Cadalyst - March 2008 - (Page 38)

plmstrategies In the Eye of the Storm An IBM researcher anticipates business-oriented engineering. By Kenneth Wong just as important, perhaps even more critical for those integrating engineering systems (CAD/CAM/CAE) and business systems (enterprise resource planning [ERP], accounting, inventory, customer-relationship management). Whereas product data comprises geometric attributes (essentially the 2D/3D CAD files that define the shape of the product itself), metadata is made up of bills of materials (BOMs), part numbers, assembly configurations, sourcing information, approval records, and other facts and figures required to design, manufacture, market, and service a product. Product data still resides primarily in the engineering domain, though it may occasionally wander outside. For example, while the engineers at Ford were designing the new Ford Edge, the same CATIA file might be forwarded to Ford’s advertising agency so it can develop a photorealistic rendering of the new model destined to appear in an issue of Car and Driver magazine. Metadata, on the other hand, is not confined to engineering. It circulates widely throughout the entire enterprise, from purchasing and accounting to maintenance. Srinivasan acknowledges that product data interoperability is still a headache for many discrete manufacturers dealing with files from different CAD systems, but he also points out that intermediary formats like STEP and IGES have emerged to facilitate geometry exchange. In the observation of Doug Cheney, a CAD interoperability consultant and a member of PDES, an industry/government consortium dedicated to the ISO 10303 standards, “STEP’s international, collaborative development process ensures that it best covers the technical requirements of dissimilar software systems and data formats” (“Incompatible Software Makes Past Design and Manufacturing Data Unreadable,” PDES, August 13, 2007). In metadata standardization, Srinivasan points to the widespread adoption of XML and credits organizations like the Open Applications Group (OAGi) for doing much of the legwork. Industry consensus to use STEP for product data and XML for metadata, Srinivasan reasoned, gave the engineering systems and business systems a common language to communicate with one another, so to speak. It may change how we view engineering processes. OAGi, in fact, views many of them as business processes, according to Srinivasan. E ven though the blue October sky was perfectly clear when we spoke, Dr. Vijay Srinivasan insisted a storm was approaching — “a perfect storm,” to use his exact words. As IBM’s point man for research, standards, and academic programs for global product lifecycle management (PLM), Srinivasan was referring to a metaphorical climate change, a dramatic shift in the manufacturing universe, brought on by three coinciding developments: u The maturity of product data and metadata standards u The emergence of service-oriented architecture (SOA) u The availability of robust middleware So what will happen when the storm arrives? “We’ll have an entirely different approach to PLM — as a combination of engineering processes and business processes,” Srinivasan predicted. If he’s correct, the oncoming blast is a blessing. We can then expect the frosty relationship between engineering and enterprise systems to thaw. It sounds more like a bellwether than bad weather. Service Matters Their bitter rivalry notwithstanding, Oracle and SAP agree on the importance of SOA in business systems. Even their definitions are eerily similar. Oracle calls SOA a “truly flexible, adaptable IT infrastructure,” whereas SAP defines it as a “blueprint for an adaptable, flexible, and open IT architecture.” According to IBM, SOA is a “business-centric IT architectural approach that supports integrating your business as linked, repeatable business tasks or services.” Srinivasan has a more accessible definition: “SOA is how we maintain a complex network among the people with whom we must share information, whether it’s related to finance, asset, or engineering.” For more on SOA, see “PLM’s Growing Pains,” Cadalyst, January 2006, and “Open Up and Connect,” Cadalyst, February 2006. Two years ago, after attending SAP’s SAPPHIRE user conference, IT expert and author Naeem Hashmi summed up his cautious attitude toward the SOA hype in the title of his article “Well on Our Way to SOA? Still Data Matters The importance of product data is a given. After all, it’s the lifecycle of the product that is being managed. But Srinivasan reminds us that metadata is In this article IBM www.ibm.com PDES http://pdesinc.aticorp.org OAGi www.openapplications.org 38 March 2008 | cadalyst | www.cadalyst.com http://www.ibm.com http://pdesinc.aticorp.org http://www.openapplications.org http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - March 2008

Cadalyst - March 2008 Contents Editor's Window CAD Central Thicker than Water Safe Keeping — Backup Software Secures Your Designs AMD’s ATI FireGL Graphics Cards AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 — Surveying, Civil Engineering, and Land Development Software Cool Software Utilities for Your Job History, Nonhistory, or Both? In the Eye of the Storm Builders’ Information Modeling CAD Cartoon Issue Indexes CAD from the Streets

Cadalyst - March 2008

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