How-To Guide: Better Design Engineering Collaboration

How can you improve engineering collaboration to transform your product development process for the better?

This eBook by Lifecycle Insights: “How Do I Coordinate Design across Engineering Disciplines,” outlines how you can:

• Improve coordination among mechanical engineering for more efficient designs.
• Enhance collaboration with other design domains to ensure all requirements are met.
• Cooperate with suppliers and customers in real time with the most up-to-date data.
• Leverage a secure and accurate source of cross-domain design information at every step of the process.

Engineering Collaboration Using the Digital Twin

A comprehensive digital twin is an exact digital representation of a product, and it acts as a common thread between all stakeholders in product development, from design and manufacturing to maintenance and service.

Collaboration becomes easier when engineers from every discipline, suppliers, and customers all work together using real-time information found within the digital twin.

Organizations that use the digital twin experience the benefits almost immediately, discovering they can complete better product design with a faster time to market.

ECAD and MCAD Engineering Coordination

Product design teams use a range of mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD) and electronic computer-aided design (ECAD) software tools to complete a project.

Coordinating these files in emails or in shared drives can result in lost or outdated information, and these file types don’t always convert to other software.

A modern product lifecycle management (PLM) solution can manage designs from these different CAD packages and allow engineers to visualize designs and ensure everyone is working from the same up-to-date data.

Working With Customers, Suppliers, and Partners

Engineers aren’t the only people involved in product development – customers, suppliers, and non-engineering functions like marketing and sales are also involved.

When everyone can work together and collaborate using the same up-to-date information, the entire process is better supported.

Relying on emails for requirements, design data, project schedules, and more quickly becomes overwhelming and unmanageable.

Modern PLM platforms solve this by making information accessible to people inside and outside the organization to keep everyone on the same page.

SaaS PLM Solutions for More Accessible Engineering Collaboration

Cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) PLM offers a customizable solution for both large corporations and small to medium-sized businesses with plenty of benefits:

• Efficiency: Tailored solutions to meet specific needs
• Productivity: In-depth understanding of company workflow
• Fast implementation: Immediate access through a browser
• Distributed total ownership: Subscriptions don’t require a large, up-front technology investment
• Extended collaboration: Enable input from internal and external stakeholders
• Security: Intellectual property remains secure

With a SaaS PLM solution in place, everyone involved in product development gains quick and easy access to the data they need with little to no IT support.

Try Cloud SaaS PLM for Free

Take a look at Teamcenter X and sign up for the free trial to see how you can get started quickly and cost-effectively to drive cross-domain engineering productivity for greater product innovation.