PLMjobs.com Blog

Arena Solutions, a leading provider of on-demand product lifecycle management (PLM) software, today announced a 38 percent quarter-over-quarter gain and 103% year-over-year gain in revenues for its second quarter.

The company has taken advantage of the economic downturn that has seen manufacturers turn to PLM to accelerate product development, reduce time to market and increase profitability.

“As a contract manufacturer we get bills of materials (BOMs) in every conceivable form. Arena PLM gives us a central repository, a common format, and revision control that is nearly impossible to maintain otherwise,” said Rod Mullins, process engineering manager at Idaho-based Western Electronics. “The ability to lock all data once a product is released to production is key, and the automated routing of BOM changes reduces the time to implement a change and minimizes the potential of a misbuild. This enhanced control and improved communication are especially important during periods of economic slowdown when our customers are even more concerned with avoiding waste, redundancy, and costly errors.”

Full story available on the Arena Solutions website.

The PLM sector has seen plenty of significant aquistions in the last couple of years.  Firstly there was the takeover of the heavyweight PLM provider UGS by Siemens, which subsequently became Siemens PLM, then came the takeover of Agile by Oracle and Co-Create by PTC.   These purchases illustrate the strength and perceived potential of the PLM industry as a whole, but also the need by providers to offer a complete end-to-end solution and to diversify into the market for smaller companies – an area that is seeing significant growth.

Not for the first time, PTC has now become subject to takeover speculation.  Earlier this year there were rumours that PTC could be an aquisition target, the most likely suitor being touted as SAP – this, and positive sales figures, saw their share price leap from $13.68 in mid-March to more than $21 by mid-August.   This month, the Financial Times announced that PTC has engaged the services of Goldman Sachs to look for potential buyers with a price tag of around $2billion.   PTC are yet to comment on this speculation, and at the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference on September 9th, Kristian Talvitie, PTC’s vice-president of investor relations said “With respect to the article, things get printed on rumors all the time. I can’t comment on that. But as a public company, our shares are always for sale on the Exchange.”

Whether the rumour is true or not, it seems reasonable to assume that a takeover approach might well win board approval in light of the Boston Business Journal reporting a bonus increase for senior management should an acquistion be successful.

CIMdata, the leading global PLM consulting and information firm, has published its latest insight into the PLM market – “Actuals through 2007, Forecasts through 2012”

This report presents an analysis of the 2007 Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) market. It includes analyses of the overall PLM market and its various sectors. These include cPDm, Tools and Tools sub-sectors, and Digital Manufacturing. This analysis provides CIMdata’s perspective on PLM across a variety of industry and geographic sectors, identifies market trends, reviews investments in PLM-related software and services during 2007, and forecasts PLM investments for 2008 through 2012. The forecasts are based on data available through the first quarter of 2008. It is important to note that the data and revenue information presented in this report are CIMdata’s estimates of the PLM revenue performance of the various suppliers.

For more information and to purchase the report, visit the publications page of their website.

Arena PLM, a World leader in on-demand Product Lifecycle Management solutions, has announced that it is working with a variety of clean energy companies to help them accelerate porduct development and meet the growth in demand for greener energy supplies.

Customers include Nordic Windpower Ltd., Sunlink Corporation, and Free Source Energies LLC.  Nordic Windpower implemented Arena PLM to accelerate the domestic and international rollout of its advanced wind turbines. The company says that the software has helped it achieve product launch goals, ensure product data integrity and collaborate with worldwide contract manufacturing partners.

“We’re trying to make clean, sustainable wind power a more viable alternative by reducing its cost,” says Greg Mead, vice president of manufacturing and operations at Nordic Windpower. “Using Arena PLM, we can do it faster. Arena PLM streamlines processes and eliminates costly mistakes before they occur. We pass these lower costs on to our customers and ultimately will be able to expand production, distribution and global use of this renewable energy source.”

Majenta PLM, the UK reseller of Siemens PLM Software, has confirmed that it has reached an agreement with Napier Turbochargers Ltd to supply and support the implementation of a Product Lifecycle Management solution based on Siemens PLM Software’s NX™ and Teamcenter® software suites.

Napier Turbochargers began manufacturing turbochargers in 1947. However, the Napier name goes back to the early 1800s and in its history it has been behind such achievements as a series of land, air and water speed world records and the famous Napier Railton racing car of 1933. Today, Napier is one of the largest independent manufacturers in the world of large axial turbochargers for use in the marine, power generation and rail traction industries.

“The PLM solution that Majenta PLM is supplying and is helping us to implement will help to ensure that the right product information is at the right place at the right time”, said Andy Thacker, managing director, Napier Turbochargers Limited. “It is therefore crucial to the continued development of our range of products and to the success of the ambitious growth plans we have in each of our markets, where we are already recognized as a leading supplier.”

“Napier is renowned as an innovative company with an excellent suite of products delivering high technical performance,” he added. “I am pleased that the business has been acquired by a shareholder that is committed to investing further in R&D to maintain its technology and in the expansion of the business to meet customer demand”.

Trevor Stapleton, sales director, Majenta PLM, stated, “The Napier heritage includes such world-famous achievements as a series of land speed, air speed and water speed world records in the late 1920s and early 1930’s that culminated in the land speed record of 394.196 mph set in 1947. We are therefore delighted to be selected by the modern-day descendent, Napier Turbochargers Ltd, to provide and support the technology that will help the company build on its heritage and on its much more recent successes”.

In response to feedback we received, our tech boffins have been spending sleepless, VDU-bathed nights developing a system to allow you to upload your resumes to our database. We are pleased to announce that this is now done. This means that not only can you keep various versions of your resume online ready to apply with, but employers will also be able to find you without you having to lift a finger!

To let employers find you in 3 easy steps, do the following:

1. Login to the site, if you aren’t already.

2. Click on the ‘Post your resume button’

3. Fill in a few details

…and you’re done!

Telcordia, a provider of telecommunications network software and solutions for IP, have announced a free webinar ‘Achieving Superior Business Performance with a Centralized Service Catalog’, bringing together a panel of experts to discuss the implementation of PLM for the communications industry.

The following issues and themes will be discussed during the webinar:

• How to reduce the time and cost for product deployment with a centralized catalog that enables reuse of components
• How operators will benefit from rationalizing and standardizing product portfolios
• How to streamline fulfillment processes with automated pre-order to order flowthrough

Panelists include:

• David Doherty, Group IS Director, Easynet
• Nancee Ruzicka, Senior Research Analyst, Stratecast
• Elaine Haher, Director, Product Management, Telcordia

The webinar takes place on Wednesday, September 10, 2008, at 10:00am EDT / 3:00pm Western Europe Daylight/Summer Time (London), and lasts for 1 hour.  To register, visit the webinar registration page.

Altair have announced the line-up of this year’s HyperWorks Technology Conference.  The event takes place on the 16th & 17th of September at the Rock Financial Showplace in Novi, Michigan.   Top speakers include:

• Nand K. Kochhar, Executive Technical Leader, Global CAE, Ford Motor Company
• Terry Swack, Co-founder & CEO, Sustainable Minds
• Giovanni Greco, Director, Engineering, Sea Ray
• Chad Jackson, Aberdeen Group
• Kenneth Amann, Director of Research, CIMdata, Inc.

The two day conference has become one of the leading PLM technology events and attracts over 400 indutry professionals from a diverse cross-section of industry verticals.   Industry professionals can attend the event free of charge.

2008 Sponsors include:

Gold Sponsors:

• Intel
• nCode International
• Sun Microsystems

Event Sponsors:

• CEI
• Magna Powertrain, ECS
• EM Software & Systems (USA)
• Hewlett-Packard
• IBM
• Metacomp Technologies
• Moldflow (Autodesk, Inc.)
• Penguin Computing
• Safe Technology
• Software Cradle

For more information, visit the event website.

About HyperWorks

Built upon a foundation of design optimization, performance data management and process automation, HyperWorks is an enterprise simulation platform for rapid design-exploration and decision-making. As the most comprehensive, open-architecture CAE solution in the industry, HyperWorks includes best-in-class modeling, analysis, visualization and data management solutions for linear, nonlinear, structural optimization, fluid-structure interaction and multi-body dynamics applications. For more information, please visit http://www.altairhyperworks.com .

About Altair

Altair Engineering, Inc. empowers client innovation and decision-making through technology that optimizes the analysis, management and visualization of business and engineering information. Privately held with
more than 1,400 employees, Altair has offices throughout North America, South America, Europe and Asia/Pacific. With a 20-year-plus track record for enterprise analytics, product development and advanced computing, Altair consistently delivers a competitive advantage to customers in a broad range of industries. To learn more, please visit http://www.altair.com .

Siemens has further strengthened its portfolio of manufacturing software solutions with the aquisition of innotech, the German vendor of digital engineering software and services for the process industry.  The company will become a subsidiary of Siemens AG and will be assigned to the Industrial Automation Systems Business Unit.

“innotec is an outstanding technological supplement to our portfolio. It will make us the first vendor in the world that can offer the process industry an integrated software solution, from the planning stage of a production plant, through operation, right up to modernization,” said CEO Ralf-Michael Franke. “In the future, our customers in the process industry, like those in the discrete manufacturing industry, will be able to significantly reduce the time-to-market with coordinated Siemens technology.”

The purchase price was not disclosed and the transaction remains subject to approval from the relevant authorities.

Tom Shelley, at Manufacturing Computer Solutions, writes that a representative of BAE Systems’ Nimrod refurbishment project has been visiting Red Bull Racing HQ discovering how they have implemented Teamcenter and the advantages it has brought. Between Red Bull’s two F1 racing outfits, Red Bull Racing and Toro Rosso, they have 150 seats of NX and Teamcenter, as well as a custom interface written by Siemens for going from Epicor to Avanti ERP system. The benefits that Siemens and Teamcenter have brought to Red Bull include the ability to make parametrically controlled template parts and thus the possibility of quickly making many variants. These variants can be produced as stereolithography rapid prototype parts which can be then be immediately tested. It is this sort of rapid testing which no doubt appeals to those in charge at BAE Systems’ Nimrod MRA4 rebuilding programme for, in refurbishing the Nimrod, they are essentially having to rebuild it. Given the paramount need for safety in aviation and “some serious design management issues” on the Nimrod, more and quicker testing can only be a good thing.

The Nimrod rebuilding project are reportedly creating “several hundred” Teamcenter seats in 2009. To find current empty Teamcenter seats, try our listing for Teamcenter jobs.