We're building an industry platform: Siemens PLM

Speaking to CIOL, Vivek Marwaha, director Marketing - Siemens PLM India, talked about the new trends in the industry, the benefits and the plans for Siemens PLM India.

PLM has come a long way, from PLM for manufacturing to digital framework. How the demand has shaped PLM?

Vivek: The end comes with the need. The changing requirements are leading to the changes in the solution. Today one of the challenges that companies are facing is, firstly, need to innovate. With increasing competition, the market has become extremely demanding. Companies are looking for solutions that further reduce life cycle of product, so that they build and introduce a product in the market in the right time.

The second challenge is the increased globalization — making product for global market or establishing network of supply chain, which is spread across globe, or collaborating with global players. Companies are looking for ways to operate for addressing the global market.

Based on current environment, we see new requirements coming up in the market like green agenda and sustainability factor.

With time, three application areas of PLM have evolved — traditional design mechanical automation (CAD/CAM/CAE), digital life cycle management (putting framework collaboration like Team Center, data sharing and data management) and digital manufacturing solution (this is all about simulation and manipulating processes, before putting it). In an ideal solution, with the use of digital manufacturing solution, a company should be able to simulate entire plant/factory they plan to set up and arrive to the most optimum architecture of their new plant/factory.

At Siemens we believe in building the right product and building the product right, and we follow this objective for not only building our products solutions, but also helping our customers. The whole idea is to build a product that rightly fits in market meeting the demand and building a product which is best in quality and features.

How companies are gaining benefits from the new solutions?

V: Companies a realizing a lot of benefits with the help of the new solutions. They are not able to accelerate the production of new products by bringing down the cycle time, but also reaching to the markets faster. As a result of this, companies can sell more products and gain more value out of of it. The Digital PLM solutions have been helpful in profitable growths. Also it helps in increasing the lifespan of products. With the help of the knowledge management system, companies can re-use the data and design, embed the knowledge from the same platform and get more variants and options from the same product.

Everyone understands the need of PLM solution, but in actual terms, could you share any case where the company accrued some visible benefits?

V: Yes, I would share the example of one of the clients called Uflex Engineering Division, a unit of Uflex Limited, that designs and manufactures printing, packaging and converting machines. Its goal is to be a one-stop packaging solution, providing cost-effective and innovative equipment. They wanted to upgrade from a 2D computer-aided design (CAD) system to an advanced 3D solution. They used Solid Edge software from Siemens PLM Software.

Uflex reduced the development cycle for new machines by 70 per cent and also reduced the prices of new machines.

PLM saw its growth from manufacturing industry; which other verticals are adopting it?

V: It is right that PLM's scope and addressability started with manufacturing, but it is now finding good traction in non-traditional market process industries likes pharmacy, energy and utility. A few features, like the digital life cycle piece of the new solution that helps in managing data and end-processes, are generating demand from retail, apparel and software as well.

Where do you see the next wave of development coming from? How is Siemens PLM heading forward?

V: The next evolution will happen towards integrating the virtual world of products development like digital life cycle and digital management, taking virtual world and combining with real world of products manufacturing. We are constantly working towards evolving into a platform provider that integrates design automation with production automation. Traditionally, our (Siemens India) forte has been as a software company specializing in design automation or simulation of processes. While Siemens (globally) is in the automation industry bit, their strength is in manufacturing automation and software solution like asset management life cycle.

The next stage for us is bringing these two strengths together; moving from a PLM to industry software platform. We are looking at unifying the design automation with the manufacturing processes and becoming a one-stop shop for industry platform.