"PLM can help address challenges that have accentuated because of the economic slowdown" - Vivek Marwaha, Director Marketing, Siemens PLM Software, India"PLM is critical to help companies accelerate time to market, extend returns form products by quickly introducing market driven enhancements, increase product profitability through reduced warranty costs and optimizing manufacturing processes and resources, reduce build costs by minimizing costly prototypes and eliminating manufacturing errors, reuse knowledge to gain efficiencies in processes and eliminate non-value processes. "
1. What are your growth plans and future operation plans of the company in India?
We have been in India, in various avatars for nearly 18 years. By virtue of our long standing presence, our broad and rich portfolio of products and services, our efficient sales and support infrastructure, we have consistently led in the Indian market. We intend consolidating this position further by helping our existing customers augment their PLM deployments by covering more users, digitizing more processes and adding newer applications. We would continue to focus on the mid-market for new customer acquisition, where our portfolio of integrated CAD CAM CAE and PDM solution provides companies with an excellent entry point for deploying PLM with a very quick return–on-investment. We will continue to strive for greater growth and success and stay committed to help our customers gain greater business value from our products and solutions that will help us strengthen our leadership position.
2. What are the new verticals of the market on the radar of the company ?
Our focus continues to be on discreet manufacturing segment, that includes Automotive companies and their supply chain, Industrial Machinery manufacturers, Aerospace and Defense, High Tech Electronics and Appliances, and the Engineering services providers. Having said that , the scope of applications that PLM is addressing is gradually increasing to go beyond the traditional areas of discreet manufacturing. PLM software solutions are increasingly finding application in sectors like Consumer Packaged Goods , Retail, Pharma, Apparel etc. We have already tasted success in these segments at a global level, and would over time explore addressing them in India as well.
3. Could you please explain "synchronous technology"?
Synchronous Technology is the the next big breakthrough in digital product development. It is the PLM industry’s first-ever history-free, feature-based modeling technology, that provides users with up to 100 times faster design experience than ever before. Synchronous Technology allows one to interact with any geometry without being confined by how the model was originally constructed.
The technology is the first-ever design solution that simultaneously synchronizes geometry and rules through a new decision-making inference engine. It accelerates innovation in four key areas:
* Fast idea capture: Synchronous technology captures ideas as fast as the user thinks them, with up to 100 times faster design experience. Designers can devote more time to innovation with new techniques that provide the efficiency of parametric dimension-driven modeling without the computational overhead of pre-planned dependencies. The technology defines optionally persistent dimensions, parameters and design rules at time of creation or edit, without the overhead of an ordered history.
* Fast design changes: The technology automates the implementation of planned or unplanned design changes to seconds versus hours thorough unparalleled ease of editing, regardless of design origination, with or without the presence of a history tree.
* Improved multi-CAD reuse: The technology allows users to reuse data from other CAD systems without remodeling. Users can succeed in a multi-CAD environment with a fast, flexible system that enables them to edit other CAD system data faster than they can in the original system, regardless of the design methodology. A technique called “suggestive selection” automatically infers the function of various design elements without the need for feature or constraint definitions. This increases design reuse and OEM/supplier efficiency.
* New user experience: The technology provides a new user interaction experience that simplifies CAD and makes 3D as easy to use as 2D. The interaction paradigm merges historically independent 2D and 3D environments, providing the robustness of a mature 3D modeler with the ease of 2D. New inference technology automatically infers common constraints and executes typical commands based on cursor position. This makes design tools simple to learn and use for occasional users, driving downstream use to manufacturing engineering and the shop floor.
4. How would synchronous Technology help the Indian Manufacturing & Design industry in its growth?
The advantages of this technology for Indian companies ( for that matter any company anywhere in the world ) can be best be summed as follows :
* The design teams can witness upto 100 times faster design experience
* The design teams can perform ECOs in matter of seconds instead of minutes or hours
* Edit other system CAD data faster than they can
* The technology helps connect people with the most diverse skills across a company’s entire value chain
* With Synchronous Technology companies need not worry about using data from multiple CAD systems
6. How will PLM help organizations during this Global Economic Slow down?
The challenge facing today’s manufacturers is to be able to turn more ideas into successful products quickly and while doing so take greatest advantage of the resources that they have available to them through greater productivity and more efficient processes, all while optimizing the cost and quality of their products. PLM will help manufacturing companies establish an environment to deal with these issues and the product and process complexity that they bring.
In effect, PLM can help companies execute the activities that are required to build the right product and build the product right. Building the right product means meeting customer requirements in terms of time, function, performance, price etc. Building the product right means executing design and production processes that meet the requirements of cost, quality, reliability, sustainability etc. In order for manufacturers to be able to simultaneously build the right product and build the product right they must develop a rich platform of product and process knowledge to underpin and support continuous innovation across all disciplines and phases of the product’s lifecycle.
The bottom line is that PLM can help address challenges that have accentuated because of the economic slowdown; PLM is critical to help companies accelerate time to market, extend returns form products by quickly introducing market driven enhancements, increase product profitability through reduced warranty costs and optimizing manufacturing processes and resources, reduce build costs by minimizing costly prototypes and eliminating manufacturing errors, reuse knowledge to gain efficiencies in processes and eliminate non-value processes.
7. What are the unique features of Siemens PLM ? Why should customers choose Siemens PLM over the competitive products ?
* Our open strategy: Our Software platform is built on open standards to allow for integration between Siemens PLM Software applications as well as with legacy data and systems.
* The scalability of our software solutions is unmatched , be it in terms of performance – from 10 users to 10,000 users, or in terms of capabilities – scalable from a single application to an integrated suite
* The flexibility that our solutions provide customers in their deployment – deploy it out-of-the box or configure and customize.
* Our history of success that is demonstrated by the more than 50,000 customers and 6 million users of our software. With over forty years of existence, 56,000 customer and 5.9 million seats of software the company has been helping its customers to transform their process of innovation.
* We have a strong financial backing from one of the world’s largest manufacturing corporations.We have demonstrated continued strength and momentum in our business performance
* We have the most complete vision and portfolio of solutions in the industry to help companies build the right product and build the product right.
* Our technology, structure and wherewithal position us to lead the PLM market to new levels of value and growth
* And, at the heart of our success, a customer-centric business model where we never let a customer fail.
8. Could you please tell us about your Product development centre in Pune. Does this centre develop and support products for the global market?
The development center at Pune is a captive unit for software product development to work alongside our product development organization spread across the globe. This Development center is strategic and critical for our success;. Far more than serving as a resource pool for doing peripheral work, the center is responsible for complete ownership of many of our software products, modules and service engagements.
9. Which are your major clients in India?
Siemens PLM Software has been present in India for over 18 years. By virtue of the long standing presence, well established sales and support infrastructure, and market leading portfolio of PLM software solutions, we have acquired a large installed base of customers across various industries. This includes leading Automotive OEMS like Maruti , Tata Motors, M&M, Bajaj Auto etc leading Automotive suppliers like Bharat Forge, Brakes India, Sumi Motherson, Subros etc, Machinery manufacturers like BHEL, L&T, Crompton Greaves Ltd. and others like HAL, Navy, Indian Railways, and whole host of small to medium sized manufacturing companies. This aside, more than 300 engineering colleges use our software products to expose their students on these technologies.
