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Understanding competitor's use of EDM/PDM To complement their understanding of the way in which the company uses and manages engineering information, the project team should try to evaluate the way that competitors are organized, and the steps that they have taken towards implementing EDM/PDM solutions. The project team should also look at the way that competitor's suppliers and customers are using EDM/PDM. This may help the project team to understand competitor's behavior, and may provide opportunities to create new relationships. In some cases, competitors will be willing to invite the project team for an open exchange of information. If this is not possible, something may be learned from presentations made at conferences and seminars, or from articles in journals and magazines. Some Industry Associations, recognizing that EDM/PDM will be vitally important to their members, may run seminars in which experience is exchanged among members, and external experts give information on EDM/PDM developments in other industries. Understanding EDM/PDM Solutions There are many solutions offered to help improve the management of engineering information and the engineering process. The project team may eventually decide that there is no one vendor capable of meeting all of the requirements of the company, and a multi-vendor integrated solution may be necessary. Some systems are primarily oriented towards management of CAD data. Others focus on the management of engineering drawings or on the management of alphanumeric engineering documents. Some systems are oriented towards the management of metadata, others to the underlying data. The project team will need to examine the hardware, software and communications aspects of proposed solutions. The basics of data base theory and data modeling will need to be understood. Although some information on these subjects may be picked up from seminars, books and journals, often the best way to learn is from direct contact with vendors and existing users, or by implementing a pilot solution. Some systems require little customization, others require much more. A PC-based EDM/PDM system for half a dozen engineers in a small company may be purchased for less than $10,000. In a large company, with several hundred potential EDM/PDM system users, the initial EDM/PDM system cost may exceed $100,000, and with user licenses for additional users costing several thousand dollars, total system purchase cost can easily exceed $1,000,000. It is important to understand the total cost of a system over its expected lifetime, taking account of the cost of initial customization, the cost of customizing upgrades, and maintenance costs. Corresponding organizational costs, such as reorganization, training and the development of new procedures should also be taken into account. Reporting the results The project team will collect a mass of data about the engineering information requirements of the company. It must not present all of this to top management. Instead, the project team must distil it into a form in which management can easily understand it, and recognize the way in which it relates to the company and to the objectives set for the EDM/PDM project. The project team can try to produce a one-page overview that contains all of the most important data. This should show how the business objectives are to be met. It could include the major functions and systems currently involved, with an indication of the volume and type of information created, used and communicated. It may well be that such a figure will be unbalanced, and that a more logical grouping of activities and information can be found. Starting from this one page, top level picture, the project team can then develop one-page pictures of each of the major activity and information groups. These will show some of the lower-level activities, the systems involved, the users, and the volumes and frequencies of data creation, use and communication. The results of this part of the EDM/PDM project should include:
Once the project team has finalized the results, and produced a brief executive summary of the main points, the team leader should present the results to top management, who will probably ask that they also be made available to functional managers. Some managers will probably want to look at the detailed findings, and it may take several weeks to get the results formally agreed, and the next phase of activity (i.e. selecting an EDM/PDM system) started. Invariably, the investigation will have shown the opportunities for improving the management of engineering data, both by cleaning up the current process and by implementing an EDM/PDM system. The objective of understanding the way engineering data is used and managed will have been achieved. |