brief guide to integrating teamcenter

8/9/2019 Brief Guide to Integrating Teamcenter

1/4

A Brief Guide to Integrating Teamcenter with other Enterprise

Systems

This article provides a high level

introduction to the topic of integrating

Teamcenter with other enterprise

systems most commonly ERP and

provides a review of the main technical

options and approaches that may be

pursued to achieve a robust

integration.

Why Do Organisations Have Separate PLM and ERP system?

It is worth reflecting for a moment on why companies are often faced with the challenge of integrating standalone

PLM solutions with ERP systems when many ERP vendors increasingly offer integrated PLM type capabilities.

There are likely to be two main reasons. The first is simply that many companies have older ERP and MRP systems

that make no claims to deliver a PLM capability. As a result they may have invested in a standalone PLM system

(like Teamcenter) because their ERP vendor does not have a PLM offering.

The second reason is that PLM and ERP solutions have evolved to accomplish different tasks. So although some

ERP software vendors do offer integrated PLM capabilities as part of their suite of business solutions, PLM solutions

from dedicated PLM software vendors typically deliver more complete solutions for personnel engaged in the

product development process.

Some organisations therefore find it difficult to trade advanced PLM functionality for the alternative benefits of a

single enterprise system.

Why Bother Integrating ERP PLM?

Connecting PLM and ERP platforms to enable the bi-directional flow of product data is crucial for establishing a so-

called single source of the truth and enabling the efficient transfer of information through the organisation.

Its no longer acceptable either from a productivity or an accuracy point of view to have bill of materials information

transferred manually between PLM and ERP. Indeed we would argue that the full benefits and efficiency gains

offered by a PLM solution like Teamcenter can only be realised if it is integrated effectively with up-stream and down

-stream information flows.

But when it comes to achieving this integration, what are the technical options and which one is right for your

company?

Its probably worth starting this discussion by referring to the off the shelf ERP connector products offered by PLM

solution vendors for their PLM solutions (Teamcenter being no exception). These typically deliver varying levels of

integration with some of the more common ERP systems or the export and import of formatted XML data.

+44 (0)845 680 0501 [email protected]

To learn more about

AESSiS, visit our website at

www.aessis.com

Copyright 2010 AESSiS, All Rights Reserved

Article by Graham McCall

C.Eng M.I.Mech.E

(Continued on page 2)

Learn more about AESSiS at www.aessis.com

Click Here to Connect with Graham via Linked In
mailto:[email protected]?subject=AESSiShttp://www.aessis.com/http://www.aessis.com/http://www.aessis.com/http://www.aessis.com/http://uk.linkedin.com/in/grahammccallhttp://uk.linkedin.com/in/grahammccallhttp://www.aessis.com/http://www.aessis.com/http://www.aessis.com/http://www.aessis.com/http://www.aessis.com/http://www.aessis.com/http://www.aessis.com/http://www.aessis.com/http://www.aessis.com/http://www.aessis.com/mailto:[email protected]?subject=AESSiS


2/4

These products can be useful. However, the

individualised nature of the integration challenge and

the sheer variety of products available in the ERP

marketplace means that these generic approaches

may not always provide the level of integration that isdemanded.

In these circumstances a more bespoke approach

becomes more or less unavoidable.

Get the Foundations Right

Before writing any code, the first thing you need to do is

establish firm project foundations.

This means pulling the right team of people together

from the start and agreeing the approach you are going

to pursue for the project.

At AESSiS, were firm believers in Test Driven

Development. This is an Agile software development

technique. In essence, it allows requirements and

solutions to evolve iteratively across short design and

development cycles. It relies on high levels of

teamwork and collaboration. Therefore trust and

openness are of paramount importance.

The starting point of this test driven process is a user

acceptance specification. This specification will of

course evolve but it should always describe the latest

and best understanding of the integration challenge interms of how the information originating in PLM should

be reflected in ERP (and vice-versa). This acts as an

important reference point during subsequent user

acceptance testing and so needs to be kept up to date.

It is also really important to create a corresponding set

of test data (product structure, part and metadata

information) that is representative of your production

information. Not only does this help you understand

and describe your initial requirements, it also gives you

a consistent set of data to validate the integration at

each stage of its development.

Technical Options

Having defined the integration challenge, the next step

is to review the technical integration options.

In terms of getting data out of Teamcenter, this can be

done in a couple of ways. You can trigger Teamcenter

to stream data via SOAP (SOAP or Simple Object Access

Protocol is just a way for one program to communicate

with another directly via HTTP and XML).

Alternatively, you can export data to a file in XML or CSV

format ready to be picked up and read into the targetsystem.

One of the quickest ways to write out a formatted XML

or CSV file is to use PLMXML.

The Simplest Way to Write PLMXML

The simplest way to get PLMXML out of Teamcenter is

to use the standard Teamcenter ITK utilities (more

about ITK later).

These can be used directly, right out of the box, to

export PLMXML data and at the same time apply a style

sheet to map it into another XML format or flat CSV file

(if your MRP solution does not support XML).

The next simplest approach, if these standard utilities

dont quite deliver enough functionality, is to write a

more bespoke ITK module that also exports PLMXML

data but with addition capabilities.

When PLMXML Is Not The Right Approach

There can be situations when PLMXML may not be the

right approach such as if you need to optimise

performance in the context of complex or very large

product structures. In this case, exporting a

correspondingly large and complex PLMXML file may be

neither the most robust nor efficient approach.

Instead a more targeted approach might be desirable in

order to extract only the data that is needed and write it

directly to formatted XML (readable by the target

system) or bespoke flat file.

To do this involves building a customised solutionaround one or more of the Teamcenter APIs and

toolkits.

Using the Teamcenter APIs Toolkits

Teamcenter can be customised on both the client and

server side to deliver integration solutions.

There is no one size fits all approach and the right

approach will take into account several factors

including any infrastructure and financial constraints

prevalent within the business.

Nevertheless, a good starting point for this discussion

is the Teamcenter Integration Toolkit (or ITK for short).

(Continued from page 1)

Copyright 2010 AESSiS, All Rights Reserved (Continued on page 3)

What is PLMXML?

PLM XML was created by Siemens PLM to facilitate

product lifecycle interoperability using XML. It is an

open and published format that brings together prod-uct structure, part and metadata information to-

gether in a lightweight, manner in order to enable

broad and flexible interoperability across key PLM

applications.

You can find out more about PLM XML at

www.plmxml.org

Building Beer Engineering & Product Development Processes

.com
http://www.plmxml.org/http://www.plmxml.org/


3/4

Weve already touched on ITK when we talked about

the standard ITK utilities that are available for working

with PLMXML.

As the name implies, ITK (or more accurately C ITK) is

a set of software tools (C and C++ libraries andheaders).

ITK is a well established (its been around for many

years) way of building server side customisations to

Teamcenter (although its also worth mentioning that

with Teamcenter Unified, you also now have the new

C++ API which is an alternative to ITK and may be used

instead of or alongside IT in the future).

In any event, server side modules (were going to call

them user services from now on) are usually created in

order to accomplish resource hungry tasks on the

server (such as bulk release or export of hundreds orthousands of items) quickly and efficiently.

These server side user services then usually need to be

accessible from a Teamcenter client. A very common

way to achieve this is to write another module in Java

that connects to the user service. This Java module

can then be weaved into the Teamcenter Rich Client

interface which is also written in Java.

There are a number of variations in this theme. Forexample, you can expose server-side (ITK)

functionalities through the thin or web client. This is

useful when the Teamcenter rich client setup is not

required but you want to make services available to

those users accessing Teamcenter via a browser.

You can also bypass ITK completely and write

integration programs in Java directly into the

Teamcenter Rich Client Platform using the Teamcenter

Portal API. This can be very useful when you need to

enable more functionality within a Teamcenter client

and do not have the option or resources to customise

the server tier.

Using the Teamcenter Service Oriented Architecture


(Continued on page 4)


AESSiS bring together leading Teamcenter

integration specialists to enable companies to use

Teamcenter more effectively in the context of their

end to end product development processes.

Business Needs

A key strategic goal of any PLM initiative is to establish a

single source of the truth. In practise, this often means

integrating and connecting disparate systems to enable

the efficient flow of information through the organisation.

Those companies using Teamcenter are no exception.

Indeed the full benefits and efficiency gains offered by

Teamcenter can only be realised when Teamcenter is

integrated effectively with other enterprise systems.

Solution

With over 20 years of Teamcenter experience, AESSiS help

organisations to integrate Teamcenter with their other

mission critical enterprise systems via our team of

Teamcenter & Enterprise PLM integration experts.

Whether you need help integrating your Teamcenter

environment with your sales order process, with Microsoft

SharePoint or with your existing MRP or ERP system it is

likely that we will be able to provide you with a reasonably

priced path towards a solution to your particular challenge.

Learn more about AESSiS Teamcenter Integration Services at www.aessis.com

AESSiS Teamcenter Integration Services - Fact Sheet

AESSiS Teamcenter Integration Skills at a Glance

Teamcenter Rich Client Platform Customisation via

RCP API, OSGI (Eclipse) platforms.

Teamcenter web customisation

Server side ITK module development.

.NET/JAVA/C++ SOAs for web service integration

Complex workflow configuration

Integration via PLMXML and Collaboration Context


.com


4/4

(SOA) Client Toolkit

Another integration approach that is becoming

increasingly important is via the Teamcenter SOA client

toolkit.

Pursuing an SOA type of approach to integrate to

Teamcenter is very useful when you have other

enterprise applications that cannot be run directly in

the context of a Teamcenter client or server

environment but which still need to access Teamcenter

functionality or data.

You can even wrap up older ITK modules as an SOA

type service and reuse them in the context of an SOA

type approach without having to re-write them.

In a similar vein to combining a server side ITK service

with client side Java module, you can also use the SOA

toolkit to create user services, on the server side.

This is useful when you need accomplish resource

hungry tasks such as uploading a large product

structure to Teamcenter.

Conclusions

Theres a number of different ways for integrating to

Teamcenter ranging in complexity from the very simple

file based approaches to more sophisticated SOA type

approaches.

Each approach has its pros and cons and its own

price point.

In choosing the right approach it is important to take

into account the complexity of the integration challenge

and any infrastructure and financial constraints thatexist within the business in order to avoid creating a

solution that is neither over-engineered nor lacking in

key capabilities.

If you have any questions raised by this article, please

dont hesitate to contact AESSiS or the author.

About AESSiS

AESSiS deliver strategic business improvement

projects initiatives to improve operational financial

performance in engineering and product development.

AESSiS combine experience of engineering & product

development best practises with expert knowledge

product lifecycle management (PLM) technologies to

deliver improved performance in the following business

areas.

New Product Introduction (NPI) Process

Improvement

Target Cost Management Process Improvement

Electronic Engineering Change & Release

Control

Part Count & Material Spend Reduction

Supplier & Partner Data Exchange &

Collaboration

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Planning &

Introduction

Click Here to learn more

AESSiS also have two technical PLM practises that

conduct that conduct full PLM implementations and

related projects & services.

Teamcenter PLM Projects & Services. Click Here to

learn more

Aras Innovator PLM Projects & Services. Click Here to

learn more

AESSiS are always seeking challenging & interesting

projects with progressive & ambitious organisations

where we can contribute to significant improvements in

business performance.



What is SOA?

SOA means different things to different people, and

it is beyond the scope of this paper to explore these

differences in great detail. But in simple terms SOA

is all about packaging up core business functions or

components (usually ones that dont tend to

change very often) into independent web services

based on standard protocols which accomplish very

specific tasks.

These modularised services, which should be easy

to maintain, can then be accessed by different ap-

plications allowing organisations to connect enter-

prise systems together as well as run business proc-

esses and transfer information across them in a

more or less standardised way.


.com

About the Author

Graham McCall is Chartered

Mechanical Engineer, Product

Lifecycle Management expert

& Executive Advisor on the role

of advanced enterprise

software technologies in

engineering & product

development.

He works with organisations to deliver strategic

business improvement projects & initiatives that

increase operational & financial performance in

engineering and product development via thedevelopment of better business processes powered

by better technologies.

Click Here to Connect with Graham via Linked In
http://www.aessis.com/Services/service.aspx?id=33http://www.aessis.com/Services/Service.aspx?id=16http://www.aessis.com/Services/Service.aspx?id=16http://www.aessis.com/Services/service.aspx?id=15http://www.aessis.com/Services/service.aspx?id=15http://uk.linkedin.com/in/grahammccallhttp://uk.linkedin.com/in/grahammccallhttp://www.aessis.com/Services/service.aspx?id=15http://www.aessis.com/Services/service.aspx?id=15http://www.aessis.com/Services/service.aspx?id=15http://www.aessis.com/Services/service.aspx?id=15http://www.aessis.com/Services/Service.aspx?id=16http://www.aessis.com/Services/Service.aspx?id=16http://www.aessis.com/Services/Service.aspx?id=16http://www.aessis.com/Services/Service.aspx?id=16http://www.aessis.com/Services/service.aspx?id=33

brief guide to integrating teamcenter

Documents