Lisa P Boles さんのグループアクティビティ

ACE is Different This Year….Here’s Why!

Lisa P Boles — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 15:00:00 GMT

ACE 2021 is almost here and, like so many things over the last 12 months, this year’s event will be a bit different. Yes, ACE will be 100% digital, so that’s different, but what WON’T be different is the opportunity to hear from your peers and industry leaders and come away with tons of useful information and insights to help you Accelerate…Collaborate…and be Empowered!

While we won’t be gathering together in person, a digital event certainly has some distinct advantages—you don’t have to worry about what to pack—feel free to come in your pajamas and wear your comfy slippers. There’s no need to book travel and hotel rooms and there’s no registration fee to attend the conference. That’s right, there is no cost to attend ACE 2021!

But, more importantly, when you attend ACE, you’ll be part of a record-breaking GLOBAL audience with well over 3,000 attendees expected. This is your opportunity to rub “virtual shoulders” with Aras’ entire global community—something that’s never been done before.

Still not convinced? You can attend a plethora of timely and interesting customer presentations from industry leaders such as Toyota Motors Europe, Airbus, U.S. Department of Defense, Microsoft, NuScale, Grammar, United States Air Force, Valley Fine Foods, Caltex Oil Tools, Seaspan, and Haulotte—on a wide-range of hot topics such as: Digital Thread, Systems Thinking, Digital Twins, and Digital Transformation—just to name a few.

You’ll also get hear from Aras’ CEO and Founder, Peter Schroer, on “Empowerment—The Missing Ingredient in Digital Transformation,” John Sperling, SVP of Product Management, who will share the latest on what’s new with Aras—including details about our expanded Enterprise SaaS Cloud offerings— and Rob McAveney, Aras’ CTO, who will be offering his insights into the “Future of Products and the new Product Lifecycle.”

You’ll have the opportunity to see demonstrations of the Digital Thread in action and discover how a resilient platform empowers you to collaborate across domains to rapidly develop innovative products and how to accelerate your business by incorporating new technologies into your products earlier in the design and development phases. Learn how Digital Twins can help you how to improve collaboration across domains to quickly pivot into new markets, and how to empower teams work together to transform and realize new business models—all while using the latest features in Aras Innovator.

But, what if you can’t attend every session that you want to? Not to worry, registrants will have access to all sessions for on-demand viewing for a limited time after ACE is over.

Have you been looking forward to those special one-on-one opportunities to speak directly with your colleagues? We’ve got you covered there, too. Opportunities will abound for you to set up private 1-1 virtual meetings on your own schedule.

So, what are you waiting for? Register now and mark your calendars for April 19-21 (NA/EU) / April 20-22 (Japan) when we’ll all come together, digitally, to see what we’ve learned from this extraordinary last year and chart our courses into a future where we can Accelerate, Collaborate, and be Empowered!

Looking forward to seeing you at ACE!

ACE is Different This Year….Here’s Why!

Lisa P Boles — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 13:35:00 GMT

ACE is Different This Year….Here’s Why!

Lisa P Boles — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 13:35:00 GMT

Did you miss Aras Virtual?

Lisa P Boles — Tue, 12 May 2020 14:00:00 GMT

ACE 2020 may not have been what we originally planned but, when it became clear that having the in-person event we had planned, we shifted our efforts and went virtual. And, even if you weren’t able to join us for the live sessions, you still have a chance to see them on-demand. But, first, let’s take a quick look back at some of the highlights.

First up was a three-part webinar series, ”The Digital Thread in Action,” illustrating how the Aras PLM Platform is used to create Digital Twins and connect a digital thread that can improve service, engineering change, and next-generation design. These sessions featured business use cases along with software demonstrations featuring how the Digital Thread can be used across the lifecycle as well as showcasing how the Aras community is solving problems by realizing the vision of a single integrated Digital Thread to Own the Lifecycle—from systems design, to engineering and manufacturing processes, to maintenance and operation.

Some of the series highlights include:

Session One: The Digital Twin in Maintenance and Service

See a Digital Twin configuration built and demonstrated in real-time.
Learn how a Digital Twin can be used in maintenance in order to improve maintenance effectiveness, helping to mitigate failure and perform required tasks in the most cost-effective manner.
Discover how a Digital Twin connects you to critical information to continue and improve processes across the product’s lifecycle and create opportunities to support new business models, respond to quality issues, and influence next generation product development.
Explore how to achieve value and see what’s coming next for Aras Innovator and related applications

Session Two: Engineering Change in a Connected World

Discover the possibilities of connected information and how to use it to address products’ unforeseen problems in the field.
Learn why a Digital Thread is critical to weaving together every point of information in order for it to become real knowledge and how it provides a map to quality and engineering departments. that can be used to identify, analyze, understand, and confront emergent issues and unknowns as an asset operates in the field― ultimately, improving customer satisfaction.
See how Aras applications advance design and production for companies by incorporating real-time field feedback, operational data, simulation, and multidisciplinary change management.

Session 3: Systems Thinking and Digital Transformation

Explore the principles of Systems Thinking―a holistic design approach to analyzing and understanding a system’s elements behave in context and over time.
Learn how leveraging systems architecture, requirements engineering, and multi-fidelity simulation capabilities can help our community advance their products in new and innovative ways.
See how it can work―using the Aras platform to walk through a design scenario that combines elements of System Thinking, existing product definitions, and field experience to identify new business opportunities and product strategies.

Our second three-part series, “The Build with Aras Experience,” we explore how the high demand for new application development has surpassed the availability of qualified resources to meet the need―leading many companies to look for flexible, low-code development platforms to provide an alternative to traditional development strategies. These sessions walk you through application development from the ground up using Aras’ low-code development platform.

Highlights of this series include:

Session 1: Rapid Prototyping Your First Application Iteration

See the creation of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Application to Manage a Design Review Meeting using Aras Innovator.
See specific examples of how organizations have leveraged Aras Innovator to create new functionality and met the needs of their users.
Experience the rapid development environment as the team constructs an application using Aras Innovator.

Session 2: Experiment, Pivot and Fulfill Your Vision

See the continuation of session 1 and the highlighting of more customer solutions as building out of a custom application progresses.
Using the MVP (minimum viable product created in Session 1), you’ll see how to respond to user feedback and learn how that feedback can then be used to drive incremental value from the application.
Learn how to add data visualization and the ability to add user feedback to the MVP.

Session 3: Expand Your Vision and Leverage the Aras Community

Building upon the previous two sessions, see additional improvements being added to the newly built application
See how an Aras Community Project is utilized to expand the scope of the new application
Discover more about how you can join the Aras community in leveraging Aras’ industrial low-code platform and platform services to develop their own innovative solutions

These are just a few of the things you will learn in these sessions. Watch one or watch them all (we certainly hope it’s the latter)―on your own schedule, whenever it’s convenient for you. We hope you discover lots of useful information and tools you can use to help your organization’s digital transformation.

Did you miss Aras Virtual?

Lisa P Boles — Mon, 11 May 2020 21:57:00 GMT

See a Digital Twin configuration built and demonstrated in real-time.
Learn how a Digital Twin can be used in maintenance in order to improve maintenance effectiveness, helping to mitigate failure and perform required tasks in the most cost-effective manner.
Discover how a Digital Twin connects you to critical information to continue and improve processes across the product’s lifecycle and create opportunities to support new business models, respond to quality issues, and influence next generation product development.
Explore how to achieve value and see what’s coming next for Aras Innovator and related applications

Session Two: Engineering Change in a Connected World

Discover the possibilities of connected information and how to use it to address products’ unforeseen problems in the field.
Learn why a Digital Thread is critical to weaving together every point of information in order for it to become real knowledge and how it provides a map to quality and engineering departments. that can be used to identify, analyze, understand, and confront emergent issues and unknowns as an asset operates in the field― ultimately, improving customer satisfaction.
See how Aras applications advance design and production for companies by incorporating real-time field feedback, operational data, simulation, and multidisciplinary change management.

Session 3: Systems Thinking and Digital Transformation

Explore the principles of Systems Thinking―a holistic design approach to analyzing and understanding a system’s elements behave in context and over time.
Learn how leveraging systems architecture, requirements engineering, and multi-fidelity simulation capabilities can help our community advance their products in new and innovative ways.
See how it can work―using the Aras platform to walk through a design scenario that combines elements of System Thinking, existing product definitions, and field experience to identify new business opportunities and product strategies.

Highlights of this series include:

Session 1: Rapid Prototyping Your First Application Iteration

See the creation of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Application to Manage a Design Review Meeting using Aras Innovator.
See specific examples of how organizations have leveraged Aras Innovator to create new functionality and met the needs of their users.
Experience the rapid development environment as the team constructs an application using Aras Innovator.

Session 2: Experiment, Pivot and Fulfill Your Vision

See the continuation of session 1 and the highlighting of more customer solutions as building out of a custom application progresses.
Using the MVP (minimum viable product created in Session 1), you’ll see how to respond to user feedback and learn how that feedback can then be used to drive incremental value from the application.
Learn how to add data visualization and the ability to add user feedback to the MVP.

Session 3: Expand Your Vision and Leverage the Aras Community

Building upon the previous two sessions, see additional improvements being added to the newly built application
See how an Aras Community Project is utilized to expand the scope of the new application
Discover more about how you can join the Aras community in leveraging Aras’ industrial low-code platform and platform services to develop their own innovative solutions

OOTB is Dead

Mark Reisig — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 14:00:00 GMT

Out-of-the-box (OOTB) is dead.

If your employees are mindlessly walking around, unable to use data to get their jobs done because you have an old customized OOTB system, you have a serious problem. That’s right: PLM zombies.

The root cause for this workplace outbreak occurred when you decided you could achieve some future vision with OOTB enterprise tools. And then someone did the worst thing you can ever do—they customized it!

Customizing OOTB to meet your business needs is like doing a swan dive off the high board into quick sand—now you’re stuck and sinking. According to one PLM vendor, customizing on brittle architecture is a mistake. They recommend using their product OOTB, so just dumb down your processes to fit a tool. And do the same for the next tool, and the next… and you’ve built yourself a rigid IT infrastructure. You’ve become zombie meat, plain and simple.

Now with this proliferation of zombies exchanging spreadsheets, my advice is to follow the Zombieland Survival Rule #1: Cardio. To escape a pursuing zombie, you’ll need to outrun it, and this means being in good shape. Wait, you’re bogged down by brittle legacy architecture. Okay, remain calm. Whatever you do, do not keep customizing the OOTB. The key is getting at your own data so you can escape.

You say, “Help, get me out of this OOTB goo,” as you reach up with your outstretched arm to the person on the platform.

I respond, “Hang on, I want to explain why OOTB is dead.”

It’s not rational to pretend OOTB applications will work in the future because no one can’t predict the future with enough certainty to build everything you’ll need. Additionally, you have unique processes that give you a competitive edge, and it’s ludicrous to believe your software vendor has the extrasensory perception to predict and develop exactly what makes you better than your competitor.

But for the sake of argument, let’s says I’m wrong and the software vendor, using its thousands of customers and millions of years of experience, can predict everything you’d ever need. If that were the case, they would save many millions of dollars acquiring other software companies instead of concerning themselves with the challenges your company will face this year… next year… the year after, and so on.

If you want to read my original thoughts on the OOTB myth, here are two previous blogs, Out-of-the-Box is a PLM Fantasy and Out-of-the-Box is a PLM Fantasy (Neverland Revisited).

One thing we can reliably predict is that we don’t know the future. Your destination is not defined. Since you don’t know the future or the processes you’ll need to compete, then by definition, no OOTB software can be expected to support the capabilities and processes not yet defined. And because of this, customization will be required with whatever solution you choose.

You not only can’t predict it, but all of it will be accelerating.

“We won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century—it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate, which is accelerating).” - Ray Kurzweil, The Law of Accelerating Returns

Which leads me to my next point: how long has it been since you upgraded your PLM? It’s not practical to upgrade OOTB applications built on “brittle” architecture that was never meant to be customized and upgraded. And no PLM vendor upgrades your customized system—except one.

“It is important to note that the guaranteed upgrade of a highly customized PLM solution is not only possible, but is in fact commonplace among Aras subscribers. Many report that the upgraded database is typically returned from Aras within two weeks. Aras says the technical part of the upgrade generally takes a few hours, with the remaining time consumed with validation testing.” CIMdata, 2018

Vendors that are limited due to a compilation of rigid architectures would like you to believe in something called the 80/20 rule, which comes from the Pareto Principle. In 1896, the Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, discovered that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. In business, this 80/20 rule states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This has been adopted by vendors of rigid architecture to convince you to use enterprise OOTB software—80% OOTB and only customize 20%.

The 80/20 rule in PLM only makes sense where the architecture is rigid, so the 20% doesn’t follow. Why would you customize something not meant to be customized? The purpose is to perpetuate a myth. Kind of like saying lightning never strikes twice in the same spot. Wrong. It hits the Empire State Building approximately 100 times per year.

It’s not just the OOTB functionality and sub-optimization of your processes that are dead. For many years, PLM vendors have locked in their customers’ data. Oleg Shilovitsky does a good job explaining this in his blog, Digital Lifecycle Future PLM Networks. Companies need to connect everywhere, and the only way to do that is to own your organization’s data, not let an application dictate that to you. In some cases, you have to actually pay for the right to access your data, which is nuts. You need to own your data and only put it where you have access to it, can move it, federate it, share it, all in an open architecture."

“Help,” you say again.

“Oh yes, you know you don’t need my help. There’s an open platform waiting and you can freely download it any time.”

Decommission OOTB. That’s CIO speak for the Zombieland Rule #2: Double Tap. Always make sure with a second clean shot to all the servers that OOTB is dead. Make your future safe, build it on a resilient open platform—one that can react to your future needs.

How Resilient Thinkers are Saving PLM

Bruce Bookbinder — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 14:00:00 GMT

In my previous blog, "The Talk" I discussed the all too familiar story of PLM sponsors unexpectedly facing the limitations of their newly installed PLM systems due to the outdated frameworks upon which most older PLM systems are built. My point was that, for any PLM system to be able to adapt to evolving business processes and future, but currently unknown technology, it must be built on a resilient, future-proof platform.

Decades of building systems (yes decades, I pride myself on my ability to use punch cards) has convinced me that there is no way to predict the future, (I think I learned this in graduate school), but it has also convinced me that with the right type of thinking, platforms can be designed and built using strategic design principles making them resilient and adaptable to change. But who are these folks that spend their days contemplating the future of system designs and how to make it flexible to change? How do they operate? Are they available for dinner?

Right now, I am imagining several very experienced people with limited fashion sense and huge coffee mugs in a windowless basement war room surrounding the largest white board ever built. (Let’s not forget the inspirational poster on the wall asserting “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” – Einstein.) Let’s face it, you were thinking the same thing.

What I do know about these resilient thinkers is they start by defining and agreeing on strategic design principles that will ensure the platform will be able to absorb changes in business and technology as well as scale to what surely will be a more complex and data centric world. They realize that locking in to any specific technology, even their own, will lead them to a dead end.

The resilient thinkers emerge from their lair with three guiding principles… and the need for another cup of coffee:

Transparent – While technology changes, the data inside the technology does not. The idea behind data transparency is that resilient platform design eliminates the data’s dependency on the application. I have worked with PLM systems where it is virtually impossible to understand the data layer of the application due to the complexity of the model or proprietary encryption. Working with complex data structures within the application may be fine within today’s application, but if this data were found twenty years from now without the application, could you still extract your product structure and data? A transparent platform allows the owner to control the destiny of its data and does not hold it hostage to an aging technology or software vendor.
Evolvable – A resilient platform should never be locked into a technology. If a platform is built with hard dependencies to its technology, everything built on top of the platform also becomes dependent. As technology evolves, the ability to utilize new technology in a strategic manner will set the stage for how customized and complex the eventual technical landscape will become as well as which new technology can be leveraged by the existing applications on the platform. Piecemealing technology together to grow a platform over time will create an ugly, legacy system with high maintenance costs. I’m sure no one has ever dealt with this situation, right?
Adaptable – A resilient platform needs to be so adaptable, it not only supports change, but encourages it. Perhaps encourage is a strong word, but if a platform does not provide a strategic way to create and manage customizations, custom code will inevitably be developed. This very common approach will increase complexity to the whole environment, impacting on-going costs and efforts to support the system. Can you say, “instant legacy?” The resilient thinker anticipates change. Since “out of the box” implementations are rarely (if ever) possible, they require the platform to support system changes in a low-code, configurable environment without complex coding for each modification. The environment is designed to implement changes without increasing the complexity of the whole environment or impacting the platform’s ability to be upgraded in the future.

I would imagine there are few people that would disagree with these points, but it is amazing to see so few platforms in the marketplace support these basic requirements. There are many claims, but few hold up to truly be considered resilient (as seen by the number of companies running on aging versions of software, long cycle times for customizations, or just significant data issues due to ineffective integrations).

The resilient thinkers at Aras recognize the responsibility of creating an environment capable of adapting over time. But, business owners must also be resilient thinkers, with the same understandings and goals, in order to successfully implement a resilient platform. This collective vision between designers and business leaders is necessary to ensure the platform will be built to meet its full resilient potential.

Business owners need to question the most basic of today’s conventional wisdom―even the concept of “going out of the box.” While “going out of the box” is the mantra of most system implementations today, should the business resign themselves to accepting application functionality as is? All too often, the benefits of going “out of the box” are negated by the complex, custom code required to meet basic business requirements. Resilient thinkers appreciate the need for applications to adapt to evolving business strategies but also acknowledge that these changes must be introduced strategically, so they do not impact other applications or the overall platform. To achieve resiliency for the future, applications and their components must be built on top of resiliency, not customizations, otherwise you are headed into the “instant legacy” zone.

The Aras platform is built to model business processes, business rules, and its associated data in a low-code environment, limiting the amount of effort necessary to adapt to change. This critical information becomes easily portable and ready to move forward with any technology, at any time. Incremental deployment functions support agile methodologies and executes on a fast-paced schedule. Aras also guarantees and executes platform upgrades as part of the subscription, so customers never fall technologically behind. Without the ability to continually execute platform upgrades, the environment struggles to support technology advances and inevitably degrades the effectiveness of applications built on top of the platform.

While the insatiable demands of business continue to change and enhance our systems, we have seen the negative results of implementing changes in legacy applications with “quick” and “creative” solutions, which we know really means custom, sloppy code. The approach often rewards “thinking out of the box” to meet schedules and costs because the limitations and customizations in the existing environment prevents a more strategic and complete solution. The resilient thinker realizes that the need for change will never relent, so the only way to manage the future is to design for it so the business can always adapt to the best solutions available, not the most convenient to implement.

These resilient thinkers may even change the poster on the wall… “If everyone has to think outside the box, maybe it is the box that needs fixing” - Malcolm Gladwell

The question is, are you a resilient thinker? (and an experienced person with limited fashion sense and a huge coffee mug)?

Learn more about Aras’ Resilient Thinkers and Resilient Platform.

Achieving Sustainable Digital Transformation

Mark Reisig — Thu, 22 Aug 2019 14:00:00 GMT

While vacationing in Maine, I learned a saying of theirs: “You can’t get there from here.” This is their way of relaying the impossibility of traveling from point A to point B in a direct path due to various ponds (you might call them lakes), mountains, bays, coves, and other obstacles. This reminded me of digital transformation efforts trying to get to point B, where few are succeeding. According to a McKinsey survey of 1,733 executives, only 14 percent say their efforts have made and sustained performance improvements, and only 3 percent report complete success at sustaining their change.

What makes it even more daunting is the amount of complexity being added to products. As they become integrated systems made up of transdisciplinary systems, this increases the need for “systems thinking” as articulated in Verl McQueen’s blog Thinking of Thinking.

The number of compliance and defect-associated recalls issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) are clear proof that organizations are not stepping up quickly enough. The U.S. agency’s published numbers indicate a 33% increase in recalls between 2008 and 2018. And it’s not just automotive—it’s all industries. Expectations of customers are outpacing many organizations’ abilities to rethink how they adapt and use technology to own their operational ecosystems and sustainably digitally transform their product, services, and delivery models.

The need to transform in an increasingly digital economy with continually accelerating disruptive technologies, and a changing hypercompetitive business environment, is constant. Change and digital disruption is coming at all of us faster and will only continue to accelerate.

This is both good and bad. Good in the sense that the digital economy is causing more and more opportunities. But bad in that the disruption caused by the collision of physical and digital economies is tearing through the Fortune 500 unabated. Estimates as high as 75% of today’s S&P 500 will be replaced by 2027. (HBR, 2017)

Established market leading companies are being outflanked by more nimble competitors. Hence the huge emphasis on digital transformation. In the latest update to its Worldwide Digital Transformation Spending Guide, International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts global DX spending to reach $1.18 trillion in 2019, an increase of 17.9% over 2018. According to IDC, spending on digital transformation is the largest priority by 11 percent. And companies IDC groups as “Digitally Determined” spend 23% less across functional budgets while investing 18% more on IT annually as compared against their “Digitally Distraught” counterparts, according to Shawn Fitzgerald, practice leader, IDC Insights' Worldwide Digital Transformation Strategies.

Here are some takeaways I hope you’ll find useful:

Know Why You’re Transforming

The first problem with getting to point B is that it’s “over yonder” (which is where everything in Maine is), except its also always moving and accelerating, so a moving B is more challenging.

There are many “whats” involved, such as improving customer experience, enabling worker productivity, improving data visibility, using data and analysis to better understand and meet customers’ needs, and I could go on.

If we focus specifically on technology, we have plethora of so-called “disruptive” technologies like 5G, AI, Machine Learning, AR, VR, IoT, Bots, Multi-Cloud, etc. to consider that can be applied to any of these efforts. Some of these might fall into the “how’s,” which go far beyond technology.

But the real trick to sustainably transform is understanding “why.” If you know why you want to continually transform, you have a vision—something you can communicate that everyone can get behind. I’d contend that to have a successful digital transformation, it has more to do with “why” than any other factor.

Navigation: Know Where You’re Going

It may seem obvious to know where you’re going, but based on the number of digital transformation failures, I have my doubts.

I did some sailing in Maine, so let’s say that point B is directly upwind. You can’t sail directly into the wind (“in irons”), therefore you must sail at a 45-degree angle (“close hauled”) to either side of the wind. So, let’s say you decide to go right (starboard). At some point before you run into an obstacle, such as land (rocks, in this case), you may need to switch direction (“tack”) and head 45 degrees to the left of the wind. This zig-zagging (“tacking”) is doing the best you can do given the headwinds you face. Similarly, in business, you must know where you’re trying to get to and what headwinds you might face along the way. You are then prepared to chart the right course to transform. And then you need to communicate it clearly so your crew are all working toward the same goal.

Clear Communication

I’ve been sailing since I was a kid and have always found it interesting that sailors have their own confusing language. If we’re sailing and I yell, “ready about,” “prepare to tack,” “tack,” “stand by to go about” or “duck—I’m turning,” it doesn’t matter, as long as everyone understands that I am turning, and the very appropriately-named “boom” will sweep across and take your head off unless you duck.

Part of the problem with understanding where you’re going in a digital transformation is the terminology itself. So, let’s settle on a definition of a Digital Transformation, which is a business transformation that radically rethinks how technology, people, and processes are used to fundamentally change business performance. I’m borrowing this from George Westerman, MIT principal research scientist and author of “Leading Digital: Turning Technology Into Business Transformation.”

But there are many other definitions. For instance, few would disagree you could add “data” to that definition. Historically, those that controlled the data typically became the disruptor. Every organization’s needs are different, so they may include many things, like digitalization efforts in their digital transformation. I don’t think it matters what you call it, so long as everyone knows what it is you’re transforming and why you’re doing it. It’s your vision and where you’re headed that’s important.

And Yet It Moves

This is a phrase attributed to Galileo, who was forced to recant his observation that the Earth moved around the Sun. He’d appreciate that point B is a moving target and so must your operational ecosystem and Go-To-Market strategy keep moving. Typically, these transformations are undertaken to pursue new business models, such as offering the end-result as-a-service. Do we really need to own a car if our only goal is to go from point A to point B? Do we really need a driver? Do we need to use tires and roads? Why doesn’t anyone pay attention to George Jetson? skai.co. I digress. The real point is there are no time-outs in business, so keep moving.

Stop Buying Instant Legacy

At the root of all Digital Transformation failures is a simple misuse of technology . . . over and over again. It’s the application based on a specific technology stack with the data stuck in a specific schema. The trapped product data needs to move to another application based on another specific technology stack with a specific schema, and so on. This myriad of legacy applications, integrations, manual hand-offs, Excel spreadsheets, duct tape and spit, is the standard enterprise architecture. So, when you need to pivot and give the order to “tack”, you won’t because you have too much baggage—too many points of failure—and your enterprise will keep plowing forward until it is too late.

In the case of PLM, most vendors sell out-of-the-box (OOTB) and the ability to “configure” with the pitch that you’re better off modifying your processes to fit these PLM systems because they use "best in class" practices. That’s a fantasy, which I outline in a former blog: Out-of-the-Box is a PLM Fantasy. Instead, you’ll be forced to customize and customize and support year after year because the cost of an upgrade and a migration can’t be justified. Once you’ve customized on the wrong architecture, you’ve created “instant legacy.” Eventually, you hit a rock, take on water, and get wet. At that point you start looking for the life preservers.

Resilient Thinking

We need to reframe how we evaluate technology. Embrace “Resilient Thinking.” When you evaluate technology, you need to consider how the technology will grow with you. What’s critical is a resilient platform architecture that allows you stay current and take advantage of technology. Tomorrow’s requirements are not yet known. The focus needs to be on choosing enterprise architecture that will accommodate the unknown. Demand resiliency—the openness, the flexibility, and the industrial low-code capability to meet tomorrow’s yet known challenges.

Technical Debt

Enterprises must stop acquiring siloed applications based on breadth and depth requirements for a static point in time. This is like dragging your anchor around and trying to compete in a race. The major requirement is to meet your future customer’s unmet needs. Is your PLM platform “instant legacy” or is it a platform that allows you to reduce the number of legacy systems? Is your PLM platform on a current version? Obviously, if it’s not, how are you simplifying your enterprise architecture to move data across your digital thread?

Configuration Management (CM) in an IoT World is Not Understood

Make no mistake: industrial IoT devices are coming by the thousands to companies in manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, and other major industries. Gartner predicts businesses will employ 7.5 billion connected things by 2020.

The challenge with this new data is the massive blind spots created throughout the organization. Putting IoT in place without understanding the “why” and having CM2 configuration management in place is largely a waste of money and can lead to massive failures of compliance, unplanned work stoppages, waste, and safety issues. The disconnect between CM and IOT is a risk that ties to the bottom-line and directly impacts your ability to do business.

Transform Your Culture

Joseph Anderson, president, Institute for Process Excellence (IpX), helps companies navigate these challenging waters. He believes CM2, which is configuration management at the enterprise level, makes a huge difference in reducing product failures. Rather than take an engineering-centric approach focused solely on the product, IpX and the CM2-empowered enterprise vantage point encompasses product, system, and services. In a recent article in Digital Engineering 247, Anderson reflected on the recent high-profile recall cases, “A common theme is, they stem from a lack of enterprise change management and configuration management processes. The majority of these companies still work in silos; they tend to view things from a silo and legacy vantage point.” In order to thrive in today’s fast-paced global environment, organizations need to continually maximize their agility and not only transform their digital capabilities, but their organizations and processes as well. IpX can bring invaluable insights and expertise to help companies achieve sustainable digital transformation.

Digital Roadkill

As in sailboat racing, in the digital era, you can never copy others, or you’ll never outpace them and just end up in their wake. Historically, you could be a fast follower in business and use size and other factors to your advantage, but that’s no longer the case. According to McKinsey, three-year revenue growth for the fleetest was nearly twice that of companies that played it safe when it came to digital competition. And simply cutting costs to survive digital disruption is not a winning formula. The “me-too’s” become digital roadkill.

Platforms

When I was a kid sailing in Barnet Bay off Long Beach Island, NJ, a Swiss boat maker introduced himself to me and let me race his Moth Class pre-hydrofoil dinghy. It gave me more speed, less drag (more efficiency), and the ability to change direction faster, which was an unfair advantage versus my competition. This is exactly what you want in business.

Own your lifecycle. Connect your digital thread across your product’s operational ecosystem and do it in a way that it can respond quickly to unforeseen existential threats. We’re in the midst of a platform revolution—using platforms that allow applications to use data across a digital thread. Aras Innovator is the only industrial low-code platform for PLM that is built for speed, efficiency, flexibility, and upgradability.

Digital Transformation is ongoing—plan for it.

PLM 2030: What the Last 10 Years of PLM Can Teach Us About the Next 10.

Jill Newberg — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 14:00:00 GMT

Wish me a happy anniversary: I’ve been writing about the PLM industry for 10 years, with 3 different software vendors (5, counting M&A). But in that decade, I had yet to see the promise of “one platform for the entire product lifecycle” fulfilled. Until Aras. And, as it turns out, one platform makes all the difference.

In Search of a Nimble Platform.
You can tell existing technologies aren’t cutting it when you hear about so many companies pursuing “digital transformation.” If they had gotten it right, would they be seeking to transform today—to wrangle data and processes free from legacy systems with brittle integrations across mismatched architectures? According to one survey, 52% of CIOs are seeking “more nimble platforms” to respond to growing market unpredictability.

“Nimble” has a very specific meaning—the speed and agility needed to change directions easily—and change seems to be prerequisite to attaining tomorrow’s product and business strategies. Think: artificial intelligence; products connected to each other, to products that cross industries, and to the cloud; new competitors entering markets seemingly on a daily basis. There may as well be a signpost for OEMs that reads, “Speed and agility needed ahead.”

But what happens if you get the next step in your digital transformation wrong? “Instant legacy”: another rigid, unchangeable platform, locking away your data and processes into one prescribed way of working: flexibility hampered, agility killed, changes denied. Strategic initiatives set back. You’ve heard “digital transformation is not a choice but a necessity”? Keep reading, and you’ll find that, “Up to 84% of digital transformation projects fail”. At this point in the article, I picture that wrinkly old villain at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, just as he crumbles up and blows away: “He chose … poorly.” The reward may be great, but the risk is even greater.

How Does Aras Get It Right?
Given my last decade in this industry, I thought I’d use this opportunity to look forward to the next one. A 2018 Oliver Wyman research paper, Engineering 2030: Six Megatrends that Will Shape Engineering, introduces six trends—3 pairs of seemingly contrasting directions, both of which engineering needs to achieve for success in its next 10 years of growth. But maybe they only sound contradictory because, in my past experience, legacy PLM systems built on multiple architectures, with brittle integrations spanning them, can’t handle them both well.

If these are the realities for engineering teams in the next 10 years, PLM should be doing them right today. Let’s examine how one PLM platform to own the end-to-end product lifecycle can help you achieve Engineering 2030.

1- Breadth and depth: Open ecosystems for work … and polarization of skills. According to the research, companies use open ecosystems for work in 50% of projects due to outsourcing expertise in embedded software, cloud technology, AI, cybersecurity, and more. And this need will only grow by 2030, they predict. Even companies bringing these functions in-house will outsource legacy work—still necessitating increased openness with partners.

At the same time, they write, engineers’ skillsets are growing narrower as domains deepen due to product complexity. The rise in specialized roles for systems engineering and systems architecture coincides with the “robotization of detailed design tasks” (up to 25% of engineering work will be automated by 2030, they predict), meaning that both specialized knowledge and sophisticated tools must be incorporated into increasingly open, collaborative projects.

Only Aras offers platform agility. With one platform architecture to support the entire product lifecycle, Aras builds an unbroken digital thread—end-to-end, concept through service—with:
* Complete, accurate, and actionable data extended to every stakeholder.
* Unique security, access, and user experiences for internal and external teams.
* Openness and interoperability to support integration with tools from any domain.
* Access and action to shape the digital thread in the tools and experiences users prefer.
* Coordinated changes across teams, for a faster, easier, more agile response to change.

2- Focus and heterogeneity: Customer-centric design … and increasing engineering tools. Despite expanding domain knowledge and teams, companies must get laser-focused on customers’ needs to succeed. “60% of outperforming companies intensively collaborate with customers,” the study finds. Which is why it’s no mistake that, with the increase of embedded software in products, agile development—the constant evolution of requirements in response to customer needs—is now including not only software but also products.

Tightening the relationship with the customer “shortens the release cycle by up to half,” the research cites, while accelerating companies’ strategic advantage through a vital transformation to customer-centric products and features. If “increasing the number of tools for systems engineering and PDM” sounds like a contradiction in a more agile environment, the authors point to an answer: enabling the seamless integration of these tools is the trick to reducing design cycle time by +50%.

Only Aras offers process agility: Process agility across the platform—or, the ability to change the technology at will when new processes, data types, tools, and teams are needed—is only realized in Aras’ open platform architecture, where you can:
* Configure processes and experiences easily, with a low-code, drag-and-drop front end.
* Build new applications using the same platform services and modeling engine we use.
* Share data seamlessly across your new or customized applications and ours.
* Your new processes and data become a part of your digital thread: end to end, no limits.
* Customize all you want, and upgrade Aras anyway: every version, guaranteed.

3- More data, more flexibly: Increased product data to optimize designs … and agile digital processes. Never before has data been so abundant―and so useless. Making so much data useful across teams in a coordinated way—separating the signal from the noise so teams can make improvements—is critical to identifying the product upgrades, new features, and next-generation offerings that will deliver the experiences customers want in the next 10 years and beyond. As the research states, the potential has perhaps never been higher (equipment manufacturers could gain $10B / year from IOT-derived improvements) … but neither have the stakes: “If we don’t create data,” they quote one CTO in the Aerospace industry as saying, “we won’t survive.”

But “digital” is not just about data, it’s about processes: Engineering organizations will have to kill their processes, cites one survey respondent, to make a leap in efficiency. Digital data and digital processes are about to collide in new waves of efficiency “driven by greater cross-functional integration,” the authors write. To take efficiency to the next level, accurate data must be available for use not just across new teams, but across new, automated processes and at such an accelerated pace that “overwhelming” would not be an incorrect characterization of the task to come.

Only Aras offers one platform for end-to-end product information. The right choices in product development are driven by an understanding of how well your products meet your customers’ needs. This starts in concept and ends in operation—which is why one platform is essential to:
* Connect requirements with lifecycle data: parts, processes, even operation and service.
* Provide visibility back to requirements, for insight as to where they can be improved.
* Maintain the configuration of every fielded product to ensure accurate Digital Twins.
* Manage each Digital Twin with its common Digital Thread for better analysis and reuse.
* Ensure that data and insights from Digital Twins have a place to land: with the teams, processes, and tools across the lifecycle that need it as part of the Digital Thread.

Aras: One Platform to Own the Lifecycle. Strategic agility—the means to learn from and use your data in new ways—relies on improved flexibility: the opportunity to add new types of data, new stakeholders, new technology domains, and new tools to continually improve the processes that deliver products in a coordinated way across teams. Own your data, your processes―even the platform that delivers it―by changing what you need to change, when you need to change it, to support your business strategies.

Future-proof your strategy for the next decade―and the next―and advance your PLM platform to handle Engineering 2030 and beyond. Read how in my latest eBook, Own the Lifecycle: Sustainable Business Transformation, and let’s disrupt some markets together.

Making New Stuff With New Stuff

Verl McQueen — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 14:00:00 GMT

We are using different, and interesting new stuff to build stuff. Labs have developed solar cells using nanoparticle inks to cover the substrate, there is a never-ending search for new battery materials. Storing data in glass, combine shrimp shells with a spider silk protein and you get “shrilk” a tough, biodegradable replacement for plastics, and aerogels that can be used as high-performance insulation and high-end sports clothing—all happening now, or soon. Thermoelectric materials such as skutterudite may someday harvest excess heat from our stuff and create electricity.

The thinnest material made to date, graphene, is only one atom thick, yet is 200 times stronger than steel―flexible, stretchable, self-healing, transparent, more conductive than copper, and even super-conductive. Imagine the stuff to be made! Some possibilities include filtering sea water to make fresh water or capturing CO2 before it gets into the atmosphere to help alleviate climate change. Because of its strength and conductivity, replacing body parts like bones, organs, and nerves may be possible. Or it could be used for the early detection of toxins, viruses, or diseases. By adding graphene to traditional materials such as aluminum and steel, it could be used in the creation of stronger and lighter materials.

But, scaling these advances in technology to a manufacturing level is a challenge today and a potential problem tomorrow.

On the other hand, there are certain entities making new stuff that directly affect your ability to make new stuff. The Federal Register, the government’s regulatory bible, has almost 96,000 pages. Total pages in the Code of Federal Regulations is more than 180 thousand. Although hard to pin down exactly, the burdened cost of regulations in one study was put at $1.9 trillion in 2016 or $15,000 per household. Major rules are defined by The Congressional Review Act as ones that have resulted in, or are likely to result in, an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more. In 2016 there were close to 130 of these new rules published. The cost of non-compliance is high. Non-compliance costs come from the expenses associated with business disruption, productivity losses, fines, penalties, and settlement costs, among others. Your business has at least a handful, and more likely, a chapter or two of these pages that you need to pay attention to or be fined or worse. And while you as a maker of stuff, certainly must pay homage to more than a few, your management certainly cares as they must sign their own names certifying compliance.

As outlined in previous blogs in this series the ability to make new stuff Need Not Be This Hard, requires New Tools to stay ahead of the competition, incorporate new materials and processes, and avoid regulatory non-compliance.

There are better ways and better tools to make new stuff. Identifying requirements expressing the viewpoint, goals, needs, and objectives of the final product, as expressed by various stakeholders—such as customers, business, technologists, and regulatory agencies that oversee that market space—is the essential first step in making stuff with new stuff. It is an iterative process conducted throughout the product lifecycle. With the ubiquity of electronics, sensors, software, connectivity, variability, omnipresent regulations, and the promise and challenge of new materials and methods, the need for a formal, structured requirements management platform is essential.

One such new tool is the Requirements Engineering (RE) application built on the Aras platform. One of the key strengths of RE is its ability to establish and maintain requirement relationships, internal and external to the PLM platform (Aras Innovator), through the open database and open API. Requirements can be related to multiple items, parts, and documents. Its deployment and use as an integral part of the PLM, leads to more timely meeting of design objectives, faster time to market, reduced product cost, less cross-discipline rework, lower risk of regulatory non-compliance, and more effective resolution of issues that arise during deployment.

Some of its key capabilities include:

Requirements are libraries of standalone reusable items
Requirements metadata includes customizable classifications and categories
Requirements Documents may group any set of requirements for a specific project or design
In Requirements Documents, requirements are arranged as chapters/sub-chapters
Requirements Documents provide two ways of viewing related requirements: MS Word like native document rendering, Excel like metadata tabulation
Requirements in the context of a requirements document are edited without explicit locking—edits are resolved on save
RE is integrated with the Visual Collaboration panel

New materials and processes may be a challenge but need not be scary. Capturing the initial requirements from all stakeholders and managing them throughout the product lifecycle, under the guidance of the Requirements Engineering application, allows your organization and business to innovate, while improving timeliness, cost control, and quality.

New Stuff, Old Tools

Verl McQueen — Tue, 11 Jun 2019 14:23:00 GMT

My father served in WWII. He was part of the United States Army Air Force, specifically the 15^th Expeditionary Mobility Task Force stationed in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations. In other words, he was in the US Air Force before it was the Air Force, stationed in Tunisia and later in Italy. He was part of the repair depot with the mission to get damaged aircraft back up in the air and flying. Using spare parts, cannibalized parts from other aircraft, bailing wire and string, they got aircraft back in the air.

He safely returned from the war, married Mom, had a handful of baby boomers, including me. However, the order to get stuff repaired or built with spare parts, bailing wire, and string, was seemingly never countermanded. Washers and dryers were repaired with spare parts. The family sedan was involved in an accident. Cannibalizing from the junk yard soon resulted in a newish car.

Dad was a stereotypical Scotsman, cheap, stingy, or frugal, choose your adjective—he had a limited set of tools. Buying new tools, or appropriate tools for a specific project, apparently was never in the budget. Dad did most of his damage with a couple of screwdrivers, a hammer, a hand saw, a drill, and a motley assortment of wrenches.

Which gets us to the point of all this—let’s countermand the order to create requirements in standalone, old-fashioned authoring tools such as Word or Excel. New order—all requirements should be authored, related, and traced in a specific Requirements Management (RM) application, built on a flexible, scalable, and upgradeable PLM Platform.

All too often we use the tools we are most comfortable with, the tool that seems to fit our hand best, like our screwdriver with the worn wooden handle. We’re talking about the old standbys of Word and Excel. And in some cases, a standalone RM system, outside of the PLM system. Again, you need to create your requirements in a system like Requirements Engineering, where requirements can be bi-directionally traced between individual requirements and various design artifacts across all design domains and their lifecycles (system, mechanical, electrical, software, and documentation).

You have created Marketing Requirements Documents (MRDs), Business Requirements Documents (BRDs), Functional Specifications, and System Requirements Specifications (SRSs). You have authored them in silos and jealously guard them as your “single source of truth,” while sending them via email to various stakeholders for further input and approval outside of any formal process, keeping track of who you have contacted, which have reviewed, and who has signed off—within that monolithic Excel file. Then something changes, and if you are an Agile house, things are changing often and quickly. Whose single source of truth needs to be changed and what else has been affected by the change? How are changes propagated throughout the various documents? Or, how are the changes propagated into and out of the standalone RM system outside of the PLM ecosystem?

Do you ever wonder where that requirement that you wrote for another project can be found now? It was written for a project a couple of years ago and would be perfect to use again—if only it could be found. Which project was it and where is the document now?

Aras Requirements Engineering allows you to express requirements content in various forms―text, reusable content structures (ex: paragraphs, graphics, tables, etc.), and shareable parameters. It also has distinct advantages over traditional non-PLM centric tools stemming from the configuration management functionality of the Aras PLM platform, which include:

Versioning (engineering V curve)
Verification (engineering V curve)
Traceability between requirements
Traceability from/to requirements and items such as parts, assemblies, external links, multimedia, etc.
Impact Analysis (on the non-requirement items)
Collaboration (configuration controlled)
Change Management, Workflow, Lifecycle

Requirements Engineering enables traceability within the context of the PLM digital thread. The Data Model approach of RE not only enables defining, managing, and maintaining requirements across the product lifecycle, but also allows capturing and managing the relationships between the requirements. A data model approach supports traceability across an organization’s application eco-system, connecting requirements from multi-sources: text, structured data, parameters, and models; providing a competitive advantage in reducing product failures such as:

excessive product cost
lost time to market
products shipped without meeting all requirements
excessive time in tracing requirements
challenges in meeting regulatory or product quality

Requirements Engineering from Aras can help you with a modern tool that enables:

faster time to market with less rework
reduction in legacy systems technical debt
creation and leveraging of a digital thread though Concept Development, Technical Development, Requirements Development, Specifications, Analysis & Design, Fabrication, Testing, Verification, Validation, and Operations/Support
timely and accurate compliance reporting

Let’s start today, and look outside of our old tool box, full of inefficient tools. Let’s stop creating static, one-off, siloed documents that are resistant to change, reuse, and are untraceable. Instead let’s use a modern tool, Aras’ Requirements Engineering, built on a flexible, scalable, and upgradeable PLM Platform.

New Stuff, Old Tools

Verl McQueen — Tue, 11 Jun 2019 14:23:00 GMT

Versioning (engineering V curve)
Verification (engineering V curve)
Traceability between requirements
Traceability from/to requirements and items such as parts, assemblies, external links, multimedia, etc.
Impact Analysis (on the non-requirement items)
Collaboration (configuration controlled)
Change Management, Workflow, Lifecycle

excessive product cost
lost time to market
products shipped without meeting all requirements
excessive time in tracing requirements
challenges in meeting regulatory or product quality

Requirements Engineering from Aras can help you with a modern tool that enables:

faster time to market with less rework
reduction in legacy systems technical debt
creation and leveraging of a digital thread though Concept Development, Technical Development, Requirements Development, Specifications, Analysis & Design, Fabrication, Testing, Verification, Validation, and Operations/Support
timely and accurate compliance reporting

CAN’T WAIT FOR ACE

Lisa P Boles — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 22:16:00 GMT

It’s that time of year again! No, I don’t mean The Final Four. It’s time to get ready for ACE! ACE, the Aras Community Event, is April 15-18—this year in Phoenix, Arizona.

Collaboration is key to successful business transformation and ACE is the best place to begin or advance your journey. At ACE you’ll discover how organizations like yours are solving today’s most challenging issues as they digitally transform their businesses.

LEARN FROM INDUSTRY LEADERS

Bringing together the best and brightest across industries including: automotive, aerospace, defense, and medical devices, ACE is hottest event in PLM. But, you don’t have to take my word for it, just take a look at the great lineup of keynote presentations:

Microsoft’s Director of Enterprise PLM, Boris Cononetz and Erika Klein, Director of Cloud Hardware Engineering, will explore how they have used the Aras Platform to make big and impactful transformations across people, processes, and tools in order to quickly scale to meet the demands of their rapidly growing cloud and devices businesses.

Eli Tuber, Engineering IT Process Manager at Carestream Health, will be examining how Aras Innovator’s document change management solution, coupled with Minerva’s Medical Device PLM solution, are employed in standardizing project documentation and Design History File deliverables—a crucial task in a medical device environment.

Andersen Windows Engineering Change Services Manager, Mike Bower, and Sherilyn Stalker, Andersen’s PLM Process Leader/Analyst, will describe the benefits they were able to realize by fully exploiting Aras Innovator’s Office Connector to ensure accuracy and trust in Anderson’s product specification through automation.

General Motors will also be on hand to share details of the journey they embarked on in 2016 to replace their “homegrown” Change Management System with Aras Innovator and the improvements in capabilities and workflow they’ve achieved as a result.

Of course, you’ll hear from Aras’ CEO, Peter Schroer and Senior V.P of Product Management, John Sperling, who will be sharing the latest developments in our Digital Industrial Platform the roadmap for the exciting things coming soon. And, mark your calendar for the ever-popular “Aras In the Round” a completely open and unscripted session, where we’ll surround our CEO, Peter Schroer, and CTO, Rob McAveney, with you: our customers, analysts and partners. Bring along any feedback and questions you have (no topics are off-limits) and take your turn at the microphone.

EXPAND YOUR SKILLS WITH TRAINING

Beyond the keynotes, there are dozens of presentations from thought leaders, Aras community members, executives, and industry experts. Sign-up to participate in exclusive training courses. New this year, you’ll also have the opportunity to participate in a very special education session presented by Aras partner, the Institute for Process Excellence (IPX): True North Training, "Enabling Sustainable Transformation: Empowering Your People, Processes, Solution, & Data." Seats are limited, so you don’t want to wait to register!

Attend breakout sessions and see demos to learn more about the enhanced user experience offered with our V12 of our Aras Innovator Platform along with new features and applications. There’s simply too much to list here. Check out the full agenda.

MEET and GREET

Take advantage of great networking opportunities. You’ll also have the opportunity to meet some of the newest members of the Aras team including Sam Zawaideh Aras’ new Vice President of Global Services and Customer Success. Sam’s looking forward to meeting as many members of the Community as possible and discussing the topics that are top of mind for you.

And, we all know what they say about all work…. Don’t worry. We’ve got you covered there too. Continue networking at our special Wednesday night reception at Desert Botanical Garden where you’ll be able to experience the beauty of the desert in a whole new way with a multimedia light and sound show and a tequila tasting.

If you haven’t attended our event before, leave your expectations at the door. You’ll quickly discover that ACE is truly unique. We bring together the best and brightest to discuss the industry’s toughest challenges and we hope you’ll join us! The full agenda and registration information are available at: https://events.aras.com/ace-2019.

The 5 Ways You Can Tell Whether or Not You Have a Resilient Platform

Lisa P Boles — Fri, 08 Feb 2019 16:26:00 GMT

	Is your platform customizable and then, once customized, can you upgrade easily and without data loss? A resilient platform has an underlying technology that is flexible, scalable, and upgradable—even when heavily customized.

	Does your platform enable the creation of an end-to-end Digital Thread? A resilient platform connects data throughout the entire lifecycle—breaking down information silos and enabling the Digital Thread.

	Does your platform give you the flexibility to meet process requirements that don’t exist today? Out-of-the-box software may be able to meet today’s needs but, the digital processes of tomorrow don’t exist today. A resilient platform offers the flexibility to customize to meet ever-changing needs.

	Does your platform allow you to integrate with other systems? A resilient platform uses an overlay approach—allowing you to connect, compliment, or replace your legacy systems. The choice….and flexibility should be yours.

	Does your “platform” provider try to make you fit their single deployment model? A resilient platform offers choice when it comes to deployment. On-premise, in a data center, on the Cloud, or a combination for a hybrid deployment. Whatever works best for YOU!

Aras offers a truly resilient platform comprised of a suite of services that enables PLM behaviors on any type of data. Core services such as “search,” “access control,” “workflow,” and “file vaulting” are built to be highly secure and extremely scalable.

On top of the services layer, Aras has built a Modeling Engine that employs the data, processes, logic, and user interface needed to build a given PLM application. Another Aras advantage—the modeling is done using a “drag and drop” user interface, not by writing code. As a result, the platform is very flexible—you can use the applications “as is,” adapt them to suit your organization’s specific needs, or even create entirely new ones that haven’t even been thought of yet.

All of Aras’ Applications are built using the Modeling Engine and these applications can be further adapted to your particular use cases using those same modeling tools. Applications built with the Modeling Engine are, by their very nature, built to be upgradeable.

Additionally, resiliency is seen in the various ways to connect to the platform. Users can connect via various Clients, including web and mobile interfaces. External system can be integrated via Connectors, using the open Aras APIs and modeling techniques.

All of this is available in an all-inclusive subscription model. But, what’s really unique, is the fact that an Aras subscription includes all upgrades (regardless of how heavily you’ve customized your software) and they are performed for you by the Aras Upgrade Team. No one else offers that.

To learn more about the unique nature of Aras’ resilient platform go to: www.aras.com/en/why-aras/platform

Why ACE is the Place to Be

Lisa P Boles — Mon, 12 Mar 2018 15:13:02 GMT

Where will you be March 20th – 22nd? Hopefully, you’ll be joining me and hundreds of your peers at ACE 2018 in Indianapolis.

Why?

First of all, there’s the great lineup of industry speakers—BMW, Audi, Schaeffler, Microsoft, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, L3, Carestream, Edwards Lifesciences, Key Safety, to name a few and that’s just on the main stage. There will also be presentations, throughout the conference, on topics ranging from systems engineering to the latest tools and technologies for digital transformation and Digital Thread/Digital Twin and innovation in the digital age. Take a look at the full schedule.

Great speakers and sessions are one thing–but what really makes this event special is the opportunity to learn from other members of our Aras community. Those ad hoc discussions, sharing tips and tricks with your peers, chatting about how someone was able to use the Aras platform to solve a particularly thorny problem—perhaps one that you’ve also been grappling with—this openness is what makes ACE truly unique.

But, maybe you want to learn more about the inner workings of the Aras Platform? If so, there are a whole slew of training sessions on specialized topics. These classes will be run during the breakout sessions and are available on a “first come, first served” basis.

If you are arriving on Monday, there’s additional learning opportunity— the “Aras Test Drive.” In this interactive half-day session, you’ll get a first-hand look at Innovator’s ability to handle document control, compliance and audit management, corrective and preventive actions, and follow defined business processes to facilitate visibility into quality across the organization. You’ll create and review numerous items discovered as evidence of a potential or existing problem and recognize the time and money saving benefits of using closed-loop quality management systems to mitigate them. Pre-registration and an additional fee are required.

As for me, the thing I’m most looking forward to are the “unconferenced” roundtables with Audi, Schaeffler and L3. This is an amazing opportunity to engage in an open discussion with some of our main stage presenters and get the answers your specific questions about their presentation topics.

And, speaking of “open discussion,” another can’t get any more open than the “Ask Us Anything” session on Thursday morning. Here’s your chance to ask Aras’s CEO, Peter Schroer and Chief Architect, Rob McAveney ANYTHING (and I mean ANYTHING) about Aras in an unmoderated, freeform setting. I really haven’t seen anything like this at any other conference and I can’t wait to see what’s top of mind for the crowd this year.

Now, we know that all work and no play is simply not fun. After all, we’re going to be in Indianapolis so, of course, we need to see some fast cars. Food, entertainment and those Indy cars will all be part of the Wednesday night Community Reception at the Dallara IndyCar Factory.

So, as they say on race day, “gentleman/ladies start your engines.” I’m racing to ACE this March and hope you are too!

Lisa P Boles さんの グループ アクティビティ

ACE is Different This Year….Here’s Why!

ACE is Different This Year….Here’s Why!

ACE is Different This Year….Here’s Why!

Did you miss Aras Virtual?

Did you miss Aras Virtual?

OOTB is Dead

How Resilient Thinkers are Saving PLM

Achieving Sustainable Digital Transformation

PLM 2030: What the Last 10 Years of PLM Can Teach Us About the Next 10.

Making New Stuff With New Stuff

New Stuff, Old Tools

New Stuff, Old Tools

CAN’T WAIT FOR ACE

The 5 Ways You Can Tell Whether or Not You Have a Resilient Platform

Why ACE is the Place to Be

Lisa P Boles さんのグループアクティビティ