Archive for the ‘Digitalization’ Category
Saturday, April 3rd, 2021
A growing number of companies are relying on agile approaches when developing their PLM systems to enable faster reactions to new market requirements. At the same time, they often want to outsource development activities to offshore partners for financial reasons. Two new white papers explain how PROSTEP supports customers when it comes to using agile methods and introducing agile methods in context of near- and offshoring.
Companies in the manufacturing industry must be ready to quickly respond to changing market and customer requirements. Therefore, they need PLM solutions that support this, for example by making the growing dependencies between software and electronics in connected systems more transparent or ensuring traceability for safety-critical functions. New approaches such as model-based systems engineering (MBSE) or virtual validation of system functionalities by means of co-simulations are needed. The entire PLM architecture must be geared towards change.
IT organizations must also adapt to reduce the time between new requirements and working-functionality implemented in the PLM-Systems. Waterfall or V-model are typically not appropriate to fulfill the dynamics required here. Too much time passes between the definition of requirements and their implementation; time during which the developers do not receive any feedback. They run the risk of developing software that fails to meet the needs of the users. Specifications are often cluttered with requirements and are difficult to change. Then, their implementation is based on the contracts and not on the actual benefits. These and other factors lead to extremely long project runtimes, which can delay the introduction of innovations into productive PLM operations by months and sometimes even years.
A growing number of companies have identified the weaknesses in their existing software development processes and have started introducing agile approaches or are planning to do so. When implementing agile methods, they not only have to decide on a suitable agile model but also find development partners who are able to go along with their agile approach. Furthermore, they have to challenge existing contract models, because in agile approaches, project scope is typically only fuzzily defined at the start of the project.
PROSTEP has been using agile approaches to develop its own software solutions for many years, and as a partner and supplier also brings this experience to bear on customer projects. We are currently involved in agile projects with numerous major customers in the automotive, shipbuilding, and other industries. In many cases, we assume overall responsibility for these projects as general contractor and coordinate subcontractors, be it on site at the customer’s premises or at an offshore partner.
“Our teams combine PLM expertise and hands-on experience with using agile methods. They know the strengths and weaknesses of Scrum, SAFe and other process models from experience gained in the field and can therefore actively help to shape agile transformation at the customer’s site and drive it forward,” says PLM manager Frank Brandstetter. He is the author of PROSTEP’s new white paper, which provides more detailed information about the challenges posed by agile PLM development. (English version available soon.)
The white paper on agile PLM development is complemented by a second white paper in which Rainer Zeifang, Chief Technology Officer Daimler Projects at PROSTEP, reports on his experience with the use of agile methods in nearshoring and offshoring projects. The main driver for the outsourcing development activities is the increasing cost pressure to which we and our customers are subjected.
PROSTEP has been working together with selected nearshore and offshore partners on both the development of its own software products and on customer projects for some time now. We also make use of nearshoring internally. For the past year, we have been maintaining a subsidiary in Wrocław, Poland, which uses agile Scrum teams to provide the development team in PROSTEP’s Berlin office with support in the context of software development projects for major automotive customers.
Agile approaches are compatible with nearshoring and offshoring, but they also amplify some of the challenges involved. The partners have to create a common understanding of the customer project and exchange know-how that is generally in the heads of the developers. They need to establish a uniform approach to ensure that the software being developed is consistent and enables a coherent user experience despite distributed teams and long distances. And they must break down obstacles to communication or find new forms of communication that are compatible with agile approaches.
As Zeifang explains, personal contact and interaction are crucial for project success. “At the start of the project in particular, it is important that the key players get to know each other personally in order to exchange know-how but also to understand what makes their counterparts tick, what is important to them, and how they work.” In the new white paper, he answers questions like: What advantages and disadvantages do time differences offer when it comes to agile software development? How should the distributed agile teams be structured? Does nearshoring and offshoring work with all agile process models?
Download the white paper here.
By Joachim Christ
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Wednesday, March 31st, 2021
PROSTEP’s new series on SHIPBUILDING PLM INSIGHTS was launched on March 16. It was a successful start to the series: Around 150 participants watched the first episode, which focused on the added value of PDM and PLM for users of shipbuilding-specific CAD systems. In addition, our shipbuilding experts explained how shipyards can rebuild their PLM architectures more effectively.
The series is aimed at maritime industry professionals and IT experts who want to know more about how they can use PDM and PLM to manage growing product complexity, shorten time-to-market, and meet the more demanding requirements of customers and classification societies. Here, PDM means a specific application, while PLM describes a broader concept that can be implemented with different applications.
The first episode kicked off with a market overview of the challenges that shipyards face in digitalization. This overview was based on intensive discussions we have had with more than 40 shipyards worldwide over the past few years, from which we extracted their pain points. Pressure to act is caused by the increasing complexity of shipbuilding projects, the many changes to each ship and the growing effort required to manage requirements, documents and certificates.
The market situation is also characterized by smaller shipyards merging into larger groups. Often, post-merger integration is complicated by outdated IT system landscapes, different legacy systems at the various sites, and the multitude of Excel spreadsheets still used to manage non-CAD data. As a result, companies have little foundation to implement complex new requirements.
The most discussed topic among shipyards is what additional benefits a PDM system can offer them if they already use a shipbuilding-specific CAD system. For this reason, we have made this topic the focus of the first episode. Our colleague Jan Bitomsky explained to the participants the special features of shipbuilding-specific CAD systems, which are the reason why most shipyards do not have a PDM. They cover many PDM functions through integrated CAD data management and their focus on the shipbuilding CAx process chain. But just not all of them, which is why there are so many Excel spreadsheets.
PDM systems first caught on in other industries where management of mechanical CAD files was a key requirement. Over time, however, they have been extended to include PLM capabilities such as materials management, document management, product structure management, or partner collaboration, which are also of interest to shipbuilders but are missing from shipbuilding-specific CAD systems. Most importantly, they lack powerful change management, which is one of the key functions of any PDM system.
Combining the PLM capabilities of a shipbuilding CAD system with a PDM system therefore offers enormous added value, as Bitomsky pointed out. There is then only one source of truth. Document management is perhaps related to that with change management. In the product structure, you can see the CAD data, but also other data. And one can always trace which data was sent to which supplier and when.
But how does one get to this single source of truth? In a second topic, Bitomsky explained to participants how they can use the enterprise architecture management approach to develop a PLM architecture that is aligned with their business requirements. These requirements are more demanding in shipbuilding than in other industries because not only the products are very complex, but also the business processes from the time of sale to delivery. This is the reason why there is still no best practice solution for PLM architecture in shipbuilding.
PROSTEP supports shipyards in identifying the bottlenecks in the existing information flows based on the business objects and in determining the required capabilities for their future PLM architecture. An architecture that can combine shipbuilding-specific CAD systems, PDM and ERP systems, for example.
At the end of the first episode, participants were allowed to vote on the focus of the next episode. It will take place in May and will revolve around the topic of Collaboration in Shipbuilding. You can watch the recording of the first episode here. If you would like to receive information about the second episode, sign up here.
By Matthias Grau
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Thursday, February 11th, 2021
The first PROSTEP CONSULTING DAY will be held 15 April 2021 – a date to enter in your calendar. With our interactive online event, we want to show customers and interested parties from manufacturing industry the strategic concepts we use to help them shape digitalization so that they are better prepared to meet the challenges posed by rapid change.
In recent years PROSTEP has provided advice to numerous companies in a variety of industries in the context of defining their PLM strategy and restructuring their existing processes and systems landscapes. Although these are primarily mid-sized companies from the mechanical engineering, plant engineering and automotive supply industries, they also include manufacturers of automation technology, logistics systems, shipyards and companies from the aviation industry. The experience gained from these projects has been incorporated into our capability-based approach to PLM strategy consulting.
The trigger for many of these consulting projects is the increasing pressure for change brought about by digitalization. Customers contact us as vendor-neutral consultants because they are feeling that how their process and system infrastructures are designed will play a crucial role in ensuring their successful positioning in the market. And they see that, because of the complexity of the issue and the wealth of possibilities involved, they need a partner to provide support during this transformation. But they also want to know where they stand with regard to the potential for improvement compared to other companies and in the context of the technical possibilities available. They often lack the market overview needed to do this.
PROSTEP CONSULTING DAY will give participants an opportunity to benefit from the experience that our PLM consultants have accumulated. In three 90-minute slots, we will provide them with information about the challenges posed by digitalization in manufacturing industry and present an overview of the key approaches to solving these challenges from the perspective of processes and systems. Finally, they will learn about the methodology behind our capability-based PLM consulting based on interesting examples from customers.
The event is divided into three consecutive slots that build on each other in terms of subject matter. The first slot will address the concrete challenges that industry faces when it comes to dealing with digitalization. How will companies cope with the switch from product to system provider, and how can they organize themselves in an appropriate manner for digital business models and the digital twin? Does the cloud offer answers to these questions?
The second slot will deal with the solutions that are available to manufacturing industry. It will address topics such as systems engineering, end-to-end digitalization and the interaction between systems during the product development process. An examination of the PLM and ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) system solutions currently available on the market will be particularly interesting.
In the third slot, we will show you how to use the concept of capability-based strategy consulting to develop and implement a future-oriented PLM strategy based on your specific requirements.
Look forward to an exciting keynote when PROSTEP CONSULTING DAY kicks off. And don’t forget to register as soon as possible. That way we can keep you up to date about the agenda and exact schedule of the event.
By Martin Strietzel
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Wednesday, February 3rd, 2021
PROSTEP has entered into a strategic partnership with the Dutch technology company AMbrace, which is developing a service platform that makes it possible to 3D print spare parts. AMbrace will use our OpenDXM GlobalX data exchange platform to make 3D print data available in combination with SAMPL technology for the tamper-proof exchange of 3D printing licenses.
AMbrace’s innovative business model involves providing manufacturing companies in the aviation and other industries with a secure streaming service for the additive manufacturing of spare parts. Companies can store 3D files in a variety of printer-specific formats in AMbrace’s digital warehouse and send them on demand to a service provider, who then prints the required spare part on site. To do this, AMbrace is developing networks for the manufacturing of spare parts in a global ecosystem of certified 3D print service providers.
Within the framework of their partnership, PROSTEP and AMbrace have agreed to adapt the Secure Additive Manufacturing Platform originally developed in the SAMPL project to AMbrace’s specific requirements and to extend it to include digital warehouse functionality. Key components of the solution are the OpenDXM GlobalX data exchange platform with the blockchain module and SAMPL technology for integrating 3D printers, which turns them into secure and trusted printers. Blockchain technology ensures that the 3D data to be printed can be identified in a traceable manner and can only be printed the licensed number of times to avoid the manufacture of pirate copies.
“The partnership with AMbrace is an important step on the way to industrializing the solution, as was originally intended in the SAMPL project,” states Dr. Martin Holland, Head of Strategy & Business Development at PROSTEP. “The way we see it, this partnership supports a new business model with which we intend to transform global supply chains for spare parts provisioning,” says Herman von Bolhuis, CEO of AMbrace. “Our streaming platform makes it possible for customers to have spare parts manufactured quickly and securely, whenever and wherever they want.”
By Markus Sachers
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Saturday, January 23rd, 2021
Integrating data exchange into the users’ working environment is the best way to ensure that they comply with data security and know-how protection rules. That’s why automotive supplier HBPO has integrated the OpenDXM GlobalX data exchange platform into SAP ECTR. In the future, it will be available not only for product developers, but also for other departments.
HBPO is a world leader in the development, design and assembly of front-end modules, i.e. those modules that give vehicles their face. The Tier 1 supplier also manufactures active grille shutters, center consoles and cockpit modules for major automotive OEMs. HBPO has stood for innovation, quality and customer proximity for nearly three decades, but has only operated under this name since 2004. Being a joint venture, 66.6% of the company is owned by Plastic Omnium and 33.3% by HELLA GmbH & Co. KGaA since 2017. Currently, the module specialist employs around 2,500 people at more than 30 locations in Europe, Asia and America.
HBPO’s engineers manage their design data from different authoring systems using SAP PLM or the SAP Engineering Control Center (ECTR). ECTR provides standard integrations to the leading CAx systems under a uniform user interface. To meet the more demanding requirements in terms of IP protection and traceability of the exchange processes, the company introduced the OpenDXM GlobalX data exchange platform.
“PROSTEP was the only company that could offer us complete integration of the data exchange solution in the new environment,” explains Alexander Meier the reasons for the decision. He is responsible for supporting the company’s PLM landscape. Conformity to TISAX also played an important role. By using OpenDXM GlobalX, the strict security requirements of the VDA for handling confidential and personal data can be better met during operation.
PROSTEP delivers OpenDXM GlobalX with a plug-in that was developed in collaboration with DSC AG and is fully integrated with SAP ECTR. It allows users to send data from SAP ECTR to OpenDXM GlobalX and also to import data from there back into the system. Both the sending and receiving of documents can be largely automated, minimizing manual intervention.
The plugin is provided as a ZIP document and can be integrated into the SAP ECTR environment very easily. Analogous to the configuration of the user interface, the frontend-relevant settings can be configured on the file level. For example, HBPO has created various macros for exchanges that are still in progress or those that have already been successfully executed. Adjustments to the data model or classification, on the other hand, must be made in the SAP back end. “The configuration effort is kept within limits, however,” says Meier. “Overall, setting up the integration took no longer than a day.”
OpenDXM GlobalX is currently used primarily by engineers at HBPO. They create their exchanges for the project in question in the SAP ECTR environment, select complete assemblies or individual components in the preview window and copy them into the exchange package using drag and drop. In addition to native 3D models, the package can also contain data in neutral formats such as JT or PDF. Then they select the recipient(s) in the shipping order wizard and export the exchange package from SAP PLM to OpenDXM GlobalX. In SAP ECTR, they can track the status of their shipping orders at any time.
The seamless integration of the data exchange platform into the SAP ECTR environment ensures a high level of acceptance and also helps to ensure that users require very little training, as Meier sums up. “Setting up the data exchange authorizations was made easier by the fact that the data in SAP ECTR and also the accesses are organized on a project-by-project basis and that the integration can be adapted very flexibly to our authorization concept. Only employees who have access to the respective project and project data can create data exchange transactions.”
HBPO is very satisfied with PROSTEP’s data exchange platform and intends to make it available in the future to all departments that exchange sensitive data with customers or suppliers, as Meier concludes. This could be employees in purchasing, quality assurance or industrial engineering, but also in human resources. Since not all of them work with SAP ECTR, the company is thinking about implementing OpenDXM GlobalX’s MS Outlook integration as well.
By Daniel Wiegand
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Sunday, January 17th, 2021
A few weeks ago, Alstom completed the takeover of Bombardier’s railway division. However, the two companies already worked closely together beforehand on the development and production of the new generation of metros for the Paris transport authority. The former Bombardier sites use the OpenPDM integration platform to import the engineering data for production and assembly into their PLM environment.
Under the project name MF 19, the Paris Metro is getting a new generation of rail vehicles for the lines operated with steel wheels. The contract between the operating companies and the now “married” consortium partners Alstom and Bombardier Transportation provides for the delivery of 44 trains worth 530 million euros to be put into service between 2024 and 2026 – with the option of a further 410 trains. Alstom will essentially supply engines, drive chains, on-board electronics and IT security systems, while the former Bombardier site in Crespin, France, will be responsible for the design and production of car bodies, bogies, air conditioning and interior components.
Through the acquisition of Bombardier Transportation, the French Alstom Group expands its global footprint and becomes a world leader in mobility solutions, present in 70 countries, employing around 75,000 people and generating pro forma combined revenues of around €15.7 billion. At the same time, the acquisition expands Alstom’s portfolio of innovative rail technology products and solutions. The portfolio ranges from light and regional trains to high-speed trains and also includes new strategic products such as people movers and monorails. With a fleet of 150,000 rail vehicles, the company has the world’s largest installed base, which is also the foundation for expanding its leadership in the service business. In the signaling segment, it now ranks second in terms of sales.
Both sides need construction documents
Alstom and Bombardier have a long history of joint consortium projects. “Due to the often very large project volume, such projects are nothing unusual in rail vehicle construction,” says Edouard Hundemer, who is responsible for the OpenPDM project and end-to-end integration of MF19 engineering tools at former BT in the Bombardier Information Systems division. “However, a special feature of the MF 19 project is that both partners must be able to build the complete trains. They therefore need all the information and documentation required for assembly, even if not everyone manufactures all the subsystems.” In this way, the clients want to ensure faster delivery of the new metro generation.
Collaboration is a major challenge in the consortium project, and the merger of the two companies did not automatically resolve it because the IT landscapes have not yet been consolidated. “Basically, each partner wants to use its existing IT systems and methods for design and engineering, if possible, to avoid the cost of acquiring new systems and retraining its engineers,” says Hundemer. “At the same time, however, both partners must ensure the PLM paradigm of single source of truth when collaborating.”
To simplify collaboration, a separate development environment was set up for the MF 19 project at Bombardier’s Crespin site, which in a sense replicates the system and process landscape at Alstom. This makes it easier for the developers of the two consortium partners to synchronize their engineering data, which is particularly helpful in the early development phase with its large number of changes. For the new colleagues at Bombardier, however, it means that they must subsequently integrate the data into their own PLM landscape in order to maintain collaboration with suppliers and to be able to supply the downstream processes in manufacturing and assembly with construction documents.
The PLM landscape at the former Bombardier sites is relatively uniform, with two or three main systems. As the central PLM system, the “Rolling Stock” division uses the Siemens Teamcenter Enterprise (TCE) software, which is gradually being replaced by Teamcenter UA. Enovia 3Dcom, a CAD-related data management system, is also used to manage the CAD models. The mechanical assemblies are normally designed with the CAD system Catia V5 from Dassault Systèmes, which is also used at Alstom.
OpenPDM controls the data import
The data import into TCE or Enovia 3Dcom is controlled via PROSTEP’s PLM integration platform OpenPDM, which the new group division already used for the joint development of the ICE4 with Siemens. “We had good experience with the software during the ICX project and thus knew that it would work well on our side,” says Hundemer. “In addition, we could be sure that we met the EN standards in terms of verification requirements.”
The requirements in the ICX project for Siemens, however, differed significantly from those in the MF 19 project. In the former, OpenPDM supported both the export and import of CAD data and product structures in the ongoing development process, with the Catia files being converted into the neutral STEP format to protect intellectual property. OpenPDM also controlled the reconversion of incoming STEP files from Siemens into Catia format during import. However, in this case the company did not need the complete construction documents, as it only acts as a supplier of certain components. The trains are built by Siemens.
In the MF 19 project, the engineering data from the common development environment is to be integrated into the PLM world of the former Bombardier locations when a certain level of maturity is reached, in order to be able to use it for subsequent processes. For this purpose, they are provided in a coordinated format that OpenPDM can read. The PROSTEP solution imports the CAD and PLM data and maps them to the global data model of former Bombardier, which is quite different from the Alstom data model of the development environment. Part of the metadata moves together with the CAD files into the CAD-related data management, while the other part is created in TCE or updated after changes.
Data is imported at the push of a button
In principle, the import and mapping of data can be fully automated with OpenPDM. However, the former Bombardier team opted for a semi-automated approach in order to avoid having to immediately update every small change in the development in TCE or Enovia 3Dcom. PROSTEP has enhanced the solution so that it continuously compares the version statuses and informs the key users of changes. They can import new data sets or parts of them at the push of a button. OpenPDM also offers the possibility of importing files that have not yet been released, e.g. from long-running components, so that they can be used for request for quotations, for example.
One of the biggest challenges in the OpenPDM project was the mapping of the different data structures, as Hundemer points out. With the help of PROSTEP, however, they were able to overcome these challenges without any problems. Hundemer is very satisfied with the support he received from the collaboration experts: “It is always good to have a partner who understands his product in depth and knows how to implement it at the customer’s site. The people from PROSTEP were always approachable and often the ones who had the solution ready. This made the ramp-up much easier.”
Standard solution for collaboration
Although – as is usual for large companies – a large number of stakeholders and external service providers was involved in the project, whose coordination was also made more difficult by the Corona pandemic, the implementation and testing of the new integration solution, including going live, only took a good six months. The project partners were of course able to build on the experience and preliminary work from the ICX project. The software did not have to be installed from scratch either, because the French locations simply access the existing instance in one of the company’s data centers.
The aim is to provide the departments with a uniform solution for collaboration in joint ventures and consortium projects, as Hundemer concludes. “In the Information Systems department, we have developed a strategy for integrating partners and suppliers into the extended company, in which OpenPDM plays an important role. We will therefore certainly continue to work with PROSTEP.” Possibly, the solution will even be expanded so that in addition to CAD and PLM data, requirements can also be exchanged via OpenPDM in the future.
By Mirko Theiß
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Monday, January 11th, 2021
Although there is already a large number of projects involving digital twins under way in the maritime industry, there is no common industry-wide understanding of what a digital twin is and no uniform approach to implementation. These are the results of a survey on the digital twin conducted by PROSTEP among shipyards, operators, suppliers and classification societies.
Everyone is talking about the digital twin – even in the shipbuilding industry. But is there something like an industry-wide understanding of what companies in the maritime industry mean by the term “digital twin” and what they expect from it? To find out, PROSTEP conducted a cross-enterprise survey of shipyards, operators, suppliers and classification societies. Due to the novelty of the topic, we assumed that companies have different ideas about the digital twin.
The objective of the survey was to shed light on what companies in the maritime industry understand the digital twin to be, to record the status of current or planned applications and solutions with their potential and challenges, and also to see how the companies organize collaboration in the context of the digital twin. Managers from more than a dozen shipyards, operators, suppliers and classification societies, representing different sectors of the maritime industry from cruise, containers and cargo to naval engineering, navy and public agencies, were surveyed.
For many of those who participated in the survey, the digital twin is at best a vision and at worst a marketing buzzword. It therefore comes as no surprise that there is no common industry-wide understanding of what a digital twin is; there are however some remarkable similarities. Almost without exception, respondents across all segments of the industry associate the digital twin with the digitalization of their product or the asset to be operated but not with the digitalization of the production systems. Almost all respondents also believe that this digital twin does not end when the product is handed over to the customer but also accompanies the operating phase.
On the whole, it appears that respondents from the supplier segment have somewhat of a head start over other segments of the industry when it comes to the level of maturity of digital twin projects. Many are in the pilot stage or are already being used productively. It is also the suppliers who are calling the loudest for standards that will enable them to integrate their digital representations with other systems in the overall system that is a “vessel” and exploit the potential that the digital twin offers.
The companies have different reasons for addressing the topic of the digital twin. From an engineering perspective, primary focus is placed on optimizing designs based on insights gained during operation, the early testing of functions and providing support for downstream business processes with the help of 3D product models. In the operating phase, improved planning and remote support for maintenance and inspection tasks as well as the optimization of operating parameters are key drivers for projects currently underway. Initial use cases in manufacturing include the virtual approval of work, the early training of personnel in the construction phase of a vessel, and the optimization of manufacturing processes.
For the majority (over 70 percent) of the companies surveyed, improving service quality is the most important potential offered by the digital twin; this is followed by supporting new business models and improving the development process. As far as suppliers in particular are concerned, the main benefit is the ability to avoid subsequent costs and work resulting from development errors. For operators, on the other hand, the digital twin offers significant potential for increasing capacity utilization, reducing operating costs and improving sustainability, e.g. by reducing emissions.
Increasing collaboration in the context of implementing and using digital twins is seen throughout the industry as posing the greatest challenge – along with a lack of standards and the availability of appropriate models, which are of concern to suppliers in particular. With the exception of a few suppliers, the vast majority of the manufacturing companies surveyed do not work together with partners on digital twin projects at all or do so rarely. Most operators, on the other hand, already use digital representations of their ships to optimize operation of the vessels together with partners and customers, and they access digital service and maintenance offerings from partners.
In principle, all the companies are in favor of a higher level of collaboration when it comes to implementing and using the digital twin. Many, however, have reservations when it comes to protecting their intellectual property and see contractual ambiguities with regard to digital content. This means that every company is trying to exploit the potential of the digital twin with their own benefit in mind. There is also no uniform approach to dealing with this topic in the individual segments of the industry, and a different approach is taken for each application scenario. There is a risk that the digital twin projects will lead to the creation of new data silos.
The results of the survey provide a basis for recommending action that can be taken by companies in the maritime industry. Perhaps the most important is collaborating with other companies in the context of implementing and using digital twins. Companies that actively collaborate with partners are usually able to implement their projects faster.
We recommend that companies tackle concrete projects that offer economic value added. Collect the data you need for the project at hand but avoid creating new data silos by linking the data that you have collected according to clearly defined rules. The digital components for the digital twin are available in most companies in the form of models, data and IT systems. You just need to clarify how you can best exploit this potential to meet your business needs. Our many years of experience with digitalization initiatives in the shipbuilding industry means that we are in a position to help you do this.
By Lars Wagner
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Thursday, January 7th, 2021
The HARTING Technology Group, one of the world’s leading suppliers of connection technology, made use of PROSTEP’s PLM strategy consulting services last year. In this interview, Dr. Kurt D. Bettenhausen, member of the board responsible for New Technologies and Development at HARTING, discusses the company’s digitalization strategy and the need for action in product development.
Question: Dr. Bettenhausen, could you give us a brief introduction to HARTING?
Bettenhausen: HARTING is a leading global provider of connectivity solutions for the transmission of data, signals and energy in automation technology, mechanical engineering, robotics and, particularly important, in railway technology. We also supply entire checkout zones and provide the automotive engineering sector with actuators, magnet systems, etc. Our big growth market there is power transmission for electric vehicles with on-board charging cables, as well as charging cables and connectivity solutions for charging stations. We are a tier-1 supplier to the VW Group, supplying for example a cooled fast charging solution for the Porsche Taycan.
Question: HARTING has successfully defied the coronavirus pandemic and saw a slight increase in revenue last year. What factors played a role in this success?
Bettenhausen: First of all, close proximity to customers and to the markets and responding quickly to their requirements. The second factor is a strong sense of responsibility. We have ensured that our employees can work safely, be it in the office, on the production floor, in the testing laboratories or in logistics, and thus maintained our ability to deliver at any time. The third factor is that we quickly adapted all our market communications.
Question: In which industries and markets are you experiencing the greatest growth?
Bettenhausen: One area is undoubtedly electromobility, which really took off in Germany last year, thanks in part to financial support measures. This is where we recorded the highest rates of growth percentage-wise. But we have also enjoyed growth in the fields transportation/railway technology, automation and logistics. The fact that we are able to grow in a time when many companies are shrinking means that everyone has made a contribution.
Question: You recently established a cooperation with MIT. What kind of impetus do you hope this will provide?
Bettenhausen: We hope to find partners for collaboration and co-creation. MIT is one of the top addresses worldwide when it comes to thinking outside the box. With its hardware sector, the ecosystem in the northeast of the USA is a deliberate counter-pole to Silicon Valley. Companies that are part of this ecosystem via the Industrial Liaison Program are able to come together more quickly with the aim of solving tasks or developing initial prototypes.
Question: How innovative is HARTING? How “young” are your products on average?
Bettenhausen: We have a large number of new products in every sector. But we also continue to develop the products that our customers have known and valued for years. Countless variants of HARTING’s HAN connector, which we patented at the end of the 1950s, are still available today. It is constantly being expanded to include new modules, such as ID modules and current sensors, and new power ratings.
Question: What challenges does HARTING face in product development? How global is your product development?
Bettenhausen: We have globally distributed teams to ensure that we drive development forward close to and together with our customers, even though development is still primarily carried out in Germany. This means making note of customer requirements in a quick exchange and developing innovative answers ourselves.
Question: Aren’t connectors standard products?
Bettenhausen: We cover a whole range of connectors. The basis is provided by standard connectors from the catalog. They have a modular concept and you can configure them to meet your requirements. Then there is the Customized Solutions division, where we develop complete solutions together with customers. The jumper cables between two railcars are a good example. Every railcar manufacturer has its preferences as to what it wants to exchange and how it wants to exchange data, signals and power.
Question: What does this wide range of products mean in terms of your digitalization strategy?
Bettenhausen: It has to offer an appropriate level of flexibility. An off-the-shelf digitalization solution only offers us help with our standard products – we need flexibility for everything else. It begins with our colleagues, who first have to understand the task for which they are supposed to provide a solution together with the customer. PLM tools that offer a corresponding level of flexibility are needed to plan and produce this solution.
Question: In which fields of activity are you driving digitalization forward?
Bettenhausen: If you want to produce a modular HAN connector down to a batch size of 1, all the processes from ordering to production through to logistics have to be digitalized systematically. This is why we keep a close eye on everything to do with enterprise software. Here at HARTING, we don’t realize a project and then leave it as it is for all eternity. It’s like the lathes we were introduced to in the apprentice workshop but no longer use. The same applies to digitalization: We use it, develop it further and launch the next stage whenever it makes sense and is needed.
Question: And what about digitalization in the context of product development?
Bettenhausen: Digitalization of product development alone won’t help if we can’t get our products out there. That’s why we have an outstanding mechanical engineering department that can perform certain special tasks in-house. Product development has come a long way over the last ten years. The big players in the PLM sector have come out with complete solutions that can be used to simulate the mechanical, electrical and thermal properties of the products to be designed and break the digital twin down to the levels required by production.
Question: What role does PLM play in your digitalization strategy?
Bettenhausen: We think in terms of three core processes: development, production and sales. Development includes all the steps from designing the products to designing the production systems to making the resulting product data available throughout the entire value-added chain.
Question: What does your PLM landscape currently look like? What are the cornerstones?
Bettenhausen: The cornerstones are currently management of master data and the 3D drawing chain. The aim now is to take the next step with an upcoming PLM project.
Question: Am I right in assuming that you don’t want to reveal which systems you are currently using?
Bettenhausen: Yes. However, I can tell you that we are using two of the leading products for PLM and ERP.
Question: If you are using two leading systems, why did you need PROSTEP’s PLM strategy consulting services?
Bettenhausen: We wanted to prepare for the next round and not, so to speak, “stew in our own juices” and be dependent on the information provided by the vendors. A PLM project is about the processes, the organization and only at the end about the tools. When it came to preparing for the project, it was important that we get an opinion from a largely neutral third party and see whether our own assessment was right. PROSTEP was a big help. The consulting took place before I joined the company. I only joined in time to see the presentation of the results and thought it a great success. An appropriate roadmap had been drawn up indicating how we can further develop three interwoven aspects, namely processes, organization and tools, in the coming years.
Question: In which processes is there a need for action?
Bettenhausen: A review of the current distribution of tasks in the core process development indicated that we need to develop it further. This was confirmed by our own assessment.
Question: Can you say specifically what you want to develop further?
Bettenhausen: Collaboration between the different disciplines….
Question: Do you mean mechatronics and system development? You want to achieve a more integrated development process?
Bettenhausen: We want to add new functionality to the electromechanical design process and integrate the various disciplines involved more tightly into it. In a further step, we want to integrate simulations into the design process rather than carrying them out in parallel with the design.
Question: You are the chairman of the VDI’s Digital Transformation Committee. What does transformation mean for HARTING? Or to put it another way, are you still digitalizing or are you already transforming?
Bettenhausen: I use the term “digitalization” to refer to the availability of data and information in digital form. We at HARTING have already come a long way in this respect. The next step is to see whether we can do the same with our processes and our organization and as highly efficiently as we intend. That is the aspect of transformation that we are currently working on.
Mr. Bettenhausen, thank you very much for talking to us.
(This interview was conducted by Michael Wendenburg)
About Dr. Bettenhausen
Dr. Kurt D. Bettenhausen has been the member of the board responsible for New Technologies and Development at the HARTING Technology Group since September 2020. Prior to this, he was Chief Technology Officer at Schunk, a manufacturer of gripping systems and clamping technology. Bettenhausen studied electrical engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt, where he also completed his doctorate. He then gained his first job experience at Hoechst AG, parts of which were taken over by Siemens in 2001. Bettenhausen worked for Siemens for over 17 years in a number of different management positions, his last as Senior Vice President of Siemens Corporation in the USA.
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Monday, December 21st, 2020
Our claim “Integrate the Future” means developing innovative products and services for you. Sponsored projects provide us with important ideas for this. In recent years, we have significantly increased the extent of our research activities. Four innovation projects are currently running simultaneously: V&V Methods, SET Level, ProProS and DigiTwin. In October, we applied for funding for two new projects (ImPaKT and HoliYard).
PROSTEP invests a lot of time and money in these projects and thus in its future – for the benefit of our customers. As a technology company, we want to ensure that our service portfolio is subject to ongoing development. The sponsored projects allow us to keep our ear to the ground when it comes to technological advances and gather important ideas and gain know-how. We develop demonstrators for new products, which we can then get ready for market faster. And it is thanks to this that we were granted the first patent in the company’s history for the “procedure for the electronic documentation of license information” based on the use of blockchain technology this year.
Participation in these projects benefits us in a variety of ways. Our close contacts with renowned research institutes working in new fields such as artificial intelligence, cryptography, systems engineering and autonomous driving have over the years made it possible for us to expand our own know-how and attract new employees. At the same time, we work closely with (potential) customers and become more familiar with their requirements, which helps us develop software solutions that meet their needs. We are also gaining a deeper understanding of the industry in new application areas, such as shipbuilding in the ProProS and HoliYard projects for example.
Our traceability solution Tracy would certainly not have reached the level of maturity it currently has without the impetus provided by the V&V and SET Level projects. Within the framework of ImPaKT, a newly proposed sponsored project that will probably be launched in January, we intend to work together with both industrial partners like CLAAS and Schaeffler and SMEs like Hofmann, a specialist for balancing machines, on expanding OpenCLM to include functions for the use case of cross-domain impact analysis of changes. It will also involve the use of artificial intelligence methods. You will find more information about the use cases on the OpenCLM web page.
Sponsored projects make an important financial contribution to our product development and also to marketing. They generate a great deal of public interest and raise our profile. The SAMPL project alone gave rise to 23 presentations and 24 publications in the media; we also presented our new blockchain solution at 34 events. Our demonstrator will soon be exhibited at the Digital Technologies Forum and will also be shown to international visitors.
As part of the SAMPL (Secure Additive Manufacturing Platform) project, we have worked with partners to develop an end-to-end solution for the forgery-proof exchange of 3D print data using blockchain technology. The project has now been brought to a successful close. During the course of the project, blockchain technology was integrated in our OpenDXM GlobalX software solution. We can now support new business models that exploit the advantages of blockchain technology and involve exchanging large amounts of data. We are about to win our first major contract.
Our employees are given the opportunity to explore exciting topics and grow as a person. They in turn make it possible for us to remain innovative and break new ground for you – our customers.
If you are interested in finding out more, please contact martin.holland@prostep.com.
By Martin Holland
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Saturday, December 19th, 2020
PROSTEP is increasing the pace of development of its PLM integration platform OpenPDM and will in future deliver a new release every six months. Version 9.2 will be on the roadmap at the beginning of February 2021. In addition to support for the current releases of the PLM systems Windchill, Teamcenter and 3DEXPERIENCE, it offers new connectors to GIT, Jira and to OSLC-enabled systems.
OpenPDM 9.2 is the second release of the new generation of our world-leading PLM integration platform, which is characterized by its cloud-ready software architecture. The new version not only offers connectors to Windchill 12.0.0, Teamcenter 13.0 or 3DEXPERIENCE R2021X, but now also supports the REST interface of Dassault Systèmes’ PLM platform. Via this interface, OpenPDM can now communicate very easily with a cloud instance of 3DEXPERIENCE. In addition, we have developed a direct coupling to EXALEAD based on OpenPDM, so that data from Windchill, Teamcenter or SAP can be evaluated with EXALEAD.
We have also enhanced OpenPDM 9.2 with a view to integrating systems for managing software code and controlling the software development process (Application Lifecycle Management or ALM for short). There are new connectors to GIT and Jira. Furthermore, we have ported the existing connector to the ALM solution PTC Integrity, now called Windchill RV&S, to the new OpenPDM generation. Our connector to the IoT platform ThingWorx offers the possibility to also display data from non-PTC systems with PTC Navigate.
OpenPDM 9.2 supports new data linking concepts through an OSLC provider. It enables OSLC consumers such as IBM RTC or DOORS Next to link requirements and functional models via OpenPDM with PLM information in other source systems.
The new version of our cloud-enabled PLM integration platform will be delivered to our customers from February 2021. In addition, they will receive a Feature Enhancement and Fix Pack for the current release every two months, which contains features requested at short notice in the projects.
By Mirko Theiß
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