Channeling productivity through the life cycle

"We recognize that in the difficult business environment today, the focus on the productivity of our customers is more important than ever," said Steve Bashada, Vice President of Teamcenter Applications, Siemens PLM Software. "As a result, improvements in Teamcenter 8 are focused on three areas - individual productivity, productivity application and it productivity - we believe it will help our customers achieve their business goals." "And following the recent announcement about our agreement with IBM and the support of their technology, along with the improved integration of Teamcenter 8 with Microsoft Office, we are ensuring that productivity is possible for any of the environments in which our clients decide to implement it".

The software has been designed to enable people to work more in less time. Teamcenter 8 further extends the individual productivity allowing users to interact with the new version from the inside of the tools and processes that use every day.

Teamcenter now includes a comprehensive Microsoft Outlook user interface as well as the integration without equal with Microsoft Office 2007. Teamcenter 8 adds a 'tape' to the Microsoft Office toolbar, making it easier to interact with the product information directly from Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. Version 8 includes a Teamcenter To Do List in Outlook, which allows users to manage their calendar, workflow and allocations of change in engineering that are based on Teamcenter through the application of Office they use every day. And through the use of Microsoft Outlook, Word and Excel as user interfaces is now 'live' for Teamcenter to include and edit information, easier to expand the PL M access to a broad base of technicians and users.

If a company produces products that include electrical, mechanical and embedded software, or a combination of the three, the software can help reduce product development cycle time increasing collaboration and making more accessible product design datasafe and reusable. The integration of Teamcenter 8 logical capture and physical tools of composition of 'Mentor graphics', 'cadence', 'intercept' and 'altiumse' is supported by the Teamcenter menus integrated into these (CBAS) electronic computer-aided design solutions. Within the CBAS application, users can save native design file and perform operations of 'check in' and 'check out'. They can also access the validated components, fill a list of materials for electrical components, share data of manufacturing and Assembly and create and manage other types of CBAS derived data files.

When the implementation of integrated menus is not possible or practical, such as customers or other third party tools, Teamcenter provides a new door of integration for Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools. The application gateway uses a user interface manageable from the menu and configuration files to generate the same level of access of files and data management features supported with Teamcenter embedded CBAS integrations. It integrates with a variety of software development tools, including new certified ClearCase integration of ' IBM Ready for Rational' to unite Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) with Product Lifecycle Management (PLM).

Other enhancements in the new version affecting individual productivity include improvements to the workflow participants, loops of feedback, and asynchronous operations together with change management and management of problems.

With its unified architecture and its robust suite of Teamcenter allows companies apply PLM from the beginning to the end offering a portfolio of comprehensive modules perfectly integrated to increase efficiency at every stage of a product's life cycle. This productivity continues Teamcenter 8 with the introduction of two new applications, new industrial solutions, as well as hundreds of improvements in the catalog. It now includes solutions for 'content and document management' as well as 'Formula', 'package' and 'brand management'.

The new 'content and document management' solution with advanced integration of Microsoft Office 2007 offers enhanced data management support for templates, integrated PLM menus and automatic rendering to standardize document processes, increase user productivity and reduce training costs. The structured authoring and publication of SGML/XML environments include support for the independent technical publication S1000D standard to synchronize documentation and development and to allow reuse, re-thinking, and translation with the publication of the multiple version.

The introduction of 'Formula', 'package' and 'Brand Management' in Teamcenter 8 is designed to provide benefits to companies of manufacturing processes in the consumer goods industry. The new solution helps organizations eliminate inconsistent brands, enhance brand image and allow the growth of the brand through knowledge of brand management capabilities. Management capabilities include the decomposition of formula and recipe, as well as integration with the formula authoring tools to consolidate the silos of information in a single source of information. The management of packaging and illustrations provides traceability through requirements and visibility of all the relevant information to reduce errors and reminders. And finally, the management of specifications reduces inconsistency and duplication, allowing the synchronized execution and visibility to the effects of the change.

In addition to these two new solutions, Teamcenter 8 also includes improvements to lighten the collaboration with the supplier, the advanced requirements and management of the project and new industrial solutions for 'aerospace & Defense', 'cpg', and ' Medical Devices' along with hundreds of updates in other areas.

Being a proven PLM solution, with scalability based on open technology and undisputed, Teamcenter improves the productivity of it by providing a greater return on investment of TI in a company. 'Platform Extensibility Services' in Teamcenter allows organizations to realize the value of your investment in software can be easily and quickly evaluated and with a cost efficient. This includes services of configuration so that it can be easily integrated with other business applications without a high cost of software, (including ERP and other facilities Teamcenter) enabling enterprise-wide business processes; and the customization of services to enable Teamcenter to expand with custom software upgradeable and satisfy specific needs of business.

With its flexible at 4 levels, oriented architecture (SOA) service, Teamcenter can deploy the most effective in small enterprises in the same way as in large global companies. To facilitate this flexibility, Teamcenter supports a wide variety of it environments, including for the first time with this latest release, IBM software 'middleware'. As part of the global alliance between IBM and Siemens PLM Software, announced the pasado15 of June, Teamcenter 8 is available in the catalogue of IBM technology and becomes the first PLM solution that will be sent to customers preconfigured with IBM DB2 Information Manager and WebSphere Application Server (WAS). For companies who prefer the IBM platform, Teamcenter now provides an easy solution to implement designed to reduce the costs of deployment of PLM and increase l to it productivity for companies of any size. In addition to DB2 and WAS, Teamcenter supports Tivoli Storage Manager of IBM, Tivoli Access Manager and Rational ClearCase.

"" To add support for DB2 and WebSphere, Siemens PLM Software continues to expand the base of potential customers for PLM,"said Ken Amann, director of Research for CIMdata.""The combination of experience of services and consultancy IBM PLM solutions from Siemens PLM and the presence of market could create a powerful source of business for their clients."

Teamcenter 8 is also responsible for the it productivity with improvements in the performance of the system of management of files (FMS) and the performance of the most robust transaction for multiple installations. These enhancements provide advanced secure data storage to reduce file transfer time and maintain the important product data synchronized on all multiple locations.