6th March 2018

Customize, De-customize, Re-customize: the Enterprise Digitalization Dilemma

Going digital: to customize or not to customize? Digitalization strategies include the selection, design, build, test, deployment, continuous improvement and maintenance of enterprise IT solutions, such as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and other enterprise solutions like Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions. While there are differences in Read more

• Karen Bieniek

6th February 2018

9 Key Business Factors Driving the Manufacturing Industry

It is no surprise and nowadays perhaps even a cliché to reiterate that: Manufacturing organizations strive to create MORE innovative products and increase their portfolio, combined with FASTER time-to-market and increased productivity supported by BETTER decision making, quality and cost control. Broadly speaking, generic market drivers can be regrouped in a concise set of 9 Key Business Factors (KBFs). These KBFs Read more

• Karen Bieniek

24th August 2017

PLM/ERP/MES: The ‘Holy Trinity’ of Manufacturing

The number one challenge of manufacturing is getting ‘the right product, at the right time, at the right price‘. Competitive advantage used to come from automation and more recently digitalization, but this has now become the norm with the advent of new technologies and modern apps. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) Read more

• Karen Bieniek

Manufacturing organizations aim to create more and better innovative products and bring them faster to market. This is enabled by enterprise product development and manufacturing tools and technologies to automate core business administration and execution functions so that they operate in an integrated manner. As such, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Materials Requirements Planning (MRP) Read more

• Karen Bieniek

Complex products and services Most complex products are both mechanical and electrical, with the balance rapidly increasingly moving towards innovative electrical engineering as new product and service differentiation. Competitive product development requires robust collaboration between multiple domains, including the tight integration of electrical hardware and software development with traditional mechanical design and enterprise processes. Innovations in connectivity Read more

• Karen Bieniek

16th November 2016

Single Enterprise BOM: Utopia vs Dystopia

Bills of Materials, aka BOMs, are multilevel metadata structures that represent a hierarchical arrangement of components, materials, and other information required to develop, engineer, assemble, produce the finished product, as well as sell and service it. Creating a BOM is not only a necessary step in the product realization cycle, it is also what makes Read more

• Karen Bieniek

16th November 2016

BOM Convergence: 4 Integration Patterns

Multiple Enterprise BOMs Bills of Materials (BOMs) can be referred to as the lifeblood of manufacturing companies. Whether or not the ‘single enterprise BOM‘ vision will ever be achievable is still open for debate from different perspectives: technical feasibility, organizational maturity, cultural reasons, etc. (including data silo mentality, as well as transition challenge perhaps). It Read more

• Karen Bieniek

16th November 2016

From Planning to Validation: Putting CAE Back Into Engineering

Putting CAE back into engineering Simply put, Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) is the process of solving complex engineering problems through the use of sophisticated, interactive, graphical software, coupled with mathematical models and optimization systems. The true value of CAE is to foster virtual product development validation by enabling manufacturers to integrate advanced technology into the conceptual Read more

• Karen Bieniek