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 Our research, “How to Reduce Non-Value-Added Work in Engineering,” finds that data becomes outdated 29% of the time when working with third parties, resulting in rework, delayed time to market, and excess cost.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:
- Design data 2D & 3D CAD, including advanced MBD support
- PLM, PDM, and other data sources
- Other standard / neutral file formats like STEP, DXF, QIF, XML, and more
- Documents and other non-technical file types
The Anark Product Suite leverages this data foundation with three offerings:
- Anark Collaborate: A mobile-first hosted platform (on-prem or SaaS) that offers collaboration in context, with real-time chat, markup capabilities, and traceability. Team members can share, access, and discuss technical data with markups, notes, pictures, videos and chat.
- Anark Workstation: A desktop solution for engineers and other authors to create recipe-driven technical data packages.
- Anark Publish: Automation engine that understands and synchronizes data with PDM, PLM, and other systems and makes it available for Anark Collaborate.
Anark’s solutions complement and extend existing systems like PLM by providing an additional secure collaboration platform, providing everything from simple file sharing to 3D markups that become an integral part of the digital thread. Thank you to Fred Waugh and Patrick Dunfey, and we look forward to continuing to learn more about how Anark solves these tough collaboration challenges.