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Technology
Designing Virtually Anything
Collaborative product development has finally come of age allowing transnationals to harness brainpower from around the world.
Two years ago when the U.S. Department of Defense announced that it was looking to upgrade its fleet of warplanes, a corporate dogfight ensued between the nation's two leading aircraft manufacturers—Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Eyeing the same prize: "a winner takes all" contract worth $19 billion to build more than 3,000 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft for the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marines, and foreign allies, both rivals moved at Mach speed to design a machine that would revolutionize the industry with breakthrough technology. The challenge was enormous because Defense Department officials wanted a design that would be the most economical for all the armed forces to operate throughout the first half of the 21st century.
Working against a time clock and a comparatively tight budget, Lockheed Martin rushed to develop a bold plan that would harness the collective brainpower of some of its 50,000 engineers, managers, and suppliers spread across the globe. What it came up with was an initiative to create the next-generation, stealthy F-35 fighter plane, a supersonic aircraft that can attack the enemy on and off the ground with smart bombs equipped with radar-absorbing coatings. The aircraft maker's innovative design, coupled with the production process it detailed, gave the company the edge it needed to overtake its opponent and win the deal.
The plan called for shortening the production cycle from 15 to five months, slashing manufacturing costs in half. The remarkable feat would be accomplished thanks to Lockheed Martin's own secret weapon: proprietary collaborative design technology, a blend of web-based tools that use enterprise data management software and simulation technology to reduce design cycles by an astounding 40% to 80%.
The way the technology works to orchestrate product design amongst a cadre of geographically dispersed experts is breathtaking: It allows a company's employees from production, testing, quality control, marketing, and customer service to work simultaneously on product design. It also allows them to interface with global suppliers involved in parts and materials handling, and manufacturing processes. "Program information is presented in real time across multiple time zones, with the net effect being round-the-clock engineering of the F-35," explains Thomas Burbage, executive vice president and general manager of the JSF program. "It brings a level of efficiency never before achieved in the development of such a complex product."
The tale exemplifies a growing trend among companies in all industries—from aviation to automobiles to electronics—to opt for collaborative design software. What is driving the adoption of the technology is pure economics. Mounting competition to get products to market faster while cutting development costs is making this a necessity. Statistics tell the story. According to a survey of 180 manufacturing companies conducted recently by CIMdata Inc., a market research firm specializing in product lifecycle management technology, and the investment banking firm Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co., 84% of respondents plan to implement new design collaboration projects during the next year. Their primary objectives are to: shorten product development lifecycles, reduce manufacturing design errors, and improve communications with suppliers.
Another factor that is forcing manufacturers to adopt the technology is the changing nature of the supply chain. As more and more companies outsource, they are increasingly delegating design responsibility for parts, assemblies, and subsystems to suppliers, consultants, contract manufacturers, and partner companies that comprise their extended enterprises. Companies have become decentralized and geographically dispersed so that, for example, mechanical design might be done in Illinois, electronic circuits configured in California, testing and analysis performed in a lab in Pennsylvania, plastic parts molded in China, and components assembled in Mexico. To succeed, these sprawling corporations must be able to manage the collaborative design efforts of all the separate organizations.
Breakthrough Technology at Work
Luckily, advances in technology are helping companies in their product design, providing tools to handle a range of tasks for sharing information efficiently. Co-modeling systems allow multiple engineers in different locations to work on the same computer-aided design (CAD) model simultaneously. Visualization software lets people view the design work of others in 3-D. Digital mockup systems combine parts and subassemblies of different engineers into an overall product model. Document management packages keep track of engineering drawings and other documents. Project management software keeps track of who's doing what and where things stand in the product development process. The list could go on and on.
Most of these collaborative tools are tied into product data management (PDM) systems that store and coordinate technical information such as design files, analysis results, parts lists, engineering changes, etc. Once the exclusive domain of engineering departments, PDM in the last few years has expanded into other areas of the manufacturing enterprise such as production and field service, with the expanded scope of these applications and approaches labeled product lifecycle management (PLM). These downstream areas not only access engineering information for their own work but also contribute to the overall PDM database for the benefit of engineers in the design cycle, so collaboration is a cornerstone of PLM: now one of the hottest acronyms in the manufacturing and IT industries.
The overall PLM market is made up of two distinct sub-markets that started merging only a few years ago when the term PLM came into vogue. What are referred to as authoring and analysis tools are the computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE) systems used to design products. The collaboration portion of the market (referred to as collaborative Product Definition management, or cPDm) covers solutions for managing and sharing product information.
PLM Investments Grow
Statistics from CIMdata, which closely tracks market size and trends, indicate strong growth in PLM, with the cPDm portion of the market growing 25% to reach $3.6 billion in 2001. The firm expects strong growth to be maintained, with the market reaching nearly $4 billion in 2002 and increasing at a compound annual growth rate of 18% through 2006, when they expect cPDm market size to exceed $8 billion and overall PLM revenues to pass the $18 billion mark.
Web-based collaborative tools aimed at product development started to emerge at the height of the Internet boom of the 1990s. Unlike many of the dot-com startup outfits that quickly blossomed and then burst during that time, however, software providers offering PLM collaboration technology are some of the most stable in information technology (IT), and many are major players in the industry. Major PLM vendors include EDS, SAP, IBM/Dassault, PTC, MatrixOne, Agile, Intergraph, and Eigner. All are providing a host of products, each positioned differently and aimed at attacking collaboration from a unique angle.
Management of an enterprise's intellectual assets is emphasized by EDS PLM Solutions, whose Teamcenter software has an architecture that supports an integrated data model across the enterprise. Many times, such information resides in multiple separate data sources that aren't easily accessible to people at various stages of the product lifecycle. Those people have to make important decisions about design, cost, materials, etc. Teamcenter provides a complete solution that brings all this information together and presents relevant data to users in an understandable format.
PTC positions its software as a complete product development system, with its Windchill collaboration and control solutions combined with its Pro/ENGINEER design and development software. The system is intended to enable users to create designs, collaborate throughout the entire product lifecycle, and control the resulting enterprise information. Designed to work as a single integral system in meeting present requirements as well as future needs, the solution allows engineers to collaborate with colleagues while they are working on designs instead of having to jump in and out of different systems.
Fast startup, especially for small and medium-sized companies, is the focus of Autodesk's Streamline collaboration tool, a hosted service through which users access a common data source posted on a secure website. The company posting the information controls access, determining who can participate in project collaboration and what information they can work with. Streamline is touted as highly affordable, and it requires no process re-engineering or enterprise-wide changes. Rather, it is marketed as desktop PLM that can be set up on a departmental level, bringing technology to the mainstream that's quick and easy to deploy, value-priced, and provides a fast return on investment.
Not Just for Industry Giants
The largest, most extensive collaborative systems with all possible bells and whistles can cost millions of dollars and can take years to implement fully. Using lessons learned and technology developed for these megasystems, vendors have also come up with tools for handling a targeted range of tasks that smaller, mid-sized companies can afford. Many of these out-of-the-box, plug-in tools can be fully operational in only a matter of weeks and cost a few thousand dollars. Not exactly pocket change, especially for a smaller company, but still easily justified based on the impressive benefits companies can reap from deploying such a system.
Power-tool manufacturer WMH Tool Group in Chicago can attest to that. It uses Autodesk CAD and Streamline to slash product development time by 10% to 20% across all divisions. The 600-employee company needed a collaborative solution in sharing information among its global network of engineering centers, manufacturing facilities, and contractors, including suppliers in China and Taiwan and WMH offices in Washington, Illinois, and Tennessee. Streamline allows WMH to store all design information in one place so people in all those dispersed locations can work on it simultaneously.
With information available immediately and processes standardized, the company reports it has increased its competitive advantage by being quicker to market with fewer mistakes. At any time, for example, Cliff Rickmers, VP of International Operations who oversees all the brands, can access the system for the status of a particular project. "For us, like many manufacturers, there is a simple formula for success," said Barry Schwaiger, engineering manager at WMH. "Better communication, plus better organization, plus better business processes equals increased competitive advantage. Streamline is a key to achieving that result."
Similarly, Babcock Power in Worcester, Mass., a maker of "scrubbing" systems for power plants (equipment that removes hazardous sulphur dioxide from emitted gases) adopted collaborative technology to improve efficiencies. Because it was missing schedules with customers, Babcock invested in PTC's Windchill so that customers can now see their project schedules online and then make changes in real time. Communication about drawings and other documents is now done online. And the company reports a 90% reduction in search time for project information. "The biggest benefit includes the ability to win more contracts," said Steve Scally, manager of Engineering Computer Applications at Babcock. "Our customers expect a faster pace of operations. We have to be faster in processing our information just to compete."
Not surprisingly, companies the most heavily into design collaboration are part of extended enterprises with fairly complex products. Gamesa, a Spanish manufacturer of fuselages, landing gear doors, and other assemblies for commuter aircraft and helicopters-is using EDS Solutions Teamcenter to reduce design errors by a whopping 88%. The system manages the company's design models and allows engineers to construct electronic mockups. That is the approach the company took in designing the rear fuselage and other portions of the Embraer ERJ-170 aircraft which is composed of 2,400 different parts. Now, in seconds, engineers call up entire assembly models to ensure that design changes aren't creating part interferences or other problems. "The bottom line," explains Jose Ignacio Uriarte, manager of project management and scheduling, "is that Teamcenter helps us easily determine the impact of modifications through the entire subassembly, which dramatically reduces the potential for mistakes."
A Competitive Necessity
"Companies operating as extended enterprises in a broadening range of industries are continuing to invest and expand their solutions and are now integrating their design partners into their overall design chain," explained Ed Miller, president of CIMdata and a recognized authority in PLM.
"There is heightened recognition among senior-level executives that PLM is critical to business success. By managing and leveraging product information across the extended enterprise, PLM enhances business performance by supporting initiatives such as supply chain management, concurrent engineering, integrated product development, and globalization," says Miller. "These are initiatives that can make or break a company." As he points out, the technology is empowering. The competitive advantage it gives corporations is rapidly making its adoption a competitive necessity. —by John Krouse
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The section was prepared by John Krouse: a respected authority on engineering software and a veteran journalist covering CAD, simulation, PLM and collaboration. Krouse is currently editor and publisher of Engineering Process Journal newsletter (www.epjournal.com). He can be contacted at jkrouse@compuserve.com and 440/354-5334.
ABOUT CIMDATA
Industry data for this section was provided by CIMdata, Inc., a market research and consulting firm specializing in PLM and related software, applications, and strategies. The company also hosts PLM-focused international conferences in the US, Europe, and Japan. Contact the company at 734/668-9922 or visit the website www.cimdata.com.
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