Jill Newberg さんのアクティビティ

The Digital Thread – Low Code Connection: 6 Questions to Ask Your Digital Transformation Platform Vendor

Jill Newberg — Tue, 11 May 2021 12:57:00 GMT

Creating a Digital Thread of product information is critical to Digital Transformation. With a digital thread, teams can more efficiently access and impact the information they need. Different domains can collaborate seamlessly. Data can flow more easily between related processes. In short, the typical bottlenecks that prevent change are eliminated, helping companies drive organizational improvements, strategy updates, and new product innovations faster and more effectively.

But what defines Digital Transformation is unique to your company—as unique as the processes you employ, the data you generate, and the products you build. And out-of-the-box software will not meet every company’s unique needs, which is why customization is inevitable.

Plenty of enterprise software companies are touting the value of a Digital Thread to drive Digital Transformation forward. But how you will leverage their technology to create the Digital Thread is important to consider. Check out six questions below to ask yourself—and your Digital Transformation platform provider—before taking the leap.

1 - Is It Digital Transformation or “Best Practices” in Sheep’s Clothing?

Can just any out-of-the-box enterprise software tool build your unique digital thread? Generating, managing, and connecting related information across the product’s lifecycle should be a unique process: defined by your organization in a way that is specific to the products you create and the teams you employ to create them.

Certainly, enterprise software is a great starting point for any team. But step back in time with me. About a decade or so ago, “best practices” in PLM were all the rage. This amounted to software companies encouraging organizations (in an entirely different business from theirs, which they knew very little about and employed few to no experts in) to change their unique, differentiated workflows to match the software development company’s idea of how they should run their business to build their products.

Not coincidentally, those “best practices” matched the workflows and processes baked into the software. And changing existing processes to match software workflows “out of the box” meant that the software, which was rigid and difficult to change, wouldn’t require customization. Therefore, “out of the box” is best, they’d claim.

2 - Is the Path to “Out of the Box” Paved with Good Intentions?

In truth, “Out of the box” is an impossibility. Every company is different—every team, every process, every workflow, and every data point—because every company builds different products. The way one company’s product information must fit together, flow-down, and relate in interconnected ways to build its unique Digital Thread must, necessarily, be as unique as the processes used to create that data.

And as much as your product is your competitive differentiator, so is the process you use to build that product in your unique way. Leverage technology to enhance your unique processes? Yes. Use it to accelerate your processes, digitalize your processes, connect more groups across the organization into your processes in an automated way? Yes, yes, and yes.

But replace your processes with rigid, “out of the box” software that belies the complexity, uniqueness, and competitive differentiation of your team’s approach to product development? No. Never change what makes your teams unique—and uniquely successful—just to conform to some software company’s idea of how you should run your product development business.

3 – How Are Customizations Built?

In that light, it’s no wonder customizing enterprise software is inevitable. For companies investigating software vendors to support their digital transformation, the question should not be, “to customize or not to customize?” Rather, it should be, “tell me how your tool gets customized?” Who customizes it, how long does it take them, how easily can they continue iterating on customizations when they need to change, and how do those customizations stay in sync with vendor updates and upgrades as they are released?

Spoiler alert: most PLM software is not designed with customization in mind. Yes you can do it, or—more accurately perhaps—the consultants you hire can do it, but they must be knowledgeable developers who can access and change the code base, then recompile the code and launch the new system.

And once they’ve done that, the new code has branched significantly from the original code base, heading off in a new direction to meet the unique needs of your team. When your organization inevitably needs to add its own updates and improvements to that iteration, they must start from this new point: a branch that no longer allows the return to the original, “out of the box” toolset.

At the same time you’ve been customizing, your vendor has been doing the same—they call it R&D, of course—but they’ve started from the last point you both had in common: their last released version. In a way, they’ve branched as well; except their branch is the one that matters when they release a software upgrade. When your team has branched from the vendor’s path via customization, their updates become inaccessible to you, because their tool is not built to be customized and upgraded.

In order to upgrade, you must back up to an earlier version, before your customizations, meaning you’ve lost your changes and you must add them in all over again from scratch—or lose those processes forever: yes, the very same ones you just constructed so carefully to build your precise, unique, differentiated Digital Thread of product information.

4 – Are You Giving Me Branches or Rungs?

In contrast to branches that can leave you stranded between versions like other PLM system customizations offer, Aras Innovator is built with rungs you were meant to climb. Customization through configuration in Aras Innovator offers a GUI (graphical user interface) specifically designed so that administrators can easily configure (on the back-end) a customized user experience (on the front-end).

This easy, no-code, “configure to customize” path is the one most customers use to extend Aras applications or build their own. But additional low-code functionality exists for administrators and developers who know how to code, and who need the platform to achieve more.

Using AML (Aras Markup Language), an intuitive XML framework, developers can quickly write methods (short snippets of code) to instruct the system to do more. Methods are straightforward to write and easy to interpret (one example of AML is “OnGet”—which means “when this data is retrieved, do this specified action”). And Aras offers this AML editor to administrators in open, easy ways, by design—like the rungs of a ladder offered throughout the tool—to keep your customizations carefully organized without sacrificing your ability to access and change up our platform services to work the way you need them to.

In short, upgrades can always be achieved, and quickly. Aras provides them to you free of charge, and they take an average of 3 months’ time, vs. our competitors’ average of 11-14 months’ time, to complete. Development work is low-lift (hence, “low-code”), and this easy, intuitive, point-and-click configuration to customize the tool is available throughout every application on the Aras Innovator platform.

Through this combination of GUI-high, code-low administrator user experiences, not only can existing applications be configured to work in new ways—with new workflows, capabilities, and connections—brand-new applications can be built from the ground up, to ensure your Digital Thread works the way you need it to: connecting every new process, data point, team member, and external tool you need to connect across a single, seamless platform.

5 - Can I Build It as I Go?

The old analogy of building the airplane while we fly it, or building the car while we drive it, seems apt during this past year of inevitable Digital Transformation—this was a sink or swim, ride or die, fly or fall, change or be changed kind of year. The need to change the way digital systems work should involve quickly and efficiently adapting them to new needs as you go—not contracting again with your system integrators, making a new purchasing decision, or interviewing a new stream of vendors to replace legacy tools that just don’t do what you need them to anymore. By the time you’ve done that, in a year like this one has been, the opportunity has gotten away from you—or the challenge has overwhelmed you.

In Aras Innovator, changes that your administrators introduce are made at run-time: meaning you can see most changes happen live in the system as you make them, or—for other changes—simply log out and log back in again to see them. There is no recompiling code or re-creating and redeploying executable files. To ensure the integrity of the current data in the live, production system, teams will test changes in pre-production or sandbox environments and then deploy those changes to the live environment, where end-users can enjoy the nearly seamless introduction of new capabilities.

This helps to ensure agility—or, the means by which teams can deploy changes rapidly, discover how they work out for end-users, and continue iterating on the environment to get the feature set just the way it’s needed, continuously improving functionality as new needs come online. These changes may be minor, or they may be major, so this same agility allows teams to add new users, integrate new tools, update their processes swiftly, and rapidly adapt to changing business environments—even pursing new strategies for the product, the organization, or the market by changing up the capabilities of the platform when needed, as demand dictates.

6 - Is It Designed for Upgrades?

Low-code ensures agility. It ensures that the data you build on the platform matches the needs of your team and your organization and is not stuck in time where it can’t be accessed or built upon further. And, it ensures that your teams can take advantage of the upgrades offered to you by Aras, because the platform is designed to be built upon.

Aras Innovator is architected so that, as we update Aras Innovator, your teams can choose (or not choose) to deploy our changes; and, as we add functionality, our improvements (to applications and to platform services) can be brought in alongside your customizations—at no additional cost to your organization. This level of choice extends to our SaaS Cloud: the same functionality and customizability exists on Aras Innovator in the cloud, and we only upgrade your cloud environment on your schedule—not ours. Whether cloud or on-premise, Aras upgrades its customers free of charge, because it is that easy, and we work alongside your teams to ensure your customizations are tried and tested before we call your upgrade done.

It’s Your Data – How Do You Want to Create and Manage It?

Don’t lock away your product data—your organization’s most valuable asset—in legacy systems where you can’t get at it, improve it, build on it, and connect teams with it.

As a low-code platform, Aras Innovator lets you control the applications, teams, and tools that access and manage your data. It allows you to extend native Aras Innovator applications to work the way you need them to and build new applications that connect with your data across the platform. You can continue iterating on what you’ve built to manipulate your data and processes in new ways, expanding and completing your ever-evolving Digital Thread.

Finally, Aras Innovator hosts every application—ours and yours—on a single software architecture to ensure data can flow seamlessly among applications in the way your teams need to consume and control it along its Digital Thread journey. And no matter how much you’ve customized your environment, you can always upgrade to our latest and greatest release, continuing to build your Digital Thread throughout time as your organization—and ours—evolves to realize new capabilities and new technologies.

Digital Twins: The Landing Pad, the Toolkit, and the Palette

Jill Newberg — Tue, 13 Apr 2021 13:13:00 GMT

I first joined the PLM software industry in the field of quality and reliability engineering: a discipline that manages and predicts information about the typically unmanaged and unpredictable parts of a product’s lifecycle: performance, operation, usage, sustainment, maintenance, and failure. To quality and reliability engineers, creating virtual models that accurately reflect and even predict real-world product performance and failure information is just a matter of course: it’s what they do.

Which is probably why, when my career path expanded to cover PLM proper—engineering, CAD data management, bills of material, sourcing, and manufacturing—I was more than a bit shocked to learn that most PLM software focuses primarily on development; while information from the operational phase of the product’s lifecycle, which is arguably the longest phase, is typically a secondary consideration, if it is managed in PLM at all.

Aras is different. For one thing, quality planning and issue management, which impact every part of the product’s lifecycle, can be tightly woven throughout the Digital Thread of product information managed on the Aras platform. But managing information from the operational phase of the product’s lifecycle does not end with quality data in Aras Innovator.

Digital twins in Aras Innovator create a framework for information collected about products in the field (a landing pad); they inform new learning and exploration into this data, accessible by any application across the platform (a toolkit); and they enable what-if scenarios and predictions to help companies more realistically envision a new future for their product and business strategies (a palette).

To explore each of these possibilities, read on. And don’t miss this year’s ACE conference, where you can view a 30-minute demonstration featuring our Digital Twin Core application, Predict and Simulate the Future with the Digital Twin, and a breakout session led by our Digital Twin product manager Graeme Taylor, Digital Twins, Life Control and Beyond. Where are we going?

The Landing Pad

For Aras, digital twins comprise the landing pad for critical information about products in the field. They are poised to collect the information that will instruct and empower the rest of the phases across the lifecycle with insights about what happens to their best-laid plans once the product has been launched.

Each digital twin is at the center of a series of axes: its unique configuration, its environmental and/or usage conditions, and its performance in response. To accurately interpret data about performance in unpredictable conditions requires an understanding of its exact configuration: a record of what was onboard the product at the time conditions were captured. The product has inevitably changed since it left the shop floor, and those changes must be reflected to make sense of the data being collected.

With the Digital Twin Core application, Aras Innovator manages a complete and accurate Digital Twin of product information, including up-to-date configuration and performance data. With every change to the physical product in the field, its digital representation can be updated to reflect the new physical, serialized part newly onboard the device. Learn how to build Digital Twins in Aras Innovator in our “How-to Guide for Building Digital Twins”.

But changes to physical products comprise more than just parts. Other critical changes to manage include the operational life and maintenance activities for products. Digital Twins must reflect this reality, and Aras Innovator offers the means to define and collect these critical metrics so users can understand how the Twin should be performing based on its expected performance and maintenance schedule. Information about how it should be performing (and how it should be maintained) becomes a measuring stick by which to understand how well it actually is performing. Explore how this works on the Aras Innovator platform in the blog, How to Track the Operational Life of Your Digital Twins.

Exact product configurations, life data, and operational events in the Digital Twin Core application in Aras Innovator set the expectation for the physical world, reflecting how the product should have performed. They create the virtual landing pad by which to collect and accurately interpret this critical information. Then, the information landing there—how the product actually performed—is captured in the Digital Twin user experience and available for anyone throughout the organization to use as they need to: a toolkit from which to choose the information they need to improve how they do their jobs …

The Toolkit

Digital twins in Aras Innovator are like toolkits. Users across the company can build with and connect to this landing pad in any number of ways they need to, realizing the strategic value a digital twin can bring to your ecosystem of customers, suppliers, and teams from design through manufacturing.

With the Aras approach to the Digital Twin, every user who needs to can virtually interrogate and experience what parts are on-board a physical product on the field, how long they’ve been part of the current configuration, what their life expectancy is given the current configuration, and what operational events are due next to keep things running smoothly. They can explore the real-world performance data and operating conditions associated with each part, and with the product as a whole, and use this information to feed critical parts of PLM with new information that was typically never accessible to PLM before.

A Digital Twin represents and makes accessible a physical reality in the virtual world. In Aras, there is one digital twin for every physical product in the field – be they a fleet of 10 or 10,000. In Aras Innovator, the Digital Twin is not a generalization, and it is not limited to 3D CAD data alone. It is unique and individualized—a one-to-one correlation with the physical part in the field—and, while it connects with the complete Digital Thread of product information extending back to requirements, system models, simulation inputs and results—along with engineering, quality, sourcing, and manufacturing data—it is not solely an engineering-focused dataset.

Users from each of these domains can deconstruct—or reconstruct—information from the Digital Twin, to use in their own unique domains. They can elect to explore one unique twin given its extraordinary (or ordinary) operating conditions; or they can look across the whole fleet for generalized insights. How well did a physical product meet its expected requirements? Traverse the Digital Thread from the physical product in the field back to the requirements information about how it should’ve performed to find out. What impact did a particular manufacturing plant, timeframe, supplier, or tooling choice have on the performance of a set of serial numbers associated with it? What quality issues arose during critical usage or environmental conditions experienced by physical products, and how can the products themselves yield more information about the potential root causes of these issues? Examine them. How should marketing and sales teams position upsells and new features to better meet their customers’ needs and enhance their experience with the product? Gather these insights from Digital Twins.

Connections between the Digital Twin and its Digital Thread makes this "Digital Twin Time Machine” useful in a wide variety of applications across organizations. And the unique ability of the Aras platform to manage Digital Twin data in a fully connected way with data from across the product lifecycle upstream makes all of these rich applications for twin data possible.

Aras Innovator can manage as little or as much Digital Thread and Digital Twin information as you choose. A single platform housing them both makes for a rich user experience while navigating and visualizing end-to-end product lifecycle information, adding value to PLM applications from requirements through sustainment across your organization. But the Digital Twin does not just look backward in time. It can help product development engineer new solutions for the future: the work of the palette…

The Palette

Finally, the digital twin as it is realized on the Aras platform is a palette: a model to adjust and add new parameters to in order to envision a new future for your product, your business, and your customers. A digital twin is not only a window on current and past experiences for your product in the field; it allows you to explore and realize future possibilities for product and business strategies.

In Aras Innovator, a Digital Twin is not just a collection of operational data, or snapshots collected in time for the sake of creating a historical record of physical performance in the field. And it’s not just a pilot project limited to one product or one instance of a product for one limited, pre-defined use case. Rather, the Digital Twin in Aras Innovator builds a living, dynamic model of your current products, enhanced with their operational and service information, suitable for the use cases you’ve already defined or for those you develop next.

As a model of the physical world accessible in the virtual world, Digital Twins can be accessed and used for further exploration, analysis, and learning, to inform new maintenance strategies, new business opportunities, and new engineering possibilities. At ACE 2021, you’ll see a demonstration of how companies can apply new operational conditions experienced by the digital twin to past designs representing expected usage conditions, helping maintenance and engineering teams to understand and accommodate for the impact of heretofore unpredictable conditions. Simulation can leverage digital twin data to evaluate how real-world conditions that weren’t accommodated for during design and play out what happens when the as-designed model is subjected to them digitally.

And unlike physical models in the field, the Digital Twin represents an in-flight product that can continue to be iterated on with new design possibilities, in small or in large ways. Do you want to simulate potential new operating conditions on an exact model of a real-world product in the field? The Digital Twin connects with Simulation Management. Do you need to connect new functionality via software updates with a fleet of physical models in the field, to improve their functionality and your customers’ experience? Learn where they’re needed and deploy them. Do you need insights into what future maintenance strategies your business could deploy to make the user experience more seamless? Use the data you find across digital twins to apply and analyze new ways to streamline resource use across the actual maintenance needs your digital twins have been experiencing. Find out how in the blog, How the Digital Twin Supports Maintenance Effectiveness. With the digital twin in Aras, the future possibilities for your business are available to try out on a digital fleet: risk-free, accurate, and connected to the product development teams that need them.

Digital Twin Core: Only Aras

The Digital Twin Core application in Aras Innovator does not limit your team to a narrow pilot project for digital twins. It offers a fully in-production application suitable for any industry’s product offerings. It does not reside on a separate software tool but is an integral part of the Aras Innovator platform, with its data accessible to and visible from the full complement of Aras PLM applications, requirements through maintenance. It fulfills the promise of PLM as a truly end-to-end lifecycle management platform spanning organizations, teams, processes, and data. And, it is a resource to use when exploring the possibilities for your product and your business ecosystem.

Don’t miss all the ways we’ll feature the Digital Twin at this year’s ACE conference, including a 30-minute demonstration of our Digital Twin Core application, Predict and Simulate the Future with the Digital Twin, and a breakout session led by our Digital Twin product manager Graeme Taylor, Digital Twins, Life Control and Beyond. Where are we going?

How to Manage Quality in Aras Innovator

Jill Newberg — Fri, 19 Mar 2021 14:21:00 GMT

How do you manage quality, how does Aras manage quality, and how do you connect quality with engineering data to ensure it doesn’t sit alone a silo, not making a real difference?

Check out the answers below… and learn more at our ACE 2021 presentation, Plan and Track Quality Throughout the Digital Thread, complete with a demo and discussion delivered by our Product Manager for Quality Planning and Quality Systems applications:

How does your organization manage quality?

Proactive Quality: If you said “before there’s a problem,” you’re talking about quality planning: methods like Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) applied to the design phase (DFMEA) and the process planning phase (PFMEA) to analyze potential failures in a product and either design them out or design-in ways to mitigate them.

Reactive Quality: If you said “with careful, comprehensive corrective actions,” looking across systems (customer complaints, problem reports, manufacturing nonconformances, unexpected maintenance, etc.) for commonly-experienced failures, analyzing where their common root cause could be, and implementing both corrective and preventive measures to avoid them in the future, you’re talking about CAPAs: Corrective Action / Preventive Action plans.

Pervasive Quality: If you said “both”, you are thinking about quality as a holistic, full-product-lifecycle approach that needs to permeate all phases including requirements definition; system modeling; hardware, electronics, and software engineering processes; manufacturing; maintenance planning and execution; and even sustainment and retirement activities.

How does Aras manage quality?

Proactive, Reactive, and Pervasive: Aras thinks about all 3 approaches, offering a complete Quality Management System (QMS) with unique applications for Quality Planning and Quality Systems that can be leveraged as a seamlessly integrated part of the product lifecycle in Aras Innovator PLM.

A Whole-Lifecycle Approach: Aras Innovator combines proactive approaches (DFMEA, PFMEA) with reactive ones (CAPA, PRs, nonconformances, maintenance issues, and more). Both types of approaches to quality can be tightly connected with parts information, manufacturing process planning, documents and other product information, workflows, and change management processes across one PLM platform. This allows quality to be designed-in and to persist as the product evolves.

Persistent Quality: With Aras, quality management never just happens in a silo, so it can be more than a “check in the box” used solely for compliance purposes. Rather, it serves as a strategic reference point that can be updated and evolved as products develop and change throughout their lifecycles. And when new, unexpected issues arise, quality management can feed information about problems, causes, solutions and improvements back to other teams across the lifecycle who need to address them. Potential issues defined early on in the product lifecycle can be traced throughout a product’s evolution to be sure they are appropriately mitigated; and new issues that arise can be managed and avoided both in the field and in next-generation products.

What PLM data should connect to quality?

The Digital Thread and Quality: The short answer? All of it. As a single platform capable of managing product information from the end-to-end product lifecycle, Aras Innovator allows quality information to be seamlessly connected with other product development information. This creates a Digital Thread of traceability and connectivity that allow changes in engineering and manufacturing data to alert quality and keep their teams always “in the loop”:

CAPA and Engineering Change: Problem reports can be generated from any issue you may face (customer complaints, manufacturing nonconformances, unexpected issues in maintenance and service) and connected with a Corrective Action / Preventive Action Plan (CAP) that includes standard steps in a CAPA process like hold / stop ship, root cause analysis in a variety of formats including 8D and 5Whys, corrective and preventive actions taken, and more. Or, this process can be easily configured to follow your organization’s unique steps. The output of a CAPA can be an Engineering Change to address the problem with a formal change process in Aras. Workflows can be applied across any step to collect an auditable trail of reviews, approvals, and sign-offs.
Design Quality and Parts Data: A design FMEA is based on parts information, analyzing the risks associated with all the ways a child part could fail and its effects on higher-level parent components throughout the system. In Aras Innovator, fields in an FMEA can be directly linked with part information. This means, when parts information changes, the quality team can be alerted to the change, connect directly with the part, and evaluate whether or not the change impacts the quality analysis and requires an update across the FMEA.
Process Quality and Production Steps: Manufacturing Process Planning in Aras Innovator takes a process-oriented approach, allowing the user to build the process steps first and add manufacturing parts to them; or build the mBOM first and add process steps once it’s built. The two approaches work together, allowing for a hybrid approach that meets users’ needs. From a quality perspective, this means that steps in the process plan can be linked with steps in a Process FMEA on the platform, and alert the quality user when a manufacturing process step has been changed or updated: similar to how a change in parts alerts users in the Design FMEA that the quality analysis may need to be updated.
Closed-Loop Quality: When the output of a CAPA introduces a new potential risk that the Design or Process FMEA did not anticipate, the “Preventive Action” step can also indicate the need to update the DFMEA or PFMEA. This “closes the loop” for the quality team, structuring a systematic, automated, and accountable feedback loop that ensures every quality issue is captured as a potential future risk for analysis and mitigation in next-generation products.

A Platform Approach to Quality: What difference does a platform make? The Aras Innovator platform has these connections built-in because it offers a common set of services across all of its applications—one foundational technology that all applications draw from to create a common user experience, a fully connected data model, centralized ways to manage communication, visualization, change and configuration, and more. A platform offers more than “integrated” applications—it offers the feel of one, seamless application environment encompassing quality, engineering, manufacturing, systems models, requirements, simulation management, digital twins, and so on.

Quality Your Way: It also means that Quality Management Systems (including the whole scope of quality functionality: proactive, reactive, and these in-depth connections across our applications) in Aras Innovator can be fully customized to meet your unique business processes.

Compliance You Define: For example, FMEAs can point to requirements and elements of systems models managed in Aras—functional and logical elements—instead of being linked to parts. This fulfills a more functional approach to the FMEA: an approach that is more and more common given the advance of complex, highly technical products relying on systems models that weave the inner workings of software, electrical/electronic, and mechanical functionality together before a single physical engineering part is ever selected or designed. To see a demonstration of this, don’t miss our ACE demo session.
Digital and Physical Verification: It also means that quality analyses and quality management processes can point to Simulation data managed in Aras Innovator as virtual verification steps, to test the design virtually and to keep a record of its success, creating another layer of “closed loop quality” and digital verification to demonstrate accountability to a quality plan.
Evolving Quality Applications: And, it means that our platform will never stop evolving with you: as your needs for quality connected with product lifecycle information and process steps evolves, you can continually advance the way Aras Innovator captures your quality information and matches your unique steps toward better managing quality across the lifecycle.

Where can you learn more?

Check out the ACE session, Plan and Track Quality Throughout the Digital Thread, at our digital event this April to see a demonstration of Quality Management Systems in Aras and how the platform can be customized and configured to meet the evolving needs for quality management in your industry.

Accelerate, Collaborate, and Empower Your Digital Transformation at ACE 2021

Jill Newberg — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 16:00:00 GMT

Many businesses seem to be in a state of constant change nowadays, and that can be unsettling for everyone. But what we’re transforming from will cause us a lot less worry when we know what we’re transforming to.

That’s the subject of three ACE 2021 demo sessions this year: “main stage” sessions delivered once a day throughout this fully online event, directly following each morning’s two keynote presenters from Aras and from industry.

This year we’re demonstrating three unique transformations: accelerating the incorporation of new technologies into your products early on in design and development; collaborating across domains to quickly pivot to new markets, and empowering maintenance teams to help companies realize new business models. And we’re using the latest features in Aras Innovator to do it.

Let’s preview each of these transformations in turn, including some of the new features you’ll be able to see in action during the event. And, if you haven’t already done so, please be sure to register now!

New Technologies: Because Software Is Eating the World.

Systems Thinking and the Design of Complex Products

Entering new markets with heightened regulatory requirements can drive significant changes to products already in development and to those in the R&D pipeline. But new requirements can be driven from anywhere: customer sources, new business opportunities, strategic changes, or competitive pressures.

For all of these reasons and more, companies are increasingly turning to software onboard their products to expand what those products can do. Which means that new requirements need to be considered with respect to their impact across all of a product’s related systems: software, hardware, mechanical, and electrical/electronic. Plus, products don’t exist in a vacuum. Designing a complex system with an eye to its role in a broader system (that is, systems of systems design) adds further complexity to an already siloed, disjointed process across multiple teams involved in the early concept design stages, each managing their data in traditionally siloed, disconnected tools.

Aras helps teams manage this complexity. In Aras, requirements from many sources can be managed centrally, connected by the digital thread to elements of the systems model that fulfill them. That way, when requirements change or new requirements are added, the system model in Aras can be synched with changes in its original authoring tool, reflecting the updated design. Then, simulations downstream that leverage the system model can access the changes and be used to digitally verify that the new requirements are being met. This is possible even when the simulation processes being managed in Aras take place in complex external tools, simulating software- and hardware-in the loop to ensure the design will meet its new requirements.

New Markets: How Fast Can Your Teams Pivot?

Collaborate to Innovate Across the Digital Thread

When a new business opportunity arises, how fast can your teams execute a significant product change across the many domains and teams engaged throughout the product lifecycle: in marketing, design, sourcing, manufacturing, and documentation?

With new features in requirements engineering, visualization, variant management, and other applications across the Aras platform, we’ll show you how quickly teams can define and add a product variant—expanding the reuse of existing data and helping to accelerate a redesign to take hold of a lucrative new market opportunity.

When that change needs to reflect new hardware, software, and electrical / electronic components, change management on the platform, with seamless visual collaboration, can easily engage teams inside and outside the organization to complete the change. Finally, teams across sourcing, manufacture, and technical documentation can easily update their project deliverables to reflect the new design: helping your company pivot to new markets just as fast as those markets change.

New Business Models: For the Rest of the Product Lifecycle.

Predict and Simulate the Future with Digital Twins

Companies are fast discovering that innovative business strategies like product-as-a-service can shake up markets and give new entrants—or long-standing leaders—a competitive edge. But these strategies require a better understanding of product performance, operational events, and service than most PLM providers offer.

Aras Innovator is different. In this demonstration, check out how Digital Twins in Aras can be leveraged during the Maintenance phase of a product’s lifecycle to monitor and predict performance, plan for advanced maintenance strategies, simulate real-world operating conditions, and improve a company’s ability to update or redesign products in the field.

When their teams can better manage assets in the field with a view into their expected and actual performance, companies can improve the profitability of their maintenance activities and advance new maintenance strategies. With digital twins of products in the field, companies can prevent potential issues, enhance the customer experience, derive new value through upsell, and improve next-generation product designs using all they’ve learned.

Don’t Miss Our Demo Sessions!

Join us for ACE 2021 to explore the possibilities for your next digital transformation and hear from fellow members of our community how theirs are succeeding, with Aras Innovator: the only low-code PLM platform on the market today.

Accelerate, Collaborate, and Empower Your Digital Transformation at ACE 2021

Jill Newberg — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 14:05:00 GMT

Understanding Variant Management in Aras Innovator

Jill Newberg — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 16:40:00 GMT

Who doesn’t like more choices? Modular architecture enables an efficient configure-to-order strategy for product families and product platforms. This allows manufacturers to offer increased choices to their customers while optimizing cost and ensuring manufacturability.

Designing for product platforms with modular architecture is a complex task. Handling different product variants makes it even more complex because it requires careful organization of which options and combinations can work together. Aras Innovator can help. Our forthcoming Variant Management application helps users manage product variants from the start. Try it today in our Variant Management sample application available on github.

To learn the key concepts you’ll need to try it out, check out this video: Product Variability across the Digital Thread. Or, learn more about these concepts below.

https://youtu.be/-2ORRQmYb6k

Features, Options, and Rules

Understanding Variant Management in Aras Innovator relies on a few key concepts. First, you can think of any product as having a set of Features. Features are characteristics of a product such as material and size. In Aras Innovator, Options are discrete choices for each feature. A Size feature can have options like XS, S, M, L, or XL.

In Aras Innovator, users can author Rules that allow or restrict certain option combinations. Rules might stem from marketing requirements, technical compatibility, manufacturing requirements, regulatory requirements, or other reasons. Managing rules is done with a simple, intuitive “matrix” interface; or, with a helpful rule editor that helps you author the expressions.

In the Aras Innovator Variant Management application, you don’t have to manage variability all at one level of a product. You can divide them into smaller sets of features, options and rules. For a Bicycle family of products, for example, you could have the Control System and the Transmission variability represented separately, each with their own sets of rules. That way, different groups that engineer these systems can define and maintain their rules just for that system. Then, at a higher level of the “Bicycle” variability structure, rules can be written that span the Control System and the Transmission.

At the highest level of the product variability definition, features, options and rules are aggregated up from all of the lower levels, providing one central way to view and manage them. Or, you can view and manage them at the lower levels as well.

Breakdown Structures

In Aras Innovator, Breakdown Structures are used to decompose products into systems and subsystems based on modular architecture principles. Breakdown structures can include both fixed and variable components. Fixed components may include—for example—a user’s manual that is included no matter what options are selected for a bicycle.

The Breakdown Structure is represented in Aras as an overloaded structure containing all fixed and variable components—that is, all options available against their assigned features are visible.

Variable Components

Variable Components are containers for assets (such as Parts and Documents) that fulfill a specific purpose. For example, on the “Bicycle” family of products, the “Handlebar” variable component contains a number of Handlebar part numbers for a number of different handlebar types (e.g. flat, drop and raiser bar) and widths. Each part number in the Variable Component has its Usage Condition that identifies its valid usage. With a simple configuration, users can add other item types as assets, like Requirements, Software Items, and so on.

Variant Resolution

In Aras Innovator, variant resolution can be full or partial, where a BoM may be resolved from 150% down to 100% for full resolution; or, if the user wants to examine “What if” scenarios, they can leave the BoM partially unresolved. To resolve the structure, the user begins selecting desired options. As rules restricting certain option combinations are processed, options that are unavailable for selection based on those Rules are indicated in red text.

In this way, a resolved structure can result in an engineering Bill of Materials (eBOM) that represents the selected variant for use throughout the platform.

To view the full product demonstration, visit the Aras webinar replay, Product Variability across the Digital Thread and learn more about Aras Variant Management. Or, download the sample Variant Management application, available on github, and try it out today!

Maintaining a Digital Thread Across the Supply Chain

Jill Newberg — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 14:34:00 GMT

For today’s global companies, creating a streamlined and cohesive value chain requires coordinating product design and development work across a complex ecosystem of third-party suppliers, partners, and contractors.

In this environment, ensuring security and accelerating time-to-value could be mutually exclusive goals. But the ability to offer suppliers secure access to Aras Innovator provides both visibility into just the information suppliers need to see, and the means to update it efficiently.

See how in the video below. Or, watch the full-length demonstration here: Connect and Secure Your Product Ecosystem with the Digital Thread.

www.youtube.com/watch

Visualize Your Complete Digital Thread

In Aras Innovator, when engineering teams work in a vibrant ecosystem with third-party suppliers, they can easily visualize which partner organizations are responsible for which parts. This takes place in Graph Navigation, which can be easily configured by your administrator to visualize, navigate, and explore your unique Digital Thread, including both external organizations and internal processes.

Collaborate in Context

When changes to a part or system include a suppler-owned subassembly, as in the case of this SD storage and software component, collaboration between OEM and supplier can take place in the context of Aras Innovator, so as not compromise security or traceability.

The secure Visual Collaboration interface available on any item in Aras Innovator ensures that only users with access—internal or external to the organization—can see the messages relevant to them. Anyone with permissions, even users without a CAD license, can add and view 3D markups and annotations to help support the change request, while simultaneously discussing issues in real time across the platform.

Control Supplier Access

When supplier-owned parts are under change, adding them to a change order can automatically kick off an email notification to the supplier, complete with a link right to the change item in Aras Innovator.

Suppliers have a view into the Aras platform that is unique to their permissions, allowing them to only view and edit a limited set of all the data stored on the platform. With permissions, they can see the information the OEM provides—like markups and collaboration—and they can securely communicate back. But other data across the platform and even across an individual item, including its form and relationship data, can be excluded from a supplier’s view, ensuring the security of your valuable IP.

Implement Change across the Extended Enterprise

When the change is returned from the supplier, the OEM can view any markup they return with the change: eliminating the need to go searching across emails or chat tools to find the information they are looking for. Instead, it’s right in context with the task they need to do.

Streamlined supplier collaboration in Aras Innovator works across multiple organizations, suppliers, and partners, providing a secure and accelerated change process that includes notifications, collaboration, and visualization to support accuracy and efficiency.

See the complete demonstration here, Connect and Secure Your Product Ecosystem with the Digital Thread, or download Aras Innovator yourself to try it out today.

A Platform to Own the Lifecycle

Jill Newberg — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 14:44:00 GMT

The beginning of the new year is a time to reflect on how far we’ve come, and to see if past predictions have aged well. While no one could have predicted the events of last year, few would argue that, when such unimagined challenges arise, what really matters becomes strikingly clear. This is as true in our professional lives as it is in our personal ones.

A previous Aras blog, Own the Lifecycle, predicted what manufacturers could need to succeed in an unknown future market: one that is ever-transforming as new, unpredictable business and technology challenges emerge. In this blog, we’ll examine a few of these past ideas to see if they’ve held up to one of the toughest years we’ve all had, and to explore more about what it means to Own the Lifecycle of your product data and business processes.

Ownership is Access to Your Data

“Global organizations are rethinking how they use product data.”

This statement may be more true now than it has ever been. Teams across the product lifecycle suddenly find themselves members of a nearly all-remote workforce and need access from anywhere, at any time, to the critical product information required to do their jobs. Without this access, the impact on product development is clear: especially in a workplace where my kids’ online classes have a stranglehold on my productivity.

Which begs the question, what more can be accomplished with access to more data from the end-to-end lifecycle of your products: from every domain, including the customer’s experience, service needs, operating conditions, the supply chain, and data currently stored in external tools? When you can no longer complete work by “walking around”—and other in-person, manual processes and workarounds (Excel spreadsheets, anyone?)—the need for access to complete, accurate, and up-to-date digital information quickly, to drive critical product development decisions, is brought into sharp relief.

Ownership is the Ability to Change

“[Manufacturers that own the lifecycle can] strengthen their ability to innovate and execute, and to quickly adapt to changing market realities.”

Without the agility to quickly respond to the truths you find in your data, that information won’t do you much good. Over half of the respondents in a survey of 890 CIOs from across 23 countries reported they seek “a more nimble technology platform” to address unpredictability in their markets.

Owning something means you can quickly and easily change it, and that ability to change, with agility and purpose, is at the heart of Digital Transformation. The ubiquity of the term belies the fact that organizations are having a hard time changing their existing digital systems. If those systems house your digital data—your intellectual property—and the process of changing them to accommodate a new strategy is really that painful, do you own your data at all?

If this past year has taught us anything about global businesses, it’s that an inability to keep transforming as worldwide markets change and new technologies emerge leaves companies open to risk, limiting their strategic advantage. Your company should be able to rely on its technology platform to help it continually evolve.

Ownership is Strategic

“We tend to picture PLM as a linear progression from conception to end-of-life, but I maintain it should be a recursive circular Digital Thread—a cycle that leads to additional business, more competitive products, a reduced time to innovate, and a much tighter relationship with the customer.”

Strategy defines a set of choices. For product and services companies, successfully driving innovation within your offerings to support new product strategies requires agility and speed, along with the means to connect your teams with information about each change so they can all respond in a concerted way: quickly, efficiently, and accurately accelerating that new innovation to market.

Technology to own this lifecycle of product and service improvements can sustain your business throughout these repeating cycles: from one emerging trend to the next, from one market upheaval to the next, and from one set of customer requirements to the next. Maintaining your product changes centrally, and making them easily accessible across the extended enterprise, is key to transforming your business strategy. A platform technology that can support and accelerate this cycle of change is a strategic imperative.

Ownership Relies on Your Technology

“When a change is made to a product or process in one part of the thread, that change should be automatically disseminated to each stakeholder along the chain… This is easier said than done due to the complexities of existing legacy systems—based on outdated architectures and sub-optimal processes—that exist in many manufacturing organizations.”

This system of cascading changes—that is, automatically updating related information and alerting relevant personnel to the change across connected tools and systems—describes a complex, interwoven Digital Thread of product information capable of traversing your extended enterprise.

What platform capabilities are essential to constructing this Digital Thread? The right platform will offer fully connected applications, purpose-built for users within their unique domains, while maintaining a familiar user experience to make it easy to understand and consume data from other domains and applications. It will be open, to connect data across disparate systems while still allowing teams to work in the authoring tools they prefer.

What’s more, the right platform to build this Digital Thread must be customizable. No single organization has data and processes identical to another’s, which means that, to capture and instantiate your organization’s unique Digital Thread, applications must be able to be customized or built from scratch while still maintaining connections to other applications across the platform.

The speed with which applications can either be customized or built anew must match the velocity of change in global markets. Digital Transformation is not “one and done”: it is continuous, ever-changing, and core to your business strategy. Customizations should, likewise, be agile and iterative—quickly launched, tested, and improved upon.

Finally, the platform should remain fully upgradable, despite customizations, as the vendor adds new features and capabilities. If any part of the process is a waiting game—a time sink that delays product and process innovations for your business—or a money pit of customizations and upgrades that incurs a cost comparable to that of purchasing another new enterprise system all over again, it may be time to reevaluate the platform you’re entrusting your valuable IP to.

Ownership Can Advance Your Business

“The days of making decisions in the dark are long gone. Managing data in silos and making products in a vacuum has no place in your customer’s future—it’s about providing complete connectivity throughout your business’s lifecycle and using that product data to drive better business decisions.”

When companies need to quickly change direction, a technology platform that lets them seamlessly execute this change, try it out and get feedback, and then change some more in response to what they’ve learned, is critical. New technologies are always emerging that companies will want to leverage onboard their products or to improve their back-end systems, enhancing the customer experience, adding business value, improving the work of their product development teams, or all of the above. Among PLM technologies, only the Aras platform is built for industrial low-code development so teams can customize or create applications; seamlessly integrate new tools, data types, processes, and teams; and upgrade quickly and easily, free from additional costs.

As we’ve seen this past year, unpredictable events change markets quickly. Your business lifecycle, like your product lifecycle, is a cyclical force that can learn from what has come before it and impart wisdom to change and improve the next cycle, offering new advantages for your customers and for your internal teams: if you have the right technology to build upon.

Check out our previous blog, Own the Lifecycle, or read our eBook, Own the Lifecycle: Sustainable Business Transformation, to discover the connection between the Aras platform and successful Digital Transformation initiatives.

A Platform to Own the Lifecycle

Jill Newberg — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 14:44:00 GMT

Ownership is Access to Your Data

“Global organizations are rethinking how they use product data.”

Ownership is the Ability to Change

“[Manufacturers that own the lifecycle can] strengthen their ability to innovate and execute, and to quickly adapt to changing market realities.”

Ownership is Strategic

Ownership Relies on Your Technology

Ownership Can Advance Your Business

Accelerate Design Reviews with Aras Innovator

Jill Newberg — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 16:46:00 GMT

To better compete in quickly advancing industries, companies need to accelerate how products get to market. Offering new technologies first helps companies gain an edge over the competition; and becoming more efficient without sacrificing quality creates an opportunity to pass savings on to customers with better-value offerings while investing critical resources into the next innovation.

But gaining these advantages means increasing the velocity of change across your organization. And increasing the speed and volume of changes is not only difficult: it may also leave you open to risks, depending on how you manage change today.

It’s no surprise that manual processes to manage change and design reviews take up valuable time and leave teams open to risk. Have you ever had that “This could’ve been an email!” feeling? Design review meetings take up teams’ time preparing custom reports to review changes. This is essential, of course, to thoroughly analyze the impact of any change and to gain approval from the multitude of stakeholders all impacted by a single change. But despite all this effort, teams could still be exposed to risk due to the manual nature of the process, if it takes place outside the digital thread of product information. It might even be hard for organizations to judge how much time is wasted in this work: doing so sounds like another report (and another meeting!) to me.

Aras has a better way. Check it out in the video below; or, view the full-length demo here: Accelerating Product Development with Collaborative Design Review.

www.youtube.com/watch

So why all the manual work? It must be important, if so many teams are stuck doing it. Of course, it’s to reduce any hint of risk that the change might introduce. But we can reduce the risk without all the overhead? Let’s see how:

Change affects more than just the item being changed.

Change is cascading: it affects parts in the product hierarchy both “above” (parents) and “below” (children) the part being changed. That’s why Aras offers the Impact Matrix to automatically draw the items above and below the part into the change process, to fully demonstrate the impact of the change during design review.

Change impacts more people than just the one creating the change.

Any stakeholder with a role in the change should have visibility into the change being considered, which is why Aras change management kicks off notifications to individuals involved in the change process, to let them know it’s happening. For a demonstration of the Impact Matrix and Notifications in Aras Change Management, check out this video + blog.

Change impacts product quality.

You don’t want to initiate a change without checking out its impact on the product’s quality. Teams involved in quality planning (design FMEA) and manufacturing process planning (process FMEA) also receive notification that a change has taken place. Check out this demo to see the quality-change connection in Aras Innovator.

Change is under close scrutiny.

With so much at stake, everyone in the organization has their eyes on change: from top executives who need to understand how efficient or costly change processes are, to managers who need to understand and maximize their team resources in improving products; to end-users who need to know their day-to-day tasks. This full-length demo, Accelerating Product Development with Collaborative Design Review, and the video above, both show clearly how each role can create and view reports against change processes in Aras Innovator, from the highest levels of performance across the organization to the everyday tasks of individual engineers.

Change shouldn’t include workarounds.

Keeping critical changes “outside the system” – in workarounds like emails, chat tools, and other manual processes – introduces risk to the change process. To see how Aras Innovator lets users keep all discussions about changes in-context with product development data and internal to the system, preserving both “tribal knowledge” and discussions alongside formal change processes without compromising the security of your data and processes, check out this video + blog on Collaboration in Aras Innovator.

If you’ve ever felt like “this could’ve been an email”, check out one of our many Change Management resources above. Or, download Aras Innovator here to try change management out for yourself.

Tracking the Operational Life of Your Digital Twins

Jill Newberg — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 18:21:00 GMT

The Aras Innovator application Digital Twin Core creates and manages individual physical part structures to create a digital record for any physical product operating in the field. This can include every change to the part as it evolves throughout its lifetime.

In a forthcoming release, Digital Twin Core introduces Life Controls, including Life Parameters, Life Polices, and Part Policies. Together, these life controls will help companies to track the operational life of each Digital Twin in the field.

For more information on why this feature is so compelling, check out our previous blog. To see a brief overview of Life Controls in action, check out the video below:

https://youtu.be/xwDpkHWiMK4

To watch this full-length demo, visit Planes, Trains, Ships, and Rockets—Extending Your Digital Twin.

Each component of Life Controls in the Aras Innovator Digital Twin Core application is defined below:

Life Parameters

Life Parameters are variables that keep track of how long the part has been operating for. These can include cycles, distance, revolutions, repetitions—like landings, for tracking an aircraft—hours or calendar dates; you get the idea.

There are a number of different Life Parameters included standard with the Digital Twin Core application, and – as always – administrators can build their own in Aras Innovator.

For example, the Life Parameter Cycles Since New measures from the beginning of the product’s operational life and cannot be reset, like the odometer on your car. Another, Cycles Since Repair, can be reset to begin at the repair event and measure when the next repair is due: the way a trip odometer in your car works. Still another one, Shelf Life, can flag you when a part is beyond its “use or sell by date” and must be withdrawn from service. Shelf Life Recertification is another parameter, which addresses the needs of adhesives or solvents in inventory to be used beyond a hard expiration date. Another one, Maximum Hard Cycles, indicates the operational limit of a part. And finally, Periodic Inspection indicates the date for part inspection whether it is in inventory or installed on an assembly.

Life Policies

When Life Parameters need to be applied to a part or parts, they are first grouped together into a single Life Policy. When applied to many parts, Life Policies help to standardize how all of the parts are tracked and measured.

Part Policies

When a Life Policy is applied to an engineering Part, it is known as a Part Policy. A Part Policy is, in effect, a plan or blueprint for how the part should be monitored and tracked. When the engineering part is used to create a Physical Part—or, a Digital Twin, in Aras—the Physical Part inherits the Part Policy and all of the associated Life Parameters.

Current Life Values

Creating a physical part in Aras Innovator that has an attached Part Policy generates the digital container in the Physical Part where the real-world values for each Life Parameter are recorded. These real-world values are known as current life values, and they track the age, in those original Life Parameters, of the part on hand.

Each Current Life Value represents the current, up-to-date value for the life parameter as it has been tracked against the part in the field.

Life History Log

When an event impacts the life parameter, like a repair that sets values back to 0, those values are retained in the Life History Log, which is planned for a future release.

Conclusion: Managing Digital Twin Complexity

In the Digital Twin Core application, child parts have their own Life Parameters recorded independently of their parent parts. This enables different use cases, such as when the child part is removed from the parent part and repaired, or when it is refurbished and later installed on a new parent part.

Using Life Controls, many different types of life data can be collected and logged throughout the operational lifespan of any physical product using the Aras Digital Twin core application. This foundation allows companies to collect critical operational data for analysis, interpretation, and insights—to ultimately guide product upgrades and improvements, new customer experiences, new service planning needs, and much, much more.

To watch this full-length demo, visit Planes, Trains, Ships, and Rockets—Extending Your Digital Twin.

What Makes Digital Twins So Compelling?

Jill Newberg — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 20:49:00 GMT

Digital Twins represent physical parts in a digital world. They record and make accessible information about a part’s current real-world configuration, including repairs and modifications; along with all the data that went into creating it through connections to its Digital Thread of engineering information.

The forthcoming update to the Digital Twin core application in Aras Innovator will include a feature known as Life Control. With this logic, configuration information can include the part's life tracking data. This feature allows the user to define, assign, and maintain life parameters for serial and lot/batch controlled parts for your chosen industry. For a 30-minute demonstration of Life Control, visit the recent Aras Innovator demo series webinar: Planes, Trains, Ships, and Rockets—Extending Your Digital Twin.

But what makes Digital Twins so compelling?

1: A Digital Twin is Possible for Any Asset, in Any Industry

To recap, the Digital Twin Core application in Aras Innovator offers a serialized part Bill of Materials to help users organize and manage multiple digital twins in the field—even those with very large bills of material. These extensive and detailed records fulfill the latter half of the PLM (product lifecycle management) promise, starting at the point in time when a theoretical product that has been conceived, designed, and developed in PLM becomes a physical product, and extending throughout its manufacture, commission, operation, service, and decommission.

And this bill of materials is not static. In Aras Innovator, it is equipped to record every change to a component part or assembly: including the new serial number, the time and date of the change, and other information vital to maintaining a real-world record of an actual physical part operating in the field. This enables management of the oft-forgotten part of the product lifecycle, overlooked by the PLM software industry for many years, and Aras makes it possible.

2: A Digital Twin is Connected to Its Digital Thread

For any asset in the field with a Digital Twin managed in Aras Innovator, you can navigate its Digital Thread, starting from information about that physical asset and extending back through to the engineering data that was created as part of its development: including its requirements, system models, simulation results, supply chain information, manufacturing processes, technical documentation, service information, customer information, and more.

To see how, check it out here—The Aras Approach to the Digital Twin: What Makes it Different? All of this is possible in just the first release of our Digital Twin Core application. So what’s next for the Digital Twin?

3: A Digital Twin Knows How It Should Perform

Our forthcoming release of Digital Twin Core will offer Life Control for any parts that require life tracking with a set of new features: Life Parameters, Life Policies, and Part Policies. To better understand what this means, think back to the advice you always heard from your Dad about when to change the oil in your car: “3 months or 3,000 miles.” Let’s see how that analogy applies:

Life Parameters: These are operational variables that define how the life of a product is measured: mileage (3,000 miles, in our analogy) or time (3 months). In Aras Innovator, Life Parameters can indicate cycles, distance, revolutions, repetitions (for example, landings, in the case of aircraft), hours, minutes—you get the idea. The possibilities are exhaustive, allowing Aras Innovator to cover nearly every industry’s Digital Twin needs. Aras Innovator has even built in the capability to specify maximum Life operating limits that can be tailored to specific serialized parts. You can even record the shelf expiry life of some consumables like adhesives which are no longer usable beyond a specified manufacturer's date.

Life Policies: In our analogy, more than one variable can and often does help a company track the life of a product. A power-generating windmill turbine airfoil blade may operate for 1000s of hours a year but another measure of activity maybe revolutions. So, a grouping of Life Parameters is a Life Policy. Life Policies can be and very often are applied to more than one part (if you also top off your windshield washer fluid with every oil change, for example). This helps companies standardize the way similar parts are monitored and tracked in the field.

Part Policies: When an engineering part is assigned a Life Policy, it’s known as a Part Policy. In our analogy, this is a policy applied to the vehicle model you were cruising around in at the time your Dad made that exhortation about changing your oil with some degree of frequency. Now, mind you, this has nothing to do with the unique vehicle you owned and whether or not you followed his advice—it merely refers to the recommendation for all vehicles of that type. What you actually did with his advice is covered next …

4: A Digital Twin Knows How It Did Perform

Everything we’ve just discussed is not the Digital Twin yet: it’s just the set-up for an actual, individual instantiation of the Twin. Once an engineering Part in Aras Innovator has a Physical Part equivalent in the field, that Physical Part can inherit the Life Policy assigned to the Part Policy. That means the part knows what life parameters need to be tracked to measure the life and now has a digital container for information about how it is actually performing: for example, during a maintenance inspection and after 10,000 operating hours since installation, the part is still in serviceable condition.

In other words: did you change the oil at 3,000 miles, or not? Recording actual life events happens on a twin-by-twin basis—that is, it is an individual value against an individual part in the field, of which there can be many. You may not have changed the oil as often as your Dad did – even if you drove the same type of car with the same Part Policy assigned by the manufacturer. The real-world information that tracks how your oil-changing habits varied from your Dad’s would be recorded on the physical part level in Aras Innovator for each of your vehicles.For oil changes, you would create a Life Parameter MCBNOC, or, Miles Consumed Before Next Oil Change.

5: A Digital Twin Can Enhance Your Customers’ Experience with Your Product

This is where Digital Twins get really compelling. Understanding how one part performed when it needed to be repaired, replaced, maintained, or simply checked is interesting; but rolling up metrics from a whole fleet full of parts across all of your Digital Twins in the field that experienced wear and tear suddenly equips your teams with a trove of information for use in the analysis of your product’s real-world performance.

These insights can be used to improve quality and reliability; to enable product as a service business strategies; to extend or contract warranty periods; to introduce new products or new upgrades that add value to customers; and to advance your customers’ experience with your products.

And it all begins with defining Life Controls—expected values for performance—that can be managed, assigned to engineering parts, and propagated to each Digital Twin in the field with forthcoming features in Aras Innovator. To see these features in action, check out the full demonstration here: Planes, Trains, Ships, and Rockets—Extending Your Digital Twin.

Demystifying Effectivity with Aras Innovator Version 12

Jill Newberg — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 16:54:00 GMT

Many companies use “150% Bills of Materials”, also called “overloaded BOMs”, to manage multiple part choices in complex products and to handle different product configurations in one place.

Effectivity is the condition determining whether to include or exclude an item in a valid configuration. Aras Innovator Version 12 manages Effectivity in a clear and streamlined new way: with an intuitive user experience, a simple and straightforward expression editor, and fast, powerful filtering. Check it out right here:

www.youtube.com/watch

Defining Effectivity

A single product structure can handle many different configurations by using effectivity. When an item is to be included in in some – but not all – of the configured structures, effectivity identifies the valid conditions for inclusion. Managing an overloaded, configurable structure via the use of effectivity is much more efficient than managing a separate BOM structure for each unique configuration instance.

The above image represents an overloaded, configurable BOM. There are two different Landing Gear Assemblies, and three different Engines that have effectivity conditions. One of these Landing Gears and Engines will be used in a specific configuration. The effectivity condition includes the product Model as well as a Unit number range. In the Unit number “5” configuration of “Model_A”, Landing Gear Assm 1 and Engine 3 are valid to use.

An Overview of Effectivity in Aras Innovator

Delivered standard in the Product Engineering application in Version 12, effectivity on Part-BOM relationships includes Model, Unit, and Date effectivity variables. For effectivity conditions using the Model variable, a simple way to think of it is: “For a given position in the Bill of Materials, Model A uses one part and Model B uses another part (and Models C and D can use other parts still)”. For Unit effectivity: “Units <= x use one part and Units >=x+1 use another part”. Finally, for date effectivity, “On or before date y, use one part; after date y use another part,” and so on. What’s more, you can combine effectivity variables. Use one part for Model A, or for Model B unit ranges 1 to 10, or for Model C until 12/31/2011”.

Model, Unit, and Date are not the only effectivity variables you can use in Aras Innovator. Administrators can easily create additional effectivity variables, of different types such as Date, Integer, List and Item. These variables can be used in combination with the standard effectivity variables, Model, Unit and Date. What’s more, users can create new Effectivity Scopes – not just use the Part/BOM scope we’ve been discussing so far. For example, Part-Document scope is another scope that companies can configure and customize. Put simply: this document is effective for this part under these conditions; and another document under those conditions. The possibilities are endless.

Viewing and Authoring Effectivity

With the necessary permissions in Aras Innovator, you can manage effectivity on any level of the BOM structure: against a single part or against a complex, multilevel assembly. The process is the same in both cases. Parts under the same parent item do not all need to have effectivity assigned to them.

In Aras, you will see any assigned Effectivity conditions listed in the Effectivity column in the BOM Structure relationship tab. To view one of these conditions in more detail, right-click on an expression listed in this column and select View Effectivity. A split-pane view opens, to view all effectivity conditions applied. From this view, effectivity conditions can be added or deleted. An existing effectivity condition can be edited by right clicking it and selecting Edit Effectivity. Ability to change a part’s effectivity is subject to permissions.

The effectivity editor helps you write valid effectivity expressions by offering the next logical option in the effectivity condition expression. In the below example, with “Model” effectivity variable selected, the possible values in the system for “Model” are offered. And with a valid selection for “Model”, continue typing to see the next logical parts of the expression: “AND” or “OR” to add another effectivity variable, like “Unit” or “Date”. With “Unit” selected, choose a starting unit and see the next logical step: greater than, equal to, greater than or equal to, less than, and so on. In this way, continue entering your effectivity expression with guided help from the system to ensure its validity.

Filtering on Effectivity

With effectivity conditions set on the BOM, it is time to filter the overloaded, configurable structure using your effectivity criteria. The new Set Effectivity Criteria button in the BOM Structure tab lets the user filter the 150% BOM with the criteria they just set. This command lets you filter down the 150% BOM to a 100% BOM. You can also partially resolve the structure.

To view the “100%” BOM, choose Set Effectivity Criteria and select a value for every effectivity variable used in the effectivity conditions on that BOM. The parts that are not valid for the selected values are filtered out in the resolved structure. To view a partially resolved BOM, leave some of the effectivity variables on the Set Effectivity Criteria dialog blank. Again, the parts that are not valid for the partial selections are filtered out from the resolved structure.

Using the Export to Excel button on the Tree Grid View tool bar, you can export the resolved structure to a spreadsheet.

Further Topics in Effectivity

Effectivity is not limited to the standard effectivity variables (Date, Model and Unit). It is easily configurable by your administrator to add other effectivity variables that fit your business needs. Effectivity can also be configured and customized on other relationships, like Part Document. These topics will be explored in future blogs.

Extending Multi-CAD Data to the Enterprise

Jill Newberg — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 15:14:00 GMT

When access to CAD data is limited to CAD designers, the only users that can realize the value of visualization, collaboration, and coordinated change based on a highly intuitive, graphical representation of the product are the users who created those representations in the first place. Getting visual data to users throughout the enterprise helps companies to extend the value of Multi-CAD data to more teams with more roles and responsibilities throughout the product’s lifecycle, even if they can’t access or use CAD tools. It also creates a single source of truth for Part information that can be connected to various other domains throughout the product’s lifecycle and governed by formal change processes.

But all this functionality still depends on the CAD data, and how companies manage it. Aras Innovator can manage Multi-CAD data created in external tools like SOLIDWORKS PDM, shown here. It also offers similar connectors to mechanical, electrical, and architectural CAD and product data management tools, all with similar, bi-directional synchronization to PLM data on the Aras platform. Check out how this works in the short video below. Or, explore it further in the full-length Webinar, Leveraging Aras PLM inside Your SOLIDWORKS Environment.

https://youtu.be/dvSJJerRYd4

Introduction: Why Leverage SOLIDWORKS Data in Aras PLM?

Aras PLM ensures that CAD designs, parts, and assemblies are maintained in a single source of truth as they change and evolve, with all parties across the lifecycle notified of—and collaborating in—those changes. And, it helps teams communicate within and across disciplines in clear, visual, and intuitive ways as designs evolve. Aras PLM offers both governance for formal change processes, like release management, change orders, requests, and notifications; along with capabilities for collaboration, allowing for the review, markup, and informal change requests by any team involved in the product’s lifecycle.

It can associate key documents, projects, and change processes or workflows with those parts, to keep all of the data that’s ancillary to the Part items organized and consistent as that data changes and evolves throughout the product’s lifecycle as well, alongside changes made to their parts. Finally, Aras PLM allows the part and assembly data to be connected with data generated by upstream and downstream functions throughout the product lifecycle, like information about their requirements, system models, simulation processes and results, quality planning and quality management, manufacturing processes, maintenance procedures, and so much more.

So how is it done?

Step 1: Register to Synchronize CAD and PLM Data

To prepare SOLIDWORKS data for management in PLM, the “Register” feature in the Aras Innovator SOLIDWORKS PDM connector provides for the bi-directional mapping of properties, part numbers, and configurations between the Aras PLM platform and SOLIDWORKS PDM.

Upon Registering, Parts and CAD documents are generated in Aras Innovator, along with part numbers—if the user chooses. But no CAD documents are attached until the user specifies. This creates “placeholders” in Aras where documents and related data can be connected, even if there are no CAD designs yet to represent each part. This helps design processes managed in PLM to happen concurrently with those managed in PDM, rather than sequentially, until they’re brought together at the right time based on the company’s business processes.

Step 2: Submit to PLM Creates the BOM Structure and Viewables for Collaboration and Markup

CAD documents are not attached to their Parts in Aras Innovator until this step. “Submit to PLM” generates a full BOM structure in Aras Innovator automatically, matching 1:1 with the CAD data structure from SOLIDWORKS PDM. This step also generates viewables. In the demonstration above, we’ve used the Aras Conversion Server—included with the platform—to complete this task, but the way these are created is configurable by your administrator.

With the viewables created, any user with permissions can leverage the Visual Collaboration feature in Aras Innovator. Here, with just an internet browser, users can view and rotate the CAD data; explode, measure, cross-section, and select and hide/show parts in the structure; and mark up the 3D model to smoothly and visually collaborate with other users across the enterprise. Visual Collaboration takes a snapshot of the markup state, which can be included in a discussion thread-style user experience where members collaborate with one another by subscribing to notifications and tagging other users in their comments. Together, this powerful visualization plus social collaboration feature lets Aras PLM users throughout the product lifecycle participate in review and communication of the CAD designs even if they’re not CAD users.

Step 3: Change State Governs Changes to CAD

With a request from a team member to change the design, this selection in SOLIDWORKS PDM ensures that the parts’ state in both SOLIDWORKS and Aras Innovator indicates “In Change”, so as not to allow for other changes across either system. And with the change made, the Submit to PLM function can now ensure that only the changed CAD documents and parts are returned to PLM.

Step 4: Add to Change Drives PLM Changes from the PDM User Interface

Users can initiate a formal Change Management process in Aras Innovator from the SOLIDWORKS PDM user interface by choosing “Add to Change”. This places all items from the CAD structure—both CAD and Part items—as affected items on the new change; or, the user can select from a list to identify items to add or remove from the change before creating it in PLM. Any type of change item available in Aras Innovator can be generated here, and its unique item number can be automatically assigned during this step.

With the change generated out of SOLIDWORKS PDM, a fully-featured change management process in Aras Innovator is available to the user: including workflows with review, approval, and signoff to create a traceable record of the change, plus other processes across the platform that can leverage change items, like Quality processes including Problem Reports and CAPAs.

Conclusion: Parts with Connections Across the Platform

Of course, parts generated quickly and automatically from SOLIDWORKS PDM and CAD data are available to functions and applications well beyond Change Management and Visual Collaboration on the Aras PLM platform.

Parts can be connected with Requirements and System Architecture data, to demonstrate how early requirements and system designs are fulfilled by physical designs. They can be connected with the Simulation instructions, variables, and results used in external authoring tools, to create a traceable record of their use in simulation processes for the enterprise.

They can be connected with their Quality Planning (Design Quality) and Quality Management (QMS / CAPA) processes to demonstrate a fully auditable trail of how quality was built-in and managed throughout a product’s design. And, they can be used downstream in Manufacturing Processes, connecting process, quality, and engineering functions into a single thread of information.

Released parts even can be transformed into a Physical Parts Bill of Materials, creating a digital record of the physical product in the field that includes its operational lifecycle, configurations, and any changes driven by service or maintenance activities.

Parts and assemblies that originate in CAD can take on a life of their own when they are made accessible to the enterprise on a comprehensive, end-to-end PLM platform throughout their lifecycles: starting as they embark on their design, manufacturing, and operational journeys.

Lessons Learned for Digital Transformation Success

Jill Newberg — Fri, 21 Aug 2020 15:08:00 GMT

Every company is different. But we’re all facing rapidly changing markets demanding new ways of doing business, further accelerated by multiple, concurrent global upheavals. Success is assured, we are told, if only we choose the “right” platform for Digital Transformation. But what are the factors that actually make one technology enable Digital Transformation better than another?

Aras knows a thing or two about Digital Transformation, as we have been undergoing our own—in order to better enable yours. From our old cadence of software releases to a new, 6-week update cycle, we’ve been streamlining and accelerating the ways we get new features and applications into your hands.

This blog will examine these recent changes as a whole, together with what they have to do with your Digital Transformation, starting with Aras Innovator Version 12 and working our way forward to the latest release: Version 12 Service Pack (SP) 9. Or, to see a live, end-to-end demonstration of all these features, check out our webinar: Take Hold of Digital Transformation with Aras Innovator 12.

Adopt to Adapt

The hardest part of a big, important organizational change like Digital Transformation may not be the technology—it may be the people. Companies can implement a great new business process, roll it out on the shiniest new technology, but if they don’t have user buy-in—if teams don’t see the immediate value in the new system and adopt it with the speed and enthusiasm necessary—it will be dead in the water. So, what makes a new technology more adoptable, to help make your teams more adaptable? The answer may just be in plain sight: how user-friendly is it?

I’ve written about software for my whole, 20-year career. So, what do the buttons and workflows in the software products I write about daily have to do with a big, heady topic like Digital Transformation? A coworker put it this way the other day—so succinctly, but with such great wisdom—when he said,

“PLM is one of the most powerful software tools that exists for managing complex products. But that doesn’t mean everything inside it has to be hard to do. We make the easy stuff easy.”

‘Making the easy stuff easy’ definitely drives adoption rates. All the little touches users love help them to see how the tool makes their jobs easier: no matter how complex those jobs may be. We’ve been at work on updates to Aras Innovator to keep “making the easy stuff easy” in order to help your teams adopt – and adapt – faster. These updates include …

Personalization, to create an environment that works just the way you want it to, every time you log in;
Efficiency, to accelerate common workflows and help you find and use the data you need, faster; and
Flexibility, to successfully manage a number of parallel or interrelated tasks at the same time.

Don’t Lose Sight of the Vision

The shiniest new features on a Digital Transformation platform don’t amount to much if they don’t fit the vision your company is striving to achieve. This latest release of Aras Innovator offers three new applications, and scores of new features and updates, to fit an expanding vision that matches the growing complexity of products and systems on the market today—and tomorrow. These include:

Systems Architecture: By managing complex, systems of systems designs using the well-known R, F, L, P (requirements, functional, logical, and physical elements) framework employed by systems engineering, the new Systems Architecture application in Aras Innovator authors and manages connections between critical parts of the Systems model and its connections both upstream (to requirements) and downstream (to parts). This unique approach makes the complete, end-to-end system model easy to view, navigate, interrogate, and change as other product changes across the lifecycle demand; and, it streamlines and accelerates the development of highly complex, software-dependent, and technologically advanced products.
Simulation Management: This new application manages simulation artifacts – inputs, instructions, and results – in the Digital Thread of product information, contributing to the democratization and pervasiveness of simulation across teams. When more teams can access simulation data, learn from the results, and re-run simulations when necessary, simulation can be used throughout more of the product’s lifecycle. This supports modern product development processes like early design space exploration, multidisciplinary and multifidelity simulation studies, digital verification and validation, generative design, and simulating operational conditions in the field to improve the value and scope of Digital Twins.
Digital Twin Core: Speaking of Digital Twins, a new application to manage digital definitions of physical assets in the field, also known as Digital Twins—including their complete, complex, and ever-changing Bills of Materials—is also available in Aras Innovator SP9. Construct Digital Twin representations from released engineering parts. Keep a record of serviced or upgraded parts as products evolve and change in the field. And, connect all this information from the field back to engineering with access to the complete Digital Thread of information on that Digital Twin, all the way back through Manufacturing, Quality, Supply Chain, Systems Architecture, Simulation, Requirements Engineering, and more—enhancing traceability, accuracy, insight, and context to help teams across the complete, end-to-end lifecycle better understand and improve products.

Improve Core Competencies

Perhaps the first rule of organizational change? Don't break what works. This is another obstacle companies commonly face when addressing Digital Transformation. Teams must beware of grabbing hold of the next technology trend yet “letting go” of their core competencies. New, exciting processes can actually pose a risk to the “bread and butter” of a company. Alternately, the technology may not be a good fit with existing processes, systems, and needs—like security, collaboration, and interoperability. The right Digital Transformation technology should never abandon or neglect what is working: rather, it should continue improving on it, thereby giving teams the time, resources, and energy to spend on newer, more forward-looking initiatives.

So, let’s look at how core PLM is also expanding and improving with new features and functions in Aras Innovator Version 12 SP9:

Dynamic Product Navigation: One role of PLM is to manage CAD data; but it also does so much more. To unify PLM data with the ease and efficiency of consuming highly visual CAD designs, the latest version of Aras Innovator offers Dynamic Product Navigation: a platform service available across every application—including the ones you author yourself. With DPN, you can view PLM data in context with an intuitive, easy-to-navigate and interrogate CAD viewable.
Increased Security: Check out new features in security, including
- New Item Access Reporting, and
- New MAC policy capabilities, tracing down to the level of Item properties.
Improvements to Tech Docs Framework to save existing Technical Documents as templates
And much, much more, including:
- Effectivity management in the Product Engineering application
- Structure resolution across Part-BOM relationships and DPN viewables
- Updated RoHS compliance for Component Engineering
- Support for the latest-generation of SOLIDWORKS PDM
- Improved performance for Search and Large Assemblies

To see a complete demonstration and discussion of all these features, and more, check out our webinar: Take Hold of Digital Transformation with Aras Innovator 12.

Test Drive Your Digital Transformation

Embark on a Digital Transformation journey sight unseen? Not with Aras. Aras Innovator Version 12 SP9 is the latest open release version: download it and try it out right here. Like so many of our subscribers, try it out first to see how it fits your teams, your technologies, and your processes. Our roadmap is always open and available to you on the Web to view and explore the latest features, so don’t hesitate to download SP9 today and take it for a spin. On this Digital Transformation journey, you may just find that getting there is half the fun.