CAD Designer, "Why can't I just find the Part I need. I know we've designed this exact one before!"

Lead Engineer, "I wish everyone would just leave me alone to get my job done instead of always asking for information that should be on-line."

Manufacturing Engineer, "There's no reason why I should be building to an out-of-rev Drawing. The most recent revision should be sent to me immediately."

Engineering VP, "I need our Engineers to be more productive. They spend too much time looking and not enough time designing. This has to change."

Life Cycle Solutions knows that for a company to be successful it must establish a universally available Common Product Definition. This means establishing a solution that unifies a company's product information from ideation through retirement.

LCS™ assists companies from all industries in developing enterprise solutions based on Common Product Definition within the context of a 3 layer database modeling architecture, and an N-tier deployment model. Some examples of the types of solutions that LCS™ developed for its customers using PLM commercial offerings include:

• Discrete Parts and Assemblies — Revision controlled and characterized using key information such as Part Numbers, detailed descriptions, costing, reference designators, and material composition.

• Comprehensive Part Classifications — Enabling detailed characteristics specific to each Electronic or Mechanical Part Class, such as thread size, diameter, capacitance or voltage.

• Document Vaulting — Establishing direct association between Part and Assemblies and the corresponding M CAD/E CAD Designs, Drawings, Engineering and Materials Specifications.

• Flexible Configuration Management — Supporting representations of As-Designed, As-Built and As-Maintained Bill of Materials with effectivity at the Part and Assembly level.

• Product Configurations — Defining the variations of Part and Assembly participation to support Product Features and predefined Optionality.

• New Product Introduction – No other process in an organization requires more cross functional cooperation than new product introduction. Put those individual product introductions into a portfolio of products that your organization supports and releases, and you have a product portfolio problem to manage.

• Product Portfolio Management -- Optimizing your entire product portfolio directly impacts top line growth. PLM enables an organization to support the cross functional collaboration required, both with internal and supply chain resources, to deliver the correct product, in the right volume, at the critical market window.

• New Part Request — In establishing new Parts, a broad range of groups must be rallied to ensure non-duplicates, ensure internal standards compliance, approve suppliers and establish Part cost and lead times.

• NewMaterials Approval — As with NPR, formalizing the use of a Material requires the review and approval of numerous groups, often requiring access to complex materials specifications and engineering standards documents.

• NewDrawing/Design Review — Formalizing this review process often varies based on the type of product being reviewed, while requiring the integration of View & Mark-up tools to ensure clarity and traceability of all review comments.

• NewEngineering Change Order/Notice — Facilitating a common ECO/N process while supporting the unique processing of specific product lines is key to providing efficiency and versatility.

• NewDrawing/Design Release — Promoting Drawings/Designs often includes publishing documents and Bill of Materials information to Manufacturing and Services in a viewable format.
By automating the manual procedures that have been established to manage and control the development and manufacture of a company's product, major benefits can be achieved. LCS™ works closely with its customers to leverage the benefits of automation without compromising data management or control.

CAD Manager, "It's discouraging to know that everything my group enters {Parts, BOM} into our CAD tool has to be reentered into the ERP system."

Component Engineer, "If I had a dime for every time I had to access the Engineering system and the ERP system to get new Parts entered, I'd be rich."

Purchasing Manager, "There has got to be a better way to notify Engineering when a vendor's price changes than using this useless form."

Manufacturing Manager, "I can't count how many times the BOM has been misentered into ERP."

Though it is clear that establishing a Common Product Definition and initiating Workflow/Process Management will yield major benefits, it is the goal of PLM to link all systems that contain or affect a company's product data. Total Enterprise Integration is achieved through the direct transfer of select product data from authoring tools, such as CAD/CAE, as well as transferring relevant data to manufacturing support system, such as ERP systems.

LCS™ has been extremely successful in developing integrations for our customers between PLM systems and authoring tools, in-house legacy systems and commercial ERP systems. Examples of the types of integrations provided include:

• Workgroup MCAD Management — This integration is between local data management products that are used to provide local control of Part and BOM data for Engineering groups. It is required to transfer/synchronize Part and BOM data between the Workgroup MCAD Management tool and the PLM system.

• ECAD Authoring Tools — This form of integration is a bit more difficult, and involves interfacing with select ECAD exporting facilities and ensuring that all PCB information is transferred and reflected in the PLM system, including component detailing such as Reference Designators.

• ERP Publishing — When a product's data is ready for publishing to a company's ERP, the integration requires transferring of Part, BOM and ECO details. This has often included specifics on effectivity as well as filtering based on manufacturing facility.

Engineering Director, "Our design partners need a better way to share product data than using email and FedEx."

Purchasing Manager, "We've wasted an enormous amount of time and money working with suppliers that aren't able to keep current with our design changes."

CEO, "I know that we could increase our competitive positioning if
we could link directly to our customers. We need to stay current with their design efforts and give them rapid response — no delays."

Collaborative Product Realization is the final frontier of PLM based solutions. To achieve this level of sophistication, you need Common Product Definition, Workflow/Process Management as well as some level of Enterprise Integration. Product Collaboration requires a very clear definition of what can be pushed to your partners, customers or suppliers and what must be held under lock and key without compromise.

LCS™ assisted many companies achieve their Collaborative Product Realization goals. Though efforts continue towards this evolving ideal, there are many examples of how collaboration has resulted in corporate benefits, including:

llaboration — Forming a direct collaborative solution with partner companies often requires a direct interfacing between PLM systems. Partners become a integral participant in a company's product development process and are expected to use compatible design tools.

• Supplier Collaboration — Collaborating with Suppliers requires the release of MCAD/ECAD product data necessary to enable production readiness. The conversion of product data to a format acceptable to the Supplier is often required and any changes or updates to Drawings/Designs require immediate notification to Suppliers.

• Customer Collaboration — Providing collaborative interfacing to a customer enables companies to share production status, or Drawing/Design review in the instance where the company is providing design or design/manufacturing services.

PLM Manager, "Education is key. Management is just plain reluctant to listen. It's a shame."

CFO, "I've seen nothing of the PLM project proposal that shows a positive impact to the bottom line."

Engineering VP, "This project [PLM] is crucial to reducing our time to market. We need to get our lead Engineers behind this or it will fail."

Program Director, "Management commitment is not strong, placing our budget and the overall initiative in jeopardy."

Life Cycle Solutions identified a series of steps that are required to be successful in implementing PLM. It starts with a high level of education and understanding of the benefits of PLM at all levels of the corporation. Each organization finds different benefit from PLM, and it is critical to define and quantify this benefit to ensure overall buy-in and participation.

LCS™ assisted its customers in being successful in their PLM initiatives through the use of tools and techniques that have become standards in the industry. These tools and techniques include:

• 7 Key Acceptance Factors — By analyzing a companies "vitals", it can be determined if a company is prepared to undergo a PLM initiative. These factors are Financial, Technology, Understanding, Culture, Competitive Quality, Scheduling and Image. If specific areas are low in readiness (such as Understanding), then specific steps are initiated to better the chances for success (such as a PLM workshop}.

• Cost Justification Toolkit — This toolkit ensures a formal agreement on the financial benefits of a PLM based solution. It provides benefit definition; implementation cost modeling; return on investment analysis and will outline the specifics a CFO requires, such as the internal rate of return and cost of money.

• PLM System Evaluation Toolkit — With over 200 selection criteria, this toolkit has been used by hundreds of companies to successfully evaluate and select commercial PLM products.

• On site Workshops — Using a 1-3 day workshop, many companies have been able to unify their PLM initiative and focus their planning on what will assure success.

• Business Case -- Developing a solid business case is critical to the short, medium and long term success of a PLM initiative. LCS excels in this endeavor.