Siemens recently introduced a new series of industry-specific offerings at its annual PLM Software Analyst Conference in Boston. The Industry Catalyst Series offerings consist of a pre-packaged combination of industry best practice guides, templates and software aimed at accelerating PLM deployment and tailoring the system to the needs of specific industries. The series is designed to increase a company’s overall return on its PLM investment, as well as the speed at which ROI is realized. The new offerings will also make it faster and easier to adopt, and gain value from, the latest PLM technology. The Industry Catalyst Series will work with one or more Siemens PLM Software offerings and – in accordance with the company’s open business model – in combination with third party PLM solutions. Individual Industry Catalyst Series offerings will be announced over the next several months.

“Two years ago we began our transition from a product-focused organization to one focused on the unique requirements of industries,” said Chuck Grindstaff, president and CEO, Siemens PLM Software. “This announcement represents a pivotal step forward in that transition. Each offering in the Industry Catalyst Series will be built around a specific industry’s best practices, based on in-depth knowledge we have collected over more than 30 years of working with customers. By imbedding that knowledge and experience in each offering, our customers will not only experience accelerated PLM implementations, but those implementations will be tailored to each company’s business in a way that facilitates the adoption of new technology. The result is more business value, faster ROI, and the ability to benefit from the latest technology as soon as it becomes available.”

Over the past several years, most organizations have come to appreciate how PLM technology and processes can help them increase productivity and efficiency. At the same time, however, many of these organizations have been slow to implement a full scope PLM solution, or to adopt the latest technology for their existing PLM system. This often stems from concern about costs and business disruptions associated with the need to customize standard PLM technology to their specific processes, data structures and workflow.

The Industry Catalyst Series minimizes that disruption by delivering an industry-tailored deployment more quickly. As the name implies, each individual Industry Catalyst Series offering will work like an industry-specific “agent” to accelerate a PLM implementation. This is accomplished through the three main components of each offering:

• Industry Best Practices – a set of digital guides and templates which function as a reference for the best processes and practices across the product lifecycle in a particular industry.
• Deployment Accelerators – a set of industry-specific recommendations for product selections, systems design decisions, configuration procedures and best practices for deployment.
• Open and Configurable Industry Solution Components – software components that enable the implementation team to easily control the appearance and behavior of a Siemens PLM implementation, without the need for custom programming.

“Building interfaces and custom coding can add significantly to the cost of a PLM system,” said Georg Vogl, executive program manager PLM at BSH, a Siemens PLM Software customer. “Over the past several years, Siemens has evolved its PLM software solutions to minimize these efforts by allowing us to configure the system to our needs rather than developing custom software. This has already helped us reduce our total cost of PLM ownership by 25 to 35 percent. Now with the introduction of the Industry Catalyst Series, we see the potential to implement new PLM technology even faster and reduce costs even further.”

“The natural time lag between the introduction of the latest PLM technology and its adoption by customers may be extended due to tailoring to meet industry and company-specific needs,” said Peter Bilello, president of CIMdata, a leading PLM consulting firm. “The longer this time lag lasts, the greater the amount of ‘missed value’ the customer will experience and the greater the risk to their competitive position. Siemens’ new Industry Catalyst Series is aimed at reducing this time lag for companies seeking to deploy a new industry-tailored PLM system, or those seeking to adopt the latest technology into their existing PLM system. In either case, the Industry Catalyst Series is designed to enable these companies to accelerate their time to value and enhance their competitive position.”

Over the next several months, individual Industry Catalyst Series offerings will be announced for a variety of industries including automotive, electronics, consumer products, marine, energy, machinery, medical device and aerospace. In addition to supporting multi-vendor PLM implementations, the Industry Catalyst Series offerings will work with all of Siemens’ enterprise-level PLM software products including NX software for digital product development, the Teamcenter portfolio for digital lifecycle management, the Tecnomatix portfolio for digital manufacturing, and LMS software for test and mechatronic simulation.