PLM under palm trees: from systems engineering to company-wide document management

In Las Vegas DSC presents the PLM integration platform SAP Engineering Control Center – with countless conveniences for product manufacturers

 

From March 21–23, 2016, in the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Las Vegas (USA), the conference “SAPinsider CRM 2016 | Logistics & SCM, PLM, Manufacturing, and Procurement 2016” was held: with around 900 registered participants and 51 exhibitors. Among them: DSC Software on a shared SAP-PLM partner stand. The event’s focus: “The meaning of digitization for research, development, and manufacturing, and how to meet the challenges in these areas on an SAP basis”. There was direct experience of this for visitors to DSC: e.g. with “SAP Engineering Control Center” (SAP ECTR), a platform for seamless SAP-PLM integration of the most varied authoring tools such as mCAD, eCAD or MS Office. The solution was presented in two versions (“SAP ECTR Standard” and “SAP ECTR Professional”) and with many new functions such as ballooning in 2D design drawings. Additionally, multi-CAD scenarios were demonstrated, among others in interaction with SAP’s own CAD direct link “SAP Engineering Control Center interface to NX”. Other CAD direct links could also be seen live with the stand’s partners.

DSC took part in two of a total of 18 PLM presentations. The first of these was at midday on the second day in the joint presentation with SAP SE and EPLAN: “Synchronize your engineering workstreams and enable systems engineering with SAP PLM”. In this lecture, with an accompanying live demonstration, about 30 visitors heard about the benefits of SAP ECTR for systems engineering. The second lecture, in the afternoon, was presented by DSC alone: “The power of SAP document management when linked to business processes”. Here, over 20 participants learned about the SAP system as a central document management system (DMS). Thanks to the integration of authoring tools through SAP ECTR, much more product-relevant information can be stored in the SAP system – and this information can very easily be retrieved by means of the intuitive user interface – company-wide. This enables the linking business processes from engineering, production planning, maintenance, asset management, quality management, technical documentation, and sales in such a ways as to create added value.

Both the lecture about DMS with “SAP ECTR Standard” and the live demos of the engineering processes with “SAP ECTR Professional” encountered a very positive feedback from the event visitors. Thus in the end the event paid off handsomely for the Karlsruhe software house: on the one hand, many very interesting new contacts were made; on the other, DSC was able to get together and discuss with existing international customers as well as with SAP colleagues and other SAP PLM partners.