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PLM integration becomes a strategic issueBy Karsten Theis End-to-end digitalization is an important key to shortening product development cycles. Weaving the digital thread, however, is becoming increasingly difficult because multiple domains, using different IT systems, are today involved in developing software-intensive products, and because development is often distributed over a long chain of development and manufacturing partners, who in turn also use different IT tools. A minor change made to a vehicle or a machine, which is perhaps being manufactured in a joint venture in China, might easily require the synchronization of seven or eight systems. This is why PLM integration is increasingly becoming a topic of strategic importance to companies. Despite every effort made to harmonize the tool landscapes in product development, they tend to be becoming increasingly diverse. This is not least due to the fact that the link between the development of electrics/electronics and software and overall product development is becoming increasingly tight. Many companies today start with a model of the overall architecture and make use of model-based systems engineering methods. And even if the domains continue to work to a large extent separately, using their own tools and processes, their developments converge during the change and release process at the latest. 
The tool chains are not only becoming more diverse, they are also constantly changing, especially at large companies. No consolidation of the market is yet apparent in the field of electronic and software development, and PLM technology is also continuing to evolve, not least because leading PLM vendors are constantly adding new applications to their product portfolios as the result of acquisitions. Siemens, for example, has just acquired Altair Engineering, a simulation expert. Ultimately, all of these initiatives involve end-to-end digitalization. Many PLM vendors talk about digital threads and digital twins and some offer very good solutions in this context, but only within their own tool world. But the reality is that complex products in particular cannot be created in homogeneous tool landscapes. Companies have to live with heterogeneous tool landscapes – at the latest when acquiring other companies or in the context of large consortium projects. 
That being said, many companies are already pursuing a best-of-breed strategy because they have realized that no one vendor can optimally cover all domains and/or because they do not want to place themselves in too great a position of dependency. In some cases, speeding up development processes is more important to them than harmonizing the PLM landscape. And to do this, they need to use the best tools for the task at hand. Anyone pursuing a best-of-breed strategy must, however, also have a sustainable PLM integration strategy, as otherwise the benefits of the best-of-breed strategy will go up in smoke or will be canceled out by system discontinuities. 
PLM integration has always been one of PROSTEP's core competencies. For decades, we have been providing companies in the manufacturing industry with support in the context of integrating their heterogeneous PLM landscapes and integrating their supply chains into these landscapes – both in an advisory capacity and through the use of our time-tested software products. That is why we are well aware that companies' integration requirements are becoming increasingly demanding. It is no longer all about merely exchanging data between different systems or with development partners. Instead, an increasing amount of process-relevant information must be linked across system and domain boundaries in order to manage complex development projects. This requires a lightweight integration layer that consolidates the information and makes it available to decision-makers. 
In recent years, we have established a shared technological basis for our software products to ensure that they interact very well. The aim is to meet growing integration requirements in the context of end-to-end digitalization. Now we are going one step further and bringing them together on a product platform that supports every conceivable integration scenario and use case – from the synchronization of heterogeneous system environments to data exchange between different organizations all the way through to cross-domain linking. This means that we offer our customers the greatest possible flexibility when creating their internal and cross-company collaboration processes. And we offer them the option of very easily expanding their existing applications to address new use cases. Yours Karsten Theis |
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