breaking the barriers to collaborative product development
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7/27/2019 Breaking the Barriers to Collaborative Product Development
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P T C . c o m
White Paper Collaborative Product Development Page 1 of 10
Expanding the Enterprise:
Breaking the Barriers to Collaborative
Product Development
Learn How Best-Practice Technology is Enabling Partners, Customers and
Distributed Global Teams to Work Together
Abstract
Product development has never been easy, but in today’s global market,
the pressures facing industrial manufacturers are greater than ever. With
more and more stakeholders involved in the product development process,
collaboration and communication are critical to driving competitive
advantage. The fact is, the product development team has grown outside
of the engineering department, to now include cross-functional internal
resources, suppliers, partners, and customers located around the world.
Your challenge: to bring all these globally dispersed product stakeholders
into the same virtual room – in real time– to help drive your next generation
of innovative products. If you ignore this mandate and fail to connect your
global team, your product development process is likely to become a long
and painful effort marred by miscommunication, poor resource utilization,
and costly rework. If you succeed, you will be leveraging a highly tunednetwork of global resources to maximize existing bandwidth, increase
innovation, speed time-to-market, and reduce costs.
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White Paper Collaborative Product Development Page 2 of 10
Cross-functional Collaboration:
Extended Teams, Partners & Customers
In the vast world o industrial manuacturing today, there are as many
‘avors’ to product development as there are product development
organizations. While some see product development as merely synony-
mous with engineering, truly eective manuacturing organizations
know that product development now involves a variety o cross-unc-
tional participants rom marketing, procurement, manuacturing, sales,
and service departments.
And in today’s global manuacturing environment, many o these
resources may not even be internal; ever-increasing outsourcing is
now orcing suppliers and manuacturing partners into direct roles
in the product development process. In addition, thanks to Internet-
based communication and visual ization tools, your customers—
located down the street or across the ocean—now want more direct
involvement in every acet o product development.
The growing ecosystem o participants in product development is
adding massive complexity to the product development process.
These cross-unctional, interdepartmental, and external third-party
team members are bringing with them multiple priorities, drivers and
expectations that have to be consolidated and managed. Decision-
makers with varying degrees o engineering knowledge must be able
to review and provide eedback on design and execution at multiple
stages o the product liecycle.
In addition to integrating these new human resources into the pro-
cess, you must also take into account the corresponding technologysystems and processes they bring with them into the development
cycle. These technologies and processes must also be incorporated
into your product development liecycle, so that all involved can
exchange, interpret and retain data and present it in a way that is
relevant to each user. In practical terms, this means your collabora-
tive processes and supportive technology must be highly optimized
to coordinate so many access points and to manage each project’s
timeline, scope and ultimate success.
When Physical Distance Increases Product
Development Complexity
Another barrier to success, which most industrial product design
teams ace in today’s world o global product development, is physical
distance. True, technology and communication advances now pro-
vide instant access to a global talent pool, and manuacturers are
taking advantage o these new resources. In act, in a 2008 survey
conducted by PTC o more than 350 industrial decision makers, 89%
o those surveyed reported working with global teams on product
development. However, managing a global development team means
that you must collaborate while dealing eectively with multiple
time zones, language barriers, cultural dierences, and in-county
laws and regulations, among other actors.
Despite these inherent challenges, many manuacturers see multiplereasons to engage global resources. Some frms are setting up design
centers in low-cost areas so as to lower operating costs and increase
proft margin. Some are tapping into overseas labor markets because
o a shortage o skilled engineering resources in their own geog-
raphies. Some are acquiring companies overseas, then integrating
them into their current product development inrastructure. Still
others are partnering with third-party vendors to deepen their port-
olio with specialized expertise, or opening local ofces to provide
regional support to targeted overseas markets.
Regardless o their motivation, companies are fnding that distrib-
uted global product development is a proven method o staying com-
petitive in an increasingly global playing feld, and it is a trend thatis only increasing. In act, in the previously mentioned survey, over
44% o respondents said that globalizing key business unctions and
processes was one o their top three corporate initiatives, up rom just
28% the year beore. While advanced technology, processes and tools
have made these long-distance collaborations more likely, the very
nature o physical separation still adds additional complexity to the
collaborative relationship.
So, how do you successully build these global, cross-unctional,
collaborative product development networks? Achieving eective
collaboration oten requires manuacturers to alter their processes
and their product design structure – changes that industrial companies
have historically been reluctant to make. As a result, many ail torealize the anticipated ROI. Gartner Group studies show that about
50% o outsourcing deals – a predominant orm o collaborative
product development or industrial manuacturers – end in ailure.
Despite that statistic, nearly a quarter o the industrial decision-
makers responding to the PTC survey said they needed to improve
their collaborative global relationships. Realizing value rom distrib-
uted product development requires an understanding both o the
challenges o collaboration, and the tools, technologies, and processes
needed to address those challenges.
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White Paper Collaborative Product Development Page 3 of 10
The Challenges of Collaboration:
Technology and Processes
Technology Challenges: Keeping the Product Data Set
Complete and Secure
Technology is the single, underlying backbone o collaborative product
development; it is the advancement o inormation technology that
has made most orms o collaboration a practical reality. Technology–
including data management, project management, or web-based
collaboration tools – enables manuacturers to manage the entire
liecycle o a product, rom its conception, through design and manu-
acture, to service and disposal. This extended product liecycle, known
as the “Digital Product Value Chain,” incorporates a variety o processes
and supporting sotware systems. The two main components o the
Digital Product Value Chain are Product Liecycle Management (PLM)
and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). PLM reers to the creation,management, and sharing o product development inormation, and
includes tools or design (CAD/CAM /CAE), engineering content and
data management, process management, documentation manage-
ment, engineering calculations, and visualization.
ERP, also known as Manuacturing Resource Planning (MRP), includes
operational planning, order management and fnancial planning, and
material requirements planning (including both worker resources and
raw materials/parts), and product data management. For both PLM and
ERP, the underlying unctions can be comprised either o a single system,
or point solutions connected with multiple integrations. PLM and ERP
systems are each typically independent but integrated, as the unctions
o each vary too widely to be managed within a single architecture.
Typically, new product development begins in the product develop-
ment system – that is, the sotware application or set o applications
that encompass all the aspects o PLM described previously (CAD /
CAM /CAE, etc.). For most engineers , this solution set is the primary
technology used or creating, managing and sharing product devel-
opment inormation. The complete product design that is created in
the product development system will be translated into a bill-o-
materials (BOM) and communicated to the ERP system or manuac-
ture and assembly.
Because the product development system is the main col laboration
tool used during product design, it has a direct impact on the abilityo extended teams to work together eect ively. Today’s best-in-class
product development systems allow industrial manuacturers to:
Get Digital.• By eliminating paper and moving to a purely
digital product modeling approach, companies can make
their intellectual property highly portable between locations,third-party partners, and internal team members. It is this
portability that allows engineers in dispersed ofces and across
multiple time zones to collaborate on product design around
the clock. The consistent use o 3D CAD (computer-aided
design) sotware, in particular, is a prerequisite to any
meaningul outsourced design st rategy, while the use o
complementary CAM, CAE, and visualization technologies is
required or these partnerships to realize their ull potential.
Get Control.• Using an eective inormation and process
management environment, companies can ully capture
digital data content, securely control its various versions and
confgurations, manage concurrent changes, and automatethe ow o inormation between members o the product
development team. Having a baseline o inormation and
process control is a c ritical prerequisite or avoiding chaos
during the transit ion to, and ongoing operation o, global
product development.
Get Global.• The introduct ion o Internet-based collaboration
technologies enables companies to establish “virtual team rooms”
that allow dynamic sharing o digital product inormation across
both geographic and company boundaries. When collaborat ion
tools and data management solutions are integrated, companies
can share enterprise inormation with oshore partners in a
select and secure manner, thus boosting productivit y withoutcompromising the proprietary nature o intellectual property.
In addition to having your human resources sharing inormation during
the product development liecycle, var ious technology systems must
also share data created during product design as well – including
both downstream ERP systems and, quite requently, other internal
and external product development systems. To limit the number o
needed data transer points, an eective product development system
will support as many o the varied PLM unctions as possible in a single,
integrated system. Picking and choosing product development “pieces”
– or instance a CAD tool rom one vendor, a data management tool
rom another vendor, and a documentation tool rom a third vendor,
is a strategy that might seem, on the surace, to provide more options.Alternatively, it may seem like too great an eort to move users rom
a pre-existing “legacy” system to a new product development system,
motivating manuacturers to keep some PLM tools even when choosing
a new product development vendor.
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White Paper Collaborative Product Development Page 4 of 10
Integrating multiple product development technology ‘pieces’ usually
requires massive resource eorts, and in the end may result in poor
system-to-system communication, slow and cumbersome transer
processes, and data loss. The lack o data interoperability and the
need or ongoing integration maintenance required o a non-integral
product development system can make product development unneces-
sarily complicated and costly to maintain– or the system integrator,
the system administrator, and the manuacturer.
At a technical level, these architectures suer in terms o usability,
perormance, scalability, security, and availability. Also, by retain-
ing legacy systems or some aspects o product design, you may be
retaining technology that does not oer the most up-to-date eatures
and unctionality, which limits the efcacy o the entire solution.
Conversely, with a single, integrated product development system,
all o the application’s eatures and unctions work together seam-lessly, allowing integration teams to ocus on links to other enterprise
systems. This approach has ar-reaching uture benefts as well, as it
allows or an easier routine upgrade and update processes, as a fnite
number o integrations to the ERP or other PLM systems need to be
updated in kind.
While, ideally, each acet o the Digital Product Value Chain is managed
by only one enterprise solution, such as one ERP and one PLM system,
with little or no duplication, this is requently not the case. As a result
o acquisitional growth, department-level decision-making, distributed
implementation resources, and company politics, companies oten fnd
themselves working with duplicate or overlapping internal systems. For
example, within a single company, engineers in North America may beusing one CAD tool while engineers in an acquired division in France
may be using a dierent CAD tool, even though the two groups are
working together on the same design. When internal teams must work
with disparate tools and systems on the same product development proj-
ects, there is oten a dramatic negative aect on collaboration. While
in some cases the manuacturer in this situation can choose to migrate
to a single, company-wide tool or system, the available resources or
lack o centralized support or such initiatives oten make integration
between existing tools the only easible solution. Integrations between
these systems must ensure that product data, including change and con-
fguration history or product designs, is ully usable across tools, so as
to prevent costly rework.
Even without system duplications, some integrat ions are necessary;
any product development system must share data with other systems
during the product liecycle. Because product development is by its
very nature an iterative process that requires changes at all stages,
data that passes between PLM, ERP and other enterprise systems
oten goes in both directions, as opposed to a simple ‘push’ rom
one system to the other. This means that integration between these
systems must be able to manage a broader set o product and design
data points than each system needs indiv idually, to ensure that inor-
mation is not lost during these bi-directional ows.
Finally, because your partners and customers involved in product
development are generally independent entities with autonomous
decision-making teams, they may be using an entirely dierent set o
tools or their unction in the product liecycle. This can be an issue
or collaborative product development, when product data must be
passed to and rom external partners. The needs o these partners,
in terms o data-sharing, can vary rom relationship to relationship;
some partners might need ull access-control when participating in
product design, while some may just want to view the product model
to ensure their component is compatible with the existing design.
While the responsibi lities and the level o interaction with partners
and customers in the product development design chain may vary,
there is generally at least some level o integration needed. In addi-
tion to providing partners with access to the data they need, these
external integrations must account or multiple, role-driven data
access rules, data security, and the retaining o change and con-
fguration history (or audit trail) when data moves back and orth between parties.
Given the extended nature o current product development processes
and the signifcant transer o electronic and digital content on a
day-to-day basis, technology is now a critical part o any secure data
management scheme. For industrial organizations to operate saely
and securely, they must incorporate both technology tools and pro-
cesses that deliver seamless integration across distributed product
development participants. All these part ies must be plugged into the
process “at the right time, with the right access to the right data.” This
challenge is heightened due to the complexity o product data and
the robust nature o industr ial product development processes today.
To support eective internal and external collaboration, companiesmust careully consider their securit y needs, including the integra-
tion between the disparate systems, the overly ing process defnition,
management, and governance, secure end-user access, and secur ity
o data and data exchange.
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White Paper Collaborative Product Development Page 5 of 10
Process Challenges: Moving Data through the Product Lifecycle
In tandem with technology, processes are central to establishing
eective collaborative relationships – with highly eective processes being critical to successul collaboration. Without eective processes,
even the best technology inrastructure will be less eective. Just as
product development includes many cross-unctional participants,
cross-unctional processes are involved as well. Implementing eective
processes requires a ull understanding o your entire organization’s
cross-departmental product development processes, and how the prod-
uct development liecycle impacts those processes.
For instance, you need to understand your company’s Proposal Response
process in order to understand how changes to an outsourced compo-
nent will aect that process in the uture: How will the change aectdevelopment costs, product time-to-market, and variant options? How
is this inormation distributed to teams preparing customer quotes and
proposals? How are special customer requests, which are outside the
partner’s current capabilities, addressed? How is eedback rom cus-
tomers or the service department communicated to the partner? And
what is the process or incorporating this eedback into later versions
o the component?
Plan Concept Design Validate Production Support
Management
Sales & Mktg.
Engineering
Sourcing
Manufacturing
Service
Process Landscape
Program Management
Por t fo l io Management
New Produc t In troduc tion
Regula tory Compl iance
Qual i ty Management
Change and Conf igura tion Management
Proposa l Response
Requirements Capture and Management
Concept Development
Sys tem Des ign
Deta i led Des ign
Varian t Des ign and Genera tion
Verification and Validation
Des ign Outsourc ing
Manufac tur ing Process Management
Advanced Sourc ing
Tool ing and Fac tory Equipment Des ign
Manufac tur ing Outsourc ing
Technical Publications
Service Program Management
Equipment Management
Performance Analys is
Component and Suppl ier Management
Produc t Marketing Pub l ica tions
Cross-functional Processes of the Digital Product Value Chain
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White Paper Collaborative Product Development Page 7 of 10
Perhaps the one process that is most crucial to the success o collabora-
tive relationships is the Change and Confguration Management (C&CM)
process. Many industrial organizations today are attempting to manage
a multitude o change processes across an extended global enterprise.
Many companies still use manual, paper-based processes, while others
use technologies that are either homegrown or custom-made, and yet
others use myriad combinations o each, all in an attempt at auto-
mation. This lack o a single, standardized, automated C&CM process
creates a variety o problems, most notably schedule and program
delays, duplication o eort, added expense, and multiple avoidable
errors due to the lack o visibility and accurate inormation.
Disorganized C&CM processes can also result in incompatible or ine-
fcient synchronization o interdependent, but independently man-
aged, product development activities, such as sotware, mechanical and
electrical development processes, or development o connected prod-
uct modules by separate design and manuacturing teams. I changes
have not been eectively communicated and managed across these
independent design and manuacturing teams, you may be aced with
costly, time-consuming design rework very late in the product develop-
ment liecycle.
When working with partners and external teams who are passing data
to and rom enterprise systems, your in-house PLM system must have
a defned change management process, as well as highly eective
integrations and inherent confguration management capabilities.
Designers and manuacturers need immediate visibi lity into changes
and confgurations being made to the product design, and must be
able to immediately identiy any changes in product design thatcould jeopardize integration with the larger product interaces or
manuacturing.
Solving Collaboration Challenges: Technology, Processes, and Integration
Technology and Processes
As daunting as the challenge o creating a collaborative product
development relationship may seem, the economic and competitive
benefts make it an initiative that the majority o industrial manuac-
turers deem worthy o pursuing. Collaboration throughout the entire
product liecycle, rom design to manuactur ing and beyond, can bedone eectively with best-in-class technologies and practices. By
choosing the right technology platorms, by consolidating duplicate
and overlapping systems, and by creating highly eective system
integrations, industrial manuacturers can create a strong technol-
ogy oundation or successul collaboration practices.
Today’s best-in-class PLM and ERP technologies are able to support
eective processes via automated workows and advanced capabili-
ties. ‘Automated’ means that product data is moved rom one step in
the product development cycle to the next, t riggered by events or the
completion o tasks. On the PLM (Product Liecycle Management)
side o the Digital Value Chain, in the product development system,
this data can include MCAD and ECAD data, calculations, illustrations
and technical publications. This entire set o product development
data, including a history o changes, moves through the product lie-
cycle as a single representation o the entire product. Because the
entire set o data needs to be kept complete, yet also needs to be
fltered based on the needs and rights o the user, the product devel-
opment tool should be a single, integral system that incorporates
a common database schema, business objects, process models and
web-based user interace, including single login.
The most eect ive product development systems work natively with
the many orms o product data that must be shared across resources,
including data generated rom other PLM systems. This results in
aster data conversion and transer, data presentation that is appro-
priate to the role o the specifc user, and workow management to
keep complex, multi-departmental schedules on time.
In addition, a system architecture that is built upon industry standards
is better able to support the variety o users who must participate in
product development workows– including people rom various depart-
ments within the company, as well as external users, such as suppliers,
partners and customer communities.
The ultimate purpose o the product development system is to opti-mize the business processes that companies need to execute in order to
develop competitive products and achieve their business initiatives. A
system that merely delivers a hodgepodge o eatures and unctions is
not optimized to acilitate the execution o specifc business processes.
Recognizing the act that business processes are what drive product
development, best-in-class solutions automate and optimize business
processes, both those that are contained within the product development
solution and those that extend beyond into other enterprise PLM and
ERP systems. Consolidated enterprise systems can also play an important
role in increasing a company’s competitiveness by allowing continuous
improvements and automation o business processes and procedures.
By start ing with a solid product development system base and an
understanding o the related product development processes, you
can ocus your integration eorts on connecting PLM with ERP and
coordinating with other best-in-class solutions or other enterprise
capabilities (CRM, etc).
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White Paper Collaborative Product Development Page 8 of 10
Implementing End-to-End Digital Product Value Chain
Processes and Solutions
When implementing PLM, ERP and other enterprise solutions, indus-trial manuacturers oten attempt custom integrations. Oten, this
‘one-o’ approach can ulfll the needs o a given business process.
However, one-o applications typically require high levels o ongoing
administrative attention and manual exception handling. In most cases,
companies don’t recognize or understand the high cost o resources –
human and fnancial– consumed by the ongoing administration o
their application interaces. The more custom code a company devel-
ops, the more code it must maintain, using either its own IT department
or an outsourced development service. Beyond the resources needed
to create custom sotware code, resources are also needed to test and
implement this code; these tasks are difcult and time-consuming or
most traditional IT departments who, as a rule, are more likely to lever-
age commercial applications whenever possible.
One o the most difcult aspects o working with customized sotware
applications is that every time a new release o the source code or
target sotware is available, much o the development process has to be
redone. Scalability is also an issue with custom integrations; as business
processes expand to support a growing enterprise, they oten all short
o evolving business requirements and are too inexible to accommo-
date additional systems. Inevitably, the shortcomings o these integra-
tions are “fxed” with manual processes that are resource-intensive
and prone to error. The result is pockets o efciency with signifcant
process and inormation gaps in the overall enterprise system.
Commercial middleware applications are helpul, but they don’t oer
any business logic to support manuacturing business processes, thus
leaving a signifcant portion o the integration eorts to in-house
or outsourced third–party integration teams. As a rule, traditional
approaches to integration don’t yield all o the expected benefts.
Process Collaboration/SOA Foundation
Technology Collaboration
Concept Development
System Design
Detailed Design
Variant Design and Generation
Verification and Validation
Design Outsourcing
Program andPortfolio
Management
RequirementsManagement
DataManagement
DataManagement
DataManagement
DataManagement
MechanicalAuthoring
ElectricalAuthoring
SoftwareAuthoring
Analysis &Simulation
EnterprisePDM ERP EAM
OtherEnterprise
Applications
Cross-Functional Collaboration
PLM Functions ERP Functions
Project/BusinessManagement
(OEM and/or Suppliers)Engineers
(OEM and/or Suppliers) Quality Operations Sales Service
SOA Foundation and Reference Architecture
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White Paper Collaborative Product Development Page 9 of 10
Eect ive integrations consider not only the technology platorms
that need to be connected, but the business processes that these
technology platorms are intended to support. Business Process Management (BPM) is a discipline that combines sotware capabil i-
ties and business expert ise to accelerate process improvements and
acilitate business innovation. BPM relies on an enabling technology
called Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), an IT architecture that
supports integrating a business as linked ‘services’.
SOA is a methodology or approach on how to integrate dierent sot-
ware applications. It is not a sotware product or a communication
standard. However, there are certain kinds o middleware and cer tain
sotware standards that are typically used when implementing an
SOA solution.
When integrating two enterprise applications, there are typically
three main components:
1. An integration layer or module or the frst application that
utilizes an Internet communication protocol such as XML
2. A middleware application (such as IBM WebSphere)
3. An integration layer or module or the second application that
utilizes an Internet communication protocol such as XML
Protocols, such as XML, can signifcantly reduce the work involved in
developing an interace. In addition, an existing interace can be reused
with other applications instead o having to develop a new interace.
SOA can greatly lower the amount o eort in developing composite
applications that rely on inormation rom a number o dierent appli-
cations. SOA also enables IT to simpliy application and system integra-
tion, and to better reuse existing applications. Thus, the overall business
value o SOA is that it lowers the IT total cost o ownership.
Helping manuacturing companies extend the value o their invest-
ments in enterprise applications, by better leveraging vital data
across the enterprise, will not only improve collaboration, increase
productivity and reduce the time and cost to bring new products
to market, but it will also enhance the strategic importance o these
applications to all users in the enterprise.
The combination o PLM with SOA concepts eliminates integration
and process complexity issues by changing the way data is structuredand handled. With this approach, a ‘ederated’ inormation mechanism,
based on open standards, is created, rom which all applications access
and share data. Here, business processes exist independent o specifc
applications and are viewed and accessed by all companies participat-
ing in a product development value chain. This allows business exibil-
ity and better responsiveness to changes in the competitive landscape.
Portals provide access and visibility into all business processes relevant
to particular user roles, enabling support o better business decisions as
well as role-based access to inormation.
Why Is ‘SOA for PLM’ Critical for Collaboration?
A truly successul Digital Product Value Chain requires an under-
standing o:
1. The ‘big picture’ view o the enterprise technology systems
involved in the product liecycle
2. The interdepartmental processes that are aected by product
development and product management
3. The interrelation between technology systems and processes
This big picture view includes both internal processes, and the related
processes o your partners. Thus, in order to be successul, any related
integration eort must also consider all o these extended, collabora-
tive relationships. Only with these relationships in mind are you best
able to:
Formalize repeatable processes around best pract ices at all levels•
Improve people’s capabilities to execute the processes in•
day-to-day work
Deploy sotware and service capabilities designed to•
support process
Plan the changes to coincide with product development programs•
Mapping out the processes enables you to identi y integration points
between your processes and your partners’ processes. This allows you
and your collaboration partners to:
Establish a common understanding o terminology, scope and•
relationships between processes selected or improvement
Prov ide the basis or validation o process ow, including tasks,•
roles and sotware alignment at multiple maturity levels
Prov ide documentation o multi-level, best-practice procedures•
or training
By eliminating traditional inormation silos and making vital product
inormation visible throughout an enterprise, an SOA-enabled Digital
Product Value Chain connects the distinct systems, processes and
resources, and creates a unifed source o all product inormation.
An SOA-enabled, end-to-end solution provides business decisionsupport, increases exibilit y and responsiveness, and improves inte-
gration with the value chain, enabling CEOs to continually innovate
their products, their business processes, and their PLM inrastruc-
tures. SOA also creates an ecosystem in which multiple solution
developers, integrators and IT consultants can collaborate, replacing
competition with cooperation– a proound beneft to the client.
By permitting heterogeneous hardware and sotware to operate together
smoothly through a shared commitment to open standards, SOA truly
delivers on the long-held client dream to mix and match best-o-breed
PLM and ERP applications to achieve a system uniquely suited to their
special goals and challenges. The result can be client solutions tailored
or the various industries, such as aerospace and deence, automotive,consumer products, electronics and industrial products.
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Conclusion
For many o today’s industr ial manuacturers, the Digital P roduct
Value Chain involves cross-unctional, interdepartmental, geograph-
ically dispersed, and third-party team members, along with a variety
o technology applications, and a plethora o interrelated processes.
Progress ive manuacturers must move away rom silos o inorma-
tion and processes, and transition towards a view o the product
liecycle as an integrated ow o product data.
To optimize collaborative product development, whether you are
collaborating with internal or external resources, you must have a
complete view both o technologies and processes in order to suc-
ceed. Companies are most successul in attaining the value they expect
rom collaboration initiatives when they ollow these best practices and
supporting methodologies:
Build PLM process on a strong, integral product development•
technology oundation. Best-in-class product development
systems make engineering data and intellectual property highly
portable, eliminating the barriers o time zones and enabling
collaboration on product design around the clock. They support
the control o product inormation and the management o
changes and confgurations– which becomes increasingly
important as product data moves to and rom other PLM and
ERP systems. Product development systems should also support
the sharing o inormation with partners in a select and secure
manner, enabling productiv ity without compromising the
proprietary nature o intellectual property.
Understand your organization’s end-to-end product development•
processes. Include those processes that happen both internally
and externally with partners. By looking at product liecycle
processes across all departments– and not just those processes
within your engineer ing department–you can anticipate which
concurrent, dependant, or intersecting processes will be aected
by changes.
Eective product development collaboration requires eective•
product liecycle management, or PLM. For eective PLM, both
the technology tools and the business processes that support
the entire liecycle o product data need to be connected. These
integrations must incorporate an understanding o the enterpr isetechnology systems and the interdepartmental processes that are
aected by product development, and how these systems and
processes are interrelated. This big picture v iew includes both
internal processes, and the related processes o your partners.
© 2008, Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC). All rights reserved. Information described herein is
furnished for informational use only, is subject to change without notice, and should not be construed as
a guarantee, commitment, condition or offer by PTC. PTC, the PTC logo, and all PTC product names and
logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of PTC and/or its subsidiaries in the United States and in
other countries. All other product or company names are property of their respective owners.
3951-Collaborat ive PD-WP-1008
Whether you need to respond to increased compet ition, or you need
global resources to meet engineering bandwidth demands, you
must develop strong collaborative relationships to be successul. Without the r ight technologies and processes in place, producti vity
will decrease, changes w ill take longer to manage, costs wil l go up,
and time-to-market will suer. Eective collaboration is not just a
bonus; it can make the dierence between sinking or swimming in a
competitive global market. Understanding the challenges o collabo-
ration, and how to best address them through technology, processes,
and a “big picture view” o the Digital Product Value Chain, is the
secret to realizing the potential benefts o these new product devel-
opment opportunities.
Above all else, when optimizing your processes, choose technology
providers who oer best-in-class solutions, proven expertise, and an
understanding o the entire product development liecycle. Whether your organization consists o distributed internal teams, or a network
o global design partners, you should select providers that understand
the product liecycle ramework both inside and outside o the internal
engineering department, so they can help you achieve success.
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