The world of product development, manufacturing, and maintenance is getting ever more complicated with the addition of advanced electronics and software into every mechanical product. In this report, ENGINEERING.com's European correspondent, Verdi Ogewell, speaks with executives who are responsible for product development in large companies.
Verdi also gets the perspective of industry analysts including Peter Bilello of CIMdata and Gartner's Marc Halpern who claim that we are entering a new paradigm for product development. They say it has already changed not only the way engineers and product designers work, but also the product content and the related business models. This is most evident in large assemblies like airplanes, cars, military vehicles, and missile systems… in every direction you look this trend towards increased complexity and the requirement for systems engineering is crystal clear.
So how can product development and IT leaders deal with the increasing complexity?
Verdi went to the recent PDT Europe 2013 conference in Stockholm to find out how growing product complexity is affecting and reshaping engineering and business processes.
It turns out that although PLM, Systems Engineering (SE) and Configuration Management (CM) as high level disciplines have a lot in common, in many organizations they are still conducted by different and often separate teams. The good news is that leading companies and organizations – like Airbus, US Army, Siemens Turbo Machinery and Norwegian defense contractor Kongsberg - are now looking to extend PLM, SE and CM to include the extended enterprise with suppliers, partners and customers.
In this report you can hear perspective from:
- Anders Romare, responsible for PLM at Airbus
- Retired Colonel Bill Black (Black & Rossi)
- Siemens Turbo Machinery's Sune Horkeby
- Kongsberg's Odd Ivar Hatlenes.
The question is: What can be done to deal with that bigger picture? Can neutral standards – like the PLCS technology (Product Lifecycle Support) - help to integrate PLM, systems engineering and configuration management to really bridge the gaps that exist today?