UGS Announces Tecnomatix 8

UGS today announced Tecnomatix™ Version 8 software, the latest release of its industry-leading suite of digital manufacturing solutions. Tecnomatix 8 includes several significant enhancements focused on helping companies improve manufacturing predictability and quality by better anticipating potential shop floor issues originating in product and/or process design.

Tecnomatix 8 enhancements fall into two major categories – added strength for its industry leading PLM integration and the introduction of a next generation process planning and simulation capability. The result is enhanced predictability from product development to the shop floor, enabling companies to improve the manufacturability of product designs and to design robust, reliable and optimized manufacturing processes.

“The release of Tecnomatix 8.0 provides new levels of integration with Teamcenter and the entire UGS PLM solution set, continuing UGS’ strategy of helping companies establish a single source of manufacturing knowledge,” said Dick Slansky, senior analyst for PLM, ARC Advisory Group. “With the addition of a number of advanced capabilities in Tecnomatix 8.0, including state of the art robotic and controls simulation tools, UGS maintains its position as a leader in digital manufacturing technology, now a key component in an end-to-end PLM strategy. The enhanced features and PLM integration of Tecnomatix 8.0 will enable manufacturers to shorten dramatically the product launch cycle while providing an advanced production systems platform for shop floor to enterprise integration. The result for manufacturers will be their ability to accelerate substantially their product time to market while implementing agile and flexible production systems.”

Greater control through single source of manufacturing knowledge

With Tecnomatix 8, UGS continues to enhance the level of integration between its flagship suite of digital manufacturing solutions and Teamcenter® software, the industry leading PLM platform with more than three million licenses installed. This integration provides a proven, scalable foundation that serves as a digital platform for manufacturing and all other product lifecycle processes. Building on previous versions, Tecnomatix 8 is the first release to support general assembly workflow within native Teamcenter, providing an enterprise integration environment for manufacturing planning, simulation, documentation and execution of assembly processes. As a result, companies gain greater control of their product lifecycle process by working with a single source of manufacturing knowledge.

This level of integration also provides greater insight into the product and process design process by extending a company’s PLM footprint to the shop floor and facilitating collaboration among all levels of the engineering and manufacturing organization. This allows companies to perform process-driven product design that increases manufacturability, accelerates the new product introduction process, facilitates engineering changes and raises quality levels.

“With Tecnomatix 8, any discrete manufacturing company can improve its predictability through a managed environment that enables early identification of potential product and process issues before they become problems,” said Ziyon Amram, vice president, Digital Manufacturing Solutions, UGS. “As a result, organizations can quickly identify the best strategies for addressing these issues and make the necessary adjustments to boost productivity, lower costs and improve quality with more predictable processes. Companies performing typical general assembly tasks – such as authoring, sequencing, simulation and validation of assembly operations – then producing shop floor documentation, will see an immediate benefit.”

Greater speed through enhanced process planning and simulation

As the need for speed, flexibility and quality continue to increase, manufacturers need a way to achieve a more smooth and rapid production ramp-up through better design and implementation planning of robotic and automation processes. Often times this needs to take place before the factory or lines have been built. This requirement for increased predictability is the driving force behind Process Simulate Robotics, the next generation robotic and automation process planning and simulation tool being introduced today with Tecnomatix 8. Process Simulate Robotics enables companies to bring robotics and automation environments together by providing a platform for digitally validating shop floor deployment – i.e. plant commissioning – on a virtual model.

“Process Simulate Robotics has given us the ability to examine the impact of material handling alternatives in the overall line throughput,” said Mr. Michael Jarosevits, of Reis Robotics, a leading worldwide provider of Robotic solutions headquartered in Obernburg, Germany. “Being able to predict what our line cycle time would be in a complex production environment provides us with significant competitive advantage.”

UGS has a long and successful track record of providing robotic solutions with Robcad® software, its industry leading off-line programming software for robots. With Process Simulate Robotics manufacturers can now take planning to the next level with full line simulation, synchronization, programming and commissioning including robot gardens, material flow and human activity. As a result, they can achieve more accurate cycle times which closely emulate real-world conditions for each device and robot providing the ability to simulate more complex operations. A more realistic representation of the physical world in the design and simulation of device behavior, offers manufacturers more precise off-line robot programming and analyses of cycle-times and interferences. Full station resource synchronization and program debugging with early detection of process defects enhances the predictability and quality of your manufacturing processes and enhances your robotics and automation workflow with connectivity to an enterprise database.

Tecnomatix 8 is available immediately. For more information, please visit

www.ugs.com/products/tecnomatix/tecnomatix8