And they’re after your data assets!  As engineers, we’re more likely to relate to the "enterprise" as a starship than as a mechanism to advance (or retard) our careers.  But most definitely, the business enterprise – other departments in your company, other divisions around the world, plus the virtual enterprise represented by your suppliers and customers – is coming at you.

As your CAD/CAM/CAE and Product Data Management (PDM) -- or all together sometimes called Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) -- implementation delivers increasingly more strategic benefits to your company, the more important it will be to connect your efforts with other elements of the enterprise.  In the past, PLM was a continent (OK, maybe a set of linked islands) floating somewhere in the ocean of Information Technology.  Now it’s becoming clear that there are some other continents floating our way… namely ERP/MRP, PDM, and Visual Collaboration. And they all covet the 3D designs — indeed the "3D data asset" — that you’re creating in your CAD system.

Your choice is either to wait for the "enterprise issues" to be thrust upon you… or to take the initiative and leverage the 3D data asset as the thread to bring together the enterprise solution.

Oh, but there are many questions.  We’ll delve into each element of "enterprise integration" more in future columns, but let’s set the stage with a bird’s eye view of this converging landscape:

What is ERP and what data does it want from PLM?  Enterprise Resource Planning is effectively the 3^rd generation of MRP (Material Requirements or Manufacturing Resource Planning), but on steroids.  Having grown out of either the production manufacturing area or from the other end of the world in accounting, these ERP systems now span the A-to-Z of information integration.  The major software suppliers (e.g. SAP) are several times the size of the biggest CAD software vendors and ERP is fast becoming the backbone of IT.  What do they want from you?  Your bills-of-material, regularly updated as the design evolves.

Does PDM have to take light years to implement?  You probably already have PDM implementation studies underway and may already be struggling with the ever-opening Pandora’s box.  Key to a sane PDM implementation is to be ruthless about limiting scope and getting the system into production quickly.  And think carefully about which interconnections you need… CAD to ERP, ERP to PDM, and/or CAD to PDM.  For most companies, CAD is the primary source of engineering data and therefore having PDM embedded in the CAD solution makes a lot of sense.

What is Visual Collaboration and do I want it on every desktop?  If you’ve already posed this question, you're half way to salvation and a successful 3D release process.  For piece parts and small subassemblies, you’ll do fine with exporting neutral view-only files (with full 3D inspection information) and having your data "consumers" view the data in their web browser.  But for measuring, interrogating, and sharing assemblies -- with the shop floor, assembly engineering, tech pubs, suppliers, sales/marketing, and customers – you’ll want to look at a dedicated visualization package that is fast (even on laptops) and understands the product structure, precise geometry, and inspection information from 3D CAD. Most importantly, make sure that your viewing package can be the visual front-end to ERP and PDM for all the non-CAD users throughout your enterprise.

Is Internet 3D conferencing ready for prime time?  At LAN and WAN speeds, the answer is absolutely "yes" and even at dial-up connection rates you’ll be surprised how productive it can be to have a 3D, real-time collaboration with your colleagues literally on the other side of the world.

And what about synchronizing data across all these continents (IT and geographical)?  This is where you’ll end up spending time and energy to make enterprise integration a reality at your company.  The pieces are, by and large, all there and even the tools to integrate the continents… but there is a lot of "white space" between the continents that your enterprise team will have to span.  There just isn’t a Big Brother supplier out there that has an off-the-shelf enterprise engineering solution.

The evolving integration of the enterprise presents intriguing, yet very complex challenges that would be daunting perhaps even for Mr. Spock.  Your company and your career will benefit most if you take a leadership role in the enterprise movement – and pursue a progressive yet pragmatic, win-as-we-go implementation path.

A 35-year veteran of the computer-aided design, engineering and product lifecycle marketplace, Wayne McClelland is well-known as an energetic pioneer in the development and implementation of technologies for structural dynamics, finite element analysis, 3D solid modeling, and workgroup data management.  Wayne can be reached at waynemcc@wamware.com or www.wamware.com.