We’ve had an insightful series of webinars this summer and early fall, starting with data migration and ending with our quarterly 3DEXPERIENCE Roundtable. We’re eager to share the results from each.

Migrating Data to 3DEXPERIENCE

Our first webinar this summer focused on our tried-and-true methodologies for migrating data to 3DEXPERIENCE when upgrading from a legacy system.

Best practices that we follow include:

• A thorough pre-migration data analysis to review the type and location of the data.
• A review of business processes and user experiences to identify areas for improvement
• A comprehensive identification of source and target system environments relating to data access, search options, permissions, data mappings and license implications.
• A complete review of all data loading options
• A decision to select the best data extraction formula, format, and tools/methods such as XPDM. We also develop customized scripts and programs where needed.
  

Read more about our data migration process, methodology and best practices.

 

xLM Solutions Upgraded S&C Electric to A Customized PLM

Our second webinar focused on a customer success story with S&C Electric Company. The company was ready to upgrade from SmarTeam to 3DEXPERIENCE and engaged with the experts at xLM Solutions to conduct the migration and to customize the PLM system to S&C’s requirements. The data migration involved millions of items — including engineering change orders, bills of material, and engineering documents — to the company’s new 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

XLM conducted the data migration in stages, starting with the smallest of the six sites going live, waiting a month to review and test results, and then moving to the next largest site.We also developed specialized widgets and other tools for S&C’s unique needs.

S&C Electric continues to work with xLM to move its Solid Edge design data from SmartTeam to 3DEXPERIENCE. In addition, the company is looking to enrich its EBOM capability — which will help the company update and maintain MBOMs — and to add printed circuit board (PCB) designs for the CAD tool. Plans also include implementing ECO processes using routes in ENOVIA.

Project Management within 3DEXPERIENCE

In this webinar, we focused on the main issues of project management and project governance during PLM implementation and integration projects. Best practices include building in tasks, structures, milestones, and roles from the beginning to avoid wasting time on non-value-add activities. The solutions offer managers ways to instead dedicate time to value-add activities such as, identifying potential risks and how to respond to them, scheduling resources, and generally executing a project.

The webinar specifically looked at three project manager roles from 3DEXPERIENCE:

• Project Manager (DPM) – This is the main project management role. It relates to a waterfall management solution, with a plan, milestones, gates, and tasks, where a projects cascades from one task to another. It is available in the cloud and on premise.
• Project Planner (XPP-OC) – This role is a cloud solution for project management that includes agile methodology for small projects where a plan may be evolving. In addition, DS offers Collaborative Tasks for on-premise implementations to manage tasks with an agile method.
• Project Portfolio Manager (DPS) – This role involves more analytics and reporting with additional applications and using various services/licenses/products, such as EXALEAD search engine to track and dashboard project information.

We reviewed the steps and functions of project management in 3DEXPERIENCE, from planning, collaborating, reporting with dashboards, conducting phase gate reporting, tracking deliverables and phases of execution and conducting “what if” analyses.

3DEXPERIENCE Roundtable

With our quarterly 3DEXPERIENCE roundtable, we’re giving participants the opportunity to suggest topics and areas to discuss. Our latest roundtable focused on:

• Data migration is an essential step as users move data from legacy systems to 3DEXPERIENCE. It’s important to differentiate processes between cloud and on-premise solutions. Critical steps: mapping the data, picking the correct migration technology, and testing and validating the migration.
• 3DEXPERIENCE implementation involves assessing the scope, identifying any process or organizational changes needed, and engaging with the proper resources of solution architects, infrastructure experts, developers, testers and project managers. Our implementation processes follow a phased approach.
• Collaboration best practices specifically related to 3DEXPERIENCE, often with external suppliers and vendors. It’s important to assess collaboration scenarios and how they will work and which data will be shared. Security is an important component to consider.
• Widgets and customizations beg the question – to customize or not. When users customize PLM solutions, they often see multiple benefits in time savings and reduction of errors and repetitious tasks, among others.
• Cloud vs. on-premise implementations. We described the differences among DS public cloud, private clouds, hosted/on-premise clouds. When deciding which way to go, we suggest keeping in mind: server maintenance and backup, upgrades/schedules, ITAR/security, customizations/configurations and testing environments.

Watch for emails about our next 3DEXPERIENCE Roundtable. Contact us with topics you’d like us to review.