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PLM for Embedded Product Development - Challenges, Experiences and Solution

� © 2009, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

PLM Center of Excellence | May 2009

Table of ConTenTs

Abstract 3

Introduction 4

Embedded product development life cycle 4

Typical challenges in Embedded Product Development Life Cycle 5

What is PLM? 6

How PLM can help in addressing the challenges in Embedded Product Development? 7

What are the benefits with PLM? 9

About HCL 12



Abstract

In Today’s scenario, Manufacturers across all industries have increasingly incorporated electronics and software into their mechanical products in order to deliver features that customers want at a competitive price. However, embedded product development has set of challenges in integrating multi-disciplinary design teams into a coherent, synchronized product lifecycle.

Product Life Cycle Management Solutions provides the enterprises a rich environment for the collaborative development of mechanical, electrical, electronic and embedded software technologies in a single source of product and process knowledge. Enterprises have increasingly realized the need for PLM systems and have also implemented them to address the challenges during the product development life cycle.

This white paper attempts to detail out the typical set of challenges in embedded product development life cycle and how Product Life Cycle Management (PLM) can be leveraged to address those challenges.



Introduction

Today’s products have many advanced features enabled through the use of software-driven electronics. Automobiles have advanced safety features, automatic controls and service diagnostics. Home appliances have software-powered controls designed to provide automated features and energy saving controls.

In order to compete, Manufacturers need to be able to synchronize all aspects of complex product and process design, pushing all systems engineering and design issues to the front of the process whenever possible. They must optimize product performance, integration and quality by unifying interdependent mechanical, electrical and software subsystems – many of which may be designed and built by suppliers.

Developing these embedded products involves a set of challenges in coordinating the disparate engineering disciplines on a single design.

All the above results in products with complex multi-disciplinary design, increased product data and information to be managed and shared in an organized, centralized and real-time manner across an extended enterprise.

Hence organizations are in need for a system that can address the rising complexity of products, need to collaborate real-time, manage product information in a centralized location and yet make it available to different functional groups of users across the geography.

Product lifecycle management, or PLM, solutions can provide an ideal framework for implementing enterprise-wide new product development goals. Organizations have increasingly realized the need for PLM systems and have also implemented them.

Embedded product development life cycle

New product development life cycle for embedded products typically involves the following important phases – Concept, Requirement, Design, Embedded software development, Mechanical development, Hardware schematics/board layout, Prototyping, Hardware & Software integration, Verification and Validation (V&V), Electronic packaging and may be system integration, Compliance pre-scanning, System testing, Manufacturing transition, Production and Support/ retire.

Following diagram represents the typical new product development cycle and key functional areas for a typical embedded product



New product development cycle and key functional areas for a typical embedded product

Typical challenges in Embedded Product Development Life Cycle

Embedded product development is a difficult proposition: bring together multiple highly complicated disciplines with little understanding or visibility into their companion areas. Following listing provides the list of some of the challenges in the embedded product development life cycle.

Product complexity: Developing embedded software is complex as it involves interfacing with various sub-system with real time requirements and with minimal resources to accomplish the same. Ensuring all design requirements are met in the final system requires close track of requirements across various disciplines. In addition, it is very difficult to understand the impact of design change across disciplines.

Isolated functional teams: Software development teams are not integrated with electronic and mechanical design teams. Early identification of system level problems is very difficult because of the isolated teams.

Too many product variants: Products are increasingly differentiated on the basis of their embedded software features.

Distributed design groups: It is difficult to manage the growing number of distributed design setups. Geographically distributed design teams often face issues in accessing right information during the product development.

Compatibility: Development teams find it hard to identify which hardware/software modules are compatible. It is very difficult to identify and manage huge number of software enhancements/upgrades over a period of time in the case of longer product life cycles, typically medical, automotive, aerospace and defence.



Unavailability of experienced system engineers: Difficulty in finding and hiring experienced system engineers/lack of cross functional knowledge

Difficulty predicting product behaviour: Difficulty predicting / modelling system product behaviour until physical prototypes exists. Understanding the interdependencies of the software design with other cross functional designs is often late-stage process conducted only after the software is uploaded to the first prototype.

Debugging software problems and issues are not easy in a real time environment

Hardware resources like memory (RAM, ROM), processor bandwidth etc re-quired to accomplish the product development are not abundant and have to accomplish product with less RAM/ROM. This is not the case in a PC based software development

Since the target platform where the embedded software executes is different, than in software that executes on a PC, debugging is difficult and requires use of good debugging tools

When an issue/problem surfaces, generally it is very difficult to find if it is due to hardware or software etc or is it combinational? This poses great challenges

Embedded product generally requires interfacing with multiple systems and these systems are not readily available during development requiring use of simulated environment during early phases. If these environments are not exactly identical to the final environment, considerable challenges faced during final testing

Software development is often outsourced, but system integration is still the responsibility of the OEM engineering group

Software lifecycle issues increase today’s service and repair costs

What is PLM?

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a strategic business approach that applies a set of business solutions in support of the collaborative creation, management, dissemination, and use of product records across the extended enterprise spanning from product concept to end of life.

Product Life Cycle Management Solutions provides the enterprises with a rich environment for the collaborative development of mechanical, electrical, electronic and embedded software technologies in a single source of product and process knowledge. PLM helps to establish a common data model across the engineering domains facilitating individual development teams can retain their mechanical, electrical, electronic or software focus, while working in-context and

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together to meet the overall development goals. Following diagram depicts the typical set of functionalities during the collaborative product development are supported by PLM.

PLM enables Collaborative Product Development

How PLM can help in addressing the chal-lenges in Embedded Product Development?

The following processes or features help in collaborative design across multiple functional teams geographically distributed and right product at first time during the new product development life cycle.

Single source of product and process knowledge

PLM solutions combine existing business systems (Enterprise Resource Planning, Computer Aided Design, Supply Chain Management, Document Management Systems, etc.), providing a single source for product information including Bill of Material (BOM) and supporting collaboration and communication within a project environment.

It integrates multi-seat and multi-disciplinary design workgroups into a single environment. It allows concurrent design and design re-use as well as product visualisation for the entire enterprise.

BOM SpecBOM ChangesDesign SpecsDesign Feedback

ModelsDrawingsSimulations

Product ConceptProduct RequirementsMarket RequirementsBrochuresData Sheets

ProposalsCustomer Requirements

Service Parts CatalogService ManualsTraining ManualsIssue Reports

Conformance SpecsConformance Reporting

E-BOM -> MBOMManufacturing FeedbackProcess Configurations/ RecipesWork InstructionsManufacturing Routes Operator Training SpecsConsumable SpecsPackaging/Labeling SpecsTooling Designs

Preferred PartsApproved Vendors

Design to Manufacture with PLM as core IT strategy

Sales

Engineering Regulatory

Design Partners

Manufacturing

Distributed Mfg

Procurement

Suppliers

Customers

ServiceMarketing

CollaborativeProduct

Development



PLM offers vaulting, versioning control, check-in/check-out and security protection capabilities enable the enterprise to manage and control this aggregate knowledge in PLM global repository.

Global Collaborative platform

PLM provides a framework enables associative product development across multiple functional teams. It also provide seamless collaborative design environment in case of geographically distributed design groups.

PLM also enables product teams to work with their suppliers, allied partners and trusted customers in a real-time environment that facilitates the rapid formation of sourcing teams, concept studies, program reviews, design reviews and engineering change processes.

Manage software binaries as parts

PLM provides integration with software development tools, e.g. IBM ClearCase, Rational Rose, etc, ability to manage software binaries/builds as parts and the appropriate links to the mechanical and electronic component configuration are established.

Changes to software (and the associated electronic and mechanical equipment) under configuration control must be approved before being incorporated. This enables designers, developers, manufacturing, and service personnel to access the product information and see the complete definition at any point in time. It also ensures that they work with (and don’t violate) the correct configuration of the version upon which they are working.

Workflow and CMII compliant Change Management

CMII (Configuration Management II) is a revolutionary business model, which has replaced traditional change management strategies all over the world. CMII provides a business process infrastructure that enables Project Management and Quality Assurance to perform their tasks reliably and efficiently.

PLM tools provide workflow capabilities that enable review and release processes for enterprise data like parts, documents etc.

PLM enables the organizations to implement change management at an enterprise level and also ensures that downstream agencies, internal and external partners and suppliers are fully integrated in this process.

Efficient Product Configurations Management

PLM provides the product structure, BOM views, alternates and substitutes, effectivities and configuration management functionalities. In addition, it enables the product development teams to integrate information generated by multiple applications and create higher level product representations (such as product models, product definitions, product configurations, and virtual prototypes).



Systems Engineering and Requirement Management

PLM provides System Engineering and Requirements management capabilities. Systems Engineering enables product teams to optimize the tradeoffs made at multiple stages in a decision-intensive product lifecycle.

Requirements management capabilities allow an enterprise to define, capture, engineer, manage and leverage product requirements and compliance regulations on a repeatable and rigorous basis.

Leading PLM tools offers integration with requirement management tools like DOOR.

Program and Project Management

PLM tools provide program and project management capabilities that product teams can leverage to plan and manage lifecycle projects on a real-time basis. It offers resource management, project schedules, WBS, tracking and reporting capabilities…etc. It also provides integration capabilities with other Project Management tools, like MS Project etc.

In addition, PLM offers the following capabilities.

Product Visualization

Document Management

Component Classification Management

Quality and Regulatory Compliance

Integration with design and development tools, legacy/custom applications, ERP, MES etc

Supply Chain Management

What are the benefits with PLM?

PLM offers the following typical benefits:

Reduction of product development costs and design cycle time through design automation

Eliminate rework while maximizing design and knowledge reuse from one project to another

Integrated visualization and collaboration capabilities enable widely dispersed product team members to view, mark up and exchange these higher-level product representations

Reduction of cost overruns by quantitatively estimating costs during the design process using trade-off analysis programs or sophisticated cost models

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10 © 2009, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.


Build the products right the first time by designing multi-disciplinary components – in a single digital product definition and by evaluate many more design alternatives

Integration of workflow processes that can be executed more rapidly by reducing or eliminating manual work and/or increasing engineering productivity

Collaborate efficiently across the Supply Chain and increase Inventory Turns and Visibility

Efficient global product development by facilitating collaborative design in distributed design environment

Reduction of hardware investments through more efficient workload distribution, effective use of legacy systems or implementation of more efficient technology

Improvement in product quality by applying quality engineering throughout the entire design process—from conceptual and preliminary design through final detailed design

Reduction of warranty costs by applying ‘design for quality’ methods to ensure more reliable and robust products are delivered to the market.

Effective Requirement Management and Systems Engineering

Standard Engineering processes across the enterprise

Regulatory Compliance – compliance management throughout the product life cycle

Improve change process efficiency by using a single source of mechanical, electronic and software design information

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11 © 2009, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.


About the Authors

Murthy is a senior PLM consultant in the HCL PLM Centre of Excellence. He has extensive experience in PLM Consulting, Solution Architecting and PLM implementation across various industry domains. He can be reached on [email protected] for further queries.

Manohar S – Senior Project Manager, [email protected] working with HCL Embedded System Group of HCL for more than 10 years and have worked in executing embedded projects in Industrial, Automotive and Medical Domain.

About HCL’s PLM Practice

HCL is bringing 10 years of PLM domain expertise for developing, enhancing and supporting PLM engagements for large clients in Automotive, Aerospace & Defence, Manufacturing, Electrical, Retail and Med-devices space etc with leading PLM tools like Siemens PLM Teamcenter, PTC Windchill, Enovia MatrixOne, Smarteam, Oracle Agile and SAP PLM.

For any queries on PLM, please contact Atul Tiwari, Head of PLM on [email protected]

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HCL Technologies

HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company, working with clients in the areas that impact and redefine the core of their businesses. Since its inception into the global landscape after its IPO in 1999, HCL focuses on ‘transformational outsourcing’, underlined by innovation and value creation, and offers integrated portfolio of services including software-led IT solutions, remote infrastructure management, engineering and R&D services and BPO. HCL leverages its extensive global offshore infrastructure and network of offices in 20 countries to provide holistic, multi-service delivery in key industry verticals including Financial Services, Manufacturing, Aerospace & Defense, Telecom, Retail & CPG, Life Sciences & Healthcare, Media & Entertainment, Travel, Transportation & Logistics, Automotive, Government, Energy & Utilities. HCL takes pride in its philosophy of ‘Employee First’ which empowers our 54,026 transformers to create a real value for the customers. HCL Technologies, along with its subsidiaries, had consolidated revenues of US$ 2.0 billion (Rs. 9,842 crores), as on 31st March 2009. For more information, please visit www.hcltech.com

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