1. December 2004
Technologies Of The Year -- Proficiency Inc.'s Collaboration Gateway
By John Teresko
Latest version attacks the collaboration challenge --
data exchange among CAD systems.
Question: Do you know the expense related to CAD conversion and interoperability? In a
recent study, the words "don't know" were uttered by 64% of respondents --
manufacturers, OEMs, suppliers and service providers, says Proficiency Inc.'s Michael
Jannery, vice president marketing, Marlborough, Mass.
Clearly, his professional challenge to sell a solution has to begin with defining the
problem to decision-makers who may not realize the scope of the challenge. The study,
a collaboration with TenLinks Inc., the online CAD media firm, also revealed other
metrics of industry's CAD interoperability challenge.
For example, 33% responded with cost estimates of "less than $50K," to address
interoperability even though the same respondents earlier answered that significant
effort was spent on geometry exchange and manual remastering of data for delivery to
customers and suppliers.
The lack of expense visibility could be explained by the response to the question of who
funds the expense of data exchange: 45% said the expense is "buried in the overall
project expense," 33% responded "don't know," and 16% responded "a central group."
Version 3.5 of Proficiency's solution, Collaboration Gateway, extends the solution's
capability with support for assembly constraints, surfacing features and methodology
and provides enhanced support for top-down associative design techniques. As with
prior versions, this latest release is designed for high-throughput exchange of
mechanical CAD models among Dassault Systemes' CATIA v4 and v5, PTC's
Pro/ENGINEER and Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire and UGS' Unigraphics NX and I-deas NX
Series.
A special feature is Proficiency's UPR Viewer, an application that brings non-CAD users
into the process loop. With this feature, they can query, view and leverage the product
design data defined within CAD models and assemblies, independent of the original
authoring system. Jannery says the Viewer exposes the engineering-rich content
traditionally only available through the full CAD system. Model details like the feature
tree, sketch geometry, constraints, dimensions and metadata are graphically displayed.
Jannery
Wrote,
Analyzed,
Published
Study
Jannery
Proposed
and
Justified
Product
Strategy
Jannery
Briefed
Editor,
Applied
for
Award

2. The strategy is to facilitate access to the design intelligence any time and anywhere
without the need to be proficient in a CAD system, says Proficiency's Trenton H. Brown,
president and CEO. Analyst John MacKrell at CIMdata Inc., Ann Arbor, Mich., sees
benefits wherever multiple product definition solutions are in use within a supply chain.
Reducing design time by sharing more complete product definition translates into
significant time-to-market advantages and serves as an important enabler to product
lifecycle management (PLM) success, adds MacKrell.
Automobile OEMs and suppliers such as Italy's Magneti Marelli Powertrain S.p.A. are
among the early adopters. The supplier is using Collaboration Gateway to streamline
design collaboration and reduce costs between its operations in Bologna and Venaria
Reale as well as for delivering model data in required formats to its auto OEMs.
By Magneti Marelli's calculations, use of Collaboration Gateway is significantly
shortening each product delivery cycle to OEMs from an average of six weeks down to
two weeks, saving between 700 and 1,200 person-hours per project. In addition, the
supplier anticipates reducing library part maintenance time and cost by 67% and library
part development by 94%.
Sharing design models between divisions had traditionally been accomplished through
the exchange of "dumb" solids. For example, the electronic component of an integrated
engine control system is developed in Venaria Reale using Pro/ENGINEER.
Formerly when delivered to Bologna to be integrated with the Unigraphics-designed
mechanical body, the use of conventional STEP data translation software meant that
important design intelligence would be lost. Any of the design parameters that governed
the model's form, fit or function would be lost. Extra effort was required to join the part
designs, incurring cost and adding to program delay. In addition to solving that problem,
Magneti Marelli is using Collaboration Gateway to ensure that data received from its part
suppliers is acceptable. The company, with Proficiency's guidance, has identified the
feature set that provides optimal data exchange results and has mandated that suppliers
adhere to those feature sets.
Jannery
Landed
Customer
Jannery
Ghost-
wrote
Analyst
Report
Jannery
Wrote
Customer
Success
Story,
Calculated
ROI