Siemens PLM Software Blog

Guest Blog Post by Dave Chadwick, Global Marketing Manager, data management components of the Velocity Series for Siemens PLM Software. See bottom of post for Dave’s bio.

In my first and second blog posts in this series on the results of our survey of more than 2300 data management practitioners we focused on the current landscape and challenges for data management, and the benefits achieved by top performers in product development.

In this post I will turn to a new design management solution Solid Edge Insight XT which we are announcing today at Solid Edge University in Nashville. You may well be asking yourself why another data management solution from Siemens PLM Software? Well I just checked and we have 71,000 customers so it is not surprising that we would offer different solutions to meet the needs of a large and diverse customer base!

Solid Edge Insight XT is focused on the needs of our Solid Edge customers, many of whom are small and medium sized manufacturing organizations; it is also a development of Insight, a Microsoft SharePoint based CAD file management solution that has been solving data management issues for our Solid Edge customers since its introduction in 2001. I firmly believe that we have demonstrated clear technical leadership and excellent customer satisfaction in the area of Microsoft SharePoint based design data management over the last 10 years.

Street Crane UK uses Insight to manage development projects for its range of overhead cranes

So what is different about Insight XT?

I believe our development team has come up with a unique dynamic and visual approach to managing CAD files and related documents. They have addressed limitations in SharePoint with its focus on managing individual documents by providing multi-document part, product, ECR and ECO structures that meet the needs of manufacturers for organizing their complex design data. An example of the clarity these structures bring to complex design data is shown below and you can see more in this short demo.

Effective management of design projects is key for world class manufacturers

A key requirement for many manufacturing organizations is managing design projects and our survey results show that the top performers in the area of product development are more than 3x more likely to be “very effective” at managing their design projects.

This is an area we have focused on in the development of Insight XT and I think you will be impressed by the visual approach we have taken to managing data by project – a simple example of how easy it is for a user to understand how a project is comprised of ECOs, the ECRs that drove these ECOs, and the relevant design data is shown below.

Insight XT’s Relation Browser enables easy management of design projects

So yes – we are investing further in our development of SharePoint-based design management solutions for our Solid Edge users. With the noise around Cloud-based data management solutions, this may seem like we are going in a different direction to other vendors – but to me it makes perfect sense to take advantage of an established platform that is already deployed inside many manufacturing organizations, and case studies from customers like Street Crane validate the success of this approach.

You can also read the press release on Solid Edge Insight XT.

Dave Chadwick is responsible for global product marketing for the data management components of the Velocity Series for Siemens PLM Software. Dave has 20 years experience in data management and has led implementation projects across a wide variety of manufacturing organizations. You can follow Dave on Twitter: @davidchadwick

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Tags: #SEU12, Data Management, design data, infographic, PDM, product data management, Solid Edge, Tech-Clarity