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Last week the ACE Germany conference was hosted by the Freudenberg in Weinheim. I went over to participate, and it was great to see such a diverse combination of people collaborating on best practices with the Aras solutions.
From my perspective it’s always fascinating to see companies openly exchanging experiences and ideas to improve global product development and supply chain operations. I enjoyed the practical examples of how Aras is being used and the numerous discussions about advanced new solutions, deployment, integration and other PLM topics.
I should take a moment to extend special thanks to Freudenberg for hosting the event and to all presenters and partners for sharing their insights. It was really great.
Martin Allemann kicked off the event with a rousing update on the continued expansion of Aras and the community over the past year highlighting our 200%+ growth each quarter. The stats demonstrate that the enterprise open source format for PLM is really catching on around the world, and to me the enthusiasm in the audience was the real indicator. Here are some of the summary highlights:
Freudenberg Freudenberg FDS, a global Tier 1 automotive supplier specializing in seals and vibration technologies, discussed how they use Aras Innovator with SAP at more than 20 sites across Europe. The deployment spans all stages of product development from the initial proposal phase to product recipe management and into production, all run in a single standardized process. In fact, it’s so important to Freudenberg that they use it as the differentiator in winning new business by rebranding the automotive ISO/TS compliance requirement to call it APQP2. Now that’s how to take a standard and make it an advantage.
T-Systems Our new partner T-Systems, which is a leading provider of information and communication technology (ICT) systems for multinational corporations and public sector institutions, presented their investments into secure engineering collaboration solutions. T-Systems and Aras have a shared vision of providing dynamically scalable PLM solutions that integrate with global services and data and operate seamlessly wherever the customer requires - on-site, in the cloud and in hybrid in-cloud/on-premise deployments.
GETRAG FORD Transmissions GETRAG FORD Transmissions is a 50:50 joint venture with Ford Motor Company and a leading automotive supplier of transmissions and drivetrains to Audi, BMW, Daimler, Ferrari, Fiat, Ford, GM, Porsche, Toyota, Volkswagen and other global OEMs. They presented on their enterprise-wide PLM initiative and the drive for a truly integrated mechatronic configuration and change management process with Aras across mechanical, electrical and software product development.
HYDROMETER GmbH HYDROMETER GmbH is part of the larger DIEHL Gruppe, an international conglomerate, and a leading Clean Tech / Green Tech provider of high accuracy meters for water, gas, electricity, heat energy, and energy services. They use SAP for ERP on released products and are deploying Aras Innovator to manage the product information across the entire life cycle, from product development and project management to document management, Bill of Materials (BOM) and regulatory compliance.
Deutsche Blisterunion Deutsche Blisterunion (DBU) is an association of pharmacies, regional operating centers and industrial companies providing packaged doses of drugs for individual patients. They are changing the business model and practices of the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare industries in Germany. DBU uses Aras in an unconventional PLM way to manage everything in the business from hospital patients and their associated multiple daily pills along with the packaging of each individual dosage which includes the date & time of that the patient must take the dosage on the packaging. Everything is managed by Aras: the patient records, the prescriptions, the production process, product release and the regulatory compliance inspection records for each dosage. This process includes an electronic signature solution add-on from Aras partner Datasquare who also did the implementation. The deployment has eliminated the use of paper documents entirely within the company. Then, they archive all the information for each patient for 30 years and have record retrieval if a compliance issue occurs.
Ubidyne GmbH Ubidyne GmbH, a start-up technology firm in Germany, China and the US, is developing next generation active mobile communications antenna. Ubidyne explained how they use Aras for Parts and BOMs with Product Costing as well as documents and drawings with change management workflows. They explained how they have improved their global release processes by splitting standard ECN process into a dedicated Document Release process and a Part Release process.
Aras Roadmap Rolf Laudenbach presented on the Aras roadmap providing an update on the latest releases as well as the upcoming near term developments and the longer term plans. The overview also touched on the continuous innovation that is occurring across the corporate community and the practical solution capabilities that companies can take advantage of such as mobile on Android and iPhone, the SharePoint PLM integration and the fact that Aras is now the only enterprise PLM platform that is cloud-ready today.
Aras University Research Programs Two of the renowned international Universities with PLM programs delivered presentations on the specific research projects they are conducting with Aras Innovator and we have Prof Dr Martin Eigner, Head of Virtual Product Engineering at the University of Kaiserslautern, presentation on the ‘Future PLM- Research Trends and Practice’ as well.
I especially liked Björn Rüegg presentation. He is a Project Engineer at the Technical University and IPEK Institute in Rapperswil Switzerland and the title of his session was [Why] Enterprise Open Source Will Win. He discussed how Aras’s advanced technology and open approach are important to truly streamline and integrate the business processes of the future.
Fabrice Mogo Nem from the Technical University of Kaiserslautern presented on his team’s progress related to a series of projects the department is undertaking including a cross browser client (you may have been reading his blog posts on our User Blog about this project), an integration with the Siemens PLM JT viewer and a new approach to Mechatronic Systems Engineering (integrated Mechanical, Electrical and Software design configuration management), as well as, the cross supply chain Engineering Network data model.
The real action was during the breakouts and breaks where lots of networking and discussion about collaboration occurred. Based on the discussions I was part of (and those I overheard) it seems like there could be some truly innovative business process solutions coming out of these joint efforts.
For those who want to read about the event in German or share with others that only read German language, we have another version of this post on the German Aras PLM blog.
Overall, it was a great day and I’d like to thank everyone for coming out and being so active and engaged, and… if you couldn’t make it this year, don’t worry… you can of course get all the slides and we’re looking forward to seeing you at the next ACE conference.
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