MCAD & PLM Integration

MCAD & PLM integration allows for effective change management, secure enterprise-wide data access, and team collaboration for MCAD data; enabling the realization of globally distributed product development teams.

The following topics need to be addressed as part of an MCAD/PLM Integration implementation.

• Data access & control (user, group, role based access)
• Part number generation and access
• Check-in, check-out, version control & design change notification
• MCAD model attribute synch to PLM attributes
• MCAD model renaming and “cloning”
• Formats and standard part management
• Derived output generation, storage and enterprise access
• MCAD model lifecycle management (promote, demote, sign-offs, release and revise)
• MCAD structure and E-BoM synch
• ECR/ECO integration with MCAD model change
• Customer, supplier, design partner data exchange

PDM/MCAD & PLM Integration

Integration of a PDM/MCAD data manager and PLM enables separate, yet integrated management of the work-in-process MCAD data management and the enterprise engineering release and change control process.

A PDM/MCAD integrations enables you to independently use and leverage the value of the PDM system for MCAD WIP data management, and leverage the PLM system for enterprise engineering release & change control.

The key objectives for a PDM/MCAD and PLM integration include:

• Mechanical design is initiated in PDM and design variations can be iterated on, independent of the PLM system
• Mechanical design data is “pushed” to PLM when it is ready for enterprise visibility or enterprise change management
• Enterprise visibility to mechanical design data (derived files) is “controlled” by PLM via data access rules
• Once released, mechanical design data within PDM is “locked-down” until a PLM ECR is initiated/released
• Mechanical design data is “packaged” and “transferred” for supplier exchange via PLM

ERP & PLM Integration

PLM & ERP integration allows for the automated release of the engineering BoM to the manufacturing or production BoMs, thereby; enabling the design-anywhere / build anywhere paradigm.

The following topics need to be addressed as part of a PLM/ERP Integration implementation.

• Part item transfer to ERP (lifecycle integration and attribute mappings)
• BoM & ECO transfer to ERP (lifecycle integration and attribute mappings)
• Multi-organization part and BoM transfer(management of organization specific transfer parameters)
• BoM difference analysis
• ERP data access/viewing from within PLM
• ERP part item transfer to PLM (what attributes need to be transferred)

PLM Integration Services

In addition to developing vendor/OEM integration products, ITI TranscenData provides implementation consulting services to assist with implementation planning for integration products.

This illustration represents the key elements of an integration implementation project:

Legacy MCAD/PDM to PLM Migration

A fundamental aspect of the value proposition for the implementation of an MCAD & PLM integration is a high quality, efficient, and cost effective migration of the legacy PDM/MCAD data to the new PLM system.

Quality, efficient, and cost effective PDM/MCAD to PLM data migration is a challenging objective. It requires a joint/collaborative effort to carefully assess several important trade-offs.

• Should the initial migration target be simple MCAD data management, or should the initial target be a fully integrated PLM/ECO/MCAD solution?
• How and when should the MCAD drawing *viewables* be migrated?
• Should you migrate one legacy PDM/MCAD system at a time, or do a merged big-bang migration?
• How much historical (previous revisions/versions) data should be migrated?
• How much PDM/MCAD data clean-up should be done prior to migration vs. automatically, as part of the migration?
• How long can the PDM/MCAD system be down during the production migration?
• How much automated vs. manual validation should be done to the migrated data?