PDM and PLM: Together at Last with Vault and Fusion Lifecycle

ALLEN GAGER: Good afternoon. Welcome, everybody. So does this feel like the first day of AU or the third day of AU? Oh, got a quiet crowd. OK. My name is Allen Gager. I am a subject matter expert in our Data Management space. I work with our sales team in a pre-sales effort. So my role is to meet with the customers and understand the business outcomes that you're trying to achieve and what problems or workflows are preventing that.

MICHAEL VESPERMAN: And I'm Mike Vesperman, and same role as Allen. My subject matter expertise are on our PLM side of our business, which is Fusion Lifecycle. I've been with Autodesk four years. Prior to Autodesk, spent some time as a consultant, helping companies implement enterprise-wide systems, mainly in the manufacturing space. So connecting different departments, moving information, product information across business systems was kind of the function of my job. I've been around with PLM systems since the early 2000s. So I've got a lot of experience in knowing what these systems do and how they have evolved through the progression in the industry.

TONY ZOHREHVAND: Hi. Good afternoon. My name is Tony, and like Mike and like Allen, I'm also a PLM technical specialist. And I support Fusion Lifecycle and also integration to Vault. I kind of work from both sides. And I've been with Autodesk for three years. Prior to that, worked for many PLM companies, consulting companies, doing a lot of PLM on-premise implementation. And then way before that, I've been a mechanical engineer and manufacturing engineer.

ALLEN GAGER: Here's our Safe Harbor Statement. Hopefully, you've all memorized this by now in the previous classes. We may make some statements that could change, oh, by the minute. So luckily, this is being recorded so we can deny everything.

I just wanted to put this up here. I love this meme. So we've introduced ourselves, and the next thing is about the class. What we're hoping to get out of this for you, the end of the day, is to understand where PDM and PLM come together and where they should come together and then the benefits from that.

We're not going to teach you about Vault. We're not going to teach you about PLM, and we're actually not going to show you all the magic that happens underneath. There are some other classes here at AU, which I'll have listed at the end, that will go deeper into these topics.

So if you want to learn to use Vault, and you want to learn to use Fusion Lifecycle, this is not the class for you. So if you signed up in error, feel free to go find another class that is more in tune to what you're looking for. Your time is very valuable, and we want to make sure that we respect that, and you get the most out of the conference.

So a quick agenda. How many people-- Vault users in here? Sweet. Love you guys. PLM users, Fusion users. OK. Anybody using Vault and PLM together? All right. Good. After questions, I am hoping we have enough time to have some roundtable discussion. So a roundtable discussion, if you've been in any of the roundtables here at AU, the classes, it's really that guided discussion between you folks. So we've got a lot of Vault folks in here, a lot of PLM folks in here. I am hoping that we get some good discussion at the end amongst all of us.

We're also going to have some product managers and guiders-- Autodesk people responsible for guidance towards the end of the class. They'll be interested in that feedback. So some of the things that you see today, kind of think about that roundtable stuff, things you might want to talk about that aren't necessarily questions specifically on what we're covering today.

Everybody familiar with this where you work? Does that seem familiar to anybody? Primarily, my job and that of my colleagues is helping our customers sort this out. We see this every day, almost every account that we go into. So I can look at this often in listening to the processes, the workflows, the challenges that you have as customers, and I see the data management pieces in here. Well, data management is going to be good for this. PDM is good for that.

Wow, we jumped to the end. Hey, class is over.

[LAUGHTER]

TONY ZOHREHVAND: I think she's trying to fit the screen.

ALLEN GAGER: OK.

TONY ZOHREHVAND: Class is over.

ALLEN GAGER: Please hold. So back to that, my colleagues on the PLM side see the same thing. We walk into an account, we listen to the challenges, the processes, understand the outcomes that they're trying to achieve. and it's a PLM conversation. OK. So while we're waiting for that to come along, who's won it big? Anybody play the tables yet? Anybody like call their boss and say, hey, I'm not coming back? Not that big? No. OK.

TONY ZOHREHVAND: OK. Here we go.

ALLEN GAGER: All right. We're back.

TONY ZOHREHVAND: Thank you.

ALLEN GAGER: Don't have to spend too much time on this. 95% of you are Vault users. , Really what we're talking about is that engineering and CAD data. Maybe some of the process is a little bit more engineering-centric related. Lifecycle management side, obviously, we're talking more about processes and enterprise-level processes, the things that maybe happen outside of engineering that engineering doesn't really care about, that they're aware of, but there's somebody else doing it.

And so we start looking at these products. One of the things that we'll notice is we got a couple areas here that kind of overlap. And there's kind of where we're going to focus today. So from an engineering standpoint, changes can come from anywhere.

They may not come from inside of engineering. They may come from your customer. We actually have a number of customers that are tightly integrated with their vendor and supplier. And getting that information and data exchanged helps them get their outcomes.

And the whole reason for this class actually came about a year ago. I was working with a customer, international customer, a brand name that all of you would recognize. You've purchased their products. And they had a PDM system that they tweaked into a pseudo-PLM system. And they bent this all out of shape and into this weird little animal that they were trying to fit in a box. And it didn't want to go.

And as I'm listening to them and working through this, I'm back to that visual. Well, this is a PDM problem. But they had a big PLM problem as well. So I called Mike. It was the first time Mike and I actually worked together on that account. Mike sat down with the customer, went through that messy maze map. And he says, yeah, we can solve this with PLM. This is a process thing. The problem is, we have that barrier there. The PLM needs to get to the PDM. And the PDM needs to talk to the PLM.

So really, what we're going to do today is look at how we can get out of that fence. Sometimes fences are good. It's great to have a good neighbor. You know, they can come over and take care of your pets when you're gone, get your mail. If they're a really good neighbor, maybe bury something in the backyard.

So what's the answer? We've got all these things going on, got all these problems we're trying to track. And what we think we've come up with is connectivity. So Tony is going to walk you through what that might look like in those use cases.

TONY ZOHREHVAND: Yes. Thank you. Everybody hear me? Good. All right. Thank you. So why is it important to connect the Vault and Fusion Lifecycle? You know, on the left-hand side, you have Vault. Some of you already using Vault. That kind of manages the CAD data. It's really limited to designers, people who create the CAD data, and maybe they're involved in some of the aspects of the CAD data.

On the right-hand side, you see Fusion Lifecycle. You see there are so many capabilities there that they are enterprise-level capabilities that really, outside of scope of a CAD management tool. But everything that you do there, it kind of revolves around the item. And CAD data is what describes the item.

For example, if there is a CAPA at some point the CAPA is going to lead into a Change Request, is going to lead into a Change Order. Now you have to make the changes. And if the changes affect the model, then you have to go into the Vault and make those changes.

Now, being able to kind of connect these two together and have that single source of truth, an end-to-end connection is the important message here. the concept to design to engineering to even manufacturing, you notice we have the ERP integration right there on the right-hand side below kind of managing that whole process with one system, where everybody in the organization can actually go get a status of the data, get updates, where everything is, who has been assigned to what. So that's why it's connected. Otherwise, you have to come back out of one system and go into another system and try to do the things that you do and then come back to this other system and update it. But that's why it's important to connect the two together.

This slide is kind of similar slide to the previous. It's just a different way of showing it. This reminds me of that old saying that all roads lead to Rome. You notice all of these capabilities that we have in here, at some point it leads to the item. You have audit, supplier, change, CAPA, task, product. Everything kind of picks the item. Not all the time, but most of the time changes to the item make changes to the CAD files.

Sometimes you change an attribute, a description, or something that is not relevant to CAD file. So those items are separate. But any time you make changes that affects the CAD file, it leads into that PDM system. So all of these capabilities that you see on the PLM side at some point are going to have to come back and update the CAD files. That's why connecting it, again, it's important.

There are some guiding principle integrations. To me, integration is just not getting two systems talking to each other and you're done. Well, first of all, you have to make sure you maintain that single source of truth. You're not recreating the data. Because if you recreate the data, now you have to manage it in two locations. You are kind of connecting them together. Original files remain in Vault. So we're not recreating those CAD files into the Fusion Lifecycle. They remain in Vault.

What keeps in the PLM is some of the properties that are updated through the integration, BOM structure, the visualization file, some of the images. And also, you can combine some of the capabilities in the UI. For example, I don't need to leave Fusion Lifecycle and go back into the Vault. There are hyperlinks that you can embed into the Fusion Lifecycle that takes you to Vault and vice versa. You can have a view-- you see here-- this is a view of Fusion Lifecycle within Vault. So being able for the users to kind of see both systems without having to leave one system and come back, it's also important.

And then automate it. So when you integrate two systems is when do I share information? What information do I share? How do I share it? You can share that information, use that integration through a workflow.

So when I reach a certain maturity in my process, publish this information either direction or it could be overnight. I want overnight, everything that has been changed in one system update another system. Or it could be ad hoc. You can just kind of run it on an ad hoc basis. Or you could update it every minute. Just kind of update both systems. Make sure both systems are synced.

So we're going to go through some of the use cases, but not one size fits all, right? The core capability is connecting the two systems together. Now, you can decide and configure any way you want to. Where do you want to start? Where do you want to end? How many times you go back and forth. All of these are possible, but at a minimum, you have to connect the two systems together.

Here's one use case that kind of starts a Fusion Lifecycle. You create a product or project, it creates a project in some folders in Vault. Integration does that. Then designer goes and creates the geometry, drawings, any kind of document reference. And then integration pushes them to Fusion Lifecycle.

Now, here they're not really recreated, but the integration actually pushed the information about the Fusion Lifecycle, and it puts them Under Review. Now, why do we have the locks? Because when they are Under Review, you don't want people to go back and change here, because now you're reviewing that. So you don't want it to be a moving target. You want it to be kind of locked, create the items, create the building material, and then take it through your typical change process. Usually you release items through a change process.

As you go through the change process and you release them, once they're released, Vault is updated. It shows all the information is released. And sometimes upon the release, you create PDF. For those who use Vault, you might use the Job Processor, that when you release something, PDFs are created. So you can actually send those PDFs across as well.

So people in the manufacturing, in the engineering, enterprise-wide, can have access to all the viewables about the CAD data. And then that becomes your product BOM, and it gets pushed into the product. Here's kind of a larger view of this that kind of walks through this process. This product is created. Here, geometry. Items are Published, Under Review, Locked. As you go through change process releasing these, PDFs are generated. Now your product BOM is released. Now it's ready to go into your product development process.

So releasing beta material, releasing the CAD structure, is different than going through the product development process. First, you have to release that-- whatever you're making, you have to release the CAD model. And then, you go through your product development process, which is requirement, development, testing, production, and so on and so forth.

Here's another use case. So as I said, there are many use cases. Some companies are top-down approach, where you build your product structure first and your PLM. And then you push that information into Vault. Some companies are CAD-centric. You start in Vault. You create the CAD structure first, and that CAD structure is what drives the BOM into your Fusion Lifecycle.

So in this case, it's a CAD-centric approach. You start the geometry, you push it into the Fusion Lifecycle. And again, as you release it, PDFs are generated and attached. And now you have your product BOM. So in the previous use case, we started in Fusion Lifecycle. Here, we start in Vault.

And again, it depends to your process, to how you do business. How do you make-- I've been at companies, that they have these massive assemblies. And they literally start the entire assembly in PLM. They kind of build the product structure. And once they have the product structure, they can push that into Vault. Vault uses that information, uses a template file, and creates all the parts and assembly. Now the engineers can go and add geometry.

So that's a top-down approach. And a CAD-centric approach is where designers start making the CAD models, put it together, make an assembly, and that ultimately becomes your building material. And here is, of course, a bigger picture of the same use case we were looking at.

Now, I'm going to kind of run through a couple-minute demo that we actually did this live and we captured it. But we are demoing where we initiated a product in Fusion Lifecycle. That product created the project in Vault. Then we went and we added the CAD files into the Vault, and we pushed the CAD files from Work In Progress to Full Review. That initiated the integration, pushed them into the Fusion Lifecycle. We went to an ECO process, and we released them. And as we released them, integration updated CAD file in Vault and released them automatically.

So let's start the demo. So here, I'm in Fusion Lifecycle. This is a project I created, 900 0017. I go into the Vault, integration created the same folder project and a folder structure. You can choose if you want to create a folder structure or not. Now, in Fusion Lifecycle, we go through the items in BOM, because this is where we publish the information into the items in BOM. We go into the items in BOM workspace, and if I go to the engineering folder of CAD Vault, this is all the CAD information that I have, CAD files and drawings. And they're in Work In Progress, I change the state to Full Review.

Now, as soon as you do that, the publishing starts behind the scenes. Of course, you can decide where you want to do that publishing. But in this case, it happens here. Now it's Full Review. Now, the publishing is working behind the scenes. We go back to Fusion Lifecycle, the entire BOM structure is created here. I go to the top-level assembly. Here is the top-level assembly.

You notice the part number even came across. You can define the part number in either system. I go to the Building Material tab here, and here is the part number. Building material tab shows the indented building material structure exactly as it was in Vault. Here's the building material. These are all the components. They are all in working condition. And the attachments.

You notice that they do [INAUDIBLE] the assembly. The actual drawing and a draft of the drawing came across. And a large model viewer allows you to actually view that. Now I'm actually viewing the 3D model, viewing drawing, without having to have that native application running. So now I'm going to look at the drawing. This is the actual drawing I'm looking at. So there's a lot of benefits here that people in manufacturing can look at these drawings as well. And here's a draft of the drawing. And we go back.

Now, in order to release something in Fusion Lifecycle, we use ECO process. So we're going to initiate the ECO process. We're going to run through a fast track that makes sure, because of the time, we can get it done. Now, I'm creating a Change Order. I go through the fast track routing, start the lifecycle. It's a bypass design and release with an effectivity date.

Now, once I create that, I have to go add all the children, because this is top-level assembly that I initiated the Change Order against. So I go add all the children to the top-level assembly, and here are all the children. And now I set the lifecycle state for all of them. I want to make sure all of them are going to be released. Right now, only the top-level assemblies.

So I specify the lifecycle states for all of them. And now, everything is going to go from nothing to revision A. So they were Work In Progress. They were unreleased. The workflow, this is our typical ECO workflow. I'm going to go through the Fast Track. So I'm going to submit it to Under Review.

But you notice here when I submit to Under Review, nothing's going to change in Vault. In Vault, a similar Review state. This is the Fast Track. And if I go back to Vault, you notice everything is still Full Review. Nothing has changed. So we go back to Fusion Lifecycle. And now we're going to approve the change. Now, upon the approval, this link here actually releases the item in Fusion Lifecycle. At the same time, it releases the item in Vault without anybody actually having to do that manually.

You notice here, the items in Vault should be released. Now, the view in Vault shows that they are released. Revision A. I'm going to sync my local space with the database. So now that sync actually updates, and now they are locked. Because in Vault, when something is released, it's locked. That means people cannot change it anymore. So now they're released and locked.

So going through that workflow actually makes that possible. So nobody had to actually go and make changes in Vault. All the lifecycle states were being changed via the integration.

ALLEN GAGER: We just actually covered a lot there. Let's take a pause for any questions on that workflow we just saw. We've got-- we're doing good on time. [INAUDIBLE]

TONY ZOHREHVAND: Yes.

AUDIENCE: So the tenant you created to import your [INAUDIBLE] files, right? So [INAUDIBLE] tenant here for you to create part numbers. Are you using that here too?

TONY ZOHREHVAND: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: So did you create a different tenant when you released the files?

TONY ZOHREHVAND: So let me repeat the question. So the tenant that I used to create the items in BOM, I use the items in BOM Tenant. As far as the part number creation, you have many options. If Fusion Lifecycle is your item master you can use the criteria classification create the part number infuse your Lifecycle and assign to part number from Fusion Lifecycle or you can create the part number. There are companies actually have a separate system that assigns part number.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

TONY ZOHREHVAND: Yeah.

MICHAEL VESPERMAN: Basically, you just could have a property that defines classification attributes in the CAD that then could be picked up by Lifecycle to generate the number based on that class. Or could have a property in your design file that is simply just put the part number and then match what gets carried into Lifecycle as the part number.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

MICHAEL VESPERMAN: Yep.

AUDIENCE: And then on top of it here, it says this is its own tenant [INAUDIBLE]

TONY ZOHREHVAND: So this is a tenant that I used for this demo. But within the tenant, I'm using a workspace that is the items in BOM workspace.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

TONY ZOHREHVAND: Yeah. Yeah. You're welcome. Yes, sir.

AUDIENCE: You have your [INAUDIBLE] Change Order in Fusion, but you changed the state of your components in Vault. So is this bidirectional or how do you control this thing with your files? Which [INAUDIBLE] or what can you--

TONY ZOHREHVAND: Yeah. So the question is, I used the ECO process to change the lifecycle state of the item in Vault. How do I reconcile when state can change in Vault as well? Right?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

TONY ZOHREHVAND: So you have to make a decision here when you do an integration. Do I want Fusion Lifecycle to drive my processes? If that's the case, then I'm going to make sure that that capability is locked within Vault so I do all the changes through the Fusion Lifecycle. If you want to be able to make changes, involve changes to the lifecycle state, then you have to change your process.

Then you have to make sure that what happens if I change it here? How do I reconcile with my Fusion Lifecycle? So in this example, we use the use case where initially when we create the item, we change the state for that initially created item to go from Work In Progress to For Review, which started the integration. After that, we let Fusion Lifecycle drive the process going forward.

MICHAEL VESPERMAN: That was the initial release.

TONY ZOHREHVAND: Yeah. That was the initial.

AUDIENCE: But was there--

MICHAEL VESPERMAN: Once in--

AUDIENCE: --trigger [INAUDIBLE]

MICHAEL VESPERMAN: Trigger to get it in. Once in, it's then governed by Lifecycle.

AUDIENCE: And then, from there the ECO [INAUDIBLE]

TONY ZOHREHVAND: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Any more questions?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

TONY ZOHREHVAND: I'm sorry?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] on board. How would you [INAUDIBLE]

TONY ZOHREHVAND: Are there applications? How do we handle other applications?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

MICHAEL VESPERMAN: Basically, file stores in Vault.

TONY ZOHREHVAND: [INAUDIBLE]

MICHAEL VESPERMAN: File stores of Vault globally, how do we handle that?

AUDIENCE: Replication.

TONY ZOHREHVAND: Oh, replication. Yeah. Yeah. How do we handle replication? Well, you know, the integration works with a centrally located Vault. The replications always update that central database, right? Unless you have multiple database replications, which is very rare. If you have multiple database replications, then yes, you have to connect to all the databases. But for the typical replication where you have a central database and then you have all these file servers in the location, you're dealing with the central location database getting the information.

Now, it all depends onto your application. How often does your application update the central locations? If your application updates every 24 hours, that means the files that had been changed in the file server locations are not updated, then you might have to have the integration to trigger an on-demand replication. You know how you can on-demand update information. So if you trigger that on-demand, those files are updated based on that on-demand so you get the latest content. Does it make sense?

MICHAEL VESPERMAN: It's handled with Vault, based on the Vault replication rules.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ALLEN GAGER: Yes. Yes. That is in your Vault setup configuration. And when those replications happen.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ALLEN GAGER: No. It's part of your-- so the question was, is there a separate tool for administering replication in Vault? No, there's not. It's part of your Vault Data Management Console.

AUDIENCE: Vault Professional.

ALLEN GAGER: Vault Professional, yes.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ALLEN GAGER: Yeah. Vault-- yeah, that is correct. Vault Professional is the only Vault version that offers replication. But the integration per se of or connectivity of Lifecycle to Vault doesn't alter how that works.

TONY ZOHREHVAND: OK. So the mixed use case is really to follow up on our first demo that we showed. So what if you have already published some data in Fusion Lifecycle, and they've been released? Now, for some reason, maybe a functional issue, maybe a quality issue, you have to make changes, and you have to revise that. And how does the integration handle that?

So in this example, you initiate a problem reporting Fusion Lifecycle that can lead into a change request. Change request is evaluated, and you decide to go forward and create Change Order. Now, the Change Order updates the file Vaults as you go through it. So let's go to that demo.

So here, we are in Fusion Lifecycle. Everything has been released. You notice, we only released this to Release A. We go to the top-level assembly. And in the top-level assembly, we look at maximizing for more real estate. We put everything into Working, because we're going to revise it. We don't revise a revised item. We revise a working version of it.

We create a Change Order. This time, we are going to take the CCB route. Instead of the fast route, we take the CCB route, because I want to show you how it updates at different stages in Vault. So we initiate this Change Order again. We are going to go from A to B. We're going to grab all the related items.

And here, we grab all the children that are in working condition. And we set the lifecycle state for all of them. Once we said the lifecycle state, it shows everything is going to go from A to B. So here they are. Everything is going to go from Revision A to Revision B. So we are revising it.

Now we are going to look at the workflow. So it's the same workflow by looking at it, except we're going through the CCB route. We're going to submit it to CCB. Now, in here, nothing's going to change in Vault, because we're just reviewing this. We're not ready to really implement the change. We're just reviewing it. So you notice in Vault, everything is still Release A. So nothing has changed in Vault.

And once the CCB reviews it and says, you know what? Let's go with this. Let's go implement these changes. So we approve, and now automatically the integration would put all the items in Vault in Work In Progress, because now we're ready to implement.

So as soon as that happens, the designer gets a notification. He goes and he updates the CAD model, whatever changes he has to make, dimensions, geometry, features, whatever it is. And you notice everything is in Revision B and Work In Progress.

Now, implementation is completed. We push it for Full Review. And now, automatically the integration updates the stuff in Vault to Full Review. So again, the Full Review process is for people to go and review and make sure everybody's OK with the changes. And once everybody approves all those changes in Fusion Lifecycle, then the Change Order is approved in Fusion Lifecycle, and the items are released in Vault with the Revision B.

So we just went from A to B without even involving making changes to the states of the items in Vault. Everything was done in Fusion Lifecycle. And any questions about this other use case before I hand it over to Mike? Yes.

AUDIENCE: If the revision number is on the drawing, how do you update the drawing?

TONY ZOHREHVAND: So if the revision item is on the drawing, how do we update the drawing? In what group here?

ALLEN GAGER: So part of that change process, so the job processor. The job processor is configured to update the properties all the way through. So just as if you are making the change in Vault. So what's happening here is that if we're in Vault, and we change from In Review to Work In Process or Released Work In Process back to Released, all of that happens by the Job Processor. We're just now connecting Fusion Lifecycle in moving that change process into Fusion Lifecycle's hands. Vault is still doing the same things that Vault did. So Vault, we're not altering or changing the behavior of Vault. We're just connecting the two.

So something I want to actually make note of here too, notice that we just had in this particular connectivity, the items were in Fusion Lifecycle. So we've got a file-centric Vault here. And we're managing all of the items in Lifecycle. So one of the things that we see frequently is we have a customer that's got Vault Basic or Vault Workgroup or they move from Basic to Pro or they installed Pro, and they didn't want to use items or didn't need items at the time, and they've got a file-centric environment.

Down the road, then they want to connect that file-centric environment to other things like ERP. And to do that in Vault Pro, you need to use Items. So if you have a file-centric environment in Vault Pro, and then you move over to an item-centric environment, you're changing the workflows. In this particular connectivity, all of the items are handled in Lifecycle.

The other thing that we should point out is that Change Orders can come from anywhere. So in order to initiate Change Orders in Vault Pro, you need a Vault Thick Client for that. So when we're talking about working with outside either customers, vendors, third parties that could in fact initiate and drive Change Orders, because Lifecycle is cloud-based, those folks can be anywhere. And again, you're not poking a hole in your Vault to allow them to do that. So you're not giving that third-party access to your Vault data.

TONY ZOHREHVAND: OK. Yes.

AUDIENCE: It's in the same line as his question. Once you approve it in Fusion, this Job Processor will go open the drawing of the revision, the new revision, the approver's initial, and then we put back this drawing in the Vault and issue a PDF in all of this?

TONY ZOHREHVAND: Yes

ALLEN GAGER: Yes.

TONY ZOHREHVAND: Yeah, exactly.

ALLEN GAGER: So the question was, when this happens, do those properties get updated? If you are using Vault Revision Scheme in Inventor, that happens. Those get added. The drawing gets released, updated, and published. So again, we're not changing the-- or the integration or the connectivity is not changing what's happening in Vault or changing the way things are happening in Vault. We're simply streamlining what would otherwise be a manual process.

TONY ZOHREHVAND: Yes, sir.

AUDIENCE: Would this work with a Plant 3D project?

ALLEN GAGER: I'm sorry? Repeat the question.

AUDIENCE: Would this work with a Plant 3D project?

ALLEN GAGER: Would this work with a Plant 3D project?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ALLEN GAGER: So there are some restrictions with Plant 3D and what you can do in Vault. The general rule of thumb is that if it is on the ribbon in Canvas in Plant 3D, you can do it, which is check in, check out, and synchronize. You can use a workflow where you do have release management with Plant 3D files and projects. That's not changing the state or the relationship in the plant 3D SQL database.

Again, so we're not doing anything magical. We're just doing that process. So if you can do that manually, if it's a process you can do manually, it's simply being scripted. So a roundabout way, yes, you can use this with Plant 3D, depending on what you end up wanting to do with it. As you know, we don't move Plant 3D objects around in Vault. That's all handled on the Plant 3D side.

TONY ZOHREHVAND: OK. So before I hand it over to Mike. So in summary, really connecting the two together is just providing this enterprise-wide tool that allows you to manage your processes, again, from the concept all the way to production and beyond. PDM is only subset of your activities when you design products.

PLM is more of an enterprise-wide, where not only does engineering or designer get involved, but you have manufacturing can get involved in the change process. Supply chain can get involved in change process. You can involve quality modules into the part of the change process. So it kind of affects the whole end-to-end disciplines. And it creates a collaborative environment for organization. Now I'm going to hand it over to Mike to continue.

MICHAEL VESPERMAN: So what I get the pleasure of telling you guys about is a customer who's actually deployed this and has seen immense business value in the deployment of a Fusion PLM system, Fusion Lifecycle, with their PDM system, which is Vault Pro.

This is company by the name of Aclara. And Aclara actually joined us at another Autodesk event that was held this past September called Accelerate. And they were one of our speakers, and they actually had an amazing story that I wanted to bring to you guys today, because I had a topic that was similar to one of the things that they were presenting that day.

So Doug and [INAUDIBLE] provided me a lot of the content that I'm going to share with you guys today. A little background on Aclara, they are a division of Hubbell Power Systems. They make products that are within the power infrastructure space. They have over 800 customers who are in utilities for electric, gas, and water metering.

They operate globally. They have about 11 locations, headquartered in St. Louis. Some of their products you can see here. Smart Metering product is one that I'm familiar with. I used to be a homeowner. And this was a product that was put in my house. It's a smart metering system for basically gas and water consumption. Wrong slides.

ALLEN GAGER: So pardon us just for a moment. When the technician came in and relaunched the deck, unfortunately she got the wrong deck.

MICHAEL VESPERMAN: There we go. OK. So their deployment of Vault Fusion Lifecycle looks like this. At the center is the PLM environment, which is Fusion Lifecycle. And they're operating a lot of their business processes utilizing Fusion's Workflow Engine. In the new product introduction, they're developing the stage gate execution of their projects to bring their products to market, managing tasks and utilizing document archives to host all this information.

They then are operating some of the quality procedures such as nonconformance reporting, corrective action, auditing, and then within the engineering departments, they're managing item and building material management, engineering requests, change notices, vendor notifications, part setups, and their supply chain.

And all of this operates within the cloud space. So Fusion Lifecycle is a cloud-based technology. And they're also integrated with their CRM solution, which is Salesforce, to manage communication of their customer relationships, such as capturing requirements from customers, opportunities for new projects, and products for customers as well as some of their customer service activities.

They also integrate to a cloud solution called Octopart. Octopart is a system where you can manage electronic components and information behind those such as manufacturers who make them and vendors who sell them and cost based on quantity as well as data sheets and some of their compliance information. So they're integrated with those systems in the cloud.

Behind their firewall is where they have their on-premise technologies. This is where their ERP system sits, which is Oracle JD Edwards, as well as their ECAD technology, which is, CADENCE and that's where they're doing their printed circuit board design work. And then Vault, and then Vault is managing, oddly enough, both SolidWorks and Creo. So our competitor's CAD technologies.

So they're using the centralized Vault system and the plugins for those CAD tools to manage the design data that they're creating. And essentially, they're using Vault, as Tony had kind of showed you with the process, is really around check-in, check-out versioning and managing the document states in order to execute the job processing that we were talking about earlier. They manage 100,000 items with their revisions. They're performing 100 Change Orders a month, on average, and they have 410 users who participate in these processes.

What they're trying to achieve with their implementation is what is referred to as closed loop quality management. Receive information from your customer, voice of the customer are typical processes you might see in this. Execute the product development cycle through a series of stages, ultimately launching that product into the market, where your customer is going to start using their products. And then, of course, notifying you of any issues with that product through complaints or returns. And that's where the quality process comes in.

The way they were doing this before the implementation of this enterprise-wide product development platform was how a lot of companies we come in and talk to do it, through defining information, builds materials in the spreadsheets, creating Access databases, transferring information via email or box, different ways of transferring. That's what Aclara was doing prior to the implementation of this deployment.

And what they were looking to achieve is a single source of the truth at the center of all this. Where Fusion Lifecycle would manage the business processes around things, Vault would manage the actual physical files, the CAD files as well as Cadence, and then the item masters in the processing of the production orders and the financials would be done in the ERP system. And as I mentioned, they're also then connecting their CRM solution to this platform.

So we're going to take a closer look at the ways these workflows are deployed within their environment, kind of take a more granular approach to see how they're actually doing this using the very configurable Fusion Lifecycle workflow engine. So this is their stage gate where they carry things from the conceptual design phase of the stage.

And then they do what's called tollgates. So they determine whether or not they're ready to move to the next phases of the development or whether or not they even want to continue with the development of this particular product and bring it to market. It's an opportunity for you to churn out bad product investments that you may bring to market.

They then move into a commitment stage, and that's where they set up the execution of their projects, determine all the activities that need to get involved. And then they move down into the development phase, ultimately leading to the commercial launch. All along the way, they have a set of tasks of which they're initiating to different members of their organization to assign some accountability on things that need to be done as you transition in and out of these phases.

Once complete, they release this product into the ERP system for that then to be produced and sold into the market. As I mentioned in the closed loop process, seen up here, we then have now notification of issues within our product. This is where returns, complaints, and then what they do is they deploy what's called a corrective and preventative action process.

This is a root cause analysis process that's typically done in a collaborative manner, where you have different departments who are engaged in understanding what was the root cause of our problem, defining a containment plan in order to solve this in a time period that's very fast so you can kind of contain what the issue is, ultimately leading to a permanent correction. When they reach the implement phase, this is where they then communicate to their engineering department what they need the engineering department to do. It's a request.

The request is where the engineering department then has an opportunity to evaluate what the issue is and all the research that was done per the corrective action root cause analysis process. You're basically empowering a team of engineers with more information than they previously had or could have had at their fingertips, because this data from that CAPA is all maintained in the same environment. It's a single source of the truth, all leading back to the issue or the item of which has been notified as a problem.

This workflow can be designed any way you want. And this is how they chose to do it, initial review and evaluation done by engineering, a change control board, ultimately leading up to an approve, which then initiates the Change notice process. The Change notice process Tony was showing you earlier, this is what it looks like inside of Fusion Lifecycle.

So here you have your Change notice number. You've got some fields such as title and priority. You're going to have a team for definition of who's going to be participating in this particular change. They do this by product category. So different categories within Drive, who's participating in the particular change that they're going to be performing, as well as the type of change.

And I want to point out these fields right here. These are actually held on the Change Order, and these are where they can derive from the items that are what's known as the affected items, who the supplier is and whether or not that supplier needs to be notified of this Change Order. They want to drive accountability into their supply chain, and that's why they do this. They don't want to not notify their supplier of a said change. They may even have a situation to where their supplier may be involved in the analysis of the execution of the change itself.

As I mentioned, the affected items is where I hold the item masters of which are undergoing the revisions. And those item masters hold information about how to drive the logic of the execution of the change. As an example, we see here a link to Vault. A link to Vault is an indicator that there are design files sitting inside of Vault Professional of which are now going to be also interactive per this particular Change Order.

Another one is this FCC. So they have compliance of which they need to meet when they release their products to market. UL testing, CE markings, and FCC all need to certify their products before they get released to the market. And so indicators on their item masters are ways of driving automation into steps that need to be performed within the engineering change process.