Can You Handle a Single Source of Product Truth?

To improve communication, everyone in your company must get their information from the same source. Sounds reasonable, right?

Whether a small company in one location or an international firm with offices worldwide, when people congregate within the same secure technology environment to gather, work, share, and store product data, keeping product development teams on the same page—including managers and executives—becomes almost natural.

The 3DEXPERIENCE® platform provides the technology infrastructure to manage product design data and documents on the cloud connected with SOLIDWORKS®: a single source of truth not just for data but for all the product deliverables.

Welcome to part two in a blog series about the Collaborative Industry Innovator Role on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. We’ll take a look at the value of working together on the same platform to improve communication.

Work Together in a Common Framework

Working together in the same building has its challenges. Those challenges are amplified now with more people working from home or remote offices. With workplaces getting more and more spread out, companies must improve their efficiencies in working together in a more organized way.

By leveraging the cloud-based Collaborative Industry Innovator, companies can efficiently work with people inside and outside their company, including partners, suppliers, and manufacturers. Users can securely access “live” product content via collaborative apps from a common framework in any location or on any device based on permissions that you set up and manage.

Because assemblies are managed in the secure, cloud-based database and not in files, an accurate design context is established quickly. The platform enables access to not only product design, but also other types of content such as multi-physics simulation, manufacturing process planning, and a host of product lifecycle management capabilities.

Include Non-engineers in Digital Mock-up and Review

Collaborative Industry Innovator has an intuitive interface to provide a real-time digital mock-up that is accessible to anyone in the enterprise—without any requisite of CAD knowledge. This enables all non-CAD users to participate in an end-to-end process and get involved sooner rather than later in the development cycle. The result is parallel work completed across different teams and overall increased efficiency.

Now, it becomes easy to communicate concerns, identify issues, and propose resolutions. Promoting your product ideas becomes a snap because all team members—from engineers to managers to executives—can participate in the design review process with full 3D digital renderings. Potential issues are discovered earlier in the process when they are less costly to resolve.

You can manage the product structure as data on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform so designers can work in parallel. Designers have instant access to updates made by other contributors. This enables real-time concurrent design, enhanced decision-making and faster design maturity. Collaborating on your SOLIDWORKS designs is quick and efficient at any time, from any location and on any device.

Keep Organized

When development work hits a frantic pace, the ability to stay organized so you can keep projects and people on track is more vital than ever. Within Collaborative Industry Innovator, Bookmarks can help you keep your important data organized and easily accessible so you can find it when you need it most.

Think of Bookmarks as folders and shortcuts; they organize information so you can quickly access them when you need them. You can create Bookmarks inside other Bookmarks (again, just like folders) to develop an organized structure that makes it easier for you to work as a team.

Bookmarks also provide access to additional tools, lifecycle actions, and collaboration features that make it easy to perform everyday tasks to stay on top of the game.

Real-time Data Lifecycle

Collaborative Industry Innovator enhances your ability to make informed decisions faster by leveraging real-time data. With all the data in the same place, everyone is up to date with access to a single source of truth. And because you are accessing “live” data, there is no risk of being out of sync on model revisions or assembly configurations.

By leveraging the cloud-based Collaborative Industry Innovator, you can eliminate communication silos, facilitating work with people inside and outside your company. Communication among team members becomes natural (possibly even fun). Best of all, you can work at the office, from home, or on the road with just an internet connection.

Look for our next blog article on Collaborative Industry Innovator soon. And, please feel free to make your comments below.