In order to provide required cross-functional and multi-disciplinary process synchronization and data management, PLM systems must integrate with other systems, including enterprise systems and authoring tools, such as CAD. This is achieved by means of application programming interfaces (APIs).

• Federation services can be used to define target objects in legacy applications as Item properties in Aras
• Web services are available for systems that require access to data or files stored in Aras
• A DLL version of the API is available as an alternative to web services

Bringing complex products to market and maintaining them through their life is a multi-step process. It requires managing bills of material (BOM) not only across mechanical, electrical, and software disciplines but in the extended supply chain as well.

The challenge of managing multiple BOM representations leaves organizations struggling to improve quality, reduce time-to-market, and manage costs.

• Alternate/substitute parts
• Options (variants) and configuration rules
• BOM red-lining and compare
• Target-estimated-calculated-actual weight and cost
• Multiple BOM views

As product complexity increases and organizations become more reliant on their supply chains, managing the change process and communicating change status across many groups inside the organization and into the supply chain is an increasing challenge.

Ineffective or poorly managed change processes can leave organizations struggling to improve quality, reduce time-to-market and manage costs.

• Standard best practice templates: CMII, Simple ECO or Custom
• Part and document change processes
• Flexible and adaptable to the needs of your business
• Automated impact analysis
• Effectivity and release date
• Escalation and delegation, group voting, weighted voting, executive veto

Organizations that use externally sourced components face tough challenges. These include managing the complete lifecycle of components used in their products from selection through acquisition, compliance reporting and eventual end of life.

• Basic and parametric search
• Component attributes, technical data, latest and historical datasheets, alternates
• Color indicators – preferred manufacturers and parts
• End of life (EOL), Product Change Notice (PCN) and Product Failure Notice (PFN) alerts
• RoHS, REACh and conflict mineral compliance
• IPC 1752A material declaration

Developing complex products, manufacturing and maintaining them through their life requires managing evolving product configurations embodying information developed by multiple groups inside the organization and in the supply chain.

The challenge of managing complex configurations can lead to costly errors and delays.

• Provides configuration identification, control, status accounting and verification
• Tracks baselines at different stages of the product lifecycle, e.g. as-designed, as-built, as-maintained
• Utilizes graphical online business process workflows with email notifications and reminders
• Reflects CMII- and CMPIC-certified best practices for configuration and change management

During the lifecycle of a typical product many documents are created containing critical information which needs to be shared and forms part of the product record. The creators and users of these documents are usually spread across many functions and locations making the management of these documents a significant challenge.

• Manages all types of documents and file formats, including Microsoft Office, PDF, drawings, TIF and more
• Associates documents directly to products or projects
• Secure storage in optionally distributed and replicated file vaults
• Simple and advanced full text search modes
• Document lifecycle status management, versioning and user access control
• Comprehensive revision and version control and change control workflows

CAD data is a key component of product design and supports a wide range of downstream processes including virtual prototyping, work instructions, and technical publications.

Managing CAD data through enterprise processes provides a huge advantage for the business and is often a top priority of PLM initiatives.

• Connectors available for all popular MCAD tools
• Single integrated environment for managing multi-disciplinary, multi-tool CAD data
• CAD file lifecycle status management, versioning and user access control
• Part and BOM items extracted and synchronized with PDM/PLM
• CAD and documents automatically linked to corresponding parts
• Viewables automatically created for Visual Collaboration

CATIA, NX, Creo, SolidWorks, SolidEdge, Inventor, AutoCAD

Aras provides secure and consistent management of the creation, change and archive of information from all popular ECAD systems.

• A single system integrated with enterprise processes for all engineering data reduces unnecessary errors and delays
• Supports global product development and supply chain collaboration strategies
• User authentication and access management increases control over critical intellectual property
• Ability to include CAD data in all PLM processes increases engineering efficiencies

Altium Vault, Altium Designer, Cadence Allegro, Cadence OrCAD, Mentor Graphics PCB, Mentor Graphics PADS, Pulsonix PCB

As organizations strive to reduce time to market and minimize costly delays and rework, integration between PLM and ERP is a prerequisite, ensuring synchronization of the engineering and manufacturing views of the BOM and the change process.

• Bi-directional exchange of documents, CAD files, BOMs, parts, classification, item status and more
• Workflow integration linking release and change processes between PLM and ERP
• Integrate with multiple ERP systems
• User interface integration

Whether your goal is to integrate or migrate your PDM system to Aras Innovator we have you covered. Different situations call for different solutions and it is important to have options to make the best decision for your business.

For successful global operation, companies need enterprise systems that support localized user interfaces and local language data storage in order to maximize user adoption and productivity.

• Supports an unlimited number of user languages simultaneously in a single system
• Supports the entire ISO/IEC 10646 Unicode character and script set
• Sorting of user search results occurs in the native language
• Every user globally is provided with local time zone display
• User actions are recorded in a defined corporate time zone for synchronization of time and date sensitive activities
• Language packs currently available include English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Hebrew, Korean, Japanese, Traditional Mandarin and Simplified Chinese

To ensure good data management practices, all information items in PLM need to have a well-defined lifecycle model to track progress and control access privileges.

• Define multiple lifecycle states and transitions using graphical tool
• Trigger item versioning
• Control access privileges and item locking
• Initiate Workflows
• Trigger emails

Project Management enables organizations to manage new product development and engineer-to-order processes for complex projects that require global collaboration.  By linking deliverables to project tasks, completion status and control are significantly enhanced.

• Project templates based on PMI principles provide best practices
• Stage-gate processes
• Project collaboration workspaces
• Forward, backward and milestone scheduling
• Interactive dashboard summarizes entire project portfolio
• Intuitive, easy-to-use scorecards, KPI metrics and reports
• Gantt charts

The Aras^®Program Management automates the product development process with comprehensive tools for monitoring projects and managing new product development. The application offers stage-gate/phase-gate organizations, project trees, Gantt charts, tasks and activities, work breakdown structure (WBS), status roll-ups, and many more capabilities. Project manager, contributor, and executive dashboards provide relevant information about project status/overview, costs for active projects, scheduling tools, etc.

Aras^® Program Management is highly flexible, allowing organizations to tailor business processes to their specific requirements.

With increasing product complexity and shortening development cycles, ensuring product quality and regulatory compliance can be challenging for companies focused on fast innovation.

However, many business use stand-alone systems and spreadsheets for managing quality, creating information silos and process gaps.

The result of this disconnected approach is reflected in the growing number of product recalls, leading to costly fines and damage to brands.

• Implement Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) processes to achieve compliance with regulatory requirements and quality standards including TS/16949, AS9100, FDA QSR
• Closed-loop corrective action/preventive action (CAPA) and Root Cause Analysis (RCA) to accelerate identification, containment & analysis of issues, and tracking of affected items
• Create and maintain critical quality documents, including:
  • Design/Process Failure Modes Effects Analyses (DFMEA/PFMEA)
  • Process Control Plans (PCP) & Process Flow Diagrams (PFD)
  • Fault Tree Analysis, Fishbone, and Five whys
• Manage libraries of critical characteristics, failure modes, effects, and control mechanisms
• Integrate quality throughout the concept, design, and manufacturing lifecycles and related change processes
• Coordinate quality reviews through Visual Collaboration, business rules & workflow, and aggregation & packaging of CAP items

Critical tasks like engineering changes function best when team members can view and discuss the proposal before making decisions.

But files created by specialist authoring tools (like MCAD/ECAD) are not generally accessible to other team members, and there are no easy ways to securely share comments in context.

• Add marked-up viewables to secure threaded discussions
• Control discussion visibility and participation using the PLM security model
• Collaborate with confidence with other known, authenticated users
• Viewable types include 3D, 2D, schematics and layouts, Microsoft Office and images
• Browser-enabled with no installs or plugins

To ensure that business processes are consistently executed in a timely manner, workflows are required to define the activities to be performed.

• Graphical definition of activities and activity paths
• Work assignment and voting (approvals)
• Reminders
• Delegation
• Voting rules
• Configurable escalations when activities are not completed in a timely manner

Manufacturing Process Planning provides an integrated approach to managing manufacturing data and processes in PLM.  It supports graphical and concurrent process plan, MBOM, and work instruction authoring plus real-time EBOM/MBOM reconciliation.

• Version controlled process plans detailing operations, steps, parts consumed, resources utilized, skills, documents referenced etc.
• Concurrent authoring of visually rich electronic work instructions
• Version controlled MBOM derived from EBOM using
  • Drag and drop editing
  • Concurrent process plan and MBOM creation
• Automatic EBOM/MBOM reconciliation
• Plant-specific MBOMs and process plans

Products are now systems of systems and require a system-level approach to product design.

Manufacturers need to transform their product processes to align disciplines and connect information. Start mastering the V-diagram with a combined systems engineering and PLM approach to tackle tomorrow’s complexity.

• System level product design (functional blocks, model based)
• System-based requirements management
• Management of multi-disciplinary deliverables for hardware and software development and maintenance
• Systems-based management of the evolving configuration of products and variants through the complete lifecycle
• Multi-disciplinary modular technical documentation

In order to ensure progress and to identify problems, managers and executives need access to reports providing visibility into business processes and insight into issues.

But typical reporting tools are hard to use and require system administrator or IT help, resulting in long delays waiting for new reports to be created.

• Configure new reports easily without special privileges or training
• Combine tables and graphics for easy to interpret reports
• Output report results and share in multiple formats
• Ensure user access privileges are respected

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Essig PLM
1 Tara Blvd, Suite 104
Nashua, NH 03062
info@essigplm.com
Phone: (978) 203-5150