Issue in Focus:

Integrating Product Design

and Development
Environments

Battling Complexity,
Improving Productivity, and
Compressing Time

© Tech-Clarity, Inc. 2014

Table of Contents

Introducing the Issue ..................................................................... 3  

Take Advantage of Integrated Design Suites ................................ 4  
Tap the Value of Integrated Design and Lifecycle Management ... 4  
Expect Digital Mockups in Real Time ............................................ 5  
Enable Engineers to Design in Context ......................................... 5  
Proactively Manage Variant Configurations .................................. 6  
Advance Collaboration to Team-based Design ............................. 8  
Collaborate in Context at the Team Level ..................................... 8  
Support the Business of Product Design and Development ......... 9  
Conclusion ..................................................................................... 9  
Recommendations ...................................................................... 11  
About the Author ......................................................................... 11  

2 © Tech-Clarity, Inc. 2014

Introducing the Issue
The status quo for product development is no longer acceptable. Manufacturers have to
continuously improve their ability to design, develop, and introduce products around the
world or lose relevance to stiff global competition. Today, leading manufacturers
compete on speed and innovation. At the same time, they can’t afford escalating
complexity to impact their productivity or quality.

Product designers and developers are rising to the challenge. Manufacturers have made
significant progress in battling complexity and improving time to market over the last
decade. They have adopted platform and modular design techniques. They have learned
to connect engineers from around the world to streamline product development.
Engineering and enterprise software have played a critical role in these improvements.
CAD and CAE have allowed engineers to design products they could only dream about in
the past. PLM and digital manufacturing have enabled them to coordinate global design
and manufacturing networks to improve productivity, increase speed, and reduce errors.
But that is not enough for the future.

The product development benchmark for the next decade will be

the ability to simultaneously introduce localized products around the globe
with increased personalization.

The bar is now raised and requires companies to strive toward a new plateau of
performance. The product development benchmark for the next decade will be the ability
to simultaneously introduce localized products around the globe with increased
personalization. To accomplish this, manufacturers will need to compress the time it
takes to design global product variants without compromising quality or cost. As if this
isn’t enough, they have to do this at the same time they adapt to the complexity of
developing smarter, mechatronic products.

Most current engineering software implementations will not support

the real-time, concurrent, design-in-context environment required.

Manufacturers are once again looking to their enabling technologies to take them to the
next level. Most current engineering software implementations, however, will not support
the real-time, concurrent, design-in-context environment required. The current best in
class technology offers seamless integration between authoring, analysis, and enterprise
tools and allows engineers and product developers to work together in a real-time
environment. This paper explores the possibilities available from the latest generation of
integrated design and development environments.

3 © Tech-Clarity, Inc. 2014

Take Advantage of Integrated Design Suites
The latest generation of design tools offers more integrated processes and software.
Integrating design tools make engineers lives easier. It allows them to focus on
innovation instead of transferring files, translating data, and healing models. Tech-
Clarity’s Consolidating Design Software report discusses the benefits of an integrated
suite of design tools include cost savings, higher productivity, greater corporate agility,
and faster response to market dynamics.

Integration allows engineers to create richer, virtual views

of products and systems to better understand their behavior
and the experience they deliver to customers.

Beyond simple efficiency improvement, integration allows engineers to create richer,

virtual views of products and systems to better understand their behavior and the
experience they deliver to customers. For example, integrating CAD with CAE,
manufacturing simulation, and other tools allows engineers to model products holistically
to get early validation of product and production processes. As the Consolidating Design
Software report concludes, “The introduction of design suites that cover a broader
spectrum of the design process opens up new opportunities. The benefits of consolidating
design software beyond just 3D mechanical design offer even greater value.”

Design suite architectures are evolving to span users and

provide concurrent access to models across the enterprise.

Some systems have evolved while others have been reinvented. Engineering software is
extending to the enterprise. PLM was developed as an enterprise-class tool. Now, design
suite architectures are evolving to span users and provide concurrent access to models
across the enterprise. One example of this is moving from traditional, file-based storage
to database-oriented techniques.

Tap the Value of Integrated Design and Lifecycle Management

Beyond the integration of design suites, embedding product data and lifecycle
management into design solutions helps improve efficiency on an enterprise scale. PLM
alone provides value by better managing products, processes, and projects to enhance
productivity and improve time to market. Integrating PLM into the design environment
keeps engineers immersed in their design tools instead of stepping out to other solutions.
It also allows them to quickly search and load data as needed instead of waiting to check
data in and out from a separate system.

4 © Tech-Clarity, Inc. 2014

Integrating CAD and CAE with PLM requires more than just embedding PLM menus
inside tools and launching a new interface. The latest generation of integrated solutions
provides data and lifecycle management capabilities directly in the CAD environment.
This provides seamless design, data, and process management that help reduce non-value
added time. This time can be significant. According to Tech-Clarity’s Best Practices for
Managing Design Data top performers spend 25% less time on nonproductive data
management tasks. That gives engineers more time to innovate or allows managers to
significantly reduce design cycle times.

The latest generation of integrated solutions provides data and lifecycle

management capabilities directly in the CAD environment.

Expect Digital Mockups in Real Time

Time to market is a critical lever of competition. A proven way to compress product
development time is allowing multiple designers to work on different portions of a design
concurrently. This helps reduce design times but makes product development more
complex. As one designer changes a portion of the product, those changes cause a ripple
effect that impacts others. If these changes aren’t identified until well after the fact, they
can cause significant design and engineering rework. This, in turn, can impact other
designs and start the domino effect of change all over.

Engineers can no longer afford to work in a vacuum

while they wait for files to be checked in.

Leading companies have invested in digital mockup (DMU) environments to provide full
visibility into their designs to visualize the impact of changes and identify issues.
Unfortunately, this approach causes delays between the time a design changes and when
others recognize the impact. Engineers can no longer afford to work in a vacuum while
they wait for files to be checked in. Instead, the latest generation of design and
development software reflects changes in real-time to quickly understand the impact of
change.

Enable Engineers to Design in Context

Integrating the design environment with PLM helps engineers understand the impact of
change on their designs and manage the complexity of concurrent design. PLM already
helps manage logical relationships such as the relationships between a CAD model and
its associated requirements and specifications. The latest generation of integrated
solutions should also manage physical relationships such as where parts are located, what
parts they are in proximity to, and which parts they interface with. This allows engineers
to determine the context of parts in which to design. But setting up this context can be

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cumbersome. The engineer can’t check everything out, and copying related designs
means they won’t update as others make changes to their parts.

Designers should be able to quickly prepare a tailored design session without

having to know how the CAD product structure is organized.

The latest generation integrated design and development environment should allow
engineers to quickly select parts based on product structure relationships or physical
locations to set up a design context. This could be by making a graphical selection using
a 3D bounding box to load related parts into the design space or navigating visually
through product structure instead of trees of parts and assemblies. They should also be
able to apply filters and selection criteria to see only what is relevant to the task at hand.
Designers should be able to quickly prepare a tailored design session without having to
know how the CAD product structure is organized.

Design contexts should be dynamic, reflecting updates real-time without having

to wait for a periodic generation of visualizations and a digital mockup.

Engineers should be able to work in this context to make updates with full contextual
fidelity and see the impact of their changes in real time, and be assured that others will
see their updates to take them into account in their own work. In the latest generation of
systems, they should not have to wait to check out a whole assembly to modify assembly
relationships and metadata. Design contexts should be dynamic, reflecting updates real-
time without having to wait for a periodic generation of visualizations and a digital
mockup. This allows engineers to identify updates to the design data already loaded in
their design session and be able to refresh the information in real time.

Proactively Manage Variant Configurations

Another aspect of improving time to market is launching multiple product variants
concurrently. Forward-thinking manufacturers simultaneously launch product variants
that meet specific market, geographic, or customer needs – without compromising
quality. In the past, manufacturers adapted products to different markets over time, but
today’s fast-paced markets drive companies to launch products concurrently on a global
scale. In addition, tailoring products to market and individual needs typically drives
higher margins. Introducing these variants, however, adds complexity and creates a
proliferation of designs that have to be created, tested, and managed.

The latest generation design and development environment helps

manage the growing complexity companies face
managing numerous configurations and product variants.

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The latest generation design and development environment helps manage the growing
complexity companies face managing numerous configurations and product variants.
Traditional approaches require independently generating different configurations in order
to validate designs. The traditional approach causes designers to find issues too late –
after design decisions have already been made. An integrated design environment allows
configurations and valid combinations of products to be defined in PLM and associated
with design elements in CAD. This allows engineers to understand the impact of their
decisions on multiple variants as they design.

Current tools make it hard to make informed decisions on these multi-variant

models because they force engineers to see all configurations at once
or generate and review each configuration independently.

Creating a single, configured 3D platform that includes all potential variations allows
engineers to model the entire product with all options, sometimes known as “150%
BOM.” This helps validate multiple variants. Current tools, however, make it hard to
make informed decisions on these multi-variant models because they force engineers to
see all configurations at once or generate and review each configuration independently.
Instead, the latest generation of integrated solutions should access configurations in PLM
and allow engineers to turn features on and off to review various configurations in real-
time as design options are explored. This effectively allows the “Design in Context”
concept to be extended to all configurations so designers can see the impact of changes
on all configurations early.

The latest generation of integrated solutions should access configurations

in PLM and allow engineers to turn features on and off to review various
configurations in real-time as design options are explored.

Improving variant design also helps support platform and modular design processes.
Manufacturers can improve efficiency, expand reuse, and shorten time to market by
leveraging these techniques. As Best Practices for Developing Industrial Equipment
found, top performing companies (those that have grown revenue and margins much
faster than others) have adopted more advanced engineering approaches including
modular and platform design. This is also true in many other industries. Commonality
greatly improves design cycle times and quality, but adds complication because changes
to the platform impact many related designs. The ability to design in the context of
multiple variants or a specific configuration greatly reduces the complexity of platform
and modular design efforts.

7 © Tech-Clarity, Inc. 2014

Advance Collaboration to Team-based Design
Beyond individual productivity, an integrated design and data management suite can
improve team performance. To start, simply consolidating CAD platforms offers
significant value. Tech-Clarity’s Consolidating CAD research shows, “A unified CAD
strategy also helps to encourage better product development and design collaboration.”
It also enables strategic benefits like corporate agility.

The latest generation design and development platform needs to

enable real-time design collaboration with quick response times
connecting globally dispersed design teams.

The latest generation design and development platform, however, goes further. Many
companies today have designers in different geographies and time zones to optimize
design cycle time and cost, or have a distributed design environment in order to involve
suppliers and other 3rd party engineers. Regardless of physical location, these designers
need to design in the context of the other designs and be sure they are always looking at
the most current design. The latest generation design and development platform needs to
enable real-time design collaboration with quick response times connecting globally
dispersed design teams.

Collaborate in Context at the Team Level

Beyond working in the same environment, the latest generation of design and
development software should offer new collaboration techniques that allow more
dynamic design collaboration and design review. Instead of making changes
independently and consolidating changes later, the software should create a joint design
space where engineers can change their design in 3D and others can see what they are
doing. This has been mimicked with screen sharing in the past, but can only be “driven”
from one side.

The software should create a joint design space where engineers can change
their design in 3D and others can see what they are doing.

Instead of looking at the same screen, advanced techniques allow designers to share data
and set up their own environment around it. In this way, they can set up their own design
context and see changes from other engineers reflected real-time on their screen. The
tools should also offer 3D comparisons that show what has been added, removed, or
changed so engineers can work together in parallel without waiting until the end of the
day (or longer) to see changes. Because each party has their own design context instead
of a screen share, this approach respects security and access rules so people only see what
they are allowed to see.

8 © Tech-Clarity, Inc. 2014

Support the Business of Product Design and Development
Designing products is only one part of solving the time to market problem. Developing
and commercializing products requires the ability to address much more than the
product’s technical characteristics. PLM has expanded to address a more complete view
of products. In addition to capturing this information, advanced solutions should allow
designers to visualize business data in its 3D context, providing a visual representation of
product development information such as status, weights, or owners to put the business
and project information into the context of the product itself. The latest generation of
design and development should continue to manage business data in conjunction with
designs.

Advanced solutions should allow designers to visualize

business data in its 3D context.

In addition to capturing business data, leading edge manufacturers are finding new ways
to get value from their digital product models. They leverage their digital models to
optimize products and their customers’ experiences early in the development process.
The latest generation solutions needs to incorporate aspects like environmental
compliance, manufacturability, serviceability, and more into design decisions to enable
manufacturers to get the product right up front.

The latest generation of design and development software needs to go beyond

supporting product design to improve the business of product development.

Of course, not all product data is directly product related. Manufacturers today are
learning to leverage knowledge from inside and outside of their organization to make
better decisions. For example, they are turning to analytics to leverage big data from
product experience in the field to help provide feedback to engineers. They are leveraging
the wisdom of the crowd by incorporating social input. They are soliciting information
and ideas from outside of the enterprise and accessing corporate knowledge that isn’t
directly associated with products to provide insights and information to drive innovation.
The latest generation of design and development software needs to go beyond supporting
product design to improve the business of product development.

Conclusion
The integrated design and development environment is the latest evolution of product
innovation and engineering software. It offers the advantages of integrated design tools
combined with product data and lifecycle management. These advanced solutions help
manufacturers meet the challenges of compressing time, improving productivity, and
battling complexity by allowing engineers to design concurrently, in context, in real-time.

9 © Tech-Clarity, Inc. 2014

Tomorrow’s manufacturers will not be able to compete without updating their design and
product development solutions to these capabilities.

Enhanced integration of engineering software suites allows engineers to stay

immersed in designs and their design tools so they can focus on innovation
instead of navigating multiple interfaces and moving files.

Enhanced integration of engineering software suites allows engineers to stay immersed in

designs and their design tools so they can focus on innovation instead of navigating
multiple interfaces and moving files. Increased integration also allows engineers to
develop more complete product models to visualize products, optimize their designs,
validate their manufacturing processes, and simulate the experience they will provide
their customers so they can design them right the first time.

Design solutions have improved to allow much stronger capabilities for designing global
variants based on a modular 3D platform. This enables a wider variety of variants,
reduced part counts, and greater innovation because engineers can consider all possible
variants during design. It also increases efficiency and quality because changes can be
automatically propagated to all relevant variants.

Team-based collaboration allows concurrency so designers can

jointly work on the same elements of a design but
view it in their own context that respects access rights.

Collaboration capabilities have advanced to allow designers to work in the context of

their designs and see changes from others in real-time. Designers are now be able to set
up an appropriate context in which to design so they can understand the impact of their
changes on related designs and vice versa. Team-based collaboration allows concurrency
so designers can jointly work on the same elements of a design but view it in their own
context that respects access rights. This allows globally dispersed teams to collaborate on
designs in real-time.

Today’s best in class solutions go beyond traditional PDM and PLM boundaries
to leverage corporate knowledge, market information, and more from big data,
unstructured information, and social knowledge.

Finally, the latest generation of tools goes beyond technical and product design to
incorporate a much richer view of the business of developing and delivering products.
Today’s best in class solutions go beyond traditional PDM and PLM boundaries to
leverage corporate knowledge, market information, and more from big data, unstructured
information, and social knowledge.

10 © Tech-Clarity, Inc. 2014

Recommendations
Based on industry experience and research for this report, Tech-Clarity offers the
following recommendations:

• Implement today’s best practices for PDM and PLM

• Expand PLM beyond technical design to incorporate a richer view of products
• Understand the limitations of the PLM architecture most manufacturers have in
place today
• Explore the possibilities available from the latest generation of integrated product
design and development environments
• Expand beyond today’s PLM to improve the business of product development,
incorporating unstructured information, big data, and social knowledge

About the Author

Jim Brown is the President of Tech-Clarity, an independent research and consulting firm
that specializes in analyzing the business value of software technology and services. Jim
has over 20 years of experience in software for the manufacturing industries. He has a
broad background including roles in industry, management consulting, the software
industry, and research. His experience spans enterprise applications including PLM, ERP,
quality management, service lifecycle management, manufacturing, supply chain
management, and more. Jim is passionate about improving product innovation, product
development, and engineering performance through the use of software technology.

Jim is an experienced researcher, author, and public speaker and enjoys the opportunity
to speak at conferences or anywhere he can engage with people with a passion to improve
business performance through software technology.

Jim can be reached at [email protected]. You can read additional research,

watch Tech-Clarity TV, or join Jim’s Clarity on PLM blog at www.tech-clarity.com. You
can also follow Jim on Twitter at @jim_techclarity, watch him as a “dueling analyst” in
the Tech4PD web show, or find Tech-Clarity on Facebook as TechClarity.inc.

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