Tag Archives: Siemens

The Cloud Lives!

November 18, 2011 By in CAD, Manufacturing industry, New Technologies Tags: , , , , , 3 Comments

18 Nov 2011: Ralph Grabowski proposed his opinion that the cloud is dead. He couldn’t be more wrong. Consider users at the Siemens NX CAE Symposium that ended last week. Virtually all of the eight users at a panel noted that cloud computing would definitely be part of their plans. Assuming that some minor issues such as security, cost, and application software licensing could be solved, all seem to have or want it in their future plans.

Several customers represented companies that already have with HPC clusters. While this ideal “local cloud” met their expectations, the cost of such a cluster is very high and not a solution for smaller companies.

I agree that the use of cloud computing for interactive applications is a bad idea. However, the vast computing power, parallel processing, and expected low costs make it a very appealing idea for tasks that require modest bandwidth and have high computational needs. Autodesk’s CEO, Carl Bass, clearly has the right idea. Autodesk, over the past two years has introduced several applications that span the range of interactive hardware and relying on the cloud to ramp up compute speeds. At AU last year I had the chance to listen to Bass and speak with him about his ideas for best utilizing the cloud. As I wrote in that article, Autodesk’s concept is to “Don’t replicate desktop solutions on the cloud. Instead make maximum use of desktop and mobile systems, utilizing the cloud where it makes sense.” Still makes sense today. Here is a link to that article http://wp.me/pvn8U-3e.

Oddly enough, with the possible exception of DS, Autodesk’s competitors don’t seem to get the concept. For example, while I interpreted from Siemens customers that they were excited about potential use of the cloud, Siemens PLM Software, except for licensing issues, seems to have no plans to enable them. The same goes for PTC.

Let me know what you think.
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Industry Siemens PLM Software Analyst meeting 2011 Notes

September 22, 2011 By in 3D Design, CAD, PLM Industry Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

Acting more like the tortoise than the hare in the fable; Siemens PLM Software (SPLMS) has plodded and plotted its way to the leadership position in the PLM software industry. Sticking with its “never let a customer fail” strategy as well as other newly elucidated goals has enabled the company to maintain a steady pace in gaining customers and revenue over the years.

At the Industry SPLMS Analyst meeting held on the 7th and 8th of September in Boston, Tony Affuso, CEO and Chairman, revealed substantial growth for the company. SPLMS experienced strong double-digit license revenue growth, following five previous quarters of steady growth and exceeded profitability and cash flow targets. SPLMS does not reveal its precise numerical performance. Acknowledging that most of the growth was organic (not from acquisitions) and since their growth considerably exceeded that of the market, the difference had to come from gaining market share growing their business within existing customers, from new markets, and by winning business from their competitors. Affuso discussed recent competitive wins against Dassault Systemes (DS) and PTC. His conclusion and that of the speakers that followed credited their strategies of openness and never outmoding customer data, quite different than PTC and DS. DS, in particular forced customers to endure substantial conversions in going from V4 to V5 and now to V6. At PTC, Creo appears to require a massive data migration as well. Instead, SPLMS has deployed SOA and XML to maintain a pipeline between new and existing applications. Using such “data pipelines” allows connections between disparate applications, the drawback being a modest degradation in performance for the additional work required by each application. This has been made relatively unimportant by the tremendous growth in hardware that has continued unabated all these years.

In speaking with one SPLMS executive, being a part of Siemens has allowed a stability and financial base that allows continued heavy investment in R&D, even in difficult economic times. Both Affuso and President Chuck Grindstaff cited Siemens devotion to innovation and not retreating on R&D expenditures during difficult times.

Announced last year, HD PLM seems to be making real headway. Designed as a graphic way to present Teamcenter data visually, we may at last be beginning to see the demise of the numbingly tedious display of tables of data – instead to be replaced with graphic views of the product. For instance, why look at a table of components that are over cost targets? Instead show the out-of-whack components using a color scheme on the assembly view of the product. Grindstaff described this as a way of showing the “semantics” of the product data, or relating data relationships. While I am sworn to secrecy, I can tell you that Siemens is exploring methods for the average user to generate his own views of data he might be interested in. More on this later this year.

More to come in Part 2.

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Siemens uses game design tools to enable top down design

September 23, 2010 By in 3D Design, CAD, Manufacturing industry Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Wow, driving back and forth from Boston to NJ really did me in. 500 miles in a few days, packed with several traffic jams from accidents, plus sitting in conferences for 2 days! So this blog may come to you a bit late. In the way of openness, Siemens paid for my travel expenses to and from the meeting as well as two nights at the hotel.

Anyhow, on Day 2 of the conference (22 Sep), I had the opportunity to view Siemens already released (last week) Mechatronics Concept Designer (MCD) software – a terrific idea, and aptly suited for designers of complex machine tools, especially those machines or groups of machines with lots of parts in motion. Later in the day, Dan Staples, Solid Edge’s head of development, and original architect of ST, described what’s coming in their upcoming release of Synchronous Technology 3 (ST3).

Built as a stand-alone solution, Paul Brown of Siemens, Senior Marketing Director, stated that the Price was about $20K, had no software prerequisites, and includes a copy of NX to assist in the design detailing.

Shown in the image above is an example of a machine designed with MCD. Designed to work with NX and Teamcenter the idea is to map out a block diagram of the prospective machine, use a library of functional parts that can be re-used or designed, add requisite motions, and prove out the design concept. Then the concept design is passed on to the appropriate engineering disciplines to continue to add detail to the design. I really liked the concept, but there is too much detail to describe here. You can see more at http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/about_us/press_kit/mechatronics-concept-designer.shtml.

What is really appealing is that design concepts like this could only have been done before manually, and because of the complex interactions of 3D and motion, would have been very difficult to design and extremely error prone. One could easily imagine this technique used for other design projects.

On the ST3 upcoming launch, due in mid-October, Solid Edge (SE), part of Siemens’ Velocity business unit, and headed up by Karsten Newbury (see my blog dated 22 July), continues to press the envelope by extending ST into assembly design, and allowing a mixture of history based design and ST unordered design. Incorporating some 2000 customer enhancements, ST3 should be an extraordinary release. The ST3 modeling advances also allow all of SE’ other apps, such as piping and wiring to use ST technology and auto update as changes are made.

Got to get some sleep now.

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Siemens PLM Software firing on all cylinders

September 22, 2010 By in 3D Design, CAD, Manufacturing industry, PLM Industry Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

22 Sep 2010: Yesterday Siemens PLM Software (SPLMS) kicked off its annual analyst conference in Boston, MA, following a years hiatus due to the economy in 2009.

As usual, a really packed day resulted in information overload by early afternoon. Alas, we are not scheduled to get any of the PowerPoint slides until later today so I cannot yet share any with you. Nevertheless, after nine hours of listening, 30 pages of notes, and viewing hundreds of slides, here is short list of the more significant highlights of the day:

  • The transition to new President Chuck Grindstaff seems to be going smoothly. Surrounded by an experienced team of long time PLMers, Chuck is upbeat and feels confident about the transition. Long the technology strategist, he plans to continue as CTO, at least for a while.
  • Following a “difficult year” in 2009, Siemens business is up more than 25% this year. The company trotted out a chart of their success, for example, in the auto industry, noting that 12 out of 15 of the top players now use Teamcenter, traditionally a Dassault Systemes (DS) stronghold. Not only that, but they are displacing DS’ V6 with NX in several accounts. Other top performing industries include aerospace and surprisingly, shipbuilding. Tony Affuso pointed out that being a part of Siemens helps enormously in winning large and very large accounts, because of company stability (120 years in business) and the synergy with other parts of the Industrial Automation Group.
  • On the technology front, Teamcenter is expanding its offering rapidly into new applications. Notable among them is a new System Engineering application that now allows validating products based on customer requirements – one I have long awaited. Solid Edge ST3 is on the horizon. A pre announcement briefing is schedule for later today. Two customers spoke glowingly of its use. Mechatronics Concept Design was oft mentioned today as a new application about to be released. It combines a physics gaming engine along with a hew UI, allowing early concepts to tie together electrical and electronic system into early design. We are due to hear more later today and I will update my readers as I find out more about the technology.
  • For many years I have been a lone voice in the woods imploring PLM vendors to make access to the reams of data easier. SPLMS shows the promise of delivering with HD-PLM. Not exactly sure about what is involved to make this work for each client, but Grindstaff intimated that it could be done with minimal efforts. Their goal is to provide clients access to the massive amounts of data so organizations can customize displays that make sense of often used data. For example, by displaying the graphic of a full car, and color-coding all late items red, a user can instantly see the project status. How about where it does not meets specs, or over cost, or needs work for fit and finish? Wow, this is exciting!
  • Many customers spoke about their implementations, perhaps none so eloquently as Amy Gowder, Director of Performance Excellence of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics about their use of SPLMS software on the JSF program. Working with 3 major variants of the product and 10 international partners companies, they have so far avoided major fit issues as have plagued Airbus and Boeing. Gowder noted that their success is not based on software, but on changes to the ways they work. Wonder how I can get a flight in the Harrier replacement variant?
  • More to come . . .

A conversation with Karsten Newbury, head of the Siemens Velocity business unit

July 22, 2010 By in 3D Design, CAD, PLM Industry, Uncategorized Tags: , , , Leave a comment

My interest in Siemens’ Solid Edge business was recently re-awakened when I finally heard that Karsten Newbury was appointed to lead the Solid Edge business. His actual title is senior vice president and general manager for Siemens PLM Software’s Velocity Series product suite. Partially this occurred when I heard that Bruce Boes had departed the company to head up marketing at Vistagy (www.vistagy.com).

Karsten Newbury

Some of you may recall that I wrote several papers when Solid edge synchronous technology was first released in 2008. Back then it was billed as the greatest thing since sliced CAD bread. Finally users could just design, change existing designs easily, and import other CAD system data easily. Yet, in the two years since, it seems to have made little dent in the marketplace. Sure, some Solid Edge competitors sat up and took notice, even going so far as to add such capabilities to their software, or at least their software plans. Autodesk announced Fusion Technology and SolidWorks promised to expand direct modeling within the history tree.

Newbury, a long time Siemens executive, led the integration of the UGS acquisition into Siemens. Aha, I thought, at last the company seems to be paying attention to this CAD modeling gem. I asked for and was granted a telephone interview with Newbury, just yesterday. Below are the nuggets from this interview.

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Ray: You have been head of Velocity marketing for some six months now, what are you doing differently than before?

Karsten: When heading up the integration into Siemens we identified certain technologies that could be more profitable. Solid Edge, with synchronous technology (ST) stood out. The establishment of the Velocity business unit was the first step to gain greater visibility and funding with Siemens PLM. I have the global responsibility for its success. I am reviewing all aspects of the business and the opportunities. There are more focused resources now along with more investment.

Ray: can you give me some metrics on how much the resource has increased?

Karsten: I cannot give you any numbers, but we have seen high double-digit license revenue growth in the last year. We have invested several million dollars in the business since the beginning of last year. I cannot share with you any details on the actual dollar amount of the revenue increase or manpower increase.

Ray: This leaves me a little cold without having details on the actual investment or manpower.

Karsten: You will just have to wait and see what the impact in the market is. The business unit is profitable and is expected to continue to be so. We will plow all the profits back into the business.

Ray: Have there been any recent management or organizational changes within your business unit that you feel are substantive?

Karsten: As a newcomer I have been examining our structure and will soon add a new person to head up the marketing function. In the three major worldwide geographic zones we have put in place new sales leaders.

Ray: What are your plans to gain market share in the face of intense competition from Autodesk and SolidWorks?

Karsten: We are focusing more on providing local support and providing more sales leadership to VARs worldwide. We have increased our channel percentage and will drive more into this direction; currently more than 90 percent of our revenue comes from channel partners. We plan to leverage ST’s real productivity gains and have users tell others about the benefits.

Ray: Do you envision any dramatic changes in the product and can you discuss the future of the product.

Karsten: This will have to wait for a more detailed session. ST3 is due out soon and incorporates about 2000 user enhancement requests. While Velocity is our brand we also want to make sure that the individual products are exposed more. The supporting Velocity products remain very strong and competitive. (Femap, Teamcenter Express and CAM Express)

Ray: Your competition has been taking potshots at ST. How do you counteract that?

Karsten: We do not worry about what the competitors say. We think users are looking for alternatives in their design approach. We want to drive real productivity gains for users and make their job easier. With ST3, due out soon, we expand these benefits even further. Solid Edge ST represents a real advantage over the competitive offerings. Users are talking about shrinking their design times from weeks to days.

Ray: Do you think Autodesk Fusion Technology is a serious threat to ST?

Karsten: Fusion technology seems to have acknowledged direct modeling benefits. We think we have a distinct time advantage over our competitors.

Teamcenter to operate within IBM’s PDIF (Product Development Integration Framework)

June 19, 2009 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , 1 Comment

June 18, 2009: Lately we have been reviewing Windchill ProductPoint, a terrific solution based on SharePoint for small users. This announcement focuses on the other end – LARGE customers. We find this particularly interesting because it’s the first deployment on PDIF of a tightly integrated PLM application.

What makes PDIF so interesting? Because it’s an excellent example of IBM using its prowess in services, global clout, and middleware (software enablers) to aim at solutions for large, complex issues, one of which is integrating the multitude of engineering and other disciplines involved in bringing out new products.

IBM’s PDIF has been in the works for several years and under many executives. It finally looks like the technologies to accomplish this have finally enabled their vision to be able to be realized.

As for today’s announcement, Siemens PLM Software announced that it will use IBM’s Product Development Integration Framework (PDIF) as a development platform and integration environment, for a soon to be delivered ready-to-use solutions built on its Teamcenter PLM software portfolio and integrating tightly with IBM WebSphere and Information Management (DB2). PDIF also enables a richer integration between Siemens Teamcenter and Rational Software’s software development platform.

“Siemens PLM Software’s Teamcenter is the industry’s first PDIF-ready platform to deliver tightly integrated IBM middleware offerings that reduce PLM software acquisition and lifecycle costs,” said Michael Wheeler, vice president, IBM PLM and Supply Chain Solutions. “By using a flexible software environment, companies have a framework for marrying key PLM business processes to technology initiatives that offer a structured approach to managing the life of a product,” added Wheeler.

On the call today, Chuck Grindstaff, Siemens PLM EVP and Wheeler discussed the implications to potential customers. Wheeler extolled the virtues of Teamcenter working on their “blue stack”, adapting their SOA solution to PDIF, and altering Teamcenter so it now uses DB2. Grindstaff, in turn, was particularly complimentary of IBM’s DB2, Tivoli for secure controls and backups, and the overall performance. All they would say on pricing is that that the combination looks to be a good value for customers. Wow, when they pack on all the IBM middleware and TC I expect it may be a good value if you can get a lot of users on each system!