2015 Programme

The PLM industry has entered an accelerating era of end-to-end business platform enablement, and recent development and acquisition strategies illustrate PLM solution provider direction and industry requirements. The shift towards enabling robust and resilient business platforms requires a fundamental change for both industrial users and PLM solution providers. Industrial companies who wish to implement enterprise business platforms now or in the future must rethink their solution set strategy, and how they identify, assess, and deploy enabling technologies. They must also identify and adhere to standards and the openness of interfaces that permit their chosen solutions to be adaptable, maintainable, extensible, scalable, compatible, stable, and reliable over multiple upgrade cycles. This presentation will describe this major industry development and what this means to the future of PLM.

The traditional hierarchy of a company involves a tiered model of upper and lower management; orders trickle down from the top and results trickle up from below. This model works for most and is widely adopted. But not at W.L. Gore & Associates, who, over the past 50 years of their operation, have adopted a model that will appear confusing and enlightening to most, in the continuous pursuit of growth and innovation.

• Understanding the utmost importance of communication and interaction in business success
• What does the flat-structure of W.L. Gore look like and what are its obvious implications?
• What does it mean to be a 'values-based' company versus a traditional model?

Exploring the 4 principles upon which this model is founded:

1. Commitment: no one tells anyone what to do; there are no job titles or descriptions and everyone is accountable for what they deliver
2. Fairness: always be fair in all internal and external transactions; always position a win-win approach to business
3. Water Line: everyone is in one boat; if you make a decision that translates into a hole in the boat above the water line, then take sole responsibility for your choice, but if it is below, consult and get advice
4. Freedom: take a promotional concept to your work and self-promote; there is no official salary grade and you are reviewed by your peers

• Understanding the basic concept: no structure around departments means no restrictions to growth

HARTMANN has a 190 year history as a medical device manufacturer and has become a global player in this industry sector. Grown by acquisitions, HARTMANN has established a broad product portfolio over the years which is managed and developed by 5 independent Business Divisions today. With regards to PLM, HARTMANN has established a cross-divisional Process Management department to ensure standardization across the Business Divisions. This session will cover:

• Understanding the HARTMANN company and organizational structure
• Exploring early PLM history and drivers in introducing PLM software - collaboration, interactions and multiple information formats
• Taking the next PLM steps by engaging with essential stakeholders from top-level management
• Elaborating on a comprehensive PLM roadmap and project setup
• Building the foundation for PLM implementation - start-up projects for software selection and organizational readiness

Project-orientated systems engineering for internal/external project demand

Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) wear more than one hat; charged with internal and external projects, they function as both an OEM and supplier partner and as such, find themselves working on a lot of different projects at any one time. Each project comes with a different design data set, internal/external modernization and/or external parts/products. Different data demands different methods and as such, the creation of customized systems architecture around existing infrastructure for every new project. Can Cangelir, Chief of Concurrent Engineering at TAI, joins us to share their internal structure and practices in dealing with such high complexity.

• Understanding the different project types and the unique demands that come with each
• What is the role of PLM in managing this?
• What is the structure of the PLM team?
• Is existing infrastructure enough or is new systems architecture needed?
• Taking responsibility to understand every system needed by every engineer type to ensure every requirement is met from concept through to logistics
• Thinking of the solution first - will it work in maintaining data integrity and quality?

Skanksa is a world leading project development and construction company. With every new project comes a new client and a new supplier network that amounts to a unique supply chain. When making design, development and operational decisions, it is paramount that you take an integrated approach to project and supply chain and as such, paramount that these two fields are intrinsically linked.

With the project managed by PLM, how do you best integrate your supplier network into your system? What are the associated access/security/IP challenges and what are the implications of a PLM upgrade on effectively-built cross-company bridges? 

FNSS Defense Systems' PLM team is currently dedicated to their V6 transition project, the aim of which was to replace Smarteam & Catia V5 with Enovia & Catia V6 by the end of 2014.

Within the project scope, it is intended to migrate all legacy PLM data (Catia, BOM files, engineering documents etc.) to the new platform without affecting quality, maintaining usability across the user force interfaces, maintaining C-level buy in for said upgrade and retiring legacy systems/apps no longer needed all under strict timelines schedules.

This session brings together those currently undergoing a platform upgrade and those currently evaluating one to discuss how to avoid the major (and unseen) pitfalls quickly to mitigate any down time and damage to product systems and data.

Composed of over 100 million components, costing over 5 billion euros and involving 111 nations in the design, manufacturing and maintenance phases, the Large Hadron Collider is the largest and most complex machine in the world. CERN is the world’s largest research centre for particle physics and faces the challenge of providing PLM tools which can be quickly assimilated and easy to employ by users of different backgrounds (physicists, engineers, technicians, administrators from distributed locations around the world).

This presentation will detail:

• Exploring CERN’s PLM strategy of using powerful commercial PLM tools with simplified web interfaces
• Improving overall user experience through customisation, training and communication
• Demonstrating how to simplify, streamline and deploy a more efficient set of tools
• Maximising the return on investment and bringing user experience to the next level
• Exploring user cases, scenarios and examples

Many companies use PLM; some have had PLM in place for years, others are new users. None of them are 100% content with the way it operates. Functionality and applicability are governed by company-dedication and limited by technology offering and in a world where industry is expected to move so fast, the platforms we use to govern how fast we react need to as well. KHIRA is a project involving academics, cross-industry reps and service providers and through its Living Lab, aims to exploit the expertise, skills and resources of all parties to overcome the challenge of knowledge management across the product lifecycle.

• Why aren't all processes involved in the product lifecycle supported by information management systems?
• Formulating a working method of effectively integrating all lifecycle processes and systems
• Promoting an holistic approach and vision to lifecycle management so access to all product data dimensions is a reality
• Creating a framework across the lifecycle to include design, production, maintenance, testing and validation
• Catching key product data to realise and maintain customer requirements and allow for real-time decision making

It's no secret that PLM investments are resource intensive. Software providers promise a fast and pain-free configuration and execution phase, but in reality, the complexity of the system combined with the tailoring needed to suit the existing architecture is hard. Most discrete companies have already taken the PLM plunge, but for some, PLM is something repeatedly reviewed and then abandoned for a commitment to instead, better what you already have. 

• Can you ever really calculate PLM's ROI pre-purchase and deployment?
• How the many unknowns of PLM greatly outweigh the benefits for many
• In an already resource-restrictive business, can a small to medium size company afford to stretch it's workforce anymore?
• Going nowhere fast with PLM
• Leveraging on existing ERP/CRM/Excel processes
• Realising the additional complexity of PLM when working with a number of clients and their multiple systems
• Are the vendors just telling you what you want to hear or are they being truthful in their upfront promises? 

Today our factories are so flexible that they can produce a wide variety of products with very short lead times at mass production cost. Also our supply chains and logistic systems are tuned to deliver goods at most places in the world within 24 hours. Now the challenge for engineering is to respond to any customer request with the design that best fits his needs and can be produced in time by the available supply chain.

Another challenge is to design all these unique products at the cost of standard designs. This requires a revolutionary boost of engineering productivity. How can this be achieved? The purpose of this break out session is to discuss and compare approaches that different companies follow including:

• Eliminating non value adding activities
• Reducing engineering lead time
• Increasing reuse of engineering knowledge

The PLM landscape is complex and every company, no matter how big, is confronted with its own unique set of challenges and pitfalls. Unfortunately, companies rarely publically speak about where they failed and focus more on where they succeeded. Whilst this is interesting and useful, it is the challenge where industry peers see the most commonality and learning.

The University of Applied Science in Rapperswil runs an active network of industrial companies, vendors and consultants addressing PLM matters.

From the experience of different industry executives, this session will cover some interesting and controversial stories, the good, bad and ugly, and will give true insight into the PLM universe.

• How to effectively setup a PLM project team
• Why do detailed conceptual topics end up on a CEO’s desk?
• Who really drives your product architecture?
• Global business with multiple local production hubs - how does PLM support both when the requirements are so different?
• Leveraging on legacy data in product development
• Can PLM actually aid in supplier network management?

The business model is changing from one of product delivery to one of services and beyond. Already manufacturing companies are achieving better margins on after-sales services then on winning the order in a competitive environment. More and more customers want to lease operational support or even sometimes outsource complete capabilities and operations versus just buying hardware and this business shift forces manufacturers to work closer to their consumer base. As such, understanding what is happening with their products during operation is becoming a major focus for many.

This focus group will discuss the transition to service:

• How to position CRM (Customer Relation Management) and SLM (Service Lifecycle Management) and
• The role of PLM in this shift

Different concepts will be discussed interactively, and participants are challenged to share and map these concepts to their organisations.

Across the product life cycle there are a series of engineering groups each tasked with a different function and therefore each having a unique set of requirements. Currently at Outotec, ENOVIA PLM acts as an underlying base and many xCAD engineering tools feed into this. But is this the most effective way of working?

Within this session, Henri will briefly discuss their current model challenge before asking you which is better:

• One system to rule them all in a harmonised manner OR
• Customised, integrated tools for different disciplines

What are the projected benefits of each and what are the short- and long-term compromises? 

After having invested in a massive global Teamcenter rollout programme, ABB did not observe their forecasted benefits. Deploying the same tool across different locations that each had their own individual requirements and histories was only the first step; the second was reaching an efficient standardized usage strategy across the globe of the investment.

With a background in Navigation within the Federal Navy, his experience of product and a proven track-record of identifying patterns and finding solutions outside of the box, Rickertsen was brought in to find a way to utilize the system in supporting more efficient engineering. This session will cover:

• Why did the TeamCenter implementation not deliver forecasted benefits and what were the key learnings
• Lessons learned from similar programmes including inputs from PI Congress Berlin 2014
• Adopting a 'wave' approach to programme management – step wise versus long term planning
• What were the key learnings and pitfalls found in the pilot project phase?
• Facilitating the new model through effective change management 
• What's next?

Are you a quitter? Is your PLM implementation only “half-done”? Has your company slowed down adoption of PLM? 

In this session we will explore and discuss the dynamics around where companies start PLM, what immediate benefits they receive, and what the next level of value is.

Come prepared for an interactive discussion.  Walk away with a new energy for even more value from PLM in your company.

43% of EU Adults are “super connected;” they are accessible across multiple devices for the whole of their waking day. Outside of the office we use our mobile phones for virtually everything, but when we get to work are we getting as much out of them as we can?

PLM was originally invented to build rocket ships.

Smartphones today have more computer processing power than Apollo 11 (which put man on the moon).

Isn’t it about time PLM became mobile?

Join collaborative IT strategist Craig Crawford as he examines what super connected means to PLM.  Participants will discuss:

• Can PLM be truly mobile?
• Why is multi-screen technology needed at work?
• How can mobility improve productivity, performance and profit?

Many companies try to accelerate their business processes by simplifying the access to product data. There are different ways to achieve this. One way is to give better access through productivity apps. For users in general this is a web page where they can find their daily information with a simple click, so they can continue their work without delay.

During this Think Tank session we will provide detailed answers to your questions and give recommendations on how to best implement productivity apps. We will explain the key factors you will have to take into account and explore the behind-the-scenes of a well implemented productivity app.

The following questions must be discussed:

• Understanding the whole information flow and the Digital Product
• What are the potential stumbling blocks and general mistakes?
• What is the difference between a website and a web application?
• Productivity apps as an easy approach to speed up your daily business throughout the whole company

• Managing data exchange between ECAD and MCAD through PLM
• Utilising interdisciplinary product definition as a starting point for domain-specific development
• PLM-Integration platform for MCAD/ECAD/EDA

Collecting data is not enough

The future environment, driven by Industry 4.0 and the IoT, will lead to new magnitudes of data being generated across all stages of a product lifecycle. Advanced analytical solutions offer new opportunities to benefit from available internal and external data sources. Companies can leverage analytics to improve decision-making along the product lifecycle thus maximizing the product value and profitability.

This think tank will elaborate:

• Value drivers and opportunities for product analytics throughout the entire product lifecycle
• Potential data sources
• Application options and exemplary use cases for analytics in product innovation and PLM
• Experiences, challenges and key obstacles

Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul of capital equipment are critical business activities. Long-term service contracts become more and more relevant to increase a company’s base- and bottom-line profit. Technological complexity, high levels of customization and, above all, equipment uptime and customer satisfaction make MRO a significant challenge for OEMs, asset owners, and those tasked with maintaining the assets and ensuring a high level of productivity and reliability. 

Given that efficient MRO processes rely on accurate product configuration, document management and maintenance history to manage assets, optimize the Service supply chain and execution of MRO activities there are numerous challenges to consider.

• How to keep the required information in a heterogeneous organization, process and system environment?
• How to integrate MRO concepts in existing PLM system landscapes?
• How to integrate short and long term planning of maintenance activities?
• How to integrate MRO processes and Service supply chain?

Within this Think Tank, share your experiences and challenges with peers and discuss chances and concepts of implementing MRO. Karer Consulting will present its expert knowledge and approaches to integrate MRO into your PLM processes and system landscape. We invite you to join us.

The issue with today's complex systems is that often behaviours emerge that are unforeseen and unwanted. The usual and expensive part of this issue is that these unforeseen and unwanted behaviours do not surface until after the system has been designed and realized. In the worst-case scenario, these unwanted behaviours result in a catastrophic failure. In the best case scenario, we are faced with expensive and time-consuming changes to the system. Once the system is realized in atoms, i.e., a physical manifestation, the cost and time to make corrections ranges from the costly to the unaffordable. A major way to mitigate this issue is to use bits, i.e., modelling and simulation, in order to test out the system virtually and uncover emergent behaviour that is detrimental to the performance of the system. The NASA DigitalTwin project is a step in that direction. The presentation will outline the scale and scope of the initial efforts and discussed the path forward.

The nature of products is changing dramatically through the Internet of Things. Smart and connected products are driving innovation by Big Data, the Cloud and Analytics and this has also had a huge impact on the product development model. 

Users are demanding more specialized and tailored products and the use of connected technologies, and their related security/compliance challenges is exponentially increasing. In order for manufacturers to remain competitive and relevant, their product development processes and technologies need to evolve to match.

IBM have developed a concept of Continuous Engineering that speeds delivery of smarter products by helping companies evolve engineering practices to adapt to the accelerating pace of business change.

• What is Continuous Engineering and what does it mean to you and your business?
• How can open service oriented standards help to realize what your product development want to archive?
• Case Study: eHorizon from Continental

Industria de Turbopropulsores (ITP), a global leader in aircraft and industrial engines, set an ambitious strategic plan to double sales from 2011-2015. To achieve this goal the company sought to integrate Manufacturing and Engineering processes, which would improve data consistency, reduce non-quality costs, allow monitoring end-to-end processes along the supply chain, and increasing the productivity of the Engineering function. All of which would shorten time-to-market ratios.

ITP executives considered PLM to be a critical component to achieve their goal. The CEO was convinced that the right PLM solution would allow his firm to produce the most competitive, efficient design at the lowest possible cost.

In this presentation, we will share the technical and organizational challenges of this wide-scoped project, which has implemented the long-term PLM platform required in ITP as well as integrated PLM with ERP and MES solutions.

Many sources agree that the digital economy is expected to overtake the physical economy by 2026. The immense volume and value creation capacity is fuelled by the ability of people and devices to interact with each other in economically meaningful ways. It is estimated that intelligent devices will outnumber humans by a factor of 15-50X with the new internet.

While the world’s markets open up for a slew of smart, wearable, ingestable products, the Physical Economy and its classical products will have to transform themselves for the Digital world.

This session explores some innovative examples of product evolution, and associated business transformation among classical brick- and- mortar companies transforming for the digital economy. 

Today’s Puig is a third-generation family-owned fashion and fragrance business based in Barcelona, that includes a combination of owned brands such as Carolina Herrera, Nina Ricci, Paco Rabanne and Jean Paul Gaultier, licenses such as Prada, Valentino and Comme des Garçons, and celebrity fragrances. The assimilation of a number of merged and acquired companies had led to the formation of a complex systems architecture of 20 tools in R&D highly impacting the product development processes. So began a project entitled ‘Knowledge Box’ which aimed to reduce the number of tools to only 4 in an effort to centralise operations and define a common operating model. Gemma Giro, involved from the beginning of the journey back in 2008, joins us to discuss:

• Exploring the complex systems architecture of PUIG in 2008 – where were the challenges?
• Evaluating and selecting a PLM platform – why DevEx?
• The ‘Knowledge Box’ – DevEx, PDM, Mundi (Sharepoint Tool)  and SAP PPM
• Creating cross-functional management teams to define best deployment strategies from the beginning
• Understanding the change management process
• How has the ‘Knowledge Box’ enhanced overall operational capability and visibility?
• What are the benefits of the 20 to 4 platform transformation? – agility, security, timelines and sustainability

Traditionally, PLM is managed largely by IT and used mostly by design/development teams. But when the sole purpose of the platform is to collect all project-associated data, it is essential that all parts of the business feed into it. In this session Skanska join us to discuss their integration efforts between PLM and sustainability, sharepoint and finance respectively and the associated migration challenges. 

Manufacturing's future rests largely on the integration of people, processes and systems. Many have already extended PLM beyond engineering to non-traditional areas of the business and it's integration with ERP is an inevitable essential step in providing a top-down view of the enterprise.

Integrating these two enterprise-wise systems will maximise customer-engineering collaboration and reduce time to market and errors. Jonas Hagner has a diverse product manufacturing field background but in many of these roles, has facilitated the integration of these two systems and will share today best practices in getting this done the right way.

When VAASAN Oy first moved into the PLM field, they made the decision to use this platform to also manage additional Master Data. In order to achieve this it was vital that the selected technology could handle not only the standard LCM but also the portfolio, brand and any other MD related field such as vendor data, labelling data, customer data and financial data. This session will discuss:

• Selecting a PLM platform that could support both sets of business data
• How can you ensure both sets of data are effectively integrated without affecting quality?
• PLM in non-product-related data: reporting, business intelligence and analytics
• Understanding the resource benefits of binding these two disciplines
• How do you make this work on a global scale?
• How has this integration boosted control?
• What level of cross-portfolio visibility is expected from this setup?

Global competition, binding regulations, shrinking profits and an increasing demand from the consumer have companies frantically looking for ways to better leverage their information architecture to boost efficiency and innovation.

Whilst PLM manages the product related data, assets and plants are governed by their own separate platforms. But the ability to leverage all company-related data is strongly dependent upon the integration of these information libraries to facilitate the access to the bigger picture.

• Bridging the gaps between siloed platforms
• Transforming data created, into intelligence for operational improvements
• How can we best align product, asset and plant data to generate greater visibility into profitability?
• How do you best leverage all three systems to maximise knowledge retention?
• Ensuring all of this information is instantly accessible by decision makers and critical systems across the company

Imagine that you are well underway with your company’s PLM journey. The next steps are understood. You know your obstacles. You know your options. It’s time to execute.

Then, Bam! Mon Dieu! Donnerwetter!– your company announces a major merger.  All of your plans are now obsolete.  What do you do?

This session will openly discuss the challenges, learnings, and more importantly – the opportunities -- that come from PLM within an M&A activity.  

PLM is seen by most companies as an IT platform; PLM is often left to the IT team to deploy and manage. It is selected and deployed with strict short and long -term goals in mind and it is these business areas that are sensibly made the priority. It is often only after its deployment that the business gets involved. So what's the next stage?

Those business areas using PLM first act as the pilot projects for its future; the company starts to ask what else the technology can do and where else its functionality might be applicable. As such, it begins to be deployed in adjacent business areas. Barring the initial target areas, this method focusses on what the technology can do first and how the business could then benefit second. But are these really the major pain points of the business?

Dagmar Heinrich was given a task: to conduct a full business analysis, understand how the business was dealing with PLM, what the issues were and how these aligned with their overall business strategy. As such they focussed on areas that supported what the strategy wanted and as such aimed to get more immediate ROIs.

How do you manage your PLM and how it should develop with the business in your organisation ensuring your business and IT are aligned to better support overall growth strategy?

Over the past few years advances in engineering technology and development processes/systems has been impressive.  New ideas and new acronyms appear almost every year and whilst this is great, what has remained constant is that the change has not been easy and the deployment of new business processes/systems is still challenging.

This panel will discuss:

• What are the drivers for process innovation and how is success measured?
• What is the role and position of PLM, ALM, SLM, ERP, GSC…software solutions in process innovation?
• How can we obtain the required ownership in the organization and NOT make process innovation efforts an IT project?
• Chicken or the Egg?: How to specify the tool requirements without knowing the process innovation they can realise?
• What are key obstacles and/or pitfalls for successful process innovation?
• All-wheel drive: How do you achieve both a pull and push strategy for successful Change Management?
• Risking an avalanche: How should you package scopes of Business Process Innovation to secure and improve daily work?
• How can we accelerate the short-term effects of these systems to secure future funding?
• How can big data analytics impact system implementation and day-to-day operation?
• Increased speed of innovation in today’s business environments – how can product lifecycle management and related IT systems keep up?
• Today IoT, Industry 4.0, Big Data – and tomorrow? How can you be prepared for future innovative trends and technologies?
• What are the best practices in involving suppliers and managing the supply chain as part of your business process innovation programme?

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is as old as PLM, having been first introduced in the late 80's. The concept was simple: having a digital model of your project meant easier collaboration and communication between the many parties involved, a function mirrored closely by PLM. But over the years the two technologies have developed as completely separate worlds, mainly because they are serviced by completely separate vendor groups and the product is different. This session will look at:

• How do the development timelines differ between the two worlds and how do their respective systems support this?
• How does the indifference to over-spending in the AEC industry compare to traditional product development?
• Improving the filing, maintenance and reuse of data in large AEC projects
• How has BIM maximised supplier network integration and collaboration?
• With the movement of PLM vendors into BIM, what might be the obvious crossovers? 

At conferences, you often hear about a second phase of PLM deployment into an organization, which is described as a 'new beginning'. These stories follow the same plan of action: we started (INITIATION) and it did not work (STRUGGLE). Obviously we did something wrong (MEDIATION), but now [REASONING, for example "after giving ownership to the business"] we are confident it will work (VICTORY).

PLM deployment is a transformation; a cultural change process of the organization that follows an S-curve pattern observed in ecosystems, for example, after the cutting down of a forest. Before the midpoint there are few species and pioneer species are dominating. After the midpoint resources become scarcer and succession species begin to dominate.

This focus group supports sharing of PLM deployment stories and is looking for underlying patterns expecting that it is not a question about the right's and the wrong's, but about keeping the pace and ensuring continuous effort to facilitate the change.