PROSTEP is bringing a lean, smart web application for generating digital threads to market: OpenCLM ensures data transparency across domain boundaries and makes it possible for everyone involved to trace deliverables and decisions. This makes it easier for companies to get to grips with complex development projects and respond agilely to new requirements.
Ensuring end-to-end digitalization (digital thread) across different domains involves a considerable amount of effort on the part of those responsible in companies today. Data is typically distributed across a large number of data silos and has to be collated and linked manually. OpenCLM significantly reduces the amount of time and effort this involves. The software creates a directed web of relationships between the information objects in the individual domains. This makes it possible to locate information in heterogeneous system landscapes, record and analyze correlations and statuses, generate reports automatically and meet compliance requirements.
OpenCLM creates digital threads throughout the entire product lifecycle, providing support for a variety of different use cases. Looking forward, the application is used to manage project progress, monitor the quality and compliance of the project results, and communicate changes across domains. Looking backwards, it allows impact analyses, defect management and helps meet traceability requirements in the context of audits.
With OpenCLM, we are not offering our customers a new super PDM but rather a lightweight web application that merely links the information objects in the domain systems and provides users with the information they need to perform their work. We want to help them exploit the potential of the digital thread without them having to change their IT landscapes or processes.”
Our new digital thread application connects heterogeneous system landscapes (PDM/PLM, ERP, ALM (Application Lifecycle Management), etc.) via our proven OpenPDM integration platform and supplements them with additional integration and function modules. Its core functions include the integration of process and project management, maturity validation, the planning of milestones and deliverables (tasks), the coordination of cross-domain changes, and the generation and management of trace links and configurations.
OpenCLM makes it possible to link data and documents from different source systems instead of replicating them while at the same time giving due consideration to process requirements. The links are independent of the IT systems used and remain unchanged even when switching to a new system. The linked data objects are displayed with metadata such as status, change date, owner, etc. in a clear and concise cockpit, so that they can be easily compared with other data statuses.
So-called baselines can be created for milestones, given points in time, etc. in order to record certain information. If required, they can also be exported, exchanged or archived in standardized formats. Reusable project and process templates ensure consistent and compliant project and product documentation, as required for certification purposes for example.
More information about OpenCLM and the supported use cases can be found on our homepage or in the new white paper.
Nowadays, manufacturing industry uses highly complex IT systems to develop equally highly complex products that include an increasing number of electronic and software components. However, the attempt to cast out the devil of complexity with complex PLM solutions is increasingly being stretched to the limit. If users are to get to grips with this complexity, they need applications that are as innovative as they are easy to use.
The key to mastering complexity is end-to-end digitalization from development to manufacturing through to operation and back again. This means that the operational data that is normally collected and evaluated on IoT platforms needs to be linked to the development objects and manufacturing information. Only then can the interrelationships and dependencies be made transparent for all the domains involved at all times.
The ability to weave this digital thread without allowing it to break during the product lifecycle is an essential prerequisite for the traceability of deliverables and development processes. Without this traceability, companies are unable to respond agilely to new market and customer requirements. This means that the digital thread is becoming key driver of competition in times of global unpredictability, which is characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.
Manufacturing companies must position themselves strategically if they are to master the digital thread. To succeed, they need a strategic overall concept for ensuring end-to-end digitalization, which is or should be an integral part of any sustainable PLM strategy.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, it was not only PROSTEP TECHDAY 2020 that was held online this year but also almost every other event at which we normally make an appearance. In recent months, we have participated in numerous online events with presentations and virtual booths. The feedback was rather restrained: What our speakers missed most was contact with the other participants.
One of the events we have been attending for years is LiveWorx, where we demonstrate the solutions in our portfolio, and in particular our OpenPDM integrations to Windchill, Creo and the IIoT platform ThingWorx, to the PTC community. Although this year’s trip to Boston was canceled, our appearance was not. In one presentation, we demonstrated to participants how our integration platform can provide support for end-to-end digitalization in heterogeneous PDM/PLM landscapes and make data from different enterprise applications available in role-based ThingWorx apps. You can watch the video here.
The 3DEXPERIENCE Conference EuroCentral organized by Dassault Systèmes was also held online this year. Our participation in the event comprised not only a virtual booth but also two live presentations. In the first presentation, we explained to participants how our data exchange platform OpenDXM GlobalX supports 3DEXPERIENCE (3DX) platform users in the context of cross-enterprise collaboration. The second presentation focused on data migration. We used concrete use cases to demonstrate how companies can migrate metadata and CAD data from legacy systems to the 3DX platform in high quality with the support of PROSTEP’s experts and our OpenPDM integration platform. Several presentations were also made at our booth, including one on how 3DX can be incorporated in an EA-based PLM strategy.
Our PLM strategy consultants also responded to the constraints placed on their ability to travel by participating in online events. One highlight was most certainly the joint presentation given together with Bosch at the prostep ivip Symposium in which we presented the current status of the SetLevel and V&V research projects. The two projects deal with the question of how the traceability of simulation steps and results can be ensured when it comes to validating autonomous driving functions. A video of the presentation, which was also shown at the 6th Symposium Driving Simulation, can be found here.
At the same time, our consulting specialists made an appearance in the former plenary hall of the German Bundestag in Bonn as a sponsor of LeanIX EA Connect Days 2020, one of the most important conferences in the field of enterprise architecture management, which was a smart combination of physical and virtual event. In an interview, Dr. Martin Strietzel explains the role EA (Enterprise Architecture) plays in PLM and the digitalization of the product development process and what PROSTEP expects from its collaboration with LeanIX.
We gave a number of presentations at the NAFEMS DACH 2020 conference, which was ultimately held online following several postponements. The presentations covered a wide range of topics from the challenges posed by the digital twin to the role of simulation in the platform economy through to a concrete representation of end-to-end digitalization using the system model in systems engineering as an example. You can find out more about these topics in our white paper.
Some of our customers in the maritime industry like MEYER Werft and MEYER Turku are using the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to rethink their PLM architectures. Our shipbuilding experts made use of a variety of online activities to help them come up with new ideas. At a virtual booth at PI Marine USA, we showcased our integration platform OpenPDM SHIP, which connects shipbuilding-specific development systems with each other or with mechanical CAD systems and all the leading PDM/PLM and ERP systems. You can find more about this in our white paper.
We also presented the results of a cross-enterprise survey on the digital twin in the maritime industry at the start of the 5th Schiff&Hafen Maritim 4.0 conference, which was held online this year. Details of the study, which attracted a great deal of attention, will be provided in the next newsletter.
With OpenCLM, PROSTEP presents a lightweight, easy-to-configure web application for traceability and cross-discipline configuration lifecycle management. This makes it easier for companies to assess project progress in the individual domains during system development and trace the development steps and deliverables.
Traceability and configuration lifecycle management (CLM) are major challenges for companies in manufacturing industry. They are not only important when it comes to meeting legal requirements but also for getting to grips with increasingly complex development projects. If they do not know the current status of the development steps and the maturity of and dependencies between the deliverables, the people involved in development often have to spend a great deal of time and effort on coordination or laborious fact-finding before they can make informed statements about the progress of a project, assess the impact of changes and implement changes efficiently. This can have a significant negative impact on efficiency. The traceability of the relationships between data from the operating phase (digital twin) through to valid configurations of the associated digital models (digital master) is also a prerequisite for making it possible to locate the source of errors (defects) in systems correctly and identify their cause faster.
In general, ensuring traceability and CLM involves a considerable amount of time and effort for collecting and linking data, which in practice is distributed across numerous different data silos. This is why holistic solutions and platforms from individual providers do not fulfill requirements relating to traceability. OpenCLM bridges the heterogeneity of the IT system landscapes (ALM, PDM, ERP, etc.) with the help of OpenPDM connectors and also provides components for integrating process, project, task, maturity, configuration, change and release management.
The extensible data model maps the most important industry-specific standards and maturity models and provides the basis for creating reusable process and project templates. The latter ensure consistent, traceable project and product documentation that complies with standards such as DIN ISO 10006, ISO 9001 / IATF 16949, ISO 13485, (Automotive) SPICE, ISO 26262, ISO 10007, ISO 15288, EN 9100.
OpenCLM displays the data, which is linked from different sources, with metadata such as status, change date, owner, etc. in a clear and concise cockpit, so that it can be easily compared with or linked to other data statuses. Baselines, i.e. views of the data statuses that are valid at a given time together with the link information, can be generated at certain points in the product development process. If necessary, these baselines can be exported, exchanged or archived in standardized formats such as 3D PDF or STEP.
OpenCLM also coordinates distributed and cross-domain changes. A distributed change process can trigger subordinate, domain-specific change processes or, if these already exist, it can be linked to them. If the change process refers to a baseline, the solution also makes it easier to define the scope of the change and provides support for impact analysis. The range of functions that OpenCLM offers not only provides companies with support for certification and audits, but also for planning and controlling complex, distributed development projects, validating maturity or improving product quality and error management.
Monolithic system architectures with static interfaces do not do justice to the dynamics in the development of smart networked products. PROSTEP has therefore developed a new integration approach that makes it possible to directly link the data of the various disciplines and domains instead of replicating them in a PLM cockpit. OpenCLM makes the status of interdisciplinary development projects easier to understand.
With the development of OpenCLM, PROSTEP is meeting the requirements of its customers, who are faced with the challenge of agile integration of new tools and methods into their system landscapes and the need to replace existing ones without losing transparency in the product development process when developing smart products. As the proportion of software and electronics increases, not only the dynamics of product changes increases, but also the dynamics of technologies for their development and production. At the same time, the coordination of the disciplines and domains involved in product development requires a depth of integration that can no longer be achieved with classic integration approaches or only with immense effort. This is all the more true as the engineering landscapes in most companies today are very heterogeneous and – as already mentioned – are constantly changing.
The development of smart products in this heterogeneous system landscape creates a huge amount of data that is related to each other and changes continuously. Project managers and their teams are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain an overview of the interrelationships and to document project progress comprehensively throughout all phases of the product development process. The manual collection of project results also involves a considerable amount of time for essentially repetitive work.
Snapshot of the digital master
OpenCLM automates this process by automatically generating the currently valid view or configuration of the information statuses and their relationships to other artifacts during the approach to previously defined coordination points (milestones). This view documents which requirements triggered which activities (tasks) and which deliverables were generated or are still to be generated. If you then draw a baseline, a snapshot of the digital master, it can be automatically derived in 3D PDF format if required.
Combining all product-relevant information for baselining in one backbone system would entail enormous effort for the integration of the authoring or supporting management systems (such as TDM, ALM, SDM) and would probably still not ensure the required depth of information. Most companies, for example, do not record the requirements in their PLM systems in a granularity that would allow individual requirements to be linked to specific artifacts. As an alternative to data replication, data linking using OpenCLM is therefore recommended.
Link data instead of replicating it
With OpenCLM, PROSTEP has developed a lightweight and easy-to-configure web application for cross-discipline Configuration Lifecycle Management (CLM). It makes it possible to easily link data and documents from different source systems. Its basis is the integration platform OpenPDM, to which not only common TDM, PDM/PLM and ERP systems, but also simulation data management systems, ALM systems (Application Lifecycle Management) and other enterprise applications can be connected via industry-proven connectors or standards such as OSLC. OpenCLM displays the linked information objects with metadata such as status, change date, owner, etc. in a clear and concise cockpit. There they can easily be compared with other data statuses.While other linking concepts aim to automatically establish semantic references between the data at database level with the aid of intelligent search algorithms, PROSTEP focuses on targeted linking of the original data based on the specific process requirements and taking into account their status information in the respective management systems. Among other things, this has the advantage that OpenCLM can not only display the linked data, but also enable write access. The project manager can then use the cockpit, for example, to add missing attributes or initiate a status change, provided he or she has the appropriate authorization in the process and in the source system and the write function is enabled in OpenCLM.
Project plan as starting point
The starting point for data linking is a concrete project plan that is oriented to the phases of the product development process. For each milestone, this plan specifies which artifacts from which source system have to be linked from one step to the next, what semantic meaning the relationships have and what quality the results to be generated should have. There are predefined link types with the permitted start and end artifacts that specify how a request is linked to a certain task, such as a simulation step, which is the work result (e.g. a test report) and where it can be found, even if it does not yet exist or only exists as a placeholder at the time the links are defined. This distinguishes OpenCLM from AI-based linking approaches, which can only calculate these correlations afterwards.
The effort for the manual preparation of the linking is manageable, since the references in principle only have to be created once. OpenCLM offers the option of creating templates for the various project types with the specifications for the respective milestones or baselines, which the user links to the concrete information objects in the current project. OpenCLM then always provides a current version of the linked information for each milestone. The project manager can create the templates himself, e.g. on the basis of his existing project structure plans, or have them created by PROSTEP as part of customizing.
Tool for project control
OpenCLM is first and foremost a tool for project managers and participants with which they or their teams can structure their work and control its progress. The project team members see an overview of all tasks and artifacts that belong to an upcoming milestone in the cockpit, and in which status they are. You can navigate in the structure and arrange it according to different criteria, e.g. to display all information belonging to a specific function across all disciplines. The software automatically identifies open points or artifacts that are still missing and can also automatically suggest their degree of maturity. In addition, project managers receive immediate visual feedback on problem points, e.g. when a particular simulation task has been performed on the basis of an outdated model.
The new PROSTEP solution ensures a high level of transparency and traceability of the development objects across all disciplines and domains. Because the relationship information is managed transiently in OpenCLM, the data models of the source systems do not need to be touched. Among other things, this has the advantage that the departments can use a different tool or data source in the next project if required, without the process or software having to be constantly adapted. The baselines of OpenCLM define which work results they have to deliver and when. This ensures consistent, comprehensible and rule-compliant product documentation, as required by SPICE, CMMI, DIN ISO 26262. plan as starting point.
