Making the value of technology clear
The Problem-Solving Story
Enabling CI Sequels
Switching software architectures, like the current move from web-based enterprise architectures to SaaS, can cause significant cost and disruption. How can companies avoid the increased total cost of ownership and reduced ROI during these transitions? Learn how low-code platforms help eliminate the need to repeat the rip-and-replace cycle as computing paradigms evolve.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Aras (registration required).
Software architectures have changed dramatically over the last several decades as the industry has evolved, innovated, and matured. These technological advances come in “waves” that improve the value of computing by unlocking new capabilities and improving the efficiency of how applications are delivered.
In the long run, new architectures increase the value software provides and drives computing cost down. Greater benefits at lower costs lead to increased software return on investment (ROI). Technology architecture transitions, however, come at a cost. They drive the total cost of ownership (TCO) higher, at least for a while. Although the resulting computing paradigm may be more efficient, migration typically causes significant disruption and decreases the ROI as companies move from existing applications. In the short-term, they must trade off the rich features, extensions, integrations, and customization they’ve developed in their existing software for a more advanced, but less tailored solution.
Optimizing the ROI of Architecture Transition
Today, the cycle is repeating itself. The cloud / SaaS transition is in full swing, reducing barriers to application adoption and supporting digital transformation with better access, agility, granularity, usability, and collaboration. But these benefits are frequently offset by the increased transition cost and functionality tradeoffs. This traditional “rip and replace” approach to software architecture transition is not sustainable.
This eBook shares details on the TCO and ROI impacts of technology waves. It also explains how companies can prepare themselves for continuous evolution at an optimal ROI by using composable, low-code applications to break the expensive rip-and-replace cycle, reduce TCO, and build long-term ROI.
Plan for the FutureWe had a fascinating update briefing with Gridraster COO/Co-founder Dijam Panigrahi, highlighting the growing potential of XR and spatial computing. When we first spoke with them a couple of years ago, we were excited about their platform and what it offers their application provider partners. Namely, Gridraster provides the infrastructure they need to deliver solutions with remote rendering, precise 3D spatial mapping of virtual objects in mixed reality, and other enablers that unlock the power of the metaverse.
One of the reasons Julie Fraser and I like speaking with Gridraster is that they do quite a bit of work in the aerospace and defense industry. A&D helped pioneer #virtualreality and continues to push the maturity of what mixed reality can do. They have also been leading proponents of digital twins, where Gridraster can provide the granular data underpinning for the industrial metaverse. Of course, it’s hard to discuss XR right now without mentioning Apple. As Dijam told us, “With Apple coming in, the new word is spatial.” The introduction of the Apple Vision Pro created a lot of enthusiasm about the metaverse across industries and should contribute to new use cases and greater adoption.
However, technology is only one part of the equation; gaining real business value is another. Manufacturers are starting to gain more confidence in spatial computing and beginning to achieve real value. Gridraster is working with manufacturers that are applying XR across the product lifecycle, from engineering through support. Some of the critical use cases they’re working with customers and partners on include:
Dijam explained that one of their most compelling capabilities to support these use cases is their ability to capture geometry with millimeter-level accuracy. With this, they can create very precise renderings or compare “as expected” digital models with the scanned truth with high precision and identify discrepancies with very high accuracy.
Our research shows that it may still take some time for XR and the industrial metaverse to become pervasive tools in the manufacturing industries, at least outside of larger companies and industries like automotive and A&D. Still, our discussions with GridRaster Inc. show that the value is available, and we believe the barriers will continue to drop. As devices become more capable, computing power grows, and platforms become more accessible, at least in some part due to the gaming industry, we expect further adoption. Thank you, Dijam Panigrahi to keep us in the “believers” camp for greater adoption – and value – from AI and XR. And thanks to John Sternal for coordinating the discussion.
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Jim Brown and Julie Fraser are enthused after recently catching up with ComplianceQuest’s CSO and VP of Product Marketing, Nikki Willett. Their progress is impressive. At ten years old, ComplianceQuest continues to expand and innovate to realize its vision of software for quality that touches everything. This vision and product suite span engineering and R&D to operations and manufacturing to safety to supply chain to services to customers.
ComplianceQuest has expanded its product footprint with the ProductQuest (PLM) suite alongside the existing QualityQuest (QMS) and SafetyQuest (EHS) suites. In all, there are 28 products in these three suites. All these applications are integrated on the ComplianceQuest Digital Quality+ platform. If you know the company, you know the software is natively built on the Salesforce Business Cloud platform. ComplianceQuest partners with Salesforce effectively to take advantage of their Force Cloud platform, applications, and ecosystem opportunities.
Last year, new functionality releases included Digital SOPs, CQ.Forms, (both online and offline) PLM, and FMEAs and Control Plans (APQP) for its Design Quality solution, connections from regulations and standards to auditing, an Intake Wizard to quickly guide users to report a nonconformance, a Response Wizard that helps create all the required records needed in an audit finding, Change Control impact assessment, and Supplier Performance rating system. In the AI space, they added CQ.AI agents, enhanced Next Best Actions/tasks (NBA) to drive more than workflow but tasks/steps as well, embedded analytics with AI in non-conformance and complaints so separate reports are no longer necessary, Intelligent Analytics for better current and predictive visibility, and Quality Maturity Index (QMI) to assess quality across the entire organization and by location.
ComplianceQuest targets both Life Sciences and Manufacturing industries. They have also made progress in the government / public sector with a FedRAMP attestation. Their integrator and reseller partner network continues to expand as the company gains customers of all sizes. Sales are also growing in Europe and Asia Pacific English-speaking countries.
ComplianceQuest’s unified solution approach is increasingly attractive as companies seek to improve the success of digital transformation and roll out the same applications across their enterprise. With quality management (QMS), environmental health and safety (EHS), and now quality-focused product lifecycle management (PLM) all on a single platform, ComplianceQuest customers have a strong data flow for the quality digital thread. Those who use the Force.com platform for other purposes can avoid integration headaches even more broadly.
The platform has AI and other decision-making enablers built into it. ComplianceQuest emphasizes the data-driven approach, a break from the document-driven approach of many historical QMS products.
Thank you,Nikki Willett, for taking the time to update us. We look forward to a deeper dive into PLM for product quality and following ComplianceQuest’s continuing growth in the market.
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How and why are real estate developers taking a design-build approach to residential real estate development? How does that increase the need for AEC technology to improve communication, validation, and planning?
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Graphisoft (registration required).
Design-Bid-Build Spreads Risk and Supports Specialization
Over the last 100+ years since the Industrial Revolution, the most common approach has been to prepare a collection of design documents and then have builders or general contractors develop pricing to deliver it, often in competitive circumstances.
This evolved beyond the framework initially dominated by the master builder (eventually the architect), who assembled craftspeople at a project location and then developed the design in place with limited pre-planning and almost no estimating and pre-construction pricing. The advent of building services and the pursuit of comfort brought technology advances and the need to preplan in advance of construction. This evolved the question, “How much will this cost?” and Design-Bid-Build (DBB) was born. The increasing complexity of construction assemblies lent itself to alternate forms of bidding and contracting.
Key to this was to establish trade scope packages and then allow the specialized experts to price based on a stipulated sum.
These technological advances led to an increase in specialization that caused design and construction firms to push those out of house due to the nature of boom-bust cycles, and the ebb and flow of work volume. It became undesirable to keep specialized craftspeople on payroll, supervised, mentored, and adequately trained. This led to a mindset of driving risk down the supply chain and lump sum project pricing. Tight stipulated price contracts ensured that owners wouldn’t see any cost escalations unless there were design changes, regardless of the materials and resources needed to deliver the project.
How does the Digital Manufacturing Journey unfold? What are views of the past, present, and future? Tech-Clarity’s Julie Fraser will be on an industry analysts panel discussing this at the Manufacturing Leadership Council’s Rethink Conference on Marco Island, FL. The conference runs from June 2nd to June 5th and will include a live panel discussion focused on the digital model of manufacturing. Register to hear Julie Fraser and analysts from LNS, ARC, and IDC in person on Tuesday, June 4th at 2:40 PM.
Julie and other panelists have been watching manufacturing IT change over the past 20 or more years. They will bring that experience to discuss current and future steps in the digital manufacturing journey. Digital transformation is inevitable, but how it unfolds is not yet entirely clear. This promises to raise areas of agreement and contention among the never-shy industry analysts.
The Rethink conference is designed for manufacturing and IT leaders and their teams to interact in roundtables and more traditional conference settings. The theme is accelerating digital transformation in manufacturing. Rethink has many networking opportunities as well as an agenda where you’ll hear from leading and award-winning manufacturing peers.
For the full-week agenda, visit the Manufacturing Leadership Council Rethink 2024 homepage.
Thank you, David Brousell of the Manufacturing Leadership Council, for extending the invitation to participate and share our views.
[post_title] => The Digital Manufacturing Journey: Past, Present, and Future
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Tech-Clarity's Jim Brown at Aras ACE 2024[/caption]
I really enjoyed the Aras ACE 2024 user conference this year. The event gave me the opportunity to hear and learn from Aras leadership, specialists, partners, and users to gain a deeper perspective on the future of Aras. I’ll share my takeaways, but I’ll start with my summary and the advice I give to manufacturers about Aras Innovator. I always tell people that if they’re looking for a PLM system, they should include Aras in their research, not because they are necessarily a better offering but because they are a very different offering. I’ll talk more about that in this post, but I talked about it in my recap of ACE 2023 as the “Aras Difference.” They aren’t the right fit for every organization, but their approach is compelling and high value for the right companies.
Business is Sunny
Let’s start with the business. CEO Roque Martin started by sharing some positive growth statistics, specifically a 61% subscriber growth since his arrival in late 2021 and 77% year-over-year growth in SaaS deployments. The SaaS growth is very important as Aras transitions to a cloud business while helping manufacturers modernize their PLM systems.
Business is Cloudy
Forgive the “cloudy” pun but I think it’s important. Most enterprise systems vendors, including PLM, provide some form of cloud offering. What I’ve seen from Aras is more than just a shift in their technology deployment approach. Aras is acting like a cloud business. They’ve adopted a more agile software development cycle and moved to smaller, more frequent releases. They’re thinking more along the lines of web services, delivering more granular, purpose-built APIs to allow Aras Innovator to fit more openly into their customers’ heterogeneous systems ecosystems in the cloud. They’ve reorganized themselves, and their solutions, around a robust DevOps approach for both internal operations and customer deployments. The transition is more than a facade or the ability to run in a cloud environment, it’s a move toward the future way solution providers deliver value.
Crystalizing their Unique Position
Aras has always been unique. From their “open systems” offering to their low-code architecture, there has always been a pride in being unique. They now have a name and a better definition of what differentiates Aras from other solution providers. It’s “the Aras Effect.” The Aras Effect is the new way they explain their basic principles of openness, support for the digital thread, adaptability, scalability, and community.
[caption id="attachment_20070" align="aligncenter" width="877"]
The "Aras Effect" as Presented at Aras ACE 2024[/caption]
I’ll touch on each of these based on my experience at ACE. I already mentioned openness due to open, granular interfaces that allow companies to execute and embed Aras capabilities in their cloud ecosystem. Scalability is thanks to the support Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform. I’m going to touch on the others directly.
Digital Thread
While I said Aras Innovator may not be the best system, it may be. Their PLM capabilities are extensive. The digital thread is the representation of broad PLM capabilities Aras has built into Aras Innovator to support the product lifecycle. Aras Innovator’s scope starts with requirements and creates traceability throughout the product lifecycle. Although Aras focuses on adaptability, they offer core capabilities as a starting point and announced continued investment in enhancing the standard offering. Aras SVP of Product Management John Sperling announced significant current and planned enhancements to both the low-code capabilities and to functionality. For example, he shared details on important PLM needs like maturing variant management including variant 3D Design with visualization. It’s just one example of Aras continuing to invest in become a more complete digital thread platform.
Another significant announcement related to the digital thread was the announcement of a new product to optimize supplier connectivity and collaboration, Supplier Management Solutions and the associated Aras Portal. The new application provides secure, remote access to controlled select digital thread and PLM information through configurable, mobile-optimized web applications. It’s not intended to replace a procurement or logistics system, but it offers direct connectivity in the integrated with data from Aras Innovator. Aras understands that the digital thread doesn’t exist in a single enterprise, but extends out into the value chain.
[caption id="attachment_20071" align="alignnone" width="977"]
Aras Supplier Management Solutions[/caption]
Adaptability
The ability to adapt Aras Innovator to customer needs has long been a key difference between Aras Innovator and the others. Whether it was called a “model-based architecture” as it was when I first started following Aras or more commonly known as “low-code,” the key point is that the operating infrastructure is separated from the data model and the logic. This decoupling allows the solution to change independently from the core underpinnings of the system.
The result is more important than the details, and Aras has leveraged that difference to offer customers more than a “cookie cutter” solution, but instead encourage customization. That’s about as different as you can get from the advice from other vendors. For any given company, “different” might not be better. But what it allows Aras to do is promise customers that they can upgrade their Aras software without disturbing their customizations.
Their low-code-enabled agility also allows them to tackle non-traditional PLM needs like what they’ve done in the process industries, most notably with Red Bull for CPG / batch process and Renesas for semiconductor manufacturing. For these companies that where there are fewer mature PLM offerings, they can modify the solution needs – including the data model – to meet unique industry without creating a dead-end resulting from their customization. It also allows Aras the ability to offer their platform as a service, but I’ll cover that next in community.
Community
Aras also works differently within the software community. That’s true for customers, but also for partners. As I mentioned, Aras offers their platform as a service for other vendors to build solutions based on their core capabilities. Some significant examples include Ansys’s Minerva Simulation Process and Management (SPDM) system and AVEVA’s Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) offerings that are both built on, “powered by,” the Aras platform. I spoke about those in last year’s coverage as well.
There is a direct relationship between their agility differentiator and their community aspect. The ability for other providers to build on top of Aras is unique. Another new example was uncovered at ACE this year as the result of a partnership with SAIC. I won’t go into detail about the offering, but SAIC announced their ReadyOne offering which is a Digital Engineering solution configured for the specific requirements of the Department of Defense. A quick look at their architecture is very telling, showing Aras platform services, modeling engine, and platform features serving as the underpinning for the SAIC data model and ReadyOne Digital Thread.
[caption id="attachment_20072" align="aligncenter" width="800"]
SAIC ReadyOne Data Model[/caption]
The ability to customize Aras Innovator is now crystalized as the ability to “build with Aras.” The capability not entirely new, but Aras is bringing more to the table including a planned app marketplace. I expect to learn more about that over time.
[caption id="attachment_20078" align="aligncenter" width="936"]
Build with Aras Program Announced at Aras ACE 2024[/caption]
From a customer community perspective, Aras has always fostered an environment where customers share with each other, even sharing customizations. Another example of doing things differently is Aras in the Round. This final session at ACE opens up the floor to all participants to ask anything as VP Leon Lauritsen tosses foam cubes with microphones to the audience. There were some challenging questions, and Roque Martin and Rob McAveney shared candid answers. It’s a unique experience.
Final Notes
There is always too much to cover at these events. As expected, Aras also discussed their continued investment in AI. In their case, it’s to support Industry 5.0 where systems augment and automate human capabilities. They are bullish on the potential, as Rob McAveney shared in a very interesting panel. As Rob explained, they are “expecting a giant leap forward in how products are designed and manufactured.” They shared some tangible examples, including requirements as a service, syndication of digital twins, and continuous design streams, AI-infused engineering, and an AI-driven chatbox hooked up to Aras Innovator. I expect a lot more from this in the coming months.
Summing Up ACE 2024
Aras is unique and comparing Aras Innovator to other PLM systems is comparing apples to oranges. They offer broad capabilities to support the digital thread, but that’s not the end of the story. Manufacturers looking to implement or upgrade PLM should take a look at Aras, if nothing else to understand the difference the “Aras Effect” delivers.
Thank you to Jason Kasper and Kylie Ochab for organizing my visit and setting up some interesting conversations.
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How can manufacturers bring the same digital transformation benefits enjoyed by other operational areas to the lab? How can the lab continuously improve and join the digital transformation? We offer five ways to get started.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Dassault Systèmes BIOVIA (registration required).
The Five Dimensions of Lab Integration
People, Process, and Technology
What does it take to integrate and drive better lab – and business – performance? We've identified five focus areas companies can measure and improve against using a continuous improvement approach. You can look at these "dimensions" across a typical, balanced view of people, process, and technology. This framework provides a proven foundation for developing and introducing more mature operations to drive better outcomes.
Any change effort must start with the people involved. For labs, it's critical to get the most out of highly skilled scientists and technicians. They must be motivated, understand their contribution to the greater cause, and be enabled to collaborate to streamline work, data flows, and innovation. Operator data is also critical to creating a complete digital thread of scientific data.
This leads to process. Peoples' activities must be standardized and optimized into efficient workflows and analytical methods that get the most out of people's effort and create well-documented, trusted scientific data. Both physical and virtual processes, such as simulations, must be standardized and streamlined.
Segmenting the Technology Dimension
The third, fourth, and fifth areas relate to technology. Technology is too complex and too important to consider a single dimension. We'll look at how integrating software, hardware, and data significantly improves lab productivity, throughput, and value.
Acknowledging Overlaps
Note that there are clear overlaps between these areas. For example, trusted test results rely on hardware readings but also validated analytical methods executed by people with the right permissions and certifications. Despite these inherent overlaps, we try to discuss each without too much overlap to give them the attention they deserve.
Can smart manufacturing, connectivity, and IoT reduce the tradeoffs of serving customers well? In this blog post, Julie Fraser explains both the importance of moving to smart manufacturing and how connectivity and IIoT support each other in moving a company forward. No company can afford to stay behind - moving to digital approaches is a foundation for success.
To get manufacturers on the road, this blog starts with unpacking the MESA definition of Smart Manufacturing. Fraser then explains the specific roles that industrial IoT (IIoT) and connectivity play, separately and together.
IIoT is a means to capture new data from equipment and processes. An IIoT platform can also put that data into context with other production data, enriching it to then visualize it and turn it into actionable information. This is a complex set of functions, each of which is crucial - but not easy to set up piecemeal.
Connectivity is what allows that data and information to flow where it’s needed, when it’s needed and to the people who need it to make decisions. What is special about industrial connectivity is that much of the data is not in a traditional database or structured format. Sensor data from IoT devices, time-series data from historians, and more can all be part of the data flows.
These two elements come together to enable smart manufacturing. Some of the benefits include agility, cost savings, efficiency, better customer experience, remote troubleshooting, less downtime, and higher product quality. Manufacturers must improve all of these at once.
Having the data you need, easily available and in context is what IIoT and connectivity together can deliver. Smart manufacturing that leverages IIoT and industrial connectivity is a clear path to the future.
Read the full blog post to understand the impact of smart manufacturing connectivity and IoT. Thank you to PTC for the opportunity to express our views here.
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[post_content] => Jim Brown and I had the opportunity to catch up with Anark to get an update. Anark has been serving the engineering and product development community for a long time, starting with their ability to translate and publish 3D visualization data and building that into a collaboration platform for manufacturers, and we wanted to catch up on their progress.
Poor collaboration has been a challenge companies have struggled with for years. In fact, Tech-Clarity's "What's the Cost of Poor Collaboration" finds that an overwhelming 93% of companies need to improve collaboration with different groups. Further, as products become more complex, the need for improved collaboration grows. For example, engineers reported that even for simple products, they collaborate with an average of 21 people and 35 for more complex products. Collaborators include other engineers, manufacturing, suppliers, customers, product managers, and more.
A digital thread can offer significant value by connecting different systems, but it doesn't capture the many communications that happen during product development. Product data is still often siloed in proprietary formats in CAD, PLM, ERP, and other systems, making it difficult to share. Consequently, engineers often share data via email just because it is easier. However, once data is shared via email, the digital thread is broken, and there is no control or visibility if that email is forwarded to anyone else. Not to mention, those communications are lost in email and need references to keep it in context with the product data.
These collaboration issues are particularly challenging when working with third parties. Our research, "How to Reduce Non-Value-Added Work in Engineering," finds that data becomes outdated 29% of the time when working with third parties, resulting in rework, delayed time to market, and excess cost.
Anark is leveraging its history and experience with CAD and PLM integrations to address the collaboration problem. They’ve expanded beyond their early publication approach to help manufacturers, particularly those in discrete manufacturing industries like aerospace, defense, automotive, industrial equipment, and medical device, improve product development. Their goal is to offer an all-in-one collaboration solution for manufacturers that provides the ease of use of a general-purpose collaboration tool, with the security to protect IP, and the ability to put the data in context.
Their integrations and adapters bring together:
The Anark Product Suite leverages this data foundation with three offerings:
How can heavy equipment manufacturers improve engineering productivity?
Heavy equipment has become increasingly complex as the amount of mechanical components, electronics, and software grows. Customer needs for customization, electrification, autonomous operations, connectivity, lower emissions, and better efficiency have driven this complexity further. Engineers are critical to successfully meet these requirements while ensuring compliance with local regulations and standards for global customers. It is a lot to manage; yet, engineers regularly lose productivity to non-value-added tasks that rob them of their ability to meet requirements. Margins are too thin to get it wrong, while poor quality or missed delivery dates threaten brand reputation, hurting the company's ability to compete, differentiate, and grow. Imagine the potential of identifying and removing the most common non-value-added activities engineers face and empowering them to focus on designing better equipment.
This research examines how engineers at heavy equipment manufacturers spend their time, where they lose productivity, and the impact on the business. It then identifies solutions and approaches to reduce time wasters.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Siemens (registration required).
For related research, read Aerospace & Defense: Reducing Engineering Time Wasters to learn how aerospace & defense manufacturers can improve engineering productivity and The Business Value of Reducing Engineering Time Wasters for a look at this research across all industries.
To received personalized recommendations for how your company could improve engineering productivity, take our 5-minute online assessment.
The Business Impact
While it may be easy to accept these time wasters as the way work is done, they come at a significant business cost. For example, an overwhelming 96% of equipment manufacturers report that lost engineering productivity negatively impacts the business. All that wasted time is spent on something other than engineering heavy equipment, putting deadlines at risk. If engineers could get even some of that time back, they would be better positioned to stay on schedule and on budget. Also, considering how challenging it can be to find and recruit engineering talent, retaining and maximizing your engineering talent is critical. Empowering them to focus on the work they want to do, rather than wasting time on tedious activities increases job satisfaction, so they will likely stay longer.
Longer development times mean higher costs, risking going over budget. Plus, engineers have less time to verify requirements and optimize their designs for fuel efficiency, performance, and cost. Together, these impacts hurt profitability, making it harder to meet goals to improve margins.
Heavy Equipment Implications
To remain competitive and optimize revenue potential, heavy equipment companies must be able to meet unique needs to empower their customers to work in new ways to improve their competitiveness. To achieve this, heavy equipment engineers need the bandwidth to fulfill specialized needs, understand regional standards and regulations, and collaborate across disciplines to support new technologies, such as electrification and digitalization. Wasting their time on non-value-added work take away from these efforts while adding development cost. Therefore, a strategic focus on reducing wasted time will have a significant positive business impact.
How Companies Use PLM
How you use PLM can determine how much value you will realize from it. While equipment manufacturers experience much value from PLM, learning from those most satisfied with PLM can reveal even more opportunities for additional benefit. For example, those most satisfied with PLM use it not only to store and manage files, but also to manage engineering changes, requirements, and design release processes (see upper graphic).
The most satisfied PLM users also use it to share design data with a broader audience (see lower graph). Not only does this unlock the value of engineering data to an extended group, but it also means fewer interruptions for engineers so they can stay focused on their engineering work. This also eliminates time wasters, like working with outdated or conflicting information. This could be especially useful for heavy equipment companies considering the number of roles involved in development.
Continuous improvement and AI: Do they go together? Is AI a way for manufacturers to ensure they get maximum value from their continuous improvement (CI) projects? Can it help select CI projects with the highest value? Companies are making better decisions these days wIth analytics and AI.
Tune in to this webinar to see Julie Fraser discuss this with PTC’s Jordan Coffman. The core of continuous improvement is the ability to analyze data to pinpoint problems and their root causes, as well as possible impacts of process changes. Sounds like an opportunity for AI and advanced analytics. Listen to this conversation about what our analyst and PTC’s Global Director of IoT Sales and Strategic Initiatives see in the market today.
This webinar focuses on making continuous improvement a true enterprise way of life. It touches on stakeholders, mindsets, and technology to support gathering, enriching, and analyzing data from all levels. Julie and Jordan get into what vendors and systems need to do to leverage real-time manufacturing data to create enterprise-wide value and accurate comparisons to decide where to invest.
They address the question of whether, with all of the systems manufacturers have at every level, they have what they need to make good decisions and get full value from continuous improvement programs. Learn more about CI and AI. Download a replay now.
This is a companion to our recent Buyer's Guide, Confidently Prioritize Manufacturing Improvement Opportunities.
[post_title] => New Era of Continuous Improvement: Use the Power of Digital & AI to Select Projects that Matter
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How can aerospace and defense engineers improve productivity?
The aerospace and defense industry continues to develop some of the world's most complex products while adhering to stringent regulations and rigorous certification standards. Moreover, technological advancements have created exciting opportunities for innovation, such as greater sustainability and automation. However, this also drives requirements for even more integrated systems of mechanical components, electronics, and software. This adds exponential levels of complexity as the thousands of components now have tens of thousands of interfaces. Consequently, engineers must manage, verify, and validate, all of this, which consuming valuable time. Unfortunately, engineers regularly lose productivity to non-value-add tasks that rob them of their ability to innovate and focus on these unique issues, threatening their company's ability to compete, differentiate, and grow. Imagine the potential of identifying and removing the most common non-value-add activities engineers face and empowering them to focus on more critical tasks.
This research examines how engineers at aerospace and defense companies spend their time, where they lose productivity, and the impact on the business. It then identifies solutions and approaches to reduce time wasters.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Siemens (registration required).
For related research, read The Business Value of Reducing Engineering Time Wasters for a look at this research across all industries.
To received personalized recommendations for how your company could improve engineering productivity, take our 5-minute online assessment.
Engineers Impact Business Success
Success at aerospace and defense companies relies on exceptional engineering. Engineers are crucial to ensuring integrated systems function as intended and will pass certification. Their design decisions directly impact sustainability goals, cost targets, and regulatory and safety requirements. Therefore, empowering engineers is key to the successful execution of business strategies.
Too Many Time Wasters
Unfortunately, engineers report spending too much time on non-value-added work with too many interruptions, taking them away from critical innovation work. Furthermore, 85% of surveyed aerospace and defense companies say this loss in engineering productivity comes at a significant business cost due to missed deadlines, higher costs, less innovation, and poor quality. One way to overcome productivity losses is to manage product data better and make it accessible to those who need it, when they need it.
Reclaiming Wasted Time
This report identifies substantial engineering time wasters in the aerospace and defense industry. It explores how companies of all sizes, including OEMs and suppliers, reclaim lost time by examining the use and value of PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) solutions to centralize data across multiple domains, manage processes, and collaborate better. Incidentally, PLM users reported fewer changes due to outdated information and errors, significantly reducing non-value-added work and shortening development times. This report also examines how companies select and use PLM solutions, including cloud-based implementations.
Conclusions
How can heavily regulated pharmaceutical and biotechnology manufacturers keep up with changes? By being flexible and paperless. Yet that’s not as easy as it may sound. Finding the appropriate manufacturing execution systems (MES) is a foundation for success.
This eBook outlines why being flexible and paperless are now imperative. It goes on to point out the challenges of doing either of those. It explains MES, and why it’s crucial in supporting pharmaceutical companies’ journey to being flexible and paperless. Finally, it points to some specific advanced capabilities that this industry requires from MES for success today and in the future.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Siemens (registration required).
For related research, read our insight to find out if the next steps of IT/OT convergence are at hand, hear how life sciences manufacturers can accelerate their innovation in this recorded webinar, and read our eBook to find out what manufacturers need in MES to be competitive today and in the future.
MES to Meet Pressures and Imperatives
All companies in the pharmaceutical industry are under pressure for time, quality, compliance, and innovation. These pressures create imperatives to be both paperless and flexible to protect profitability. The stresses and imperatives apply to small-molecule pharmaceuticals, active ingredients (API), contract drug manufacturers (CDMOs), large-molecule biotechnology, and gene and cell therapy makers.
Fortunately, a manufacturing execution system (MES) proven in these pharmaceutical segments can support many aspects of these imperatives. By choosing MES wisely, such a system can support success now and into the future.
“We have a program for digital transformation in manufacturing particularly, also in Quality and other areas. The key is implementation of eBR.” Nina Mikadze, Digital Transformation Leader, PHARMA INDUSTRY
A Healthy BioPharma Future
How can manufacturers meet growing sustainability demands without compromising manufacturing performance, quality, and availability? How does a data-driven, systematic approach leveraging the digital thread in PLM allow them to operationalize sustainability to meet ESG demands?
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Aras (registration required).
“CO2 is one thing, but not the only thing. We have a push for more circularity, how we get raw materials from the supply chain, and how to ensure the steel we get is sustainable.” – Technical Director, Fluid Transfer Systems Manufacturer.
In a similar way to the GHG scopes, there are many different facets to how manufacturers can improve their sustainability. They could focus on one or a combination of:
Jeff Stroh, Sr. Director Digital & Information Systems Management for McDermott International, explained the rationale for his business. “We are in a very carbon-intensive industry. We did a study of a liquid natural gas (LNG) facility on scopes 1,2, and 3. We found that the biggest impact we can have, even though we can do a lot different things, is in the first year our customer operates the plant.”That gives them a focus area to improve that will make a tangible difference. Take a Systems View First, manufacturers need to instill a company culture that rewards sustainability. Then, it can take a systems view to navigate the complexity, interrelationships, and tradeoffs required to make meaningful sustainability improvements. They must take into account all of the demands they face, both internal and external, and identify where they can couple doing the right thing with tangible business benefits like cost reduction. At that point, they can set requirements and goals for each. With that, they can take a holistic view to understand how potential actions will impact the targets and other implications they may have across the business so they can evaluate tradeoffs. Then, companies must monitor and track the plans across the business to fulfill the requirements and achieve their sustainability goals. This eBook shares five different ways manufacturers can improve ESG by taking a systems engineering approach.
According to Jeff Stroh of McDermott, “ESG is increasingly becoming a pre-requisite for bid eligibility, with more customers screening contractors such as McDermott for ESG criteria.”Manufacturers need to develop a culture that values sustainability across the enterprise. Then, they should take a holistic, systems approach, setting specific sustainability goals, breaking their strategic plans down into achievable systems requirements, and defining associated measurements and responsibilities. Support the Effort Driving sustainability improvements requires a systems-level approach. It requires manufacturers to move from a document-driven to a data-driven approach, leveraging robust digital threads and digital twins that incorporate data from a variety of sources. The data gathering, collaboration, and decision-making tools to drive new levels of sustainability – whether they focus on products, manufacturing, or operations – must be both comprehensive and agile. There is no “killer app” for sustainability, it requires an integrated ecosystem of collaborators, internal data, external databases, enterprise solutions, and tools throughout the product lifecycle. For example, solutions like LCA can be helpful, but they are often employed too late. Leverage PLM for Sustainability
Data is the primary foundation for sustainability. Data must be digital, accessible, unified, and centralized. Manufacturers must know their business goals and their product, including cohesive, trusted digital threads and digital twins by variant and configuration. This information must be put into the hands of designers and other decision-makers early to provide decision support, support simulation, and manage tradeoffs so designers can understand the impacts of their decisions at local and holistic levels.
It’s time to take a systematic, data-driven approach and operationalize sustainability to drive strategic ESG improvements. Although there is no single solution for sustainability, the right PLM solution is essential to support this approach. PLM provides crucial product data and integration with design tools where decisions are made. It allows companies to optimize, validate, implement, and trace sustainability decisions using core systems engineering, requirements management, lifecycle management, change control, supplier collaboration, and configuration management capabilities. The PLM solution will need to be open and flexible, however, to go beyond these core capabilities to manage new sustainability data and ESG-related processes and reporting. An open, flexible PLM solution, along with the right company culture and strategy, can help manufacturers reach their sustainability objectives and build a foundation for future improvements.
*This summary is an abbreviated version of the research and does not contain the full content. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Aras (registration required).
If you have difficulty obtaining a copy of the report, please contact us.
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In this time of uncertainty and new technologies, is it time to re-evaluate how we explore and fine-tune our supply chain forecasts, schedules, and plans? For decades, optimization and what-if planning have been in place in manufacturing supply chains. We’ll discuss new possible approaches and what we have seen working.
Making plant floor software more straightforward to use, rollout, maintain, and sustain is a worthy endeavor. The fourth annual release of the GE Digital Proficy portfolio as an integrated release was packed! Updates range from expanding industry fit to architecture for enterprise rollout, cloud everywhere, composability, consistency for connected workers, sustainability functionality, and pre-built analytics for common needs.
Jim Brown and Julie Fraser had a chance to catch up with the GE Digital product management team for a preview of the Proficy 2024 unified launch. Unified is a relatively new capability for Proficy, with cloud or hybrid hosting, a common user experience (UX), and common administration. That’s rare, since this suite includes not only comprehensive MES and plant applications, but also historian, automation software and Sustainability software.
Some of the highlights are:
Coherent, flexible architecture: Historian and MES are entirely rewritten to be containerized on the same unified namespace (UNS). Other components of this model are a data model, support for a range of databusses including MQTT, OPS-UA and more, and a directory service. We see this as a solid approach for the software to stay useful at enterprise scale over the long term.
Connected worker consistency: IT are not the only ones with new capabilities. Operations Hub supports operators, supervisors, technicians, and other connected workers. It lets the customers compose applications as they wish behind a single UI. Applications from HMI, dashboards, engineering analytics, and MES all use containers and Operations Hub to appear in a consistent way. It aims to work even beyond the Proficy suite.
Enterprise scale: Cloud, on-prem, or hybrid hosting is working into most of this suite. Customers can now pipe data into data lakes and an array of analytics tools. The file storage approach means sending even millions of data points per second from OT tags across multiple plants is possible. Configuration Hub is central to the ability of a center of expertise (CoE) to manage all of these applications seamlessly. GE reports that one automotive customer is automatically building tag databases for their many plants retooling for EV production, and it’s taking only weeks to build HMI/SCADA databases. Licensing by tags also enables customer flexibility to deploy as needed.
Expanded discrete industry support: GE Digital is working with GE Aviation to support complex low-volume discrete industries such as A&D (Proficy has long had a strong base in automotive). This industry has only a few successful MES who offer what they need in engineering change and dispatching, so this market entry is welcome.
Expanded analytics: More of the applications now have embedded issue-specific analytics already included. The suite also offers customers the ability to build their own analytics models. Sustainability is one such area, based on Vernova’s focus. PID loop health is another. Alarm management in the automation suite has been upgraded to reduce distribution during alarm floors, and new capabilities for troubleshooting alarms are included also.
All of these new capabilities are in a coherent yet open suite of products. Customers can benefit across OT, IT, sustainability, and plant operations. We see how this would put GE Digital in a strong position as the spin-off of GE Vernova approaches.
Thank you, Steve Pavlovsky, Prasad Pai, Joe Gerstl, and Ben Whiteman, for an excellent overview of the new possibilities in Proficy. Thanks, Carter Conway and Spenser Murray, for setting up the briefing for us. We will look forward to more news as Proficy continues to leverage technology advances and meet market shifts.
For related content, read our previous insights on how GE Aims to Operationalize Sustainability and how they plan to Enhance MES for TCO and Flexibility.
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Denodo Data Virtualization Capabilities[/caption]
Julie Fraser and I were introduced to Denodo through a connection made in the Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association (MESA) International Smart Manufacturing Community. Denodo is a large, fast-growing data management company with capabilities supporting enterprise data fabric and data integration. We spent some time with the Denodo team, learning about their solution for data virtualization to create “integration without integration.”
Denodo helps companies create a single view of distributed data to drive analytics. As one would expect, the offering provides data integration, management, quality, and governance. But Denodo’s solution does not aggregate and replicate large volumes of data, instead creating a form of data mesh by sourcing and storing metadata while leaving data in place, but accessible. They then use the metadata to create a data catalog that allows self-service data discovery and data preparation on a logical abstraction of a variety of data stores. Although Denodo takes a “logical first” approach, leading with virtualization, they can also support ETL, ESBs, or APIs with over 200 adapters for complete data management and delivery.
Our research shows that manufacturers typically invest significant time and effort in creating and maintaining integrated data to drive decisions and support AI. In particular, they struggle to put IT and OT data in context. Denodo’s abstraction layer and services could play a significant role in simplifying this and deliver significant benefits.
[caption id="attachment_19829" align="aligncenter" width="824"]
Denodo Platform Functionality[/caption]
The real value comes by putting the data into action. Denodo provides connectivity to data analysis tools like Tableau or PowerBI to turn that data into actionable insights. In this way, their data virtualization approach can help create intelligence from fragmented and proliferated data in real time without waiting for traditional extract, transformation, and load (ETL) processes.
We’ve seen some case studies and we’re impressed, but we also have more to learn. We believe that Denodo can offer significant value to support manufacturing and supply chain analytics and AI with their data fabric approach. Thank you, Dave Nixon, for making the connection, and Saptarshi Sengupta and Deborah Wiltshire for introducing us to Denodo’s capabilities. We look forward to continuing our learning and watching their progress in manufacturing industries.
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I caught up with an old friend who has an exciting new role as Executive Board Member and Co-Owner of PDTec, a company that I am excited to get to know better. The company offers a series of composable apps based on their data management platform, ice. NET. I love their tagline “innovation through integration” and their focus spanning data, process, and systems integration. Their solutions, based on a scalable component architecture, are designed to help engineers be more effective and efficient in product development, including:
In addition to these preconfigured standard offerings, PDTec can leverage their component-based platform to develop unique solutions on a consultative basis driven by their deep industry expertise.
PDTec is not a flashy software company, instead focusing on serving their customers who include majorlinke complex, discrete manufacturers with significant adoption in the automotive industry. In fact, they publicly list many German automotive OEMs as their customers, including Porsche AG, AUDI AG, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz AG, and Daimler Truck. Their customers also include tier 1 automotive suppliers such as Brose Group, Japanese automotive OEMs Mitsubishi Corporation and Nissan Motor Corporation.
PDTec is a company I look forward to learning more about. Thank you Michael Murgai for the overview.
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Tech-Clarity Analysts Jim Brown and Michelle Boucher at Autodesk University[/caption]
2023 is in the rearview mirror and I’m reflecting on a few things that Michelle Boucher and I learned and what they mean for our industry. Here are some takeaways from Autodesk University 2023, including AI and PLM strategy updates, that will have a big impact on the industry. This is only a small portion of what we learned from multiple presentations and conversations, it’s always hard to decide what to report on from these large conferences!
It's important to point out that Autodesk is not new to AI. We’ve been in conversations with Autodesk about AI for a long time. Autodesk was one of the first large engineering software vendors to focus heavily in generative design and has been at it for some time. They are continuing their investment in generative AI to augment human innovation, for example they announced an acquisition of Blank.AI to rapidly develop design concepts for the automotive industry.
Autodesk has invested a lot of brainpower into how AI can make a difference for their customers. They’ve also invested a lot of expensive computing power to develop AI models from the vast amount of data they have access to. They have learned a lot and we expect to see continued AI capabilities rolled out at all levels of Autodesk products. To support this, Autodesk announced Autodesk AI to provide intelligent assistance and generative capabilities across their software portfolio as a part of the Autodesk Platform.
Autodesk VP Vikram Dutt further shared their vision for AI, “The cloud has connected our customers’ data, and it's enabling AI to unlock new ways of working. We really believe we're on the cusp of a new era, one where AI will fundamentally change the way our customers do business, unleashing both their agility as well as creativity. And we believe our customers really need an entirely new way of working.” It’s a bold objective that offers significant potential. We’re keeping our eyes on the progress.
Autodesk University PLM Summit[/caption]
Fusion 360 Manage is a flexible, workflow-oriented system. Fusion 360 Manage complements Autodesk’s extended PDM solution, Vault. They also offer their still relatively newly acquired Upchain solution that supports what they described as “fully cloud PDM with some PLM capabilities,” which is well suited for design-centric, multi-CAD environments.
Although there is some overlap in the offerings, Autodesk is investing in integrating all of these solutions with Fusion, their industry cloud for manufacturing. In a presentation on Autodesk Fusion Data Management, Jeremy Lambert explained that their goal is a single, unified industry cloud with capabilities from Prodsmart, Fusion 360 Manage, Fusion 360, Vault, and Upchain.
[caption id="attachment_19628" align="aligncenter" width="961"]
Autodesk Fusion Data Management[/caption]
Fusion is clearly Autodesk’s long-term strategy for the manufacturing industry. Fusion is a pure platform built from the ground up and goes well beyond PLM. As described by VP Cloud Data and PLM Derrek Cooper, Fusion is CAD, CAM, PLM, and MES data in a graph database, decoupled from logic, run through APIs. It leverages a common data model across applications, which is the target for integrating Autodesk’s PDM and PLM offerings.
AU Design & Manufacturing Executive Panel[/caption]
Autodesk University AEC Panel[/caption]
Autodesk has a leading position in AEC and there is much more to share, but I’m going to limit my commentary to one more exciting update related to the the intersection of D&M and AEC, industrialized construction. There was a very interesting presentation and exhibit from Factory OS sharing how they use Forma for sustainable modular construction, working collaboratively in the cloud , around a common language and drawings. The parallels with Fusion are noticeable, and both supported by Autodesk Platform.
Has your continuous improvement kept up with your business? It is a new era for manufacturing, and a new era for continuous improvement (CI) is available too. This eBook gives you ideas for how to update your CI with digital support and new approaches that ensure you build on your CI successes.
We interviewed manufacturers, consultants, and associations to validate and expand on the concepts we explain in this white paper.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research please visit our sponsor, PTC Thingworx (registration required)
The Problem-Solving StoryEnabling CI Sequels
Has your continuous improvement kept up with your business? It is a new era for manufacturing, and a new era for continuous improvement (CI) is available too. This eBook gives you ideas for how to update your CI with digital support and new approaches that ensure you build on your CI successes. We interviewed manufacturers,…
Switching software architectures, like the current move from web-based enterprise architectures to SaaS, can cause significant cost and disruption. How can companies avoid the increased total cost of ownership and reduced ROI during these transitions? Learn how low-code platforms help eliminate the need to repeat the rip-and-replace cycle as computing paradigms evolve. Please enjoy the…
We had a fascinating update briefing with Gridraster COO/Co-founder Dijam Panigrahi, highlighting the growing potential of XR and spatial computing. When we first spoke with them a couple of years ago, we were excited about their platform and what it offers their application provider partners. Namely, Gridraster provides the infrastructure they need to deliver solutions…
Jim Brown and Julie Fraser are enthused after recently catching up with ComplianceQuest’s CSO and VP of Product Marketing, Nikki Willett. Their progress is impressive. At ten years old, ComplianceQuest continues to expand and innovate to realize its vision of software for quality that touches everything. This vision and product suite span engineering and R&D…
How and why are real estate developers taking a design-build approach to residential real estate development? How does that increase the need for AEC technology to improve communication, validation, and planning? Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Graphisoft (registration required). Table of Contents The Design-Build Project Approach Construction…
How does the Digital Manufacturing Journey unfold? What are views of the past, present, and future? Tech-Clarity’s Julie Fraser will be on an industry analysts panel discussing this at the Manufacturing Leadership Council’s Rethink Conference on Marco Island, FL. The conference runs from June 2nd to June 5th and will include a live panel discussion…
I really enjoyed the Aras ACE 2024 user conference this year. The event gave me the opportunity to hear and learn from Aras leadership, specialists, partners, and users to gain a deeper perspective on the future of Aras. I’ll share my takeaways, but I’ll start with my summary and the advice I give to manufacturers…
How can manufacturers bring the same digital transformation benefits enjoyed by other operational areas to the lab? How can the lab continuously improve and join the digital transformation? We offer five ways to get started. Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Dassault Systèmes BIOVIA (registration required). Table of…
Can smart manufacturing, connectivity, and IoT reduce the tradeoffs of serving customers well? In this blog post, Julie Fraser explains both the importance of moving to smart manufacturing and how connectivity and IIoT support each other in moving a company forward. No company can afford to stay behind – moving to digital approaches is a…
Jim Brown and I had the opportunity to catch up with Anark to get an update. Anark has been serving the engineering and product development community for a long time, starting with their ability to translate and publish 3D visualization data and building that into a collaboration platform for manufacturers, and we wanted to catch…
How can heavy equipment manufacturers improve engineering productivity? Heavy equipment has become increasingly complex as the amount of mechanical components, electronics, and software grows. Customer needs for customization, electrification, autonomous operations, connectivity, lower emissions, and better efficiency have driven this complexity further. Engineers are critical to successfully meet these requirements while ensuring compliance with local…
Continuous improvement and AI: Do they go together? Is AI a way for manufacturers to ensure they get maximum value from their continuous improvement (CI) projects? Can it help select CI projects with the highest value? Companies are making better decisions these days wIth analytics and AI. Tune in to this webinar to see Julie…
How can aerospace and defense engineers improve productivity? The aerospace and defense industry continues to develop some of the world’s most complex products while adhering to stringent regulations and rigorous certification standards. Moreover, technological advancements have created exciting opportunities for innovation, such as greater sustainability and automation. However, this also drives requirements for even more…
How can heavily regulated pharmaceutical and biotechnology manufacturers keep up with changes? By being flexible and paperless. Yet that’s not as easy as it may sound. Finding the appropriate manufacturing execution systems (MES) is a foundation for success. This eBook outlines why being flexible and paperless are now imperative. It goes on to point out…
How can manufacturers meet growing sustainability demands without compromising manufacturing performance, quality, and availability? How does a data-driven, systematic approach leveraging the digital thread in PLM allow them to operationalize sustainability to meet ESG demands? Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Aras (registration required). Table of Contents Take…
In this time of uncertainty and new technologies, is it time to re-evaluate how we explore and fine-tune our supply chain forecasts, schedules, and plans? For decades, optimization and what-if planning have been in place in manufacturing supply chains. We’ll discuss new possible approaches and what we have seen working. Are traditional algorithmic and simulation…
Making plant floor software more straightforward to use, rollout, maintain, and sustain is a worthy endeavor. The fourth annual release of the GE Digital Proficy portfolio as an integrated release was packed! Updates range from expanding industry fit to architecture for enterprise rollout, cloud everywhere, composability, consistency for connected workers, sustainability functionality, and pre-built analytics…
Julie Fraser and I were introduced to Denodo through a connection made in the Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association (MESA) International Smart Manufacturing Community. Denodo is a large, fast-growing data management company with capabilities supporting enterprise data fabric and data integration. We spent some time with the Denodo team, learning about their solution for data virtualization…
I caught up with an old friend who has an exciting new role as Executive Board Member and Co-Owner of PDTec, a company that I am excited to get to know better. The company offers a series of composable apps based on their data management platform, ice. NET. I love their tagline “innovation through integration”…
2023 is in the rearview mirror and I’m reflecting on a few things that Michelle Boucher and I learned and what they mean for our industry. Here are some takeaways from Autodesk University 2023, including AI and PLM strategy updates, that will have a big impact on the industry. This is only a small portion…
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