IEN: How much progress do you see toward tying together design with the overall enterprise (manufacturing, front office, back office, and all aspects of logistics)? What major hurdles remain? Does the Internet continue to increase its presence in design?
Milliken: The most immediate opportunity for tying design to the overall enterprise is to link design engineers with their counterparts in manufacturing for input during the design process. The Internet aids design by enabling remote collaboration, such as through online team sessions and sharing data in Alibre Design (pictured), our MCAD application that integrates these capabilities. The Internet also gives designers access to libraries of standard and manufacturers'' parts such as that of our partner, CADalog.com.
The big hurdles that still remain are related to connecting design more seamlessly with the front/back office and logistics. These implementations are still too complex and expensive and rarely extend into the supply chain. The Internet can also help to connect various participants in the product development process across the supply chain but this potential is still largely untapped.
IEN: How can/will collaborative manufacturing management strategies address problems related to integrating design with the industrial enterprise?
Milliken: Manufacturing management must find a seat at the table early in the design process, which may take a significant mind shift for design engineers accustomed to working alone, or a significant change in work habits for entire engineering departments. Design software like Alibre Design that integrates team design and secure anytime/anywhere data sharing capabilities can make new collaborative processes easier on all participants.
IEN: Will Product Life Management play an increased role in design? Why/Why not?
Milliken: The question is whether organizations will adopt PLM principles -- and software systems. If they do, they''ll want to capture design information for use by manufacturing, sales and support, but it should be in a neutral data format. The challenge is that most CAD applications, apart from Alibre Design, use proprietary data formats that force all users of the design data to use the original application.
Also, this issue becomes much larger and more difficult to manage when one looks outside of the enterprise into the supply chain. Tools like Alibre Design are simpler and more flexible, providing the ability for more collaboration, data sharing and interoperability (cornerstones of PLM) from the ground up rather than trying to force it from the top down, which simply isn''t working. In many respects, "PLM" is a fabrication of the software industry trying to drive a market for more expensive and complicated tools. We feel that expensive enterprise solutions like this will not be effective in penetrating deep into the supply chain.
IEN: What innovations are in store for users of CAD?
Milliken: CAD users will see low cost; on demand, live support; integrated, easy-to-use PDM; integrated online collaboration -- at least if they use Alibre Design.
IEN: What advances do you see in collaborative design?
Milliken: We feel it is less about a specific way of collaborating than the availability of a pervasive and affordable tool that enables the basic mechanisms for wide-scale, frequent collaboration. Interestingly, with Alibre Design, users who bought the application for low-cost MCAD, and had little or no interest in collaboration, have found great value in the capability when they collaborated with our Alibre Assistant for real-time tech support.