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We help our customers digitalize & integrate their product lifecycle management so that they can leverage existing data for more value, enable better collaboration internally and externally, ultimately to drive innovation and decrease the time it takes to get products to the market.
Who needs PLM? And will it help my business? by: Rob Kennedy, President A simple question with a simple answer. If your company designs and manufactures a product, then yes you absolutely need a PLM. I am sure I am going [...]
Globalization in a PLM World by: Rob Kennedy, President Managing and controlling the entire Product Development Process (PDP), or the process that takes a product from concept to market, can be quite a task. There are a few questions we ask [...]
How do you 'PLM'? According to Wikipedia, PLM came from American Motors Corporation (AMC) as a way to speed up its product development process and to compete with larger competitors in 1985. So, is PLM speeding up your product development process? Is [...]
"Recently Accessed" for Speed and Efficiency Here’s a great tip for working with Windchill: when you’re in a time crunch or you want to avoid navigating through Windchill to find your current work, the Recently Accessed drop-down menu is your best friend. [...]
The Costs of Empty Software Support Seats Windchill System Administration is critical. But finding candidates…? It’s a Jungle out there! Filling an empty Windchill System Administration seat is no easy trick. Less than 3.1% unemployment means good help is hard to find. When you do [...]
Cool Windchill Reporting Windchill Reporting is about to get a whole lot easier! Eccellent Solutions understands the problems with Windchill reporting. Therefore, we’re bridging the gaps between hammering out reports, and leveraging business intelligence. As a result of our efforts, [...]
System Clean-up - Wait! Before you hit that button... Let’s just review where you are and what got you here… It’s the morning routine: you swipe your badge, grab a cup of coffee, pick up the paper, assume the position on the [...]
System Administration - 7 Investments What's happening to System Administration?! 7 Reasons you should invest in Sys Admin (and some you don't…) Enterprise System Administration capabilities and responsibilities are fragmenting at a rapid rate. As a result, they're literally growing apart. With advances [...]
System Administrator Fact 1: You run on IT System Administrator Fact 1: “Your Business Runs on IT.” When you manage your company’s own information super highway you carry the cost of infrastructure support. If the pavement is fresh and new it’s all about [...]
System Administration Fact 2: It's the Data, Stupid. System Administration is important. Data and Information Security, System Uptime, Throughput, Configuration, and Processing Capability, all are the primary responsibilities of the System Administrator. They have a huge impact on corporate productivity and the bottom [...]
System Administration Fact 3: They have special capabilities Your System Administration capabilities are specialized. But not necessarily in a good way. Five things cause this: System Administration Fact 4, Fact 5, Fact 6, Fact 7, and Evolution. Twenty years ago the number of [...]
System Administrator Fact 4: They're hard to find A Good System Administrator is hard to find. As a result, most publications have the average unemployment rate for the System Administrator sector hovering somewhere between 2% and 3%, but closer to 2% - which [...]
System Administration Fact 5: They're mostly entry level System Administration is typically an entry level position. Don’t get me wrong, there are people who have made a nice career of being a SysAdmin. But not by staying in the role that teaches them [...]
System Administrator Fact 6: They Get the Itch Average System Administrator tenure is about seven years. Aaah, the seven-year itch! The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BOLS) parks the midpoint for “longevity in a System Administration career” at somewhere between five and nine years. [...]
System Administrator, Fact 7: They're expensive According to the BOLS data, average annual salary for a “Network and Computer System Administrator” (job code 15-1142) is upwards of $80K (this is a National average, mind you. Local salaries may differ based on a particular [...]
The Flip-side of Moore's Law If you’re noticing that your Enterprise System and Business Administration capabilities are literally dis-integrating [sic], there’s a reason for that. With every advance in computing power, greater sophistication and specialization is required to manage the inputs [...]
Application Performance Management - Taking out the garbage Application Performance Management is like taking out the garbage. Actually, it’s more like my son taking out the garbage: It’s his chore; he knows it’s full, he can see that it’s full, he waits anyway, [...]
These definitions are helpful for the Business Initiatives Section
Improve product portfolio management and decisions – Increase number of product ideas conceptualized, evaluated and designed. Manage product portfolio to keep competitors from entering your markets. Continuing to invest in successful “platform/derivative”.
Increase product modularity design – Design products to be a collection of connected modules. This facilitates cost-effective customization because variations can be created by swapping different modules for one another without changing the surrounding product architecture.
Improve translation of Customer needs into product features – After understanding customer needs, ensure direct translation into product features. Link needs data closely with product specification data to enable an audit trail over time and to ensure that no customer need data is lost.
Improve collaboration with customers – Actively seek feedback from customers over the lifecycle of a product to generate and act upon ideas for product improvement.
Enable customer ability to configure products (design-to-order) – Empower the customer to self-innovate by configuring products to their specific requirements within the boundaries of possible product configurations (i.e., prevent incompatible configurations).
Improve collaboration with design partners – Better collaboration with design partners entails shared data sources, formalized channels of communication and feedback, access to intellectual property, etc. By making collaboration easier, it will happen faster which will directly lower time to production and ultimately time to volume.
Improve quality of components and suppliers – Use quality reviews and ranking of suppliers and components to drive sourcing and design-in of higher quality components.
Implement design for product linkages/ dependencies – Design products to be complementary and dependent on one another to increase the customer’s investment in your overall product line. As customers buy more of your products over time they begin to feel beholden as they realize the synergies between products and the cost savings that result from being able to use multiple products in an increasing number of new combinations.
Reduce time between product iterations – Release new products on a shorter time cycle to ensure that they offer the latest functionality while minimizing the risk of introducing new/untested features and components.
Increase design reuse – Catalog all prior product designs for easy search and reuse / adaptation to current and future product development efforts. Effective design reuse shortens process steps resulting in faster time-to-market, higher quality and lower cost.
Increase product modularity for manufacturing and supply chain – By building products off a common “platform” with modular components, a company can increase the number of common parts as well as the volume passing through core manufacturing processes. This maximizes factory utilization and lowers marginal cost. It also allows for simplified orders with suppliers (which will improve supplier performance) increases order volumes with individual suppliers which will drive lower component costs and better supplier relations.
Improve internal collaboration / concurrent engineering – Increase the sharing of work-in-process designs and information across groups within an enterprise to facilitate parallel work activities.
Integrate thought leadership in product design (lead users, topic leaders) – Create processes and capabilities to identify, collect, digest, and use the latest thinking and developments in your particular product space. This often includes focus groups with “Lead Users,” approaching academic institutions, etc.
Optimize design for proprietary services/interfaces – Design products to readily interface with your other products and services. These interfaces will make it easier and more likely that customers will buy from you (instead of competitors) when they consider add-on products and services.
Increase leverage of existing Intellectual Property (patents/copyrights) in product design – Audit current patent portfolio to identify additional uses and then cluster groups of proprietary, previously-patented designs into current products to bolster legal defensibility.
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