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PLM/PDM

“Strategic cloud-based PLM initiative”: Medical technology provider Dräger selects Aras as global backbone for products

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Bruce Jenkins | Ora Research

Aras, which bills itself as the “leader in open product lifecycle management (PLM) software for the enterprise,” announced that Dräger, an international leader in medical and safety technology, selected the Aras PLM Platform as its future PLM system “to enable enterprise-wide visibility of product data.” The new state-of-the-art PLM system will supplant Dräger’s legacy systems, connect more than 2,500 users, and be hosted in the cloud, Aras reports.

“Enabling full lifecycle traceability”

As part of company initiatives to maintain and further strengthen its market position, Dräger identified PLM as a strategic focus area and opportunity to extract value, Aras says. The result was Dräger’s PACE program, aimed at defining and developing a PLM platform to unify product data, processes and legacy systems by 2020.

Dräger had been running separate PLM instances in each of its Medical and Safety business units. Aras says its technology was selected for “its flexibility to adapt to Dräger’s requirements, and ability to easily migrate data from the two existing PLM systems. In addition, Aras’ partner Minerva played a significant role in the selection with its out-of-the-box Medical Device templates for design history file (DHF).”

Requirements management in Aras.

Aras says its PLM Platform will provide Dräger with “full lifecycle traceability to improve company visibility on product development, product quality, product costs and impact of change.” Short-term program goals include management of requirements, BOM, documents, master data and classification, to be followed by configuration, variants and options, model-based systems engineering, and enterprise change management.

As part of Dräger’s vision for its next-generation PLM system, the Aras PLM Platform will also serve as a central point for data by connecting to a range of other engineering and business systems such as requirements management, various CAD systems, and the company’s ERP system.

Aras: Model-based service-oriented architecture

Aras says its model-based service-oriented architecture (SOA) is designed to be:

  • Flexible to meet today’s needs and to adapt easily as users’ businesses evolve.
  • Scalable to grow with the user’s business.
  • Easy to upgrade even if a given user’s system is heavily customized, allowing them to readily benefit from enhancements in new releases.
Aras’ new-generation PLM technology architecture.

Open architecture—“Openness is critical to the long-term success and sustainability of a PLM/PDM system,” Aras says. “To enable true interoperability, portability and extensibility, we provide an open architecture which features open software, an open data model, open interfaces and use of open Web standards.”

Aras describes its technology as an n-tier, model-based service-oriented architecture (SOA) built entirely on open web standards composed of web clients, application servers(s), database(s) and file vaulting servers(s) based on standard Internet protocols including HTTP/HTTPS, XML and SOAP. Its open approach also leverages the Microsoft products SQL Server, .NET and Windows Server. The company further emphasizes its commitment to the ProSTEP iViP Code of PLM Openness (CPO).

Secure—Aras says its technology “has security built in from the ground up. In fact the Aras security, authentication and data access rights model was defined to meet the needs of our defense industry customers to satisfy ITAR and other military security compliance requirements.”

Dräger

Aras PLM Platform

Aras Medical Devices Capability

Aras Medical Devices Capability

Aras BOM Management

Aras Configuration Management

Aras Systems Engineering

Aras Partner Minerva

Will ALM and PLM Play Nicely Together?

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cad5
With the announcement that two companies integrating their ALM and PLM software, software and design engineers won’t spend much longer working on their pieces of the product puzzle separately.

By Jean Thilmany

In this age of mechatronics and control systems, design, electric, software, and system engineers need to coordinate efforts and work together much more regularly than in the past.

In the future, expect to see more homogeneous teams made up of software and mechanical engineers—as well as the system engineers that oversee their efforts. Those types of teams, along with the embedded systems they create, are already regularly seen in the aerospace, medical device, and automotive industries.

In other industries, engineering work is still separated by type. Design engineers work on their part of a device, software engineers another, and electrical engineers yet another. The engineers provide their own, separate solutions that are integrated into the overall design.

But that’s changing.

“One of the first things our customers ask for is tools that let people collaborate and exchange ideas across the whole engineering department: mechanical, systems, electrical, software. Everyone,” said Stefano Rizzo, SVP of strategy and business development at Polarion Software, which makes the application lifecycle management software used by software engineers.

In response, a few vendors have investigated integrating ALM, used to track software engineering projects, with the product lifecycle management system that mechanical and design engineers use for product management. According to a December 2013 VDC Research report, the rise of software-driven products make this type of integration priority.

“Over the past 10 to 15 years, software has become a part of almost every manufactured product,” Rizzo said. “You can’t really say that piece of code is a part, but it has it’s own complex lifecycle not addressed by PLM.

This spring, Polarion and Siemens announced an integrated Polarion ALM and Siemens Teamcenter, used for PLM, product.

Features include combined requirements management, and traceability functions.

But blended product management products like these won’t likely be embraced overnight. That’s because merged systems mean mixing engineering cultures, Rizzo said. “People form a way of seeing their work,” he explained. “Software engineers see their work as functional. They need to implement a function. But product engineers built a part, a piece, not a function of the part.”

These are early days and it’s yet to know how these two cultures will fare, working together within the same management system and merging identities. It’s safe to say companies implementing this shared technology can expect a few bumps in the road.

No matter what types of management technologies they rely on, engineers won’t spend much longer working on their separate pieces puzzle pieces and linking them up later to make the whole picture.

photo credit: in little pieces via photopin(license)

 

 

Onshape: Future of CAD—or future of PLM?

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By Bruce Jenkins, President, Ora Research LLC

“Is Onshape intending to develop PLM eventually, or are they going to go the route of partners to provide that?” Thus posted a user in Onshape’s online discussion forum, continuing: “I ask because Onshape is a database system with the correct platform to seemingly handle this functionality.”

Lou Gallo, a member of Onshape’s User Experience, Product Definition & Support team, posted this reply: “Time will tell but our focus is CAD and rethinking that tool and the close necessities for CAD to be successful and efficient. PLM, as you already know, is its own animal and talking to those systems seems to be the more near term solution. Still very early days…”

The first part of his post notwithstanding, Gallo’s suggestive closing words reminded us that many of Onshape’s renowned leadership team have made clear they intend to devote the rest of their professional lives to making Onshape the capstone of their careers. It’s hard not to suspect these visionaries have substantially more far-reaching plans than just moving parametric detail design to the cloud.

onshape1

Indeed, Steve Hess, another member of Onshape’s UX/PD team, followed up Gallo by posting: “As you know Onshape was built with data management in mind. The data management features of Onshape are at the core of the product and will become more exposed as Onshape matures.”

“In time, Onshape will be the system of record for all types of data & meta-data (data about the data) allowing you to run analysis and simulations…without having [to] copy or reproduce the information in another system. The data stored in Onshape will be visible and accessible to your other enterprise systems.”

A further clue to the scope and scale of Onshape’s larger ambitions was revealed several weeks ago when the company became the first engineering design software developer to declare itself “all-in” on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud platform for ISVs. “An ‘all-in’ commitment,” Amazon notes, “is a strategic declaration from the executive team at the APN [Amazon Partner Network] Partner’s firm. They have declared that AWS is their strategic cloud platform. This means that AWS is the core infrastructure powering their SaaS offerings.”

Onshape CEO John McEleney explained, “Onshape relies on AWS’s high-bandwidth networks to allow secure, real-time collaboration between our users. The global placement of Amazon’s Regions allowed us to easily distribute our compute instances worldwide to minimize latency to our users. The performance, reliability and flexibility of AWS’s services shortened Onshape’s time to market and gave us a huge technological advantage in the highly competitive CAD market.”

Key is that Onshape was “built from scratch on AWS,” the company says. Using a “unique computational architecture on AWS,” Onshape gives users secure and simultaneous access to a single master version of their data without software licenses or copying files.

These aspects of its technology, its “all-in” AWS commitment, and the many hints coming from its executives and technologists all suggest that, beyond the revolution it is bringing to CAD and 3D modeling, Onshape’s ambition is not just to liberate engineers from the chains of PDM. The company’s fundamental goal, we’re convinced, is to evolve a new engineering-platform paradigm that will free both individual engineers and product development organizations from many of the overhead burdens imposed by today’s PLM systems.

In short—how long before Onshape openly declares what we think is already emerging as its ultimate value proposition:

Who’s “all-in” for a post-PLM world?

 

Video: Data Management Best Practices to Avoid Rework on Shop Floor

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Manufacturers are always looking out for ways to work more efficiently, reducing the amount of scrap and rework required to produce products. The reality is that the best way to accomplish these goals starts upstream in the product development process.

Caleb Funk, Manufacturing Solutions Team Manager from IMAGINiT Technologies, shares leading data management practices used by successful manufacturers in this video. Downstream, these practices help to avoid costly scrap and rework on the shop floor.

Successful manufacturers establish and define good data management practices by:
* Establishing rules for creating, routing and revising design documents.
* Developing and adhering religiously to styles and generating their own corporate libraries to ensure consistency across drawings

These things alone will cut down misunderstandings that lead to time delays and costly rework and scrap. In order to catalogue and protect intellectual property, however, manufacturers need to invest in a data management system that sits on top of their 3D design software and organizes parts and assemblies so that existing information can easily be reused and the latest version easily identified.

In addition, manufacturers should look beyond software for efficiencies and not assume that software alone can solve all problems. They must examine the bottlenecks and create workflows that eliminate them. Take advantage of process automation to speed things up and improve accuracy.

Errors can be reduced by ensuring upstream and downstream systems are integrated with engineering software. Sales systems should feed engineering with final order details, informing purchasing at the same time. Similarly engineering should be integrated directly with the CAM systems on the shop floor. When engineering releases the final design, everyone works with the same information and there will be no nasty surprises coming off the line.

A central location for all design data enables the tracking of versions and revisions and ensures that everyone is working off of the latest data sets. Once standardized, manufacturers can create the rules for creating, routing and revising documents. These rules will help keep teams and projects on track.

Barb Schmitz

3D PDFs Provide Easy Way to Share CAD Data

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Earlier this week in this blog, I discussed how users can maximize their investments in 3D CAD systems by sharing their CAD data with downstream data consumers, such as documentation, assembly, manufacturing, quality, sales and marketing personnel. Sharing technical data with these people can speed up all of the supporting activities that accompany product development and assist with getting products to market successfully.

So the question arises, what is the best way to share technical data with stakeholders outside of engineering? I came across an interesting blog written by Bill Barnes of Lattice Technology that addresses this issue and I found much of it worthy of sharing.

One of the issues with sharing technical data is the fact that many of the intended recipients are non-technical, meaning they don’t use 3D CAD. The types of users involved can also vary widely in terms of the type of devices they would be receiving the data on, such as desktops, laptops or mobile devices, such as phones or tablets.

So now an organization is faced with a long list of use cases, with different type of stakeholders, needing different ways to access. With this in mind, organizations must answer these questions:

* Ease-of-use and accessibility. How do people consume this 3D data, and how difficult is it?
* Cost. How much are the licenses?
* Installation. Can you bring a new application into your current IT environment?

The solution: 3D PDF

Everyone knows about the ubiquitous PDF and how useful it is when sharing documents. In fact, everyone has the Adobe PDF reader. What you may not know is that the standard Adobe PDF Reader (that everyone has) can display interactive 3D data and can contain other related information as well – think of it as a container – more on that later.

What makes 3D PDF an ideal solution is that it is easy to use, free, already is on your computer (and apps are available for tablets), and enables anyone inside or outside of your company to easily access and use your valuable 3D engineering data via their desktop or mobile device–without additional licensing costs.

3D PDF Components

Sharing of your interactive 3D model is only the beginning. The 3D PDF is a container. Adobe designed a tremendous amount of flexibility into this powerful file format. Other data structures that might be included could be any that have a relationship to the CAD assembly model data—for instance:

* Part Lists
* Procedures for completing a task, also known as work instructions or tasks
* Snapshots and animations of the steps of an assembly process or a service procedure

Easily create 3D PDFS to share 3D CAD data, such as part lists, with others, even non-technical people using the Lattice Technologies' solution.
Easily create 3D PDFS to share 3D CAD data, such as part lists, with others, even non-technical people using the Lattice Technologies’ solution.

Using 3D PDF standalone or part of PLM/PDM processes

It doesn’t matter if you are a small engineering company or a Fortune 100 manufacturing company, using 3D PDF for sharing interactive 3D models with related information (including PMI) is probably the best way to share with any stakeholder. If you are a big company, you will most certainly have a PLM or PDM system, and the 3D PDF can easily be tucked in with all the rest of your files. If you are a small company, the 3D PDF can become a mini PDM system using its container capabilities to hold all of the above items as well as the original CAD data format and neutral formats, such as IGES and STEP.

There are many 3D PDF generation solutions on the market today — most simply convert CAD geometry– that’s all. The more robust solutions usually require scripting and programming.

Lattice Technology offers a solution that enables a person without CAD experience and without programming or scripting to easily and quickly create these powerful 3D PDFs with extended information. The solution uses a template approach, which allows users to establish standards for their 3D PDFs.

To read the entire blog, “3D PDF – Squeezing Value from CAD Models by Sharing Technical Data,” click here.

Barb Schmitz

The Benefits of Intelligent Part Numbering

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Companies–both large and small–must manage increasingly large amounts of data. Within engineering departments, this might include drawings, part files, and lots of other files that represent products. Keeping track of this data is difficult without some type of file management system in place, however, statistics show that the majority of companies continue to manage their data–often inefficiently–without any type of system in place.

Reasons behind why companies don’t implement document management systems, such as PDM or more enterprise-wide PLM systems, vary. Commonly cost is an issue as well as the complexities around implementing these systems. Often engineering departments don’t have the dedicated IT resources to facilitate such implementations, especially at smaller companies.

It's important for all companies to evaluate the pros and cons of part numbering schemes.
It’s important for all companies to evaluate the pros and cons of part numbering schemes.

Which part numbering scheme is best?

Part numbering certainly seems like an easy enough task, however, if not done using a consistent methodology, chaos will reign. Turns out nearly every company struggles with defining part numbers.
Without some type of organized system in place, finding the right part files will prove difficult, and time will be wasted. Engineers spend a ridiculous amount of time searching for files, time that could be spent doing actual engineering work.

So the question becomes: should companies mandate use of an intelligent numbering system that embeds important identifying information or go with easy-to-manage generic numbers.

I came across a blog written by Ed Lopategui on the GrabCAD site that seeks to unveil the logic behind a couple of different approaches to part numbering. The author doesn’t seek to crown a winner of this debate, but to help everyone understand the issues and how they will affect your company.

Creation and Data Entry

Generating a new number should be easy, even for the new intern. Nothing is easier than a system-assigned generic number. PDM/PLM systems default to a generic numbering system, but that is neither a recommendation nor a limitation. Most modern systems can accommodate intelligent numbering without heavy customization and/or manual entry. If you choose to embed intelligent information, you are trading the simplicity of creating a part number for a downstream benefit, so weigh that benefit carefully. Consider the part number is often what you start with on new design.

How much will you know at that stage and how certain are you about it? Could that information change in the future? Such considerations will help determine what information, if any, is truly practical to embed in an intelligent number.

Longevity and Legacies

You want your part numbers to last. Intelligent numbering systems tend to break down over time, especially if the intelligence is used for complex categorization. It probably won’t be tomorrow, or next week, but a couple of years from now, someone will likely be staring at a screen and shaking their fist at you because something doesn’t quite fit. The more complicated the system, the higher the likelihood it will break down.

Well-planned systems, however, can last. Before you get too caught up on planning for infinite longevity, keep in mind all of it may come crashing down come a merger or acquisition. Also, don’t forget about the part numbers you already have; you just might be stuck with them.

Readability

Readability is absolutely critical, people need to quickly parse through a large amount of part numbers every day and short-term retention is important. Generic numbering tends to be less readable without some designed structure or variation (i.e. breaking up long series of numbers with letters or dashes at fixed positions). It’s the reason you might remember a telephone number with an area code, but not your license plate, despite a smaller namespace. Intelligent numbers can have readability issues for the very same reasons, or if they just get too long.

Uniqueness

Two parts with the same number is trouble. Some argue that only generic numbers ensure uniqueness, but that’s not really true. You can get the same uniqueness guarantee with the right PDM/PLM system for intelligent numbering. Generic numbers, which tend to be shorter, can actually increase the chance of overlap with respect to mergers and acquisitions or cause confusion with similar supplier part numbers. Nothing ensures uniqueness in this scenario, but the larger the namespace, the lower the chance for a collision. But once again longer part numbers degrade readability.

Interpretation

Every time a part is handled, sorted, searched, or otherwise used an interpretation cost is involved. In other words, it’s the time needed to understand whether you are dealing with the right part. Intelligent part numbers can reduce this interpretation cost, provided the user understands the identification system. In the right conditions, parts can be recognized at a glance. Take caution, however: if the cost of maintaining the intelligent system exceeds the interpretation cost, it’s self-defeating. Generic numbers, on the other hand, can increase interpretation costs, since differences have to be queried in the system. Generic part interpretation can be enhanced with classification systems, but they also add cost.

Balancing all these diverse factors is difficult, because no solution is optimal for every company.

Here are some final tips to help you make prudent decisions:

* Understand your PDM/PLM system part number generation capabilities.
* Understand the limitations of any other systems that interact with your parts.
* Go through every activity that requires interpreting part numbers and understand what system access is available, and how the interfaces work. This will provide a good basis for your interpretation cost.
* Understand how easy/difficult it is for a new employee to interpret a part number

To read the entire blog, click here.

ETRAGE Announces PTC Windchill-SharePoint Integration App

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ETRAGE, a systems integration and design process automation company, announced at PTC Live Global that it’s releasing Windchill EasySearch app for PTC Windchill PDMLink for CAD files and documents.

A little background on ETRAGE: The company has been building solutions for PTC customers that help automate viewable file creation and management, integrate PTC Windchill with ERP, MRP, CRM & SharePoint systems and clean and migrate data for PTC Windchill.

ETRAGE PTC Windchill EasySearch provides a fast and optimized way of delivering the desired design data to customers, suppliers, purchasers, speeding the information flow through engineering, manufacturing and service.
ETRAGE PTC Windchill EasySearch provides a fast and optimized way of delivering the desired design data to customers, suppliers, purchasers, speeding the information flow through engineering, manufacturing and service.

Windchill EasySearch application for PTC Windchill PDMLink for CAD files and documents

• Offers a customizable Windchill search mechanism providing various options by: name, number, context, and object type, from a text file list. These search fields can be easily enabled or disabled on the User Interface by a company administrator.

• Through search results, users can list the files, gain access to the representation files, secondary content files such as PDF, DXF, STEP or IGES, open files in Creo, open files in CreoView, download files to a Workspace and use other Windchill operations.

• Windchill EasySearch allows fast and simple access to representation files and secondary content files from a standard Windchill search result page or object list in the Windchill folder through the Action Menu or a right mouse button click.

ETRAGE SmartPDF

• Provides users with the ability to get the note text as an annotation each time a user hovers their mouse over the note symbol in the PDF.

• The solution also provides the functionality of selecting section view call-out symbols and automatically changes the view of the drawing to the sheet and location of the related section view.

• SmartPDF is an add-on to the ETRAGE Plot Service for PTC Windchill, which improves your viewing experience of the created PDF by adding Annotations and Zone References.

WXML Universal Integrator for PTC Windchill

• WXML automatically exports Bills-of-Material (BOM) metadata and viewable files from PTC Windchill PDMLink in structured XML and PDF format files to a Windows folder for transfer to the ERP application. The BOMs and PDFs are then read into ERP. WXML also automatically reads structured XML files from a Windows folder in which ERP provides requests for data extraction from Windchill. Besides BOM and PDFs, WXML also supports Change Requests transfers between Windchill and ERP.

• WXML is targeted at those companies that look for an easy to deploy, out-of-the-box solution to integrate Windchill with ERP. Typically, companies already have in house ERP IT resources to export and import data to and from the ERP application. ETRAGE provides an affordable option to companies to integrate their ERP systems with Windchill.

• ETRAGE’s Universal Windchill Integrator provides, real-time updates of BOMs and change requests into ERP, streamlines data flow between the engineering, manufacturing and purchasing departments, eliminates manual data entry or processes of large sets of data and insures that manufacturing and purchasing has access to the most up-to-date engineering data and drawings inside the ERP system.

ETRAGE Drawing Notes Search application for PTC Creo Parametric and PTC Windchill PDMLink

• The Drawing Notes Search application provides companies with a simple, yet powerful method for managing notes that are on PTC Creo drawings and stored in Windchill PDMLink.

• The Application provides an automatic method for capturing notes from Creo drawings and storing them in a database. Once in the database, notes content can be accessed with a Web-based interface by searching and selecting on a drawing name or number, note character string or drawing parameter or attribute. Notes can be sorted, filtered and reviewed. Drawings can be opened for editing from links in the application. Note lists can be exported to Excel or CSV formats.

For more information on ETAGE, click here.

Barb Schmitz

ETRAGE Demonstrates a Better Way to Share Files with SubContractors

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ETRAGE LLC, a systems integration software company, will be presenting a solution that will make it easier for companies to provide access to 2D and 3D design files for their subcontractors at this year’s PTC’s Live Global Conference in Boston, June 15-17.

The presentation will describe the process of how ETRAGE customer COM DEV Ltd. now provides immediate access for its sub-contractors to 2D PDF and 3D STEP and ACIS files of design drawings and models. Options investigated include an on-demand call to the COM DEV FTP site, a customized FTP portal and the final solution of using Windchill directly through the ETRAGE Plot Service for PTC Windchill-PSW.

ENTRGE will present how to provide immediate access for sub-contractors to 2D PDF and 3D STEP and ACIS files of design drawings and models at this year's PTC Live Global Conference.
ENTRGE will present how to provide immediate access to its sub-contractors to 2D PDF and 3D STEP and ACIS files of design drawings and models at this year’s PTC Live Global Conference.

Eugene Stewart, senior Windchill administrator at COM DEV, explains how the solution was implemented. “Now vendors and customers are allowed into the COM DEV Windchill system for direct access to our latest designs. The On-Demand operating mode of PSW allows them to pull the files in a number of common formats to suit their many needs. In addition, COM DEV realizes a 40-day annual savings of a designers’ time.”

Bojan Rapaic, founder and president of ETRAGE LLC comments, “COM DEV is one of many of our clients seeing this type of a return on investment. Teams are required to be much more efficient today and ‘teams’ extend to sub-contractors. We see significant benefit to providing subcontractors with direct access to approved files.”

In addition, ETRAGE will have demonstrations of the PTC Windchill – ERP integration solutions, SharePoint Integration product, ETRAGE Bulk Loader, ETRAGE Quality Server, ETRAGE Smart PDF, ETRAGE Drawing Notes Search, ETRAGE Model Clean-up Utilities and ETRAGE Viewer.

If you’re in Boston for the PTC event, be sure and stop by the ENTRAGE booth (#506) to get a hands-on demo and to discuss your company’s specific needs.

Barb Schmitz

5 Steps to Better CAD File Management

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A problem that plagues most engineering departments is a lack of any type of structured management of CAD files. Individual engineers might deploy what they regard as a very organized way to manage their own files, giving each meaningful file names and storing them on their hard drive. The problems arise, however, when those files must be shared and worked on by other engineers.

As the number of engineers working on any one project increases, managing those files in a directory structure becomes risky. Using a shared drive can result in issues related to managing multiple design iterations. Finding the most current version of a file can be problematic as can be assuring that another engineer isn’t overwriting the changes you’ve just worked hours to make.

GrabCAD's Workbench is a cloud-based file management solution that is available for users on a monthly basis for $59 (Professional) or $89 (Enterprise).
GrabCAD’s Workbench is a cloud-based file management solution that is available for users on a monthly basis for $59 (Professional) or $89 (Enterprise).

Bring order to chaos

According to several industry surveys and studies, most manufacturers have not implemented any type of organized PDM or PLM system. By continuing to manually manage CAD data, these companies face potentials risks that include lost work, poor productivity, and errors. Common reasons cited for not implementing any type of CAD data management solutions include high cost, too much complexity and a lack of IT resources.

Recognizing the shortcomings and inherent risks associated with manual CAD file management is the first step. The good news is that there are a lot of options available today, including new cloud-based tools. In a newly published Tech-Clarity Insight report, “When Brute Force Fails and PDM is too Much,” the various solutions are explained in detail as well as the basic requirements of a CAD management solution.

Based on industry experience and extensive research, Tech-Clarity makes the following recommendations of organizations looking to improve CAD file management.

5 Steps to better CAD management:

1. Determine your needs. Understand the basics required to control, access, and share your CAD data.

2. Shop around. Evaluate solutions to decide which one is right for your business, based on your organization’s level of process maturity and available IT support.

3. Make it easy to share. This is important as engineers don’t work in a vacuum and must easily share files. Some solutions’ strength is in ease of sharing, while others might focus on a strong control paradigm.

4. Look to the cloud. Consider cloud-based solutions that combine ease of use, less risk, low cost and reduced need for IT resources, but are designed with CAD data management in mind.

5. Get started. In some cases, you might need a more traditional CAD file management solutions, but recognize that putting in place structure of any kind is a step in the right direction and then get going.

To read the entire Tech-Clarity report, download the full report on the Tech-Clarity website.

Barb Schmitz

Kenesto PLM Platform Re-launched

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Yesterday I had to opportunity to be reintroduced to the relaunched Kenesto, the company headed up by Mike Payne, one of the more renowned and revered figures in the CAD world, having started PTC and SolidWorks (then SpaceClaim). Pretty much anything that Mike is involved in draws interest from the industry and Kenesto is no exception.

Kenesto is a cloud-based PLM platform with its roots in workflow management. The platform is being relaunched with a renewed focus on collaboration, as companies are more comfortable owning up to needing this capability more than they are to admitting workflow issues.

Kenesto adopts OEM product strategy

Though the product has technically been around since it was introduced in 2011, in December of last year, the company officially announced that the product was ready to go to market. Nothing unusual about that though the way in which the company is marketing and selling the product is unusual. Due to the company’s relatively small size and lack of marketing muscle or resources, it is currently soliciting partnerships with third-party vendors to private-label the solution for subscription sales into their respective markets.

Logic behind the move is explained by Stephen Bodnar, senior VP of Products and Strategy at Kenesto (and former VP of PLM at Autodesk). “The framework we’ve put in place to support partners who wish to offer our technology to their customers, branded as their own, and through their own sales channels, makes great sense for us given where we are in our company’s lifecycle and the level of investment required to capture additional, much larger markets. It also makes great sense for enterprise software providers who wish to offer the kinds of cloud-based collaboration capabilities, such as those available in Kenesto’s solution, in a timely, cost-effective manner.”

Collaboration features with CAD benefits

An increasingly common acronym (we just love acronyms in the CAD industry) is Collaborative Product Design or CPD. Bodnar emphasizes that in Kenesto’s case, CPD can mean both collaborative project or product design, as he believes the software will fit just as nicely in other industries where file/task/workflow management remains a challenge, such as the insurance, mortgage and AEC industries. In fact, the company’s biggest customer thus far using Kenesto is a large PR agency.

Despite that, with the founders’ strong background in engineering design, that will the primary initial market they will go after with the product. As far as company size of target customers, Bodnar says they are primarily focused on small- to mid-sized businesses, a sweet spot for PLM vendors and a largely unserved market.

A colleague, Roopinder Tara, described Kenesto as “a Dropbox with CAD benefits.” Bodnar refers to it as “Dropbox on steroids.” Either way, you get the picture. The difference: Kenesto has discussion flows, where DropBox does not; Kenesto views 250 file types, Dropbox does not.

Kenesto can also store email conversations along with notes, text files, JPEGs, PDFs as well as CAD files. It is able to view major CAD files, both for MCAD and AEC, which the company sees as a big potential market for the product, and cloud rendering for Redit models. People receiving files via Kenesto do not have to be subscribers themselves, though the person sharing/sending the files must be a subscriber.

With Kenesto, everyone in the office can model their portion of the workflow.
With Kenesto, everyone in the office can model their portion of the workflow.

Platform focuses on workflow management

Though it’s common for PLM solutions to offer file and content sharing, project organization, task management, workflow diagramming, Kenesto goes about many of these quite differently. For workflow diagramming, Bodnar says, “people in an organization know only their part of the workflow; no one person knows it all.” So Kenesto allows each participant to model their portion of the workflow. The administrator then eliminates duplicates and overlaps. This capability to track workflows creates a audit trail for managers to get a higher view of processes.

You can give Kenesto a free test drive (after registering) here.

Barb Schmitz