qualities in a Simulation Solution
- Conclusion
- Recommendations
- About the Author
- About the Research
Executive Overview
As companies seek to improve profitability and competitiveness, investments in the product development process can yield big returns. Empowering teams to make the best design decisions puts them in a great position to bring innovative, high quality, profitable products to market. Simulation can be a powerful tool for supporting better decisions. However, several steps during the simulation process can slow things down and prevent companies from taking full advantage of potential benefits. Understanding simulation challenges can help companies put the right capabilities in place so they may realize even more value from simulation tools. What challenges do companies experience as part of the simulation process? What slows the process down? How do successful companies get the most value from simulation? To answer these questions, Tech-Clarity surveyed over 160 manufacturers about their simulation processes. The results were analyzed to identify the top challenges associated with preprocessing, preparing for the solver, and postprocessing. The research finds that:- Preprocessing is the most time consuming part of the simulation process, taking up 38% of total simulation time
- Top challenges of preprocessing include finding problematic geometry, recreating CAD geometry, and defining assembly contacts
- Top challenges of postprocessing involve the time invested in filtering through vast amounts of data
- Automating many time consuming, tedious tasks associated with preprocessing. They are twice as likely to automate assembly contact definition and 4-times as likely to automate geometry clean up.
- Maintaining flexibility and control so that models are not overly simplified and mesh size is appropriate. They are 52% more likely to have the ability to edit and control the mesh.
- Using visual filtering and sorting tools to more easily review, analyze, and share simulation results. They are 2.2 times more likely than peers to visually filter results, which allows them to interrogate the results and quickly focus on areas of interest.
- Ensuring their simulation solution works for their multi-CAD environment. They are 89% more likely than their peers to look for a simulation solution that has the ability to work with multi-CAD data.
In addition to examining the bottlenecks associated with simulation, this report provides guidance on best practices to address them. These practices will help product development teams get even more value from simulation so that they can make the right product decisions that will lead to more profitable products.
[post_title] => Addressing the Bottlenecks of FEA Simulation (Survey Findings) [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => simulation_bottlenecks [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2022-11-14 22:28:33 [post_modified_gmt] => 2022-11-15 03:28:33 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://tech-clarity.com/?p=5467 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 1 [filter] => raw ) [13] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 5512 [post_author] => 2 [post_date] => 2016-07-18 09:09:33 [post_date_gmt] => 2016-07-18 13:09:33 [post_content] => Autodesk published an infographic sharing our research on why top performing companies - those with better revenue growth, higher margin growth, and greater cost reduction - use Product Lifecycle Management solutions. It also shares some of our findings on the time and cost to implement PLM and Top Performers' use of cloud solutions. We've included a small excerpt here, for visit the Autodesk Fusion Lifecycle site for the full infographic (free of charge, no registration required).




Table of Contents
- Why Do Design Engineers Need a Simulation Solution?
- Determine the Scope of Your Needs
- Identify the Right Solution
- Justify the Investment
- Understand the Value
- Realize Time Savings
- Select the Right Simulation for Your Needs
- About the Author
Why Do Design Engineers Need a Simulation Solution?
How do you know if you should be using simulation? Consider for a moment:- If you could save 7% of your material costs, would it help?
- How would getting to market 14% faster improve your business?
- What would you do with the extra time?
- Would higher quality without adding cost or time make your products more competitive?
Recommendations
- Understand your needs for a simulation solution
- Justify the investment with a focus on how it will empower design engineers to make better decisions that will make products more competitive, lower-cost, and faster to market
- Select a simulation solution that will be easy for design engineers to adopt that will integrate with your existing CAD tool and support existing workflows
- Consider a solution that makes it easy to set up an analysis and includes features such as automated mashing
- Ensure the solution supports design optimization
- Select a solution and vendor that can offer the right training resources to reduce the learning curve

The Compelling ROI of PLM


What’s the Right Path for Your Company?
There’s a lot to consider when looking for a PLM solution. New options reduce barriers to entry and help add flexibility and agility. But it’s important to recognize that the primary goal is to find a solution that meets company needs to combat complexity and improve business performance. Without the capabilities to drive business improvement the rest is pointless. Manufacturers can leverage tools such as Tech-Clarity’s PDM Buyer’s Guide for a framework on how to analyze solutions based on company needs beyond features and functions. While those are important, manufacturers must also know their procurement options, deployment choices, and the impacts those have across the lifecycle of a solution.
- Understand your needs
- Know your options
- Find the right solution
- Identify the optimal procurement approach for your business
- Determine the most advantageous deployment approach
- Understand the business agility available from new options
- Take advantage of lower barriers to entry for PLM
- Get started with PLM and get a quick ROI
- Extend the benefits over time

- Software capabilities
- Implementation
- User adoption
- Support
- Vendor characteristics / attributes
- Industry or unique business needs
Table of Contents
- Executive Overview
- The Business Value of Requirements Management
- Start with Defining Best Practices
- Define Requirements
- Manage Requirements
- Manage Changes and Approvals
- Enable Traceability, Reporting, and Compliance Management
- Ensure Interoperability
- Support Reuse and Variability
- Verify and Validate Requirements
- Assess Service Requirements
- Consider Vendor Attributes
- Identify Specific Needs for your Company
- Conclusion
- Recommendations
- About the Author
Executive Overview
Fierce global competition means companies have little leeway to bring the wrong product to market. However, today’s products have gotten so complex, it has become increasingly difficult to capture customer and market needs, translate those needs to product requirements, manage them throughout a complex development process involving changes and different configurations, and then make sure the requirements are truly satisfied. A lot of work goes into the initial definition of those requirements, but we do not live in a static world. Changes are inevitable. Tracing all the impacts of those changes, notifying everyone involved, and getting everything updated, including the test case, can be a nightmare. However, with expert requirements and validation engineering practices, combined with the right technology, the process will be far more manageable. This guide consists of four major sections covering requirements management and validation software tool functionality, service requirements, vendor attributes, and special company considerations (Figure 1). Each section includes a checklist with key requirements to investigate when selecting software tools to support requirements and validation processes. To set the foundation for expert requirements and validation engineering practices, companies should focus on the entire lifecycle of requirements, not just the definition. This will enable companies to ensure the product they want to bring to market, is the one they actually do. In addition, it will improve the efficiency of the entire process, with fewer errors, leading to higher product profitability.

Executive Overview
Customized products are more compelling to customers and drive higher profitability. They can also create chaos in sales proposal and order fulfillment processes as engineers scramble to develop cost estimates, customized designs, and detailed manufacturing and sales documentation. This engineer-to-order (ETO) study finds that some companies have found better ways to design custom products, alleviating the engineering bottleneck created in most companies when quotes requests or orders roll in. The manufacturing industry needs to adopt best practices and technology to accommodate the growth in customized products. Researchers for this report surveyed over 200 companies, finding that product customization is growing significantly. Why? For some companies, it helps them differentiate. For others, their industry doesn’t give them a choice. It’s just the nature of the business. Either way, growth in product customization drives increased complexity that leads to late deliveries, recalls / warranty work, and missed financial targets. The cause? Manual processes for custom products make Engineering a bottleneck to getting quotes and orders out of the door. Fortunately Tech-Clarity research1 shows that companies taking more advanced ETO approaches to customize their products end up with better results. This report investigates trends in customization and digs deeper into these best practices. The analysis finds that manufacturers achieving the highest sales and profitability growth, The Top Performers, place more strategic emphasis on rapid quote and order turnaround. They also perform better when executing orders, experiencing significantly fewer errors. Our research shows that Top Performers adopt leading design practices including platform, modular, and rules-based design techniques1. Survey reports show they support these best practices with leading technologies, finding that they are:- More than twice as likely to use technical product configurators
- 53% more likely to have quote automation
- 22% more likely to leverage design automation
Table of Contents
- Executive Overview
- Product Customization is on the Rise
- Understanding Customization Business Drivers
- Creating Differentiation in Customized Products
- Taking A Deeper Look at Customization
- Recognizing Customization Challenges
- Recognizing Potential Negative Impacts of Customization
- Identifying the Top Performers
- Analyzing what Top Performers do Differently
- Evaluating Top Performers’ Process Advantages
- Analyzing the Technical Enablers of Top Performers
- Identifying the Technical Capabilities of Top Performers
- Conclusion
- Recommendations
- About the Author
- About the Research
- Footnote
Conclusion

Recommendations
Based on industry experience and research for this report, Tech-Clarity offers the following recommendations:- Focus on speed as a differentiator for customized products
- Adopt modular and platform design approaches to streamline customization
- Recognize the different capabilities of Technical Product Configurators and Sales (CPQ) Configurators, using each for their strengths (and possibly in combination)
- Leverage technical product configurators and design automation to remove manual engineering effort that creates bottlenecks and results in errors in sales and order engineering processes
All Results for "All"
What Is an Optimized Product Design? – Guest Post on Siemens Blog
In a new Siemens guest post, What Is an Optimized Product Design? Michelle Boucher discusses how companies use simulation to optimize their products. However, the term optimization came be a bit vague as it means different things to different people. To clarify the term, this post shares additional data from our recent study, Addressing the Bottlenecks of FEA…
How Should You Use Simulation? – Guest Post on Siemens Blog
Michelle Boucher shares additional findings from our recent study, Addressing the Bottlenecks of FEA Simulation in this Siemens guest post, How Should You Use Simulation. This guest post discusses some of the the top ways Top Performing companies apply simulation during product development. The post shares additional survey data on the benefits Top Performers report as a result of using simulation….
Composite State of the Market (Survey Findings)
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How Simulation Solves Some of Today’s Top Product Development Challenges – Guest Post on Siemens Blog
In this Siemens guest post, How Simulation Solves Some of Today’s Top Product Development Challenges Michelle Boucher shares additional findings from our recent study, Addressing the Bottlenecks of FEA Simulation. This guest post shares some of the top development challenges companies struggle with and then shares some of the ways Top Performing companies address these challenges. Simulation is…
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Ten Build-Buy Factors for IoT Platforms
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Does Quality Management Belong in PLM? (eBook)
The Does Quality Belong in PLM? eBook explores the value of implementing quality management processes in a Product Lifecycle Management system. The research shares perspectives from several manufacturers about managing quality processes like CAPA and creating product documentation including Design History Files (DHF) and Design Master Records (DMR). The eBook looks at the value of using standalone Quality…
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How to Select a Requirements and Validation Solution – Guest Post on PTC Blog
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Finding PLM to Fit Midsized CPG Companies (eBook)
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Addressing the Bottlenecks of FEA Simulation (Survey Findings)
Tech-Clarity’s Addressing the Bottlenecks of FEA Simulation: Enabling Innovation by Getting Even More Value from CAE shares survey results on the simulation process. The analysis identified the top simulation bottlenecks that slow down the process. With a better understanding of these bottlenecks, manufacturers can take steps to minimize them and consequently, get even more value from simulation….
Why Do Top Performers Use PLM? (infographic)
Autodesk published an infographic sharing our research on why top performing companies – those with better revenue growth, higher margin growth, and greater cost reduction – use Product Lifecycle Management solutions. It also shares some of our findings on the time and cost to implement PLM and Top Performers’ use of cloud solutions. We’ve included…
Successful Products Start with Requirements & Validation – Guest Post on PTC Blog
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Top Five Considerations to Build or Buy IoT Infrastructure (on demand webcast)
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Simulation Buyer’s Guide for Design Engineers
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Requirements and Validation Buyer’s Guide
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