For nearly four months I have become very attached to my Blackberry since I bought it as part of my Verizon upgrade.  One of the features I found very useful is the web access where I can get the New York Times, the weather and even Google maps.  Granted the viewing area is small and not easy on my old eyes as the popular iPod Touch and iPhone would be. It seems as everyone is following Apple’s lead with their own version of touch-screen phones like the latest Blackberry Storm and other versions from Samsung, LG and Motorola.

Even with my Blackberry Curve - I can still access and interact with a lot of mobile-ready web content. When I recently added my email account from work to deliver emails to my Blackberry while away from my desk, I began the realize some real possibilities.  A lot of my emails are Teamcenter related, some of them notification messages with the hyperlink to the Rich Client and Web Client versions.

My question then was - why hasn’t Siemens yet provided a mobile version of Teamcenter Thin or Web Client? Or - has any one who does web programming attempted to try and develop a mobile client for Teamcenter Engineering or Teamcenter Express?  What does it take - a new CSS stylesheet and maybe some custom forms programming?

The call for papers for PLMWorld 2009 is underway - perhaps if you or someone you know has an idea or a proposal - send us an abstract - go to http://event.plmworld.org/index.php  and if accepted - you will not only get to present to your colleagues, but your registration fee to attend this conference will be waived.

Maybe someday I will be able to login to Teamcenter on my Blackberry!

One of the great benefits of attending a Siemens PLM Connection Event is the networking that goes on between end users as well as the ability to discuss features and or issues with Siemens PLM management, product managers, and developers . At these events users can make a difference in the way the products evolve.
As an example, those attendees that attended PLM World Siemens PLM Connection 2008, specifically Teamcenter sessions may remember some concerns that users brought up regarding the plans for Teamcenter Unified Architecture BMIDE and LOV’s.(List of Values). The concern was that by putting LOV’s in the BMIDE, deployment of new LOV’s would become very difficult. From this input, Dave Howe of Siemens PLM Teamcenter Development announced at PLM Europe – Siemens PLM Connection Europe 2008, that LOV’s would be removed from the BMIDE, and put back into the Admin Application.
Dave recommended that input continue to be submitted for the BMIDE as the product will continue to evolve.
Our Voice was heard….. If you want your voice to be heard, get involved in PLM World Technical committees and start Budgeting now for Siemens PLM Connection 2009.

It is interesting that the conference feel is very similar to what we experience at our conference. The one thing that is noticeably different is the number of languages being spoken by everyone during the networking events. Yes, PLM World has and encourages attendees from around the world, but this is definitely a challenge for PLM Europe to get users to share their knowledge. You may be thinking what language are the presentations in? English is the primary language for the presentations, but this year since the conference is in France, a number of presentations are in French.

You may be wondering how many people attend PLM Europe, Preliminary counts are well over 700 attendees, representing 27 countries, and 200 companies. For technical content there are 193 Technical sessions scheduled, being presented by 156 presenters. In addition there are 9 Training sessions being presented by Siemens PLM.

Similar to PLM World there is a Partner Exhibit hall with over 25 partners. As with PLM World the partners are very important part of the conference with the ever-increasing cost.

Ovarall, after the morning session you realize that PLM Europe like PLM World is all about the user and how we can leverage Siemens PLM tools for our companies and our own personal growth.

Stay tuned for other updates from PLM Europe – Siemens PLM Connection Europe 2008.

New this year at our conference was a Closing Event…a chance for attendees to see each other one last time and for a great cause: our new Student Scholarship Fund. During the week, raffle tickets were sold for a chance to win some great prizes, supplied by Siemens PLM, Partners and even User Companies. Many thanks to those attendees who stepped up to the plate to fund students to attend our conference to enrich their engineering development. Also thanks for the great donations and the users who made some short presentations of the types of products their companies are producing.

Your efforts have contributed $5,400 to our scholarship fund.

David Geisler - Siemens PLM - Teamcenter Track Day 4 - Preference Configuration Assistant

Another utiltity announced by David Geisler of Siemens PLM in the Teamcenter Track for download from GTAC is the Teamcenter Preferences Configuration Assistant. It is designed to manage Teamcenter Preference Settings by taking a snapshot of your current configuration and comparing it to the recommended or default settings. It does this by exporting your current configuration settings and compares it to the recommended settings

It is now available from GTAC for Tc 2005 SR1/Tc 2007 and TC7 Unified Architecture only

David Geisler - Siemens PLM - Teamcenter Track Day 4 - Multi-Site Assistant

David Geisler announced that a new tool for consolidating Teamcenter multi-site databases,   MSA - Multi-Site Assistant is now avialable for download from GTAC

Consolidating multi-site architecture can help reduce administrative and infrastructure costs, but if multisite has been in use for a long time, it can be a very difficult and time consuming task to consolidate.

The MSA is a new tool command line stand-alone utility to using non invasive ITK_POM_inquiry command. It comes with improved reporting tools - like ownership analysis and duplicate Item ID analysis.

MSA is available as a GTAC down load and includes Site Report Utilities, Analysis Client and a User Guide. It is now available for TC9.1.3, Tc 2005 SR1/Tc2007 and Tc7 UA

Want to access your Teamcenter inbox to perform your worlkflow tasks from within MS Outlook?

Have needs to be connected to Teamcenter when you arein MS Excel, MS Powerpoint, MS Word, etc - for creating a report or document on Teamcenter data?

Create an item revision from within MS applications?

For this and more….Look forward to MS office integration with Teamcenter 8…

Jim Dehmlow from Siemens PLM did a wonderful job of presenting the business cases and technical improvements coming up in this integration with Teamcenter 8

There have been many presentations both from Siemens PLM and user companies on how the Business modeler can be effectively used to configure your application for Business processes and requirements.

BMIDE helps scalability, quick upgrades, efficient deployments and provides means to organize your configuration templates. The good news is the scale is tipping towards configuration using BMIDE in eclipse environment, instead of customization.

PLM Program Management Office and Centers of Expertise at Emerson (PMO and COe) presented by Bob Christenson and Tom Arant of IBM -

Emerson is St. Louis Based - $20.1 Billion Sales in 2006
137,000 Employees
274 Locations Worldwide
60 Divisions
Diversified Product portfolio:
Examples - Numatics, Fisher Controls, Ink Sink Erator RIDGID tools

Developing a standard, repeatable and predictable approach to PLM planning and implementation
Trying to develop a standard hardware/software enviroment and build a core team of PLM experts

IBM is assisting as consultants

Emerson is a global company with many challenges - not all Divisions implemented global process - trying to change this

Need to share info across processes - no synchronized processes for sharing files

New product development saturated with multiple tools

Recognize that standardized approach to PLM will save money. Use ROI calculators to assist in ARs

Built a PLM Program Management group that will define standard methodology, financial models and establish repeatable best practices

Customer Case Study - Teamcenter Platform Designer - presented by Tom Albrecht of Siemens PLM Software

Discussed differences between CAD and BOM structures and presented a Case study from Heavy Equipment Mfgr

TCEng / TCEng Express Best Practices for Installation by Steven Riches and Bill Bielinksi of Siemens PLM

Discussed what to do when preparing to upgrade or install Teamcenter 2005/2007. Emphasis on reading and understanding documents and making sure you backup everything before you start.

Requires a running TC V9 instance to upgrade to TC 2005 SR1 or TC 2007.

Bring in an expert if not sure how to do. GTAC will support as long as customer or site customizations are not causing problems. Configuration changes - like BM or Environment Options - are GTAC supported if problems arise. Third party customizations should be handled by the developer of those customizations if not Siemens.

Very good overview - wished I had this a year ago!

Teamcenter On-Demand Synchronization by Mark Brueggerman from General Motors

Typical assembly contains 100,000 BOM lines - 10,000 unique part or items with 12 levels. Top 4 levels are imprecise and the rest are precise.

item revisions have 10,000 object variants and items are owned by 10 or more sites.

GM does product development globally

Problem with data_sync utility in Teamcenter - relies on export and syncs all objects of given class without regard to assembly context

GM developed On-Demand Sync to improve detection of synchronization problems in large assemblies and automates import of missing components if found. On-demand Sync makes sync issues clearly visible.

Hub Solution for Multi-Site by Christopher Kim from Hamilton Sundstrand (div of United Technologies)

Discussed Hub Architecture used at Hamilton Sundstrand using TC V 9.1.3 and NX and multisite.

Mac OS X version of next NX release remains in limbo since Microsoft has dropped VBA from the latest Mac OS X version of Office. NX is not commercially viable without built-in spreadsheet support since Excel VBAs are needed to enable spreadsheets in NX.

Microsoft has recently told Siemens it doesn’t plan to add VBA to the current MS Office for Mac (2008) and it won’t until its next planned release in 2011. The previous version of MS Office (2004) is no longer sold.

Other solutions -

1. XESS Unix Spreadsheet - not avail on Mac OSX platform
2. Apples Numbers lacks needed functionalities
3. OpenOffice is possible solution - but Siemens has no plans to support

Options discussed -

• Wait until 2011 to release NX for Mac OSX with spreadsheet
• Release with MS Office 2004 but with limited support
• Develop support for OpenOffice.org
• Release without spreadsheet

There is still interest in Mac OS X versions of NX - but not clear whether lack of spreadsheet VBA will continue to delay release of NX5 - NX6.

Mac OSX for Teamcenter may be out in TC 8.1 - but for Thin Client only and with Safari support.

No print / plotting based on SDI - will use PDF as output

Bob Bradenstein at Siemens PLM should be contacted for more info.