Product lifecycle management set to forge into UK?

Product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services vendor Eigner – arguably one of the oldest and best kept secrets in PLM outside Germany – is opening up in the UK under the stewardship of Richard Shutt, formerly with ASK, Comptuervision and latterly EAI (enterprise application integration) software vendor Seebeyond. Eigner, which kick started its global march in June of last year with venture capital funding in the US and former PTC veteran Frank Azzolino as president and CEO, is in partnership talks with Elancor, CDT and Syntec on the CAD side, as well as CTC for the big league. Users to date here include Cross Huller, Joy Mining, TRW and Qualter. There’s little doubt that the firm is entering the UK market at the right time. PLM is likely to be one of the highest growth areas for the foreseeable future, as companies recognise the benefits that derive from a single integrated system able to handle all engineering information requirements – from speeding product development to automatically generating tech pubs. Fact is that with CAD/CAM and enterprise (ERP) systems in, the controls are there and – beyond other priorities like improving production in terms of supply chain management on the one hand, and shopfloor improvement (MPM) and integration on the other – this is a good next logical step. Remember, for some companies, developing a prototype alone can involve up to 200 suppliers. “This is not a luxury any more; this is a requirement,” says Azzolino. He makes the point that it is, or should be, no longer about getting competitive advantage. Just as ERP before it, this breed of PLM should be fundamental to operations for firms with a decent engineering authority. But Eigner is not alone. Other independents include MatrixOne and Agile Software, although the latter’s strength is more from the ECAD background. And there’s the big league of PTC, EDS (UGS) and the Dassault/IBM combination. Eigner is now on its third generation, web- and standards-centric PLM software, now organised as eight suites, rather than 45 modules, and dealing more obviously with manufacturing businesses’ real engineering and associated issues. This is a far cry from earlier product data and engineering change management – everything from technical document management and publishing, to PDM, configuration management, supply chain issues, MRO and custom engineering. The value comes from dipping into engineering data built and maintained at the heart of the business, with one object model – meaning that the functional requirements of as-designed, as-built, as-operated, as-maintained, etc can be handled all the way out to the extended enterprise. Azzolino claims lowest cost of ownership for Eigner software, with lower than average proportional consulting and service prices and integration with the widest range of CAD/CAM and enterprise systems right from the start. And he insists that there are plenty of implementations with just five to 10 seats – so it’s not all big boy stuff. However, with 850 implementation in some 275 companies, including Swatch, Lockheed Martin (the latter originally from earlier representation by then PTC VAR Rand), SMS Demag, Heidenhain, ABB, Leica and Siemens, there’s a lot of very big, happy global organisations out there willing to testify. Not only have many of these achieved swift implementations; they’ve also achieved relatively swift ROI – typically within 10—15 months with, for example, ECO cycle times alone being reduced from 12 weeks to three to five days.