BOSTON — Siemens PLM Software used its annual industry analyst meeting to take the wraps off application upgrades based on new synchronous technology that the company said rewrites the rules of computer aided design (CAD).
During the two-day event here, top executives also provided a progress update on the company’s effort to create a unified platform for product design and production. Siemens first outlined the initiative, code-named Archimedes, at last year’s event following its $3.5 billion acquisition of UGS. For the first time since the deal was completed in May 2007, officials this week declared the integration of UGS and Siemens complete and a success.
“Moving the two organizations together was well-executed,” said Anton Huber, CEO of Siemens Industry Automation Division, during a presentation. “I’m surprised it went so well.”
Since the acquisition, Siemens PLM has added six significant customer wins, including Volkswagen, Canon, and Samsung, noted Tony Affusso, Siemens PLM’s chairman and CEO, in his presentation. Teamcenter, its flagship PLM product, has experienced a 12% increase in revenue in the last 12 months.
In an interview with Managing Automation, Huber said he has been involved with several acquisitions, and none of the integrations have been as easy because there are often territorial conflicts over who does what. “We ran into some difficulties [with UGS and Siemens], but we were able to keep it transparent,” he said. The development of the new Archimedes architecture helped, as it brought the two organizations together on a project motivated by business — not politics, Huber said.
Archimedes covers five core areas: engineering for the digital factory; high-fidelity machining; virtual commissioning; mechatronics; and harmonized product lifecycles. Siemens’ goal is to provide manufacturers with an integrated technology portfolio that not only moves a product to the market faster, but also gives the manufacturer the confidence that it is the right product for the market.
Applications with some of these elements will start to show up this year in upgrades to existing products, including Automation Designer and Process Simulator, which will start to integrate mechanical and electrical detail in the automation design for virtual commissioning.
Key to the Archimedes vision is the ability to synchronize systems and data, a challenge that recent announcements aim to address, the company said.
Last month at Hannover Fair in Germany, Siemens PLM Software unveiled its patent-pending synchronous technology for digital product development, which allows modeling, simulation, and engineering to run in parallel.
Today, most processes run sequentially. In addition, CAD designs are tied to a history tree that can get in the way when changes need to be made that the engineer didn’t foresee and apply in the original concept. With synchronous technology, because the design, geometry, engineering constraints, and editing tools all work in parallel, a user can “change the design as fast as you change your mind,” said Chuck Grindstaff, executive vice president of products for Siemens PLM.