We believe it is of utmost importance and financial benefit to have careful reviews by the right people at each step as we make changes to processes/requirements/software/user interface etc. A review performed just to satisfy some management goal (CMMI level x) and collect signatures on a form is of no use and just wastes time. The PLM team should make a serious effort on all reviews, request enough time for a meaningful exchange of ideas, documentation and approvals. There is no need to preach the necessity of good reviews, but have seen many times where insufficient caliber of resources or hasty reviews leads to massive wastage.

At any large PLM implementation we will find multiple environments. Production environment, Production Like Test Environment (PLTE), Validation, Integration, Test, Training, multiple development environments. At very large corporations we find even multiple of each type of environment. It is important to keep all the environments up-to-date with the base code, common configuration parameters and administrative setup (Rules, lifecycles, roles, domain tables, etc.). InfoTechnik provides the tools AdmDBSynch and xrfLifeCyc to assist with these tasks so that the most qualified PLM resource does not chase issues that could have easily been identified. NavExtr tool helps in transporting large amounts of object/relation data based on certain navigation criteria from one environment to another.

If you use the right resources with knowledge and experience, the upgrades are not too difficult. Validation of the upgraded system may be an issue. But, if you have been at PLM for 10-15 years, you would have developed a set of test scripts that test the functionality most important to you. If a systematic approach to testing important functionality has not yet been developed, that should be the first priority. Upgrades requiring many class changes (E.g. ADS 3.1 to Teamcenter 2005) or object model changes (documents to structured documents) will require more effort. Changing from Teamcenter Enterprise to Teamcenter Unified should not be considered as an upgrade, but as migration to a new PLM system. It is OK to skip a version, if there is a brand new user interface or massive changes to data model/functionality. This will give some time for the new version to become more stable. You would have spared much effort if you did not jump from Metaphase 3.x to CF 1.0. Currently jumping from Teamcenter 2005/2007 to Teamcenter Unified should be carefully evaluated.

As much as the software vendors can claim that you will not have to customize, it ends up so. The configuration vs customization debate is a myth. Configuring the software is as or more complex than the customizing. The software vendor may claim that adding a few more attributes or a new object type is just configuring the software. Very often new attributes and object classes need business specific processing that requires software logic. Customization on the server side is easier to upgrade to newer versions. Customizations to the user interface are more difficult to upgrade.

Though use of Global Services sound architecturally very correct, but in actual use it adds a lot of complexity (in terms of additional hardware/software, web application servers, java code) and ends up as a difficult system to maintain and enhance. One ends up customizing Global Services code to achieve the required goals.

In our experience, CAD data management for MCAD or ECAD applications is best left to the in-built local CAD Data Management system that are built by the CAD software vendor and tightly coupled with the CAD software. Enterprise wide PLM system should be dealing with enterprise level business functions such as Change Management, BoM processing, interfaces with ERP and manufacturing systems, MRO, performance metrics gathering, interfaces with customer and suppliers, etc. Design engineers do not want to switch back and forth between the CAD application and PLM system interfaces. The choice is either to use a complicated software module built into the PLM system that interfaces at the CAD data level or use a minimal interface between CAD and PLM systems that interacts with the design engineer minimally at very points in the design process. Please call to discuss these and other options for interfacing/integration CAD systems with PLM system.