Cadalyst - October 2007 - (Page 46)

plmstrategies To better manage the sites that are oceans apart, SchuF adopted Synergis Software’s Adept document management for MS SQL server, which includes integrations for AutoCAD and SolidWorks. The Difference a Day Makes SchuF’s design center in Skippack, Pennsylvania, and its production shop in Coimbatore, India, are separated by 12.5 hours. The German staff is eight hours ahead of the U.S. staff. The Brazil staff wakes up four hours before the U.S. staff does. What Adept did was introduce a new degree of enterprise transparency so project managers can make the most of those time differences between their locales. “We were able to shorten our design windows,” Walsh explained. “For example, the German staff would sign out a file, work on it, then sign it back in when they left so the American engineers could continue to work on it.” The production facility in India no longer needs to wait for the CAD file submission. From the status of the file that has been checked into the Adept repository, the Indian staff can determine that the CAD file is ready for manufacturing. panies — they are large aerospace contractors — that have used outsourcing providers from both regions, sometimes for the same projects. A great deal of the Indian companies are very advanced in their CMMI [Capability Maturity Model Integration, a process-improvement approach] model, usually at level four or five.” Barkai learned from the same study that “The Russian outsourcers, in terms of technical capability, they may be on par, but they’re not that mature in documentation, methodology, communication, and project management — certainly not as strong as their Indian counterparts. As a result, these companies are constantly flying to Moscow to work with their outsourcing providers. You’re dealing with a different culture, a different language, so you need face-to-face interaction. You need site visits.” The Black Box Dilemma Barkai believes the current outsourcing pattern presents a risk. “More outsourcing means more black boxes, more control given to the outsourcing provider, more product knowledge retained by the supplier. Most manufacturers do all right defining specifications and physical interfaces [how the pieces fit together, how cables and the electronics will connect with the other components], but many do not do as good a job in defining functional interfaces and especially failure interfaces, that is, how components — often from different suppliers — fail gracefully without causing a catastrophic system failure.” This problem will become a challenge in aftermarket support and service, Barkai said, and it might lead to the increased number of product recalls and rising warranty costs. “Service technicians have less knowledge and experience about the contract manufacturers’ parts,” he reasoned. He advises companies to involve outsourcing partners earlier in the design cycle and focus on serviceability. But he also acknowledges that many manufacturers haven’t refined their design-outsourcing process to the level where they would willingly share all product information with their partners. ColdWatt and SchuF foresee certain benefits to giving their suppliers direct access to their data-management platforms, but at the moment, neither has done so. And that probably has to do with the technological sophistication of the suppliers as well as the nature of the relationships. c Kenneth Wong is a former editor of Cadence magazine. As a freelance writer, he explores innovative usage of technology and its implications. E-mail him at Kenneth.Wong at cadalyst.com. Know Your Resources “The projects are managed in Adept in such a way so that the project managers are able to see how much work is coming their way and whether or not they have enough engineers to handle it,” said Walsh. The added benefit to this arrangement is the ability to identify engineers who have worked on similar designs. “We’d search for a similar product, see who’s done it, see which site they’re on, and whether they’re available.” Without hiring additional staff, the project manager can dip into the unused CAD talent and engineering pool from remote sites. Expert Insight Commenting about the executive dashboards that have become the norm in PLM products, Joe Barkai, Manufacturing Insights’ PLM practice director, noted, “Buyers tend to focus more on the snazzy display than the data itself. What we’re finding is, sometimes companies have a hard time determining what the key performance indicators should be. There are many metrics that you collect — you do need to collect them for subsequent quality improvement and rootcause analyses — but many companies fail to select the few key metrics that provide effective day-to-day management.” In the Manufacturing Insights study, the analysts discovered a difference in what manufacturers can expect from certain regions. “Take two geographies, Indian and Russia, for example,” Barkai noted. “This is what I hear from com46 October 2007 | cadalyst | www.cadalyst.com http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - October 2007

Contents Editor's Window Cad Central Tech Trends: First-Hand Architecture in Second Life Rev It Up — Graphics Cards Pack Power for Today’s Hottest Designs TurboCAD Pro 14 — 3D Modeling Software SimEnterprise R2 — Design Simulation Software CADopia 6.2 SP3 Professional Edition — 2D and 3D Modeling Software Cad Manager: Programming Resources for CAD Managers MCAD Modeling: Customer Service Horror Stories PLM Strategies: Manufacturing Across Time Zones AEC in Focus: Digital-Asset Management in AEC/O Cad Cartoon Issue Indexes Cadfidential

Cadalyst - October 2007

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