What is your PLM expertise area?
– For more than six years I have been working for Technia in the area of design and development of PLM systems for manufacturing companies. I am working as a PLM consultant and solution architect in the field of engineering data management (also called PDM - Product Data Management). The main characteristic features for a PDM system in the manufacturing industry are bill-of-materials (BOM) management, CAD and ERP integration as well as printing and viewing solutions for CAD drawings.
I moved to Austria from Finland with my family a year ago - to be able to work full-time at our customer in their PLM project.
Why is PLM important for your customer company?
– My customer has a large number of production and engineering units around the world and the numbers are growing. We are working to introduce an engineering process solution which will be used to consolidate product research and development practices around the world. The major benefits are improved quality through managing and tracking changes to product design and added productivity through re-use of materials and designs. Additionally, Matrix will be seen by the customer as the integrated and flexible front-end that pushes engineering output into the ERP environment.
What has Technia helped your customer company with, regarding the PLM area?
– Technia's main asset is its very experienced and flexible team of consultants and software developers. This team has implemented complicated customisations in the highly integrated PLM system which will have lowest possible impact on long term maintainability. Achieving this has been a challenge even for the experienced team.
The second asset is a flexible Matrix PLM platform, which has convinced a lot of world class customers.
What do you think about the future importance of PLM (in your industry/all industries)?
– My industry knowledge is more specialised than broad, but PLM is without a doubt a strategic business system. Today, and in the near future, traditional PDM is still the main focus. In the long run though, PDM will become a standard and the industry’s attention will shift more to the other parts of product life-cycle management including:
- Requirement management and conceptual design as well as product configuration management at the beginning of the life-cycle
- The management of service, maintenance and recycling at in the end of the life-cycle
- Advanced collaboration tools over the complete life-cycle