Connecting Data, People and Process

SANJEEV GHOSH: Welcome to today's session on data, people, and process. My name is Sanjeev Ghosh and I'm a technical specialist with Autodesk. And I will be your host for today.

So today's presentation is for you. These are some of the challenges that you face on a regular basis. And these challenges are about information. About how information is exchanged between people. How much time you spend in looking for information and managing information. So that is the reason and the genesis for a lot of these problems that we are going to discuss today.

And why do these challenges really occur? So in an organization we have people. We have people creating information. We have people exchanging information. And we have a lot of communication that is going on. And this is the reason why we need a system that really streamlines the various processes that consume data, that produce data, and that share data across people's departments and across various systems in the organization.

And that is why the system that manages information, or the data management system, is really all about data, people, and process. So anything that helps you manage your data for the people that work in an organization, allowing them to seamlessly share information that they have created, that they have consumed. And also as they are doing this, as they are creating this new information and sharing it on a day to day basis, doing it through a streamlined process. So this is all what data management is all about.

In a follow-up CAD files, I would say when it comes to just the design data, one of the most important things that I have seen engineers talk about is being able to find the right data. Now, there are a lot of other problems also listed out there. But the biggest of all of them is finding the right data. I go to office. I have to start something new. And first thing I need to do and able to start my work and deliver my outcome, I need to find the relevant information that I need to execute my work. And what I do next? I go out asking people. I call up someone. I call up my peers. I call up my superiors. I look through the various drives, network drives, and various sources that I have. And I really spend a lot of time really getting to the right information before I can really start my work.

Now I have found my information. I have started to consume it. I have really made use of it. And now I'm good. I'm good to go. I'm making use of it. But as I'm proceeding, as I'm progressing through creating my information, the outcomes that I am supposed to, I have to interact with the people. I have to communicate with stakeholders. The stakeholders could be my own peers. They could be my superiors. They could be customers or external stakeholders such as our partners or manufacturing vendors.

And I find that this can be one of the biggest challenges when it comes to engineering data and information. Not everyone is equipped to manage engineering data. If it were just simple files, we can have a file management system or a file sharing system. But we are talking of engineering data that needs to be visualized, commented upon, understood. And a simple file management system perhaps may not be the best way to be used for communication and collaboration.

And in the process of creating data, going through the progress of making changes to it, and then subsequently collaborating on it-- as I do this, I don't work on my own. I have to take feedback. I have to communicate. Again, communication is coming up in my conversation more often than ever. But the point being that there is always a process that needs to be followed. And every company has a laid out system that needs to be adhered to.

So as I go on doing my work as an engineer, as a designer, I need to follow these processes. I cannot do it the way I want it, not exactly. I need to adhere to these processes. And being able to do that without really bothering much about how I'm going to do it-- what are the systems I'm going to use? Is everyone in the organization using the same system? These are some of the things that come to my mind.

And if you look at this infographic that is on the screen right now, we are looking at things like managing change. We are looking at things like bill of materials, managing design data by project-- meaning that the people who are really looking at the data from [INAUDIBLE] the managers, the people who are responsible for the organization, need to see data in a certain way. So as everyone goes about doing their work, is this data getting reflected and giving the information to these stakeholders, to the decision makers, to take the next steps to really make decisions and make sense out of the data? So process-- following a process is definitely the key. And this is one of the biggest challenges that I've heard people talk about.

And now let's get to the point where, why do we really experience this? Why is it that these problems occur? We all have been in business for quite some time. The automations are there for many years. They have been successful. But why do these problems still exist? And the interesting thing that we found out, by directly interacting with our customers as well as through third-party agencies surveying for us, is that most of the information that we create is managed using Windows Explorer. Now I must say Windows Explorer is really a great tool. It helps us organize the data. It helps us create a folder structure quite nicely. And it's really a tool that I use on a day-to-day basis.

But what we have realized and what we have heard from everyone that maybe Windows Explorer is not a good tool for managing engineering data. It's good to store data. It's good to give you a picture of what you have and where it is kept. But beyond that, perhaps it does not really add or give any more information, or helps you communicate, collaborate, and maintain that data in the way the data should be maintained.

So how do we solve this, really? The approach from Autodesk for solving this problem is Product Data Management. And Product Data Management is the way in which we manage data, share information, and collaborate with stakeholders. Now, Product Data Management has an acronym. It's called PDM. I'm sure it's not an unfamiliar word that you're hearing for the first time.

PDM, if I tell you what-- if I ask you what a PDM system looks like or what do you know about it, what is it that-- what one word comes to your mind? Perhaps if there are hundreds people out there in the meeting right now or in the presentation, I would get different words and everyone has a different meaning. And some of them are definitely common. And these are some of the words that would pop up.

And here we see what it's like on the left-hand side. Here we have BOM, which comes out predominantly. BOM is Bill of Material. We are talking of library parts. We are talking of reducing errors. We are also talking of things like concurrent design and version control. So many, many things. And these are the things that make up a good data management system.

For Autodesk, the data management platform that we have for our customers is Vault. Vault is the software or the solution that helps you improve your productivity when it comes to managing engineering data. And I'm going to talk about Autodesk Vault in the session ahead.

Autodesk Vault really helps manage data that is created and consumed by various people in the organization. And as they are doing this, we also manage the processes within Autodesk Vault that help you consume and collaborate on the data. To simplify this, what I have done is, I have broken down the process into three broad segments.

How do you access information? How do you control it? And finally, how do you collaborate on the data? So accessing is about getting to the data, ensuring that everyone has access or everyone has access to the information. Control is, the right people have access to the data at the right time. And collaboration is, how you exchange information using a system?

And let's start with access. Access is all about having data stored in a centralized location. Access is about having the right information, and also maintaining the various stages that it is going through. Access is also about being able to reuse information that has been previously created and executed for a different project. So we are going to look at these things in a little more detail.

So let's talk about centralized storage now. So centralized storage looks pretty simple here. There is a server. And there are people who work on different design systems who are connected to that server and accessing information from that server. When I'm saying accessing information, they are doing it in both directions. They are sending information. They are getting information.

Now, as this looks simple, when it comes to engineering information we are talking of data in terms of file sizes that could be large. And when we are working on these files in a design environment we would be needing resources-- hardware resources such as RAM or a graphics capability that our system needs to have in order to work seamlessly on this information. Now to do this properly without any lag, without any hiccups, I really need to have this information on my local machine.

So how is it that Vault is going to help here? Vault ensures that when you are creating information, the file definitely-- the information it definitely goes to the Vault server, so everyone else has access to it. But it also keeps a local copy in a space known as the local workspace on your machine. So when I'm working on a design, when I'm creating a very large assembly of equipment of a factory, of a plant, I am really working on the file that exists in my local workspace. And I continue to make changes to it.

But what Vault really does in the background, it connects this local file to the file in the server and continuously keeps on updating it. So that the other people who are connected to my work, other people who are really connected to my information and are working with me, have access to the latest information that I have been working on. That is the beauty of what Vault does when it comes to managing data centrally.

Now let's get to milestones . Now what are milestones? Let me give you an example. I come to work daily. I have perhaps created a document. I'm talking of a Word document where I have to enter a few paragraphs of text. It's a file called-- with an extension of .doc. We all know that. There is Excel. There's PowerPoint. There are various file types that are created by various systems.

Now again, coming back to my Word document. Perhaps I write a proposal that has a couple of pages. And the max it takes for me to complete the document is maybe an hour. Or at the most, after many iterations and reviewing it with my peers and my managers, I perhaps take a day to complete it and send it across. That's it. But is my engineering work really similar in nature? I would say not.

Because when I start my work, I have to gather some inputs. I have to start creating my drawing document, very similar to my Word document. But in this case, my work on that document does not really end in a day. I add information. I create elements in my drawing. And I continue to update it on a regular basis. As I'm doing this, I do it day on day, day on day, regularly updating it, taking feedback. And finally it gets completed. So the work that I started might end and get completed in a week, in a couple of weeks, in a month or a couple of months, or even for long-lead projects it could mean a couple of years as well.

So what this really means for a designer, or a project team actually managing that information, is having point in time where they can reflect back on. And get back to in case some changes need to be made. So this is what Vault does very effectively. And this really happens without much, I would say, intervention by the user. It's not the way I would do it in Windows Explorer. I would create copies of it by using a very, very easy to use command in any Windows system, the Save As. I'm not going to do a Save As in Vault. Vault will automatically take care of creating these versions. I would call them, let's say, work in process versions.

The next aspect of Vault is being able to reuse designs with a function called Copy Design. Now why is this function very important? And I really love to talk about it is because of the fact that in any project in any organization, it does not consist of a single file that you have to manage for a project. It could be five files, 10 files, hundreds or even thousands files in a project. So then I get a new project to execute, the first way in which I can do it, perhaps the most elementary way is, start from scratch, from a blank slate. So I have to really recreate every aspect of my new project. And spend a lot of time doing that.

The second way could be the company has already executed many similar projects in the past. And I can copy that entire data. Create a new set and start working on the new set. But in this second matter, which sounds sort of simple, what you're really doing is, you're creating a lot of information. And over the number of periods of years that you continue to do this work, and this company that you work for continues to create and execute projects, this is also information that has been created that is duplicate in nature. That is really difficult to even understand which is the latest. Because at various points in time, people have used various ways to store information, various kinds of folder structures, various naming conventions. And really difficult to say whether these two files are similar. Or they are nearly similar. Or they are the same. But they're not the same.

So in Vault we have created a method by which you can say that from a previous project I want to use-- reuse 80% of my design. And I want to make changes only to 20% of the design. So we have a function called Copy Design that really allows you to do that. Let's see it in action.

Again same person-- no, this time it's a different person. Earlier it was an engineer. Now it is-- they have designer that is really going to work on the project. And he's actually taking a copy design. If you're looking at the video now, we are talking about leveraging a set of information and sending it across to all different folder.

Now here we are sending information to a different folder, but how are we doing that is really important. Here we are specifying, what is it that you want to really copy? What is it that you really want to reuse? This is defined in this section called Action. And that is what is really defining how much of duplication of efforts you are really going to make. So we are going to really figure out and find out certain files, find and replace. Looks very similar. But here we are really identifying files by making use of advanced search capability.

Now I took this file. I created a folder structure. And I identified which are the files that really needed to be copied. Because now I know that these are the files that are the one that are going to be changed in my new design. So being able to copy, being able to reuse, that is the whole crux of it. Ensuring that within the two projects there are a set of files that are common. And you definitely know if these files change, they are going to affect both the systems. So you also have the knowledge of where a certain file is used. Whether it has been used multiple times in multiple projects and so on. So the Copy Design really helps you manage files without really creating unnecessary duplicates throughout the system.

Well, the next most important aspect is being able to control the information. Now, there are three statements out here, Release Management, Duplicate Search and Engineering Change Order.

Release Management is something that allows right people to access the right information at the right time.

And Duplicate Search is being able to find out that before I start creating a new file, is there a file that already exists in the system which I can reuse? So being able to find that. Also if there are files that have already been created by different people at different point in time, which is the one that needs to be kept? Are these similar files? Rather than having multiple various variants of this, you want to say that only have this particular one as the main file. The rest-- everything can be ignored and discarded.

Change Order, very important because engineering project is all about change. Change during the process of being created. Change after it has been delivered and the product is even out in the market. So change coming in from various sources-- from the manufacturing, the people who are creating the project, from customers who are using the project. So various ways in which changes can be requested. So being able to track the reasons for change is also very important.

First let's talk about Release Management. And Release Management, as I said, is about giving access to the right information to the right people at the right time. Which means that, let's say if you're looking at this flowchart, there are four stages that have been articulated. We have the starting phase where which is called work in progress. Now what is work in progress?

Perhaps, as the name suggests, it is the state in my design where it is still in the process of being completed. It's not [INAUDIBLE] completed. I'm coming daily and making changes to it. And at this stage I don't need everyone to have access to it, specifically the people who are end consumers of this design. I don't need them to see that drawing. I don't even need them to really comment or even be able to find that drawing when I'm working on it. It creates unnecessary distractions and challenges as well.

If, let's say, a manufacturing vendor or a manufacturing person accidentally picks up a drawing that is in the stage of work in progress and starts manufacturing or producing based on the drawing-- look at how much a cost or loss, it will incur for the entire project. Because you would have taken a wrong design to manufacture. Because it was not complete in the first place.

So this is what we are going to essentially ensure using the Release Management system. So we are going to save that when it is work in progress. Only certain people need access to it. When it is for review, for example, a different set of people who-- the people who are going to really study the drawing give feedback have access. And finally when it is released, that is when the end user-- end users could be as in my earlier example, it could be manufacturing. It could be a vendor management team who is taking that drawing and giving to external vendors.

And finally, there could be a stage where you no longer want people to use this drawing. And whenever they search it, it should not pop up in their searches. So we have a system that can help it make obsolete. So this is what Vault can very nicely do with the data that is being created for your projects.

Duplicate Part Identification or Duplicate Parts. Now how do we identify parts and really figure out whether they are same? Well, there are many ways. The file name to start with can be the starting point. It can say that xyz.abc is the file name I'm searching for. And I want every other file that with this name to be identified. That could be the starting point. Perhaps Windows Explorer can help you do that.

But there is a lot of other information that is there in these files because they're engineering data. There's a lot of information to suggest what material is used, for which project it was executed, for which customer it was made. And so on. So another way of searching for duplicate files is being able to track all this information and figure out how many of the files out there have this similar information. Like in this material customer project, there could be many other such information out there.

Now there's another way of looking at files is based on their shape and geometry. This is quite an interesting way. So I want to find out all the files that are similar in nature, of course, by their name, maybe. Or maybe not just by their name. Their name could be different. They may have different material as well. But I want to really find out files based on the, I would say, geometry or their shape or the look. So identifying objects or files based on how they look-- What is their shape? What is their size? --is another very important aspect of being able to identify duplicate files.

The next most important thing that I'm going to talk about now is being able to manage change. And the process in Autodesk Vault is known as Engineering Change Order. Now, this is why this process is very, very important is because life is all about change. We, with the best of our intentions, have created a great product. But when it goes out in the field there are problems that customers may experience. And you get feedback from marketing that this is something that is not working out for customers. And we really need to figure out a way to manage this, make a change to our product. So a change initiated from customer experience.

Or, for example, there could be another instance. A change that was initiated by the manufacturing department or the production department because they felt that the design that came to them was not really manufacturable. And it needed change to accommodate some manufacturing processes. Another instance of a change being requested by one of the departments.

Now one of the ways is that a simple email can trigger that change. Absolutely it can. But then as we do this and and as we really make this change, are we also capturing the reason for these changes? So that people in the future can reference back to this and really know that what happened in the past, why these changes were made? So being able to keep track of them is really, really helpful for future projects. And that is what we are going to do with the Engineering Change Order.

It helps us to create entire workflow around initiating the change order itself, having approval workflow, making that change. And finally releasing that changed document. And then finally keeping track of it. So a simple workflow could be like this.

You know, the shop floor in this case has initiated a change. We have now-- it is in the-- I would say it has been accepted by the engineering manager who is the Mike Manager. He has opened it. He has handed it over to Dave Designer who is the person who is going to effect that change. And finally someone has reviewed it and approved the change.

So there is a complete system that tracks how it was created, whether it was needed to be changed. It was approved by someone. It was then handed over to someone to really bring about that change. And then there is someone who has approved the whole process and said that now it is ready to go for the change and ready to get manufactured again. So a system that really tracks the entire process.

The next important piece is collaboration. And being able to collaborate is the key to a successful business. Collaboration with internal as well as external stakeholders. Now the background that you see on screen really articulates the essence of collaboration that we are talking about. We are talking about collaboration within the company's internal infrastructure that usually is protected by a firewall. And then being able to communicate with external stakeholders such as customers, contractors, or even engineering service providers and other design operators is the key.

So this is what Vault really does nicely. It allows us to maintain communication chain within the firewall. And also allows selective information to be shared in a secure way with external stakeholders. Now having said that, we have stakeholders that are not always in office that need access to information from-- while being mobile. When I say while being mobile, while being traveling or while being at a different place where they do not have access to their system or their office workstation in front of them.

So being able to do this from the convenience of a mobile app is really, really helpful. And that is what we have done. We have really created a nice Vault-connected app for the mobile, for both Android and iOS device, that really helps you do that.

Let's take a look at this system here, how it works. Now this is Vault on the desktop. I'm logging in, adding information of almost the same project as what we are looking at. The file being reviewed while being on the desktop app. Now I'm attaching this file with additional information such as this specification sheet. And creating and sharing it with different stakeholders now who is not in office.

Now here we are talking about, not a person who is really mobile or traveling, but a person who is in the shop floor and perhaps has access only to a machine with Internet Explorer, or a browser. So being able to access information through a browser is really, really helpful. Because that really ensures that no additional installation is required for the people who are in the software to be able to access this information.

Again, the next person who we are looking at is the designer himself. But the same, is not in front of his machine but he's really accessing the same information while being on his mobile device, which is a tablet in this case. Another interesting aspect of Vault is being able to search for files based on a barcode. Now one way is if you type a file name and really get to the file, multiple file searches show up. But what if I can simply scan a barcode and really figure out and find the exact file that I was looking for? That is really, really valuable. So this is the power of the Vault mobile app that we have created, connected to Vault.

So in summary, to put it all together, Vault is a system that keeps your data secure. It provides faster access to all the stakeholders within the chain of execution. It manages all your data and archives all your legacy data and finally, streamlines collaboration you have always wanted. So with this I come to the end of my presentation. And I'll be happy to take any questions that you may have. Thank you so much.