The Future of Holistic Engineering Workflows

The transcript below has been edited for clarity.

Jim Anderton: Hello everyone and welcome to Designing the Future. PLM and design software evolved separately and historically they were siloed in engineering industries. Today, integration is the path forward and joining me is an expert on that subject, Martin Nölle. Martin is Co-leader of the Software and Global Services Division of TECHNIA with about 130 employees in Sweden, Germany, Slovakia, India, France, the USA and Japan. Martin focuses on business, marketing and operations, and he's a mechanical engineer with 25 years of experience in 3D CAD and PLM.

Martin, welcome to the program.

Martin Nölle: Thank you for having me on engineering.com.

Jim Anderton: Martin, the IT component of engineering used to be just about design. The way engineering teams created parts and assemblies, the way they rendered them and ultimately the way they approved them for production was really a digitized version of the same pencil and paper way that parts were rendered historically.

But today, we expect engineers to be more knowledgeable about much more than just the mechanics of designing a component. Is that demand for doing things faster now, with faster time to market, is that adding pressure to design engineers? Can modern software compress that timeline?

Martin Nölle: Yeah, definitely we're compressing the timeline. Of course, we try to make it easier for them. I think there are definitely less validation points. But the idea of all the complex systems that we build is to help engineers concentrate on their knowledge, concentrate on their engineering into making better products.

So, we went through a lot of milestones, like enriching the 3D data. We went away from drawings. We have all the manufacturing information in 3D - you are probably familiar with 3D master or model-based definition campaigns. We built in a lot of engineering automation validation tools, and I think in the past couple of years we've succeeded in getting one consolidated view on the virtual product. And that means we reduce the silos, we build in digital twins where we can actually see what the model in production is, what is really built in on site, what has been changed, we can do predictive maintenance.

All these things, I think is on the minds of the of the engineers. And in return they can really concentrate building up their knowledge. They have more visibility and can make better decisions on these built systems.

Jim Anderton: It's interesting you mentioned that Martin, perhaps a century even more, even longer in the past and historically, engineering was about build something and then try it: if the airplane crashes, you build the next one more strongly and try again.

And now with this model-based systems-engineering and with simulation, it seems that we can do that again, which is just have a crazy idea, simulate it, virtually break it and then go back and iteratively rebuild the product.

Martin Nölle: Absolutely, that's a good example of simulation. We do even virtual homologation. We bring on cars on the street with never having built them before, but we have validated the entire design before we even built the first prototype. So, I think we can do with a lot virtually today and again I think that reduces costs, but that also gives much more visibility and a good baseline for good decisions to the engineers.

Jim Anderton: Good engineering design practice today means that designers have to think beyond just the performance of the product. Now they have to think about things like environmental impact, maybe even product stewardship, i.e., what happens to product at the end of its life, how it can be recycled, for example.

That means PLM now, for the product life literally is an important part of the design process so in the future, do you think engineers will start to think about PLM?

Martin Nölle: It's going in same direction, right? I think it's the same thing. We built these systems fully integrated with simulation and compliance tools. But as you said hopefully well integrated. And these integrations are of course a big challenge. Already integrating the 3D with your collaboration platform along with ERP, this is of course all that you have to integrate.

And when you look at these global ecosystems, a supplier works for multiple carmakers or for multiple aerospace companies. They have different systems already and have a lot of challenges dealing with all these different areas. And then you see in the market companies buying other companies, or they sell a piece [of their company], so I think we have to stay also pragmatic in how far we can integrate everything to one single stream?

And so redundancies are always very bad. We have to try to build everything into a good and solid process, one view on the system continuity throughout the process, and I think this is what is really important, these integrations [with] one view on the product. I think that's where we really take important steps ahead.

Jim Anderton: I can see how integration works very well for large firms, large enterprises – and you mentioned the automotive industries industry I come from. In that world there are original equipment manufacturers - big auto company - a layer below that of big supply companies - the continental Robert Bosch. And then below that another layer of many hundreds of suppliers to those companies. And we used to think of integration within one firm. But now some are thinking about integration even between the firms in the supply chain. Is that a future prospect?

Martin Nölle: Absolutely, we actually build a solution for that, and very solid supplier hub. The way you can collaborate with suppliers you know we have to get away from this pushing information. We need systems where we can trace the information, where we can follow up later on what happened and exactly when, how did this process go, for instance, the purchasing process, what were the steps, the traceability performance. Of course, everything is online, so absolutely, [that’s] in a direction that we go with integrating in a pragmatic way between suppliers and maybe even sub-suppliers, you know the Tier 2 and Tier 3 suppliers, like you mentioned, it's actually a good case for that.

Jim Anderton: You know the mark of a great engineer is the quest for simplicity. Even complex systems are usually as simple as they can possibly be, and that engineers of course look for a way to avoid complexity if it's at all possible. And in these large integrated software packages, they seem quite complex and many engineering firms often a single individual becomes the lead person for implementation of new software, and they might become a trainer or a product evangelist within the organization for new software.

But today you know the training and support that you need for these large packages that's available now online and in real time. So, if a firm is looking at adopting an integrated package, how should they think about that training and support function, because starting and actually effectively using there can be a big-time gap there.

Martin Nölle: First of all, I like the point that you started with. We have always had the users in mind when we create a new system; we always have to win the users, and of course we have to win the decision makers too to go for it.

But at the end of the day, the users decide if they like this system, if they use it or not. And you mentioned the early adopters or the evangelists in these companies, I fully agree with that; and still, I think one of the key points here is usability. We always have to work on making the systems as easy to use as possible, and as I said, they should not stop anything. They should enable, right?

Well, on the other hand, you mentioned when you have complex processes you tend to build complex tools for it. And what we try to do, I think we try to stay pragmatic. We are also experienced enough to talk to customers before they go too far. [We] look at their engineering processes and help [them] get pragmatic solutions and not to build too big systems. We have the point that we have to maintain it.

Also, we can look at the 80% of the users that only use 20% of the functionality. Maybe we can have very simple interfaces for these users to have the easy work - find a part [vs] create a new part – where they can do these simple things very easily.

And what we also do is, when we need the complexity to give to the users, maybe we can build-in in app training solutions. This digital adoption solutions that help users you know by when he has a typical use case, little bubbles come up and show him exactly what to do, step by step. And in a collaboration platform that gets kind of complex, so we understand where the context is, where the user is at the moment, we give them the right information.

But also, we understand how far the team is with the process, so it gets a bit of complex. But again, stepping back with the target to make it easy for the users and to make them successful.

Jim Anderton: Martin, for engineering managers individuals who make a recommendation to adopt a new package, for example to higher management or even some that are responsible for procuring that themselves, there are many, many resellers of engineering software in the market. Some of those resellers are also integrators that will put different packages together in a custom solution. And fewer still actually also create modules or add-ins or write code themselves.

How can engineering manager know which type of vendor is the correct one to approach to find the solution?

Martin Nölle: Partnership, as I mentioned already. I think we are good in where we interact with customers where we also can play a role when we are able to speak up. And so, when you select a supplier I think you should select the partner, somebody that we work with, that you also appreciate their feedback that you try to work on common solutions rather than only a top down approach where somebody executes what you do. I think it's a bit of a common level in these projects. I see more successful project is where we from the beginning have been part of the design help to stay pragmatic, help to teamwork and come to the best results together.

Jim Anderton: Do smaller firms shop for software the same way larger and medium sized firms do?

Martin Nölle It depends a bit. You know you have small customers that are isolated that live in their own bubble, and smaller firms that are very, very related to their customers that are even integrating their systems, have problems building IP or keeping IP. So, I think even on smaller customers it's already different. And of course, when we look at bigger customers they really want to and get more agile, I think they get also much more agile in deploying new software, rolling out new releases. And also working with us, they work more and more agile and not, you know, on specification. But again, it's about working together.

Jim Anderton: Well, that agility you brought up that's an interesting point, because in the traditional world, the smaller firms are always more agile, just because the small size makes it easier to react quickly. But large firms have spent many years now attempting to become more agile. Do you think is that gap narrowing? Or is it still a matter where if you want something fast, you've gotta subcontract that to a smaller firm.

Martin Nölle: As I said, you know, smaller firms might be very dependent and that makes them not very agile at all. But then, of course, when you look at the cloud business, smaller firms can go even work on the public cloud. They can be very flexible and very fast and accepting that new releases just happening to them. Right?

I think it's understandable, it's reasonable. Maybe in 10 years from now it will change though, but today of course, bigger firms are a bit slower, a bit more conservative. But on the other hand, what costs happen when they have downtime of three days, you know what costs are caused by that? It's also reasonable that they have very very controlled rollout plans and of course this reduces their flexibility and agility a little bit.

Jim Anderton: You mentioned the cloud. I'm glad you did because today's software as a service is becoming much more popular and you know there are many advantages to making expensive software available through the cloud.

Traditionally buying or leasing seats with the standard way that we approached engineering software, that meant a server in the office, and sometimes it meant physically loading programs you know into a resident machine somewhere.

But now for going to the cloud and you mentioned IP, what about security? In some cases some engineering firms are working with ITAR, or they’re working with military designs or even very important you know, designs to their large customer. Security is on everyone's mind these days.

Martin Nölle:  Yeah, of course you know, data security is super important. I hope that we that we get it better under control. But you know, just this week again, we had some news about encrypted currencies being stolen somewhere. You know, we see it's not there and we have to work there. It's a big topic within our organization within TECHNIA itself.

But even it gets more important with customer data; and then we put it on the cloud, we have third party like AWS or Azure that we have to trust that they take care of the data security. But we do quite a bit, but I would say very openly it's a threat. You know we have to be very, very careful with the data. It's one of the biggest challenges that we have.

Jim Anderton: 25 more years ago, as a young man working in the industry, I had to at one point fly to Detroit, Michigan and sign for a cardboard cylinder containing a blueprint which contained an image of the right front fender, the wing, of an upcoming product. And it was necessary that by their rules, the OEM’s customer rules, that had to be physically carried in my hands on the airplane back to the office because they wouldn't even trust the post or even a courier service to send something which was so important to the firm. So that that kind of security was physically hand to hand. Is there an equivalent now with encryption or something that we can do where you can throw a design like that into the cloud?

Martin Nölle:  What we, for instance, do we work on 3D web-viewing solutions that allow you to share 3D data with externals. The link will expire one day. You know we control exactly how long it will last, but also you can exactly control the level of information that you allow. Now, do you still keep tolerancing in? How detailed is a geometry? We can have a very detailed mathematical description, but also just triangulated information.

So today, you can very much control the amount of 3D data you give to your suppliers with these suppressing tools and online viewing solutions that we.

Jim Anderton: I was thinking as you mentioned the single source of truth as a concept - there are many who say that engineering is not about design but redesign, and the latest version of a design and making sure everyone is looking at the same version of that rendering - that seems like a simple thing, but it's surprisingly difficult to do. In the days of paper, we would actually have a release list and we would know how many copies were in circulation and we would go and collect them and issue the revised one. Is there a similar way to make sure in the virtual world that everyone in the supply chain, everyone in the system, are all using the latest revision?

Martin Nölle: Of course, this is what we try to achieve, and it gets quite complex though when you see on a very young management configuration management, you have the engineering BOM, you have the management manufacturing BOM, the entire change management. This is what we actually work on to bring [it] all in one system. If we do one small change it should apply to everything. And of course, what we try to achieve. And I think in this context of having a stable collaboration on one single model on one common status on one consolidated view on the on the product, I think we have quite achieved a bit. But it's still complex with all the dimensions that I just mentioned.

Jim Anderton: It's 2021 and of course it's the time of COVID, so we have to bring that subject up and with COVID many engineering professionals they're working from home now and many have expressed the desire to continue to work from home after COVID ends are finding it very convenient. But some engineering and IT managers are concerned about their ability to manage teams effectively when they're so decentralized. With modern software, can we have it both ways and can we win both ways?

Martin Nölle: Yeah, first of all I have to agree, you know, after the pandemic I think we still see a different way of working. We call the “new normal” than we had before. We have more home office or working from home but even working from a 3rd place. You know people even on our teams are asking to extend vacation and work from Greece from a beach.  

And from my side, I think Microsoft did a good job with building Teams, we use it a lot. It also shows how we accept that upgrades are made automatically. I think we went through a lot of changes in teams.

And so, it shows that I think when we look at these engineering platforms, they're of course much more complex. I think where we manage engineering data that's across a different system. And what we see as a challenge is that we need to bring and keep the team together, together. For us, innovation is very, very important - maybe I can also mention that we have a PLM Innovation Forum coming up at the end of September, go on Technia.com and you will learn more. We want to bring customers together. You know also customers are very valuable for us to help us with building the next generation software.

But we have in our teams so much knowledge and so many great ideas that we want to leverage. And if they all work from home, we might lose quite a bit you know; we have to put them in the room, build a critical mass of people, have some dispute and [then] come up with good results and hopefully really new innovation.

And on top of that also I think we want to build the identity we That's also hard. You know you can work for any company working from home. We really want their identity, so it's fun working for a global company like TECHNIA. But how do we leverage this when people are working from home?

Those are the two things: innovation bottom out, how we get unstructured information together? How do we bring in good ideas internally? And how we work on the identity going ahead? But on the other hand, of course it's great when people love working from home. They have a better carbon footprint. So overall, it's great, I think it's a great change.

Jim Anderton: A final question. Is advanced software like the type you're talking about, is this making engineering smarter? We know it makes it more efficient, but ultimately in the end is there a liberation component here? Are we going to have more fun and do more things in this industry going forward?

Martin Nölle: I think it helps [to make] better decisions. We have artificial intelligence for instance, search functionality, easy translation, it's much easier to understand each other to find very good information. And I think engineering.com is a good example. You know you have lot of great knowledge built in, but at the end of the day, it's still the engineers that take the decisions and bring up new innovation, and we also know that the industry goes away from simple products. It goes more and more to experience these services oriented but also experiences, you know. Customers don't sell products anymore. You can lease a car [for example], but it might be different next month because of the weather or because you travel and so on.

So, I think it's engineers and of course also some smart marketing people that will define the products, not any system, at least as long as Jim, you and I are around. Maybe in 20 years from now, but then we are hopefully sitting at our cottage and looking out to the Canadian lakes.

Jim Anderton: Yeah, that's a hopeful future. Martin Nölle, thanks for joining me today.

Martin Nölle:  Thank you very much for having me here and hope to see you again soon.

Jim Anderton (to audience): And thank you for joining us on Designing the Future.