Microsoft teams with Dassault Systemes

Microsoft recently discussed their commitment to the support of Dassault Systemes technology in Microsoft environments. This included full time technical staff in Suresnes collaborating with the Dassault Systemes development teams. They also indicated the current efforts to support .NET and collaborations with some enterprises in conducting a UNIX -> Windows Migration Workshop.

CATIA and SAP: Happy Wedding or Nightmare Couple?
by Xavier Blaisel, Mecanica Solutions Inc. Project PDM PLM Specialist - Application Development

xblaisel@mecanicasolutions.com

At first glance, making decisions on PDM solutions when your enterprise is running both SAP and CATIA may seem obvious. Doesn't SAP provide the right environment for mechanical engineering design? Digging into SAP may become surprisingly time-consuming in what appears as a different conceptual landscape. Then you pinpoint available SAP PDM resources compared to dedicated software specifically tailored for mechanical design. Finally, pops up the interoperability with CATIA. Does the degree of integration with SAP comply with your requirements? You may then start wondering whether a bridge with PDM software like SMARTEAM would not be better since you won't escape having to interconnect CATIA and SAP with a specialized interface. At this point, the feeling of having to start reflecting on the entire PDM strategy looks a bit annoying. Nonetheless, such spirale is typical for IT decision makers confronted with strategic redeployment of their enterprise PDM applications after or along SAP implementation. This article reflects on the issues at stake and addressed how using a PDM software may be better than coupling SAP and CATIA V5. In any case however, you cannot do without adapting SAP to receive PDM data.

What do you need to operate CATIA documents and PDM data in SAP? The issue is proportionate to SAP, which is far from being unbearable because of lightness. Let's sum up the basic points. BOM data management is capital. Forget about equipment BOMs and BOMs for functional locations: you need material BOMs. The BOM usage may be either engineering or universal. Should you use group BOM or plant BOM? Group Bom made of alternatives of BOMs are best suitable for mechanical engineering purposes, while variant BOM are both usage and plant-dependent and thus production operations and routing-oriented. You also need to make use of SAP classification to manage your BOM items and pave the way for variant configuration, so sales orders can issue peculiar BOMs that imply design reengineering. Document management is mandatory to save, store, and associate 2D and 3D CATIA files with BOM items, since SAP release 4.6c bills of document can be created. You may also wish to set up ECR and ECO change history processes, as well as data workflow, roles, and security.

SAP came only recently to mechanical design, starting from accounting, finances, and administration management. Since release 4.6, the product browser interface offers a graphical representation of BOMs' hierarchical structure. This very accurate representation tends to become over detailed but setting up filters can counterbalance. An incorporated viewer allows manipulating 2D and 3D draws, do redlining, etc. Product configuration as known for most of the PDM software available on the market, like VPM for instance, does not exist as such in SAP. However, there are analogous services like classification and variant configuration that act in lieu of classic configuration of product. PDM data will partake of data exchange on the global level of the entire enterprise. Main benefits are a quick transition from product design to product production, tight integration of requests from sales with product design, not to mention costing, pricing, and product items storage management. The real issue is CAD integration. To use or not to use PDM software before exporting data to the ERP system for further post-design considerations can be dubbed a Shakespearean dilemma. Overall, one would hardly recommend SAP alone for massive BOMs that scale up to hundreds of thousands of parts per BOM. Otherwise, there is no expert answer always valid since too many factors are at play. Generally speaking though, what are the two terms of the alternative?

CAD interfaces for ERP systems like SAP or Baan are available thanks to independent software developers, suppliers of integration products, or providers of connecting services for CAD systems. Each interface takes in charge one CAD brand. If you run other CAD/CAM software concurrently to CATIA, say SolidWorks 2000, you have to deal with another third-party interface from another independent provider. CATIA V4 has its own interface for SAP and another one for SAP/CATIA V5 is also expected in the near future. Usually such an interface is provided and installed by the company responsible for the source code but under the SAP umbrella. Cost may vary greatly but typically includes payment for the server and for each client workstation that runs the CAD software set for interoperability with SAP. The interface takes in charge the connection with the ERP system, providing access to its client graphical user interfaces related to material creation and change, document creation and change, BOM creation and change, and so on. The CAD modeler can thus input data directly in the R3 transactions with respects to CATIA drawings being processed.

Deciding for either an integration-based on a third-party interface or using a PDM instead to mediate between CATIA and the ERP is greatly a matter of taste and preferences in the way you want to work. One should target both higher productivity and harmonious enterprise application integration, but achieving one with detriment to the other is pointless. The kind of relationship the engineering design team will maintain with the rest of the enterprise is also relevant. Criticism coming from design engineers typically includes SAP being cumbersome and tedious, slowing design that by definition requires high flexibility and freedom to maneuver. After all, modeling involves a lot of changes in a short time period. Criticism coming from SAP users put forward lack of security and input errors. One would argue that PDM data should be filled in the ERP and manipulated in the system by a small team of specialists. To the contrary, administrative staff seek for absolute wall-to-wall data integration. They therefore tend to dismiss relying on a third-party PDM software, neglecting both the fact that a third party is required anyway and that design can be tremendously lengthened if not properly software-assisted. From a general standpoint, most problems of present-day software are rather associated to lack of ergonomics, that is deficiency or over complicatedly conveyed by the graphical user interface. SAP integration with CAD and PDM activities is more demanding on the organizational level and user interactions1.

For a price per client working station on the same scale of a third-party interface, SMARTEAM interacts with SAP, besides being close to any design engineer's dreams in terms of productivity. The integration with CATIA is seamless. Connecting with most CAD/CAMs is not problematic. Rather than using one specific interface each time, SMARTEAM will federate them all while mediating with SAP. SmartGateway includes the SAP Adapter. With proper settings in SAP cross-application components, SMARTEAM supports all the relevant SAP processes for material, BOM, and document management like any third-party interface. Document revisions can be synchronized with SAP and one document can be linked to multiple SAP materials. New fields can be created on both sides. With a click of a mouse in the Smart Wizard utility, the SMARTEAM database is modified to create the fields to be transferred from SMARTEAM to SAP and vice versa. Server and client scripts can be made to run tasks in the background.

Combining CATIA with SAP is not questionable. How to do it is. I underlined that, contrary to common opinion, there is no such thing as a 'direct' integration to SAP. A piece of software has to bridge CATIA to SAP: third-party interface or PDM software. With respect to data exchange with SAP, they present similar functionalities but otherwise they are quite different. On the one hand, interfaces are cheaper but you need one for each kind of CAD and you pay one license per interface on a CAD workstation. They heavily, if not entirely, rely on the SAP GUI. CAD Designer manually inputs data in the ERP. Product design is achieved within SAP PDM processes. On the other hand, PDM small suites like SMARTEAM federates a multi-CAD environment. As a rule, CAD integration is superior. Engineers benefit from using a dedicated tool that allows greater flexibility and productivity. Product design put into play SAP PDM processes for further integration with the rest of the enterprise's activities, but the design/CAD sphere still has partial autonomy towards the ERP system. The best choice depends on how you want to work.

¹ See Hans-Jürgen Brück, March 2002. The Impact of Organisational Change Management on the Success of a Product Lifecycle Management Implementation - an Investigation into the Electronics Manufacturing Industry. MA Dissertation, Lincoln University.

See also Liam Gerofsky, April 2002. Researcher examines software/user relationship, www.itbusiness.ca.