AU Class
AU Class
class - AU

A Corporate PLM Journey: The Case of De Nora Deploying Vault PLM Worldwide

이 강의 공유하기

설명

De Nora Group is a global company with two main business units: 1) electrodes—the firm is the largest provider of electrodes and coatings for electrochemical processes, and 2) water—the firm is one of the leaders in water and wastewater treatment technologies and processes for municipal and industrial applications. De Nora decided to invest in Autodesk product lifecycle management (PLM) software in order to optimize its product development processes. The firm embraced the PLM journey with Autodesk, replacing unsatisfying legacy solutions. Then the questions came: How do we successfully manage this initiative? What is the road map to deploy the PLM solution worldwide? What are the customer challenges, organizational changes, and overall benefits? And what is the best scalable architecture to satisfy a global deployment involving five plants in the United States, three in Italy, and more in the Asia-Pacific region? Join us to discover the answers to these and many more questions.

주요 학습

  • Better understand the benefits of a PLM solution.
  • Learn about driving a worldwide deployment of Vault PLM.
  • Evaluate a modern, scalable software architecture (a mix of cloud and on-premise software).
  • Learn product-development best practices directly from De Nora management team.

발표자

  • Samuele Gallazzi 님의 아바타
    Samuele Gallazzi
    I'm a sales professional voted to the manufacturing arena. Working with large accounts to improve their product development processes. Data-driven and technology addicted since my engineering studies, I love to bring technology and process innovation in challenging contexts. I'm a strong believer of sharing information among people, teams and companies!
Video Player is loading.
Current Time 0:00
Duration 0:00
Loaded: 0%
Stream Type LIVE
Remaining Time 0:00
 
1x
  • Chapters
  • descriptions off, selected
  • subtitles off, selected
      Transcript

      GIANCARLO CALDARELLA: Welcome, everyone, to this class of the Autodesk University. During the next 30, 35 minutes we will explore together some typical challenges faced when deciding to deploy a PLM solution worldwide. And we will see some best practices.

      Before starting, let me introduce myself. I'm Giancarlo Caldarella. I am in Autodesk from two years and half. And I have almost 10 years of experience in PLM across different companies. I've had multiple customers belonging to different market segments. I'm a technical specialist in charge of Italian mid-market for design and manufacturing.

      Let's move to our safe harbor. This presentation may contain information, opinions, and data supplied by third parties. And Autodesk assumes no responsibility for the accuracy or completeness or such information, opinions, or data, and shall not be liable for any decision made based upon reliance on such information, opinions, or data.

      So let's start. We will start this presentation by taking a look to the objective and introduction. I will introduce the team which worked or is still working on the project. Then we will move to a quick snapshot of the industry we are talking about and to the customer need we addressed. Then we will focus on the solution, which is Vault PLM. We will talk about the adoption plan. And we will have an overview of the system architecture of our customer.

      So let's move. Let's start by the introduction. First, obviously, the objective of this class consists in having a clear understanding of what does it mean to undertake a PLM journey. Here, let me introduce you the team which worked on this opportunity.

      Here we have Samuele Gallazzi, which is the account manager. Brian Schanen, which together with myself did the first presentation. Then I moved forward for the adoption plan and for the handover to the partner. Brian, as you know, is the PLM sales and readiness manager.

      And we have Matteo Pallaroni, which is the technical manager for Man and Machine, one of our biggest partners. We will talk about Man and Machine later on when we will go to the project overview.

      Let's have a quick industry snapshot with an overview of customer market. Water and wastewater treatment is necessary for mankind to meet the growing demand for water resources, not only for municipal and agricultural purposes, but also for critical industrial processes.

      The global market size was valued at $281 billion in 2021 and $300 billion in 2022. And it's projected to grow to $489 billion by 2029 at the CAGR of 77.1% during the forecast period. Stringent regulations regarding industrial effluent treatment are fueling the demand for these solutions.

      Let's have a quick look to what water treatment means. As we can imagine, it includes many sub-industries. Here we are a clear example of the cycle from the water structure designed to retain water, till water and wastewater systems to design and optimize treatment plants.

      And this is what our customer does. So our customer belongs to the latest case. We can say it closes the cycle. They produce machines for water treatment. And they have a global presence. Let's [? next ?] explore what's the request for which our customer is facing.

      We all know that manufacturing evolved in the last 20, 30 years. [INAUDIBLE] factory purpose was to minimize waste, while green manufacturing purpose was to minimize waste and also to recycle.

      Now we are in the sustainability era. Today, the need is to reduce waste, to recycle recycled our materials, to quickly recover or anticipate any manufacturing issue, and to redesign the manufacturing cycle in order to optimize it. So we are really in a fast-paced era where sustainability is taking an important place.

      Let's move to the need of the customer. The customer we met had some pain points. They were mainly the low compatibility between the legacy system they had before bought PLM, because they already had the [? PDM ?] solution, the lack of adoption from the user side, and as a consequence, the files were stored in shared folder without any approval process or review of documentation.

      With that, why they came to us? Because first, their install base-- their engineering install base was mainly made by Autodesk product. So they had the AutoCAD, Inventor, and Navisworks as an example, which can benefit from the best data management integration by adopting our solutions. And they had the need to start work in a sustainable way as soon as possible, let's say.

      So with these needs and given our outcome will, it was not hard to discover the outcomes. Our customer needed to improve collaboration, increase product development agility, reduce non-value added processes, and consequentially increase time to market.

      Let's move to the focus point of our presentation, which is the solution we proposed to the customer. And before moving toward PLM, let's introduce it in the proper way.

      When we go to a customer and we start talking about a data management solution, we always start from the engineering efficiency part. So we try to give the engineers a system to be more efficient so that they can work still inside the CAD, they can reuse components, they will be all of at the same level and virtual file, because we will give them a system which takes care of the versioning. And we will support the BOM creation.

      All of these job is done from a PDM solution, from a product data management solution. But as we can understand, engineering is only one department in a company. So each of these departments have different targets, different responsibility, and different needs.

      This is already reflected by the systems being used in the given departments. For example, CRM focusing on customer interaction, PDM for their engineering tools, and ERP focusing on financial and logistics. Some departments don't even have a tool. Some the production sometimes is a mess.

      So usually, all the system we mentioned are not connected. Each department is working in a silo. It is the responsibility of people to request and share information form with other departments, which is a continuous activity that is changing all the time.

      So what happens? That we have some processes which, for example, change management, or request for quotation, which are involving the wall company. And if these processes are not managed with a single product, with a single tool, what happens is that there are information shared in the wrong version or file via email. And sometimes you can have difficulties in finding the right version of the file or the right email.

      So even if a company has a system, for every department it's still hard to answer to some basic question. In example, are we in time? What is team working on? Is this done already? Or did we share this with the supply chain? All of these questions will be really hard to answer if there will not be a system which will take care of the full product development cycle.

      And this is being changed by PLM. PLM becomes the common platform for data, processes, and deliverables across the business units. It is accessible to everyone, easy to use, and meet various stakeholders' needs. It becomes the single source of data and everyone to work on the same data in the latest version. It manages processes online. It reveals responsibilities. It has the relevant information attached and notifies process stakeholders upon relevant events automatically.

      So what the PLM does is the product lifecycle management, connect data, processes, and people. Data because it can manage the data of the products. The processes because it's everything guided by workflow. And people because there will not be any more than certainness on what I have to do, which task I have to work on. People will receive a task directly in their homepage with instruction on the next step to do.

      Let's move to the solution architecture. Vault PLM is composed by two solutions. One is Vault, as we know, and the other is Fusion 360 Manager. So we propose two solutions, one on premise or which can be also on the cloud.

      And as we will see later on, this has been the way which the customer decided to take. So we have a mixed architecture with four part with some server which will be local and the central server which will be on the cloud.

      And then, we have Fusion 360 Manager, which is for all the other departments than the engineering, which will be used to improve the collaboration and to let participate all the other stakeholder in product development process.

      So how this works, and which are the advantages be for Vault. And then, the advantage of choosing Vault is that Vault is integrated in all our authoring tools, in all AutoCAD tools, in 3D Studio Max, in Inventor, et cetera.

      And Fusion 360 Manager, as we were saying, can have the design data. Because in the integration, it will have the lightweight representation of our 3D models. So not all the mathematics will go on the Fusion Manager, but only the lightweight version in order to let the other people which are not in engineering office see the relevant information.

      It's able to manage the data of the product, both coming from-- some data coming from Vault, or some data which can be directly inserted in the PLM. And it manages everything through processes. And it gives us the ability to create some easily reports to see at which point we are in the process of the lifecycle.

      So Vault PLM is an integration between Vault, which still make the PDM job and Fusion 360 Manager, as we were saying. Then this solution can be integrated, of course, with ERP. For example, let's think to the below material.

      The below material will be born in Vault. Then it will be transferred to Fusion Manager. It can be modified according to engineering needs. And then it will be transferred to the ERP that will take care of the orders. These are not the only integrations which are possible. We can also integrate our solution with the CRM or with any other needed system.

      Now, let's have a quick look to a very short video to see an example of the collaboration of the integration between Vault and Fusion 360 Manager. So in this example, we have a change order which starts in the PLM in Fusion 360 Manager, where it's asked to double the capacity for a chute.

      And why it starts in the PLM? Because everyone, also someone from the service, can open and change order. But you will not need an access to Vault. So the PLM, which is online, and it's on the cloud, it's accessible and very easy to use from everyone, will be the only tool needed in this case for this department.

      It gives the possibility to attach documentation. And it's driven from workflows, as we were saying. And it also can be integrated to have the lightweight representation of the 3D model.

      So as we will see, as we are seeing, actually, as soon as the change order is submitted to engineering, there is a refresh on the engineering tool on Vault. And basically, what we see is that what we have to do is to take this assembly to change the status to in work because the assembly in this case is released. Then we will make the checkout. And we will make the needed modifications.

      So as we are seeing, the user is opening the chute to Inventor from Vault. Now it's simply adding another chute. And there will be another check-in. As soon as the check-in will be done, and the tool will be inside the Vault.

      But actually, it can be done also from Inventor. The chute can be released again. Of course, the drawing is regenerated. And then, we will have this information back to Fusion 360 Manager. So we are seeing an example of collaboration between an external department, which is not the engineering, and actually the engineering itself.

      So what happens now, it happens that the process can move forward in the PLM. And in the end, what we will have, it will be a new drawing with the new attachment directly on the PLM so that everyone will benefit from the new information. As we can see, the quantities we changed to two for the components. And we have the updated-- the up to date-- sorry, the updated attachment with the double chute capacity.

      So that was just to give you an overview of the integration between Vault and Fusion 360 Manager, and of the fact that all the company can take advantage from this solution. But let's move back to our customer. And let's move to the adoption plan. Because the adoption trend is quite interesting.

      At the beginning of our relation with the customer, the customer sent us an Excel file with a lot of requirements. What we did, basically, has been to give a phase, to assign a phase. Here, this dark blue column has been added by myself. And so, I have this one. And so, I assigned basically a phase, possible phase to every requirement of the customer.

      And at the end, we proposed to the customer three phases. Here we can see an example of the first phase, which was basically the installation and configuration of the Vault with the minimal configuration. So we'd only out of the box, let's say, configuration.

      Then, anyway, we proposed to the customer a complete journey. So a complete journey with three phases, in which in the first one is anticipated there was a first installation and adoption of Vault. The first phase is just for you to know it's already live. And then we see the rollout moving forward.

      In the second phase, there will be-- and it's currently implemented-- a deep dive configuration. So there is some custom configuration needed. Or the first integration, they will be done in the second phase. And in the third phase, there will be a full adoption out of the PLM, so Fusion 360 Manager, and the full integration with the ERP system.

      Let's move to the architectural and project overview. The first thing I need to do is to present our partner. Our partner is Man and Machine, which is one of our biggest partner, let's say. And that's going to be seen by the revenue and by the employees. They are over 1,000. And they are public from 25 years. They are present in 22 countries and with 75 offices. And they are on the market from 38 years. So a very solid partner.

      They decided-- the partners decided to adopt a mix of the methodology for the implementation. Because they decided the waterfall for the biggest phases, let's say, of the project. And the Kanban, which is our agile methodology for the stage inside the phases.

      And why? Because the main sequence of phases is a solid assessment that represents the product structure and definition. And that's the users and all the stakeholders to better understand where they are, in which macro step of the implementation they are.

      And then, they decided to adopt the Kanban because, first, it reduces the number of meetings really to what is really needed. And it visualizes workflow, spotlights, and bottlenecks. So basically, all stakeholders are obliged to immediately resolve any issue.

      Let's move to a quick example of the Kanban dashboard. So as we can see in this dashboard, let's start from the validate phase. We have different phases. As soon as is a step is validated, some other steps start to be validated. And it moves from the implementation to the validation stage.

      And so far, basically, and that's what happened for all the cycles-- the cycle, the agile cycle. So we are talking about delivering small steps and testing them as soon as possible.

      And what happens is that if, for example, during an assessment or development of a prototype there is some major priority, what we can do is to move something from the assessment and start implementing it. And so freeing the backlog in this way, and moving forward leaving a step waiting for the right time to implement it.

      That's as I was saying, there's been a choice from our partner agreeing in-- of course, they agreed it shows with the customer. And so far, it's just that we can say that we can suggest to everyone to have a mixed approach to everyone which wants to implement a PLM system.

      But let's take a look at the architecture. The architecture is mixed as well. Because as we were saying, Vault has been stored partially on premise and partially is being hosted on the cloud. So the client basically access to the local subscriber, which is a server installed on a premise based on the country. So there is one for USA and Brazil and another one from for Italy, which is serving Italy.

      There is a central publisher, which is hosted on Microsoft Azure, and so on. The cloud, with the synchronization overnight to store all of the data or data of the subscriber. And of course, in the case there is a file is requested during the morning from the other side of the world, and there is not yet been the synchronization, the file will be transferred on demand.

      Let's move to the rollout. The rollout is already completed and in production for the phase one for USA, for Brazil, and from Italy. It's planned from China and Japan and will be defined for India.

      With this, I conclude my presentation with a reflection of it. I decided to have only one sentence on this slide just to talk a second about it. Because as we can understand from what we have seen, and as I can tell you from our experience this customer, adopting a PLM solution cannot be considered a one-shot implementation.

      There are multiple advantages for the customer taking this journey. And it requires a consistent involvement of customers, stakeholders, decision-makers, key users, system administrators, all of them. All of them will have to be involved in such a project. And every step will have to be accepted from the proper user or from the proper team.

      Our customers will get a very big competitive advantage by adopting a PLM solution. They will have a single source of truth. They will improve their internal collaboration. They will be always on the same page.

      And during the implementation, a PLM system can be connected to the CRM together, customer data, or to the ERP to trust for component data. So we will have really a master for the bill of material. And everyone will be, as I was saying, on the same page.

      I hope that I gave you a good overview related to a corporate implementation of Vault PLM. But anyway, for any further question, any clarification, please do not hesitate to contact me or your local team. Thank you, everyone, for your time.