Intelligent independent solutions and new initiatives by PLM giants make their tools increasingly useful for small- and medium-sized companies.

Last year the three biggest MCAD/CAM/ PLM developers announced initiatives aimed at making PLM—in part or whole—easier to implement and use for a wider range of companies, including small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). UGS and Dassault Systemes have partnered with Microsoft to make it easier for companies that already use Microsoft tools to add PLM. Both vendors also have existing “fast start” PLM solutions, as does PTC, which announced a new partnership with IBM to make Windchill solutions available on demand. As of January 2005, UGS was planning to announce a new on-demand PLM capability as well.

These moves follow inroads made by independent PLM developers—most notably, Aras Corporation and Arena Solutions. Aras offers a growing set of PLM tools that enable fast deployment because setup is based on templates that follow industry standards and regulations. Arena Solutions, which started life as BOM.com, was designed from the ground up as a hosted Internet answer to the PLM needs of companies that don’t want large, in-house IT departments.

This illustration shows the integration between Microsoft and CATIA. A hole was inserted on the CATIA V5 part, the change and part orientation was saved in CATIA, and the change was reflected in Word. A user can drag and drop from CATIA into Excel or Word, or use Microsoft Office to view a file received from an MCAD user. Here, an existing CATIA V5 file object is placed in a CATIA V5 model. Once saved in CATIA, the change is automatically reflected on the Microsoft Word or PowerPoint document. Click on image to enlarge.

In a Microsoft-Dominated IT World
Although perceived as targeting large enterprises, Dassault Systemes has always had a presence in the SMB scene because of the widespread use of CATIA, says John Squire, a Dassault vice president. “A manufacturer of tooling, for example, often responds to bids,“ says Squire, “but company automation may be limited to design and some reuse of existing designs.” Other bid-related issues, he adds, like “manufacturing costs, reuse of previous bids, manufacturing simulation to obtain cost analysis data, and so on, tend to be paper-based. However, it’s very important for the company to know not only whether its bid will be successful, but whether it will be profitable.”

To get these answers, Squire contends, the company needs to collaboratively join its engineering, sales, purchasing, and manufacturing departments. Extending the bid process to PLM offers the most efficient way to do this, he says.

However, many companies fear overextending themselves financially and see PLM as expensive and risky. “They need to look at software prices and the cost of middleware,” Squire says. Dassault offers two approaches: PLM Express, sold by partner IBM, which packages primarily CATIA and SmarTeam (DELMIA capabilities are also available) cost-effectively; and Microsoft-based products meant for companies that have already built their IT around Microsoft’s .NET Windows NT-based tools and Microsoft servers.

Companies that already use Microsoft products, including its Sequel database and servers (PLM Express uses Oracle), can fit Dassault PLM products, including some preconfigured for specific industries, into their existing IT environment. Tight integration between the two sets of products means that a user can drag and drop from CATIA into Excel or Word, or use Microsoft Office to view a file received from a CAD user.

“This also makes it easy to reach people who use PLM information, but for whom that’s not the main job,” says Squire.

Hans Palm, the customer support manager for Swedish wireless equipment manufacturer AMC Centurion, says, “the cooperation between Dassault Systemes, SmarTeam, and Microsoft will be an important step ahead for PLM and for the industry, and will lead to advances in PLM technology that will translate into more valuable products for PLM, and for companies—such as AMC Centurion—that rely on PLM to optimize our engineering activities and improve product development.”

UGS also has several Microsoft-based products. The most recent is Teamcenter Community, which offers collaboration tools that run on Sequel servers. “The system works with all CAD programs through JT visualizations, and is mostly geared to the product development side of PLM,” says UGS Vice President Chris Kelley.

Teamcenter Community, priced at less than $2,000 per seat, offers geometrically based design-centric collaboration among engineers, suppliers, different internal departments, and people bidding on jobs. “Some hubs in a design chain, such as automotive OEMs, are now purchasing seats for suppliers to access either over the Internet or via secure Intranet,” he reports.

Teamcenter Community is the most recent of UGS’ Microsoft-based PLM products. It offers collaboration tools that run on Sequel servers. Click on image to enlarge.

Rather than move individual modules into new platforms, says Kelley, UGS is working toward making its solution stacks multiplatform, “and developing wholly new solutions for Microsoft that don’t work on other platforms. And we work with Microsoft Office. Users can work on text-based metadata through MS Office, as a result of our building on top of Sharepoint. More complex 3D-based data use JT-To-Go, which works on several platforms.”

UGS reseller Paul Stevens of Acuity, Inc., reports that most of his SMB customers need ways to handle engineering changes that affect designs from multiple MCAD programs. “They ask for Web-type tools, and ways to incorporate workgroup data management, as well as find ways to access MRP and ERP systems,” Stevens says.

Mike Sayen, Strategic Program director for UGS, adds, “A key to lower cost of ownership is the choice of technologies with support resources—and Microsoft is a good example, because Sequel and other Microsoft resources don’t require large IT staffs.”

Teamcenter Engineering now also runs on Sequel, to serve the needs of companies that don’t want or need to invest in Oracle servers, Sayen adds.

Preconfiguration and Template-Based Setup
PLM Appliance is a new joint offering from UGS and Hewlett Packard specifically for SMBs. It bundles Teamcenter Engineering or Community with preconfigured hardware installed by experts at a fixed price for 50 or more users, and priced by the number of users. “It includes predefined workflows, document templates, storage vaults, and user role definition,” Kelley says.

PTC, without a hardware partner, offers Quick Start, described by the company as a bounded, fixed-price service that provides on-site implementation with predefined tasks, deliverables, and roles. “Quick Start gives a two-week deployment, and people who can manage the databases and either Web or client-server architectures for setup,” says Alex Mackenzie, vice president of Product Strategy. “It has industry-specific templates…, including aerospace, medical products, and high tech, as well as additional templates built around quality standards and new product launches.”

Aras Corporation, which recently celebrated its fifth anniversary, was founded by people from a number of large PDM/PLM companies, and targets SMB companies up to $1 billion, which, according to Peter Schroer, founder and chief technical officer, “could not easily deploy traditional PLM.”

Aras Innovator is available as either a client-server or on-demand set of products. The overall system uses “The market is changing its ideas of what it wants,” Schroer says. “Project and program management, risk management, manufacturing down to the shop floor—the best approach is an increment path.” Companies using Aras’ tools can start with the functionality they need immediately, and add more capabilities later.

Existing users like the Aras products. Curt Carlson, manager of Configuration Management for Plymouth, Michigan-based data storage equipment maker CNT, needed to find ways for CNT and another company it had acquired to work together effectively. Although CNT had already purchased a workflow control tool, the company abandoned it in favor of Aras Innovator. “It did what we needed in workflow and let us add incremental tools. We went live in April 2004 with workflow management, and by Fall we decided to automate sourcing and document management.”

Engineering changes in Aras Innovator are managed with graphical workflows, each one flexible enough so business processes can be adapted without programming; instead, using simple drag-and-drop editing. Click on image to enlarge.

Jim Sutton, manager of IT Engineering Support for Varian Semiconductor, Gloucester, Massachusetts, has worked with a number of different PDM systems managing engineering data from a number of CAD programs—but none of them answered his need to communicate with people other than customers. “We looked at many different systems,” he says, “but because Innovator is XML-based and Web-centric, we don't have to convert our systems and tools. We liked the pricing, and the fact that the product lets us access our older systems and use them to connect to ERP."

But what about SMBs that want to minimize their IT investments while maximizing their core competencies? That’s where hosted, on-demand solutions take center stage.

Contributing editor Louise Elliott is a freelance writer based in California. Offer Louise your feedback on this article through de-feedback@helmers.com.

On-demand hosted PLM solutions that offer quick starts plus IT burden relief help SMBs play to their strengths.

The primary reason for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMB) to adopt hosted PLM appears to be the ability to get PLM capabilities up and running very quickly. In addition, on-demand solutions offer users a menu of capabilities without requiring dedicated IT personnel, nor major rethinking of company practices.

Today, SMBs as well as larger companies can use a range of hosted PLM solutions offered by Agile, Arena Solutions, and PTC, along with on-demand collaboration solutions from several vendors, including CoCreate and the recently announced partnership between UGS and Autoweb. Aras Corporation also provides its tools in a hosted version.

Arena Solutions, which started five years ago as BOM.com, was developed specifically as an online hosted solution—originally to help manufacturing companies handle multilevel bills of material (BOMs) in an efficient manner. Now it offers two tiers of solutions—Arena Professional for enterprise users in companies sized from $10 million to $1 billion, and Arena Workgroup for startup companies or workgroups within an organization. For a limited time, Arena offers the Workgroup product free to workgroups of five people or less.

With PTC PLM On Demand non-engineers can easily participate in the design process using embedded ProductView visualization to interrogate, validate, and mark up design (CAD, PDF, etc.) information. Click on image to enlarge.

Benefits for Startups in Arena Workgroup
The Workgroup product offers basic capabilities: part and item control, BOM management, document vaulting, costing, and version control. Such tools prove useful for Threshold Corporation, a Santa Rosa, California-based startup that makes home digital networking equipment. Jaskam Johal, director of engineering, says that Threshold, which until now made only prototypes, is about to go into pilot production with manufacturing in China.

Arena Solutions founder and CEO Michael Topolovac points out that Workgroup users can migrate to Arena Professional, which includes change management, request and issue tracking, CAD/ERP interaction, advanced supplier access, and sourcing tools.?

Arena’s Workgroup product is a basic program with part and item control, BOM management, document vaulting, costing, and version control. Click on image to enlarge.

On-Demand PLM from PTC and IBM
Last November, PTC announced a new two-tier (Standard and Dedicated) PLM on-demand solution in conjunction with IBM hosting and consulting. The standard product is geared mostly for SMB users, while the dedicated version is meant for larger companies that prefer to outsource IT.

PTC’s worldwide reseller network targets companies that need a minimum of five but fewer than 250 seats with the standard version. “The companies can purchase either ProjectLink or PDMLink, or both, for a monthly per-user fee,” says Alex Mackenzie, vice president of product strategy for PTC. “When they sign up, they get 10 seats of Web-based training. Inside the product itself, we’ve created embedded tutorials that are context sensitive, so that if the user is in a screen he or she can click on a tutorial to get one specifically related to that screen. This gets users up and running very quickly.” The solution is so new that Mackenzie can’t be specific, but he says the response has been overwhelming.

PTC PLM On Demand uses PTC software together with IBM middleware, and is hosted at a large IBM facility in Boulder, Colorado. Marilyn Stemper, a partner in IBM Business Consultation Services in Irvine, California, says, “For smaller companies, we offer collaboration, vaulting, and overall management in an environment similar to an ASP (application service provider) model. We also offer consulting services to companies that may need to transform their business practices around PLM.”

Phillips & Temro of Minneapolis makes products for the automotive industry in three different locations, and has engineers in all three who need to be able to tie their work together. Dave Hawkins, CFO, who is in charge of MIS, said that after studying the support systems and personnel the company would need for an in-house PLM approach, he found the on-demand solution to be a nice fit.

They modeled their use of PTC PLM On Demand on outsourced ERP (SAP), and were glad to learn that the hosted Windchill modules will eventually communicate with the system, as the in-house versions do. “On Demand also makes it much faster to configure,” he says. “The system has fewer setup choices, and we wanted a straightforward system with which we can get a few years of PLM experience, and then move up.”

Agile: From Free Eight-User Pack to 10K Users
“For enterprise users, PLM is a commodity,” says Joe Hage, senior vice president and general manager of Agile Corp. “For small businesses, the challenge is to be up and running fast, to get something out of it. Small to medium-sized companies most want approved manufacturers’ lists, change, CAD, BOM, and workflow management, and approval. They generally outsource their manufacturing, and want to be able to extract BOMs and send them to their manufacturing partners.”Agile works with a partner to offer hosting on secure hardware. To get users started quickly, a number of predefined industry-specific templates (where they are relevant) make it possible to set up workflows, as well as roles and privileges. “We offer the same architecture in hosted and nonhosted installations,” Hage says. “Users can be ready to go in 24 business hours, and the solution can grow with the using company.”

Colubris Networks Inc. of Waltham, Massachusetts, is a major supplier of wireless local area networking (LAN) solutions. Many of its employees had already used Agile in-house systems, but the company decided on a hosted solution because “we only had one IT person,” says Steve Cohen, director of operations, “and didn’t want all his time spent on one system, nor did we want to set up a full IT infrastructure, especially as our greatest need was to share specifications with the manufacturer to which we outsource.”

Pricing
All of the on-demand PLM systems described here offer a flat price per user per month—and they don’t vary greatly. Arena Professional costs $100 per user per month. PTC PLM On Demand costs $100 per user per month for ProjectLink, $125 per user per month for PDM link, and $150 per user per month for both. Agile comes in at the lowest price point: $90 per user per month.