Touting a focus on productivity enhancements across three
key areas and a message of helping manufacturers do more with less, Siemens PLM Software
unwrapped Teamcenter
8, a major upgrade to the centerpiece of its PLM platform, along with an enhanced
version of its Tecnomatix digital manufacturing software.
Teamcenter 8's user interface has been overhauled to support
tighter integration with the Microsoft Office suite, enabling users to interact
with the PLM platform from inside the tools and processes they are accustomed
to using every day. The addition of new integrated modules for content and
document management as well as formula, package and brand management promote
application productivity while the integration of the IBM "blue stack" of technology
along with support for IBM's Service-Oriented Architecture will make Teamcenter
easier to support and integrate with other enterprise systems, easing the
burden on IT, officials say.
The announcements come just a week after Siemens announced a
major partnership around PLM with IBM. The pair have been collaborating
for over a year to ensure the forthcoming Teamcenter 8 comes ready to use with
IBM's Product
Development Information Framework (PDIF), a set of extensions built on SOA
for integrating multiple applications, and comes preconfigured with the WebSphere middleware software and DB2
database management system. Siemens and IBM officials claim Teamcenter 8 is the
only PLM platform to be so tightly integrated with IBM's SOA and integration
architecture, thus eliminating the need for customers to choose between the two
environments.
Bill Boswell, Siemens PLM Software's senior director of
Teamcenter product marketing, described the focus of the release as being all
about enhancing productivity, especially when customers are tightening their belts
and trying to do more with less. By expanding the Teamcenter solution with an
end-to-end set of components throughout the product lifecycle and by helping
reduce the integration and support issues around PLM, Siemens is hoping to
remove many of the stumbling blocks that have been an obstacle for PLM adoption
and to help companies position themselves for future growth. "Best-in-class
companies are asking the question: How can we be sure we're ready with the
right products when the economy starts to recover," Boswell says. "By
balancing productivity ... that's what this release is all about."
On a individual level, Teamcenter 8 features a number of new
enhancements, including extensive use of the Microsoft Outlook user interface
and improved integration with Office 2007. Specifically, Teamcenter 8 adds a
"ribbon" to the Office toolbar, making it easier to interact with product
information directly from within Word, Excel or other members of the Office
suite. In addition, there is now an embedded "Teamcenter To Do List" within
Outlook to help engineers manage scheduling, workflow and engineering changes
through their everyday office applications. "Teamcenter looks just like all the
other Microsoft Office pieces and all the typical tasks you need to do from
Teamcenter are available without leaving Office with live updates and live
connections," Boswell says. Earlier Teamcenter versions had limited Office
integration, only supporting some specific cases around Bill of Materials
exports or edits, he added.
Teamcenter 8 also features much more robust integration with
ECAD tools, to improve the information sharing and collaboration experience for
teams developing mechatronics-based products. Teamcenter menus can be embedded
in logic capture and physical layout tools from Mentor
Graphics, Cadence, Intercept and Altium, and from within the ECAD applications,
users can save native design files and perform check-in and check-out
operations. For tools not supported in the Teamcenter 8 release, Siemens PLM
Software is offering a new gateway integration application specifically for EDA
tools. The upgrade is also integrated with software development tools,
including IBM's Rational and ClearCase.
Teamcenter 8 also ushers in an expanded set of applications,
including modules for Content and Document Management as well as Formula,
Package and Brand Management. In addition to these new modules, the platform
offers enhanced lightweight viewing capabilities for better supplier
collaboration, advanced requirements and project management functions along
with new industry-specific template solutions for aerospace and defense, CPG
and medical devices.
In the area of enhanced IT productivity around PLM, Siemens
PLM Software is turning to its new partnership with IBM. Teamcenter 8 is now
available on the IBM technology stack, shipping to customers pre-configured
with IBM DB2 Information Manager and the WebSphere Application Server. In
addition, the software supports Tivoli Storage Manager and Access Manager along
with Rational ClearCase and the partners will jointly offer consulting and
services around PLM.
In a related move, Siemens PLM Software announced Tecnomatix 9, an upgrade to
its digital manufacturing software that boasts new features for automating
various planning tasks, including those around alternative product
assembly/disassembly sequencing and human modeling. The software also offers
tighter integration with Teamcenter, enabling improved manufacturing data
collaboration between the Tecnomatix suite and Teamcenter PLM backbone.
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