
Siemens PLM Software, a division of Siemens Automation and Drives
(A&D) today announced Teamcenter® 2007 software, the latest
version of its PLM industry-leading digital platform and software
portfolio.
Boasting a complete service-oriented architecture (SOA),
easy-to-use interface and comprehensive end-to-end PLM solution
set, Teamcenter 2007 significantly lowers the total cost of
ownership for PLM technology and establishes greater productivity
for manufacturers through a single source of product and process
knowledge.
“Teamcenter 2007 marks a new era of PLM market maturity with
the industry’s first solution to move beyond individual
software applications to establish a truly integrated PLM solution
across disciplines, project phases and programs based upon SOA
approaches,” said Michel Vrinat, Collaborative Product
Development Associates analyst. “The rich capabilities in
Teamcenter 2007 bode well for its continued industry leadership in
the PLM marketplace.”
Greater Manageability
Teamcenter 2007 was developed with a focus on lowering the total
cost of PLM ownership through a series of enhancements and features
that simplify and accelerate implementations, enhance productivity,
streamline collaboration and expand control of the entire product
lifecycle process.
One of the most powerful examples of this lower cost of ownership
is found in Teamcenter’s new Business Modeler Integrated
Development Environment (BMIDE). The BMIDE enables software
configuration versus customization along with rapid deployment of
changes to remote sites through implementation templates and live
server synchronization. In addition,
Teamcenter 2007 includes a complete SOA technology foundation
throughout the entire portfolio, delivering the industry’s
first fully unified PLM suite. The greater manageability enabled
through Teamcenter 2007 sets a new standard for an
easy-to-configure PLM environment, enabling companies to eliminate
costly implementations and significantly reduce the time necessary
to deploy a production-ready system.
“SOA-based PLM reduces the cost and complexity of deploying
and maintaining a distributed PLM environment,” says Ed
Miller, President of industry consulting and research firm CIMdata.
“Siemens PLM Software has delivered their new unified
architecture capability with the ability to coexist and
interoperate with current Teamcenter implementations. This means
that the upgrade path for existing Teamcenter customers can be much
more cost-effective.”
A select group of Siemens PLM Software customers have been using
Teamcenter 2007 in a production environment for the past several
months as part of the company’s Leadership Program. This
program has served to validate how the complete SOA implementation
simplifies several tasks for customers. In one example,
Teamcenter’s unified database enabled a customer to perform
its upgrade all at once – rather than through individual
steps and synchronization of several components. The single data
model also makes it much easier to perform tasks like data mining
and connecting to ERP systems. The end result is a significant
savings in time and development resources.
In addition to being easy to deploy, Teamcenter 2007 also
establishes a lower cost of ownership through an easy to use
interface. A new common look and feel based on the Microsoft user
interface simplifies user adoption and reduces training costs.
“I believe we will be able to lower our total cost of
ownership by reducing training costs simply because of the familiar
Windows-like user interface of Teamcenter 2007,” said Matt
Bronowski, project manager of Next Generation PLM for BSH.
“This will particularly help in regions like Asia where
we’re growing very rapidly and employing many new people.
It’s critical to bring these people up to speed very quickly,
and we believe the latest version of Teamcenter will allow us to do
that.”
Greater Productivity and Teamwork
By providing a single source of product and process knowledge along
with the ability to enable instant collaboration on a global basis,
Teamcenter 2007 delivers greater productivity and teamwork. As a
result, companies have more time to focus on developing innovative
solutions that create real business value.
“BSH needs to distribute data to nearly 40 different R&D
departments around the world and keep everybody in these
departments consistently updated with the latest product
information,” said Uwe Tontsch, head of IT for Product
Development and Industrial Engineering Solutions, BSH. “That
is where Teamcenter 2007, as the single source for this
information, is more or less the backbone and the relay station; so
everybody gets the information when needed in the process. That
brings us not only the benefit of time to market, but also a much
higher process security and therefore less failures in the design
process due to lack of updates or wrong version information.”
By unifying all product-related data, Teamcenter 2007 creates fast,
easy access to just the right information regardless of the end
user’s location or job responsibility. This information can
then be effectively leveraged with new process knowledge
enhancements for embedded requirements management providing the
ability to allocate requirements to mechanical, electrical,
electronics, and software systems to more effectively manage the
impact of change. Teamcenter 2007 also simplifies bill-of-material
(BOM) management with new tools to visualize and browse complex
product relationships, aligning design BOMs with business BOMs, and
enabling BOM editing and redlining.
In addition, the Teamcenter 2007 Leadership Program highlighted how
customers can save significant amounts of time in activities such
as design reviews by using Teamcenter as a single source of
knowledge and collaboration. For example, one leadership customer
discovered that when they needed to collaborate on a product
development project with other locations, they could gather and
share all of the information necessary, including all of the 3D
models, in a single afternoon – a process that used to take
three to four weeks. As a result, designers and engineers can spend
less time on paperwork and are free to do more creative design
work.
Greater Control
With the industry’s most comprehensive suite of powerful
end-to-end PLM applications and an unparalleled level of
integration among them, Teamcenter 2007 provides companies with
greater control by allowing them to connect all of their processes
into a cohesive system that enhances efficiency and improves
management visibility throughout the product lifecycle.
Manufacturers of all sizes can increase the speed and confidence of
management decision making by aligning new product and service
introduction efforts with market requirements. Tight software
integration eliminates the need to re-enter data from one process
to the next and Teamcenter’s scalability and breadth of
modular applications enables even small to medium size
manufacturers to deploy a cost effective system that can be easily
expanded as the business grows.
The enhanced visibility afforded by Teamcenter 2007 can positively
affect both top-line and bottom-line business value. Revenue
potential is increased by validating ideas against market
opportunities, producing products that are better aligned with
market needs and delivering them on time before the competition. At
the same time, operating and process costs are reduced through a
more efficient and coordinated effort among various departments and
greater flexibility built into the product development network.
“Siemens PLM Software appears to be ahead of its competitors
in driving product data management functions across the board in
product development projects,” said Dick Slansky, ARC
Advisory Group. “Their broad scope of solutions is impressive
but it’s the integration of those end-to-end offerings that
creates real value for manufacturers.”
Greater Success
Any major enterprise application, such as PLM, can have a profound
impact on the company that selects it and deploys it. An unproven
system or proprietary niche supplier can put an organization at
risk. As the clear market leader, Teamcenter has an unchallenged
record of proven global leadership.
In addition to being recognized with several industry awards over
the past two years, Teamcenter and Siemens PLM Software have earned
the trust and loyalty of the global manufacturing community. The
company’s top 100 customers have been clients for an average
of 17 years, and the three million installed licenses of Teamcenter
represent more than seven times the install base of the next
closest competitor. In fact, more companies trust Teamcenter to
manage their product knowledge than the next three competitors
combined.
“By listening to the market and understanding the challenges
of the global manufacturing community, our development team has
been able to produce the world’s most advanced and complete
PLM offering that is both easy-to-deploy and use,” said Chuck
Grindstaff, executive vice president of Products, Siemens PLM
Software. “As a result, our customers can spend less time on
non-productive tasks and more time on producing the world’s
most innovative new products.”
Teamcenter 2007 is available immediately. For more information
please visit
www.ugs.com/teamcenter2007
Date: October 3, 2007