No, its not the sequel to the Dickens novel, rather a perspective from three stops on our recent Advent of Visual Manufacturing Seminar tour.
Over the past couple weeks; I was fortunate in being able to represent Right Hemisphere alongside David Prawel from Longview Advisors in presenting a perspective on the challenges facing manufacturing companies today. And how these challenges are driving the need for deployment and adoption of Visual Manufacturing methods throughout the product lifecycle. David authored an intriguing whitepaper on the topic which became the foundation for the presentation. You can download a copy of the whitepaper at the Longview Advisor site http://www.longviewadvisors.com or on the Right Hemisphere site http://www.righthemisphere.com for your reference as well.
During the tour we dovetailed two COE (CATIA Operators Exchange) events, the Automotive Workshop in Detroit and the Aerospace Workshop in Wichita, we also visited the Great Northwest city of Seattle – Boeing country. So why did I chose to title this blog entry “The Tale of 3 Cities”? It is an attempt to describe the stark differences in the opinions, attitudes and general market outlook being articulated by those attending these specific events.
The COE show in Detroit was lightly attended and most of the discussion was centered on how the economic conditions in the US were causing strife in the automotive markets and putting pressure on the entire supply chain associated with this industry. There was talk about the speculated merger between GM and Chrysler and what impact that would have on the market and jobs.All were concerned about the continued threat of foreign competition and the window of opportunity the US financial and economic conditions presented for greater innovation market penetration by these companies. Even though David’s research and our presentation confirmed that the standardization and optimization of processes through the leverage of 3D design models throughout the lifecycle will help improve productivity, reduce training time, provide flexibility in resource utilization and truly enable getting more done with less resources, I left Detroit wondering if these companies would recognize the value of Visual Manufacturing especially in this time of difficulty.
So on to Wichita, the host city for the COE Aerospace Workshop and the improbable hub of the aerospace industry located in the heartland of America. Here the world seemed quite different. Attendance was much better at this event and the discussions were not about the strife in the industry but rather the demands being placed on these companies to deliver product on time, on budget and with the level of quality and reliability customers in this sector demand. A really different conversation!
It was clear that these companies were looking for ways to improve their manufacturing methods and practices. They understood that 3D modeling had improved the design of their products but had little impact on manufacturing processes. Visual Manufacturing was high on their list of priorities as they saw the benefits of the approach. Time after time we heard the benefits of improved visual aids on the shop floor in assembling complex subsystems of their aircraft and the ability to integrate 3D models to the manufacturing process for automated change management. Ironic that the mid-America town of Wichita has become a thought leader in manufacturing process optimization – funny how product demand can drive manufacturing innovation.
Next stop Seattle, which had very much the same feel as Wichita – this event was not connected to COE, but the attendees of the luncheon were predominantly from Boeing and they “got it”…in fact, they had tried to build some Visual Manufacturing technologies on their own, only to find it difficult to adapt to the various 3D file structures and to build applications downstream that were effective for non-CAD literate users. But clearly there were the same issues and needs articulated by those in Wichita. The major difference between the companies in Wichita and THE Company in Seattle was the scale, complexity and magnitude of the issues. This is probably why they tried something on their own and their sense of urgency around exploring solutions in this area was of high priority.
It became clear that manufacturers with complex products such as aircraft were trying to better the manufacturing environment with improved work instructions and visual aids, but found it difficult to stay current with the changes and customizations in their designs. An integrated environment with automated change management from design to manufacturing was the answer they were looking for. But when looking at deploying solutions for Visual Manufacturing it is also important to remember that this is the “life-blood” process for these companies – if the solution substantively disrupts this process, it will be met with strong resistance.
So all in all, the trip went well and the Tale of Three Cities was written with one common theme – those who understood the concepts and value of Visual Manufacturing were keen on deploying it, those who were distracted by other issues will get around to it – eventually…
Spend a couple of minutes checking out this comprehensive video overview of Right Hemisphere’s technical illustration solution by our resident expert Gary Burns
This news is just in from the government which is very interesting and reflective of what we are seeing in the real world.
“New orders for manufactured durable goods in September increased $1.6 billion or 0.8 percent to $207.8 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This was the fourth increase in the last five months and followed a 5.5 percent August decrease. Excluding transportation, new orders decreased 1.1 percent. Excluding defense, new orders decreased 0.6 percent.”
While the bad news is that overall durable good orders are down a good 1.1%, the overall number was up almost a full percentage point.Why was that?In a word; aircraft.New aircraft orders soared and it will simply compound an issue we see in the market relative to backorders in the A&D market.Companies are making it a priority to make significant percentage gains in the ability to move aircraft through the production process in order to ship product and realize revenue.
We sponsored a research piece in the spring called “MBD for the Masses” from CPDA and it uncovered telling feedback that has direct bearing on why we are seeing a surge in adoption of visual manufacturing initiatives today:
“Most companies indicated that their first priority centered on the communication between design engineering and the manufacturing realm, both with manufacturing process planners who decided and detailed how a product would be manufactured and with production and assembly staff on the manufacturing floor.”
This insight, in turn, is translating into initiatives focused on connecting PLM to MES environments to integrate and automate how data is processed and delivered to drive manufacturing efficiencies.They key issue is being able to provide accurate representations of each plane and its associated interactive visual work instructions based on configuration data from the ERP system and product data from the PLM system. Based on our standing room only ‘Visual Manufacturing’ seminar event the other day at COE Wichita, interest in finding out how to address these issues is very high.
To learn more feel free to check out the following links:
Many thanks to Andy Morris who is the President of Visual Aircraft in Austin, TX for giving us the okay to share these short tutorials they have created to show off different uses of Deep Exploration. You can learn more about Visual Aircraft at http://visualaircraft.com or look these and other videos up on YouTube.
Our creative team has been hard at work to building new materials that better show off the scope of Right Hemisphere products and solutions. Enjoy this latest work!
Given the fact that its election season, I thought I’d channel James Carville for a little ‘liberal’ interpretation of his most famous quote.But what does this all mean?Well, over the last couple of months we have been very busy launching a number of derivative versions of our Deep Server product to accommodate new market opportunities.The Deep Server Enterprise Edition is a version that is line with what we have been offering to date via our direct channel to large manufacturing entities looking for scalable, robust and customizable solutions to core business problems.Our new ‘Workgroup Edition” is a lower cost, less scalable version of our enterprise product tuned to the needs of departments or SMB’s that our expanding VAR channel will represent.The last version is our ‘View Edition’ that is dedicated to generating content for partners that OEM our Deep View technology *into* their product.As we have mentioned in this forum before, SAP PLM has done this and they rolled out the story to analysts and customers on September 15 at their annual ASUG conference in Nashville.We were on hand to directly participate in this effort and even presented at their analyst day.Below is a write up from Dick Slansky from ARC Advisory Group that captures the gist of what the story was;
It was clear that SAP was articulating an enterprise strategy that involved the PLM, SCM, and Mfg. domains along with a very process-driven approach that integrates product design, manufacturing build, and services in a holistic end-to-end approach. Additionally, SAP envisions this process-centric approach as a way to deliver more value to their customers by enabling them to optimize and streamline the overall design/build/support process which can ultimately lead to increased productivity and market response.
…and then he goes on to talk about Right Hemisphere’s role in fulfilling this vision:
[Right Hemisphere] provides the capability for SAP PLM 7.0 to extend and integrate product data across all business processes that involve not only PLM domains, but also ERP, SCM, MES, and Mfg operations.
What SAP and RH are doing is taking a historically engineering centric definition of PLM and making a business centric solution wherein product data is distributed across multiple silos, business processes and business applications.The key is that their product is the catalyst and has unique and common integration capabilities that make this viable.What we are learning here and at so many other customer sites is simply that businesses what to leverage and add value to their investment in the systems and processes that allow their company to operate, not necessarily to change them.So in order to do that you need to understand the nature of the business’ problem, how they work today and then work back through the processes and supporting systems to solve that problem.What we are seeing over and over is the need to bring engineering data seamlessly into these environments in a way that adapts to the end user’s needs. That means delivering data in a way that is accurate, useful and in the context of how they work.
So it really ends up being all about delivery in terms of fulfilling an overall PLM strategy.This is an area that we are very focused on and in the coming months you will be hearing more from us about this particular subject.Given the nature of the world economy today, businesses will be required to be able to do much more with what investments they have made to markedly improve top line growth first and foremost and then reduced cost in conjunction.What will be of paramount importance will be the ability to extend existing systems and processes to make everyone across the value chain more productive and accountable to the bottom line…and this is what our next developments will continue to improve upon and enable. Stay tuned.
Regards,
Rix Kramlich
Vice President of Marketing & Business Development
Right Hemisphere
PS: Come out and see David Prawel of Longwood Asc and Right Hemishpere LIVE at our continuing Visual Manufacturing Seminar Series next week (Oct 27-30) at COE Witchita, Seattle and El Segundo (LA)!Click on the link above to learn more and register.
I hope all of you have had a great summer.With Labor Day fast approaching we are ramping up to have a busy and exciting Fall full of activity and announcements!I’ll have more about that in future blog postings.
A couple of pieces of great news came over the transom in the last couple of weeks that I’d like to pass on.The first one came in from Manufacturing Business Technology, where Right Hemisphere won one of their “2008 Innovation Insight Honorable Mention Awards”.For the record, the first place winner were actually co-winners: Emerson and Honeywell which offer distinct wireless network solutions. They offered up a case study at BP for a preventative maintenance solution that is truly very cool and has obvious value.Check it out
There were only four honorable mention award winners and Right Hemisphere is in good company there.Our award write-up features a compelling case study from one of our customers, Bell Helicopter.Below is a quote from the article that is consistent with the value that we see other companies realizing which factored heavily into why we were recognized.
“The technology saved 39,000 labor hours in development of technical publications for one aircraft alone. “That’s an 80-percent savings in the time to produce graphics of much higher quality, and that are much more portable,” says Lewis, resulting in netted savings in another project of 26,000 labor hours a year.”
You can find the entire piece on page 31 of the most recent (July/August) edition of the magazine and online
We also found out that we won an emerging company of the year award from a prominent analyst firm that required a fair amount of validation with our deployed enterprise customers just to be considered.If you can believe it I am not at liberty to actually tell you who it is from based on their copy write rules!Can you believe that?In my 20 years of being in the business I’ve never seen that one.Nonetheless its great to win again…even if it is a double-super–secret award ; )
I’ll end this post with 2 bonus pieces of news;
1. RH Video News Piece
There was a recent news piece out of New Zealand that is worth checking out about Right Hemisphere.It shows off some recent cool work that people are doing with our technology and provides insight into the company’s roots.As many of you know the company was founded in Auckland and we maintain a large development team there (Our corporate headquarters are here in California).Hey – We’re looking to add world class 3D engineering talent to the team!!New Zealand is a great place to live.Something to consider!Anyways check out the piece
2. Welcome Bob Merlo!
Any company is only as good as the quality of its people and RH is lucky to have a lot of great and talented people.I am very happy to announce that the trend continues with the addition of Bob Merlo who has recently joined the company and is running Corp Marketing.Bob is an industry veteran who has held executive level positions at Autodesk, ChipData and Exodus Communications.Expect to see Bob on Deep 3D in the near future offering his perspective on the market and the Right Hemisphere’s story.
Check in often as we’ll have new news and industry observations in the coming weeks.
Regards,
Rix Kramlich
Vice President of Marketing & Business Development
Aside from shipping the latest version of Deep Exploration last week, Right Hemisphere also shipped the latest version of our Deep View technology.Now as many of you probably know, Deep View is our free plug-in that allows you natively view and explore 2D and 3D product data in a wide variety of environments like HTML and Microsoft Office documents.Aside from adding major enhancements to the product, Deep View is now coming in two forms: Minimum and Complete.The Minimum version is simply the viewer, while the “Complete” installs an application that allows you to import and PUBLISH 2D and 3D product information into PDF and Office documents…for FREE!
The new Deep View Complete version will import a wide variety of files that you may have ready access to including: .3ds, dwg, cgm, .u3d, .dxf, .obj, .rh, 3dm, .wrl, Sketchup.Inside PowerPoint, for example, a new “Deep View” menu item will appear in the application itself that will allow you to insert 3D models and publish to PDF directly from PowerPoint.
It’s very EASY, very COOL and very FREE.What more could one ask for???
First off I would like to introduce myself…I am Lars Olson, Product Manager for Right Hemisphere’s Deep Exploration desktop client tools. A little over a year ago we spent two weeks on the road through out the United States presenting our technology through a series of day long seminars. This was not the first time we had done such an event, but it was the first time that we invited our enterprise customers to closed sessions following the seminars to get a reality check on our software products and solutions. Having been the Director of Service and Support for Right Hemisphere before moving into my role as Product Manager, I had plenty of input from our customer base about our products. This time was different because we had customers from diverse fields of manufacturing all together talking freely about what was important to them, and more importantly what problems they needed solved. It should come as no surprise, but there are lots of problems to solve…some easy, some very difficult. If you listen closely enough to your customers you will find common problems within manufacturing that need to be solved no matter if you making shoes or making mining equipment.
The key was to listen to our customers, and not create features and functions that our Product Management and Development think are important, but rather solve the business issues that are common amongst our customer base. Sounds obvious…but the large CAD companies have been missing the boat. Combining visual product data with business data for the distribution and publishing of this information to suit the customers’ business needs is what we do. I like to call it a “3D product and business data mash-up”. Every new feature and function in Deep Exploration and Deep View 5.5 was based on customer requirements, and in almost every case these new features where implemented to provide a solution to a manufacturing business issue.
Today June 16, 2008 is the launch of Deep Exploration & Deep View 5.5. The entire team at Right Hemisphere poured a bunch of blood, sweat and tears into this release, and we are extremely proud of these products. We understand that if we keep our heads down doing what we do best, and continue to listen to our customers, solving manufacturing business issues then our customer list will continue to grow as it has in the past.
For those customers that have purchased Deep Exploration 5.0 CAD or Standard Edition can upgrade to version 5.5 FREE for one year, or upgrade your licenses for a longer term at 50% discount through the end of September 2008. New customers can download a trial version today. For more information (Datasheets, Summary of Features, Supported File Formats) check out the individual product pages at www.righthemisphere.com
I encourage all of you to download and distribute the FREE Deep View 5.5 software. Stay tuned as I will be posting a variety of video demos and screenshots of these products in the coming days.�
The Holodeck of the future makes it’s debut in ver 1.0–a gesture recognition capable 3-D screen that does not require the user to wear glasses. Read more here and here