Management products to produce the highest return on their investment. Brian lives in Portland, OR. Brian Roepke AU

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1 Using Autodesk Productstream to Connect Engineering with the Rest of the Company Brian Roepke, Manager, Customer Success, Data Management Autodesk, Inc. MA315 4 Learn how Autodesk Productstream can be leveraged to better communicate engineering data and related documents that make up the complete digital prototype with other parts of the company from manufacturing to purchasing to upper management. About the Speaker: Brian joined Autodesk in 2002 as part of the trueinnovations, Inc. acquisition. As you may or may not know, trueinnovations developed a product called truevault which later became Autodesk Vault. Since coming to Autodesk, Brian has worked as a Product Manager and now is the Manager of a team of Customer Success Engineers focused on helping customers utilize Autodesk Data Management products to produce the highest return on their investment. Brian lives in Portland, OR. Brian Roepke AU

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3 Executive Summary Autodesk Productstream offers the best integration with Autodesk Inventor, AutoCAD and all of Autodesk s manufacturing based design tools; from the ability to copy a design quickly to full support of all Bill of Materials functionality in each of the tools. We already know it s a fantastic tool for engineers. What about all the other parts of an organization? This class and document will talk about different parts of the organization and extended organization and how they can leverage Productstream. External Suppliers Business Systems Manufacturing Productstream Engineering Management Figure 1 Productstream's Consumers Brian Roepke AU

4 Manufacturing A critical part of the release and change management process is getting the proper people from the manufacturing group included in the process. These users need to weigh in on different aspects of the design process such as suitability for manufacturing, inventory management and potentially even warranty work. This section will talk about a few ways that Manufacturing can benefit from Productstream. Batch Plotting Batch plotting has been a common task throughout all modern design and drafting; whether it s from AutoCAD, Inventor or any design application, Batch Plotting is a much needed part of the process. Typically batch plotting in itself isn t an issue however getting the right data collected is. For example a drawing package for a certain assembly? For a certain Bill of Materials? Each of these present their challenges however; when Productstream is used you can easily get at this information. Figure 2 Batch Plot Interface There are a few commands that are important to focus on for these collections as shown below: Add Folders This command is exactly as it sounds; simple select a folder and each and every file that is valid for plotting will be added to your plot list. This also includes files in their respective sub folders. Brian Roepke AU

5 Add Related File Sheets This command has special intelligence that allows you to select an assembly and gather each and every drawing related to that assembly and plot it at once. This takes away the guess work as to whether all files are in a particular folder or whether their named in such a way that makes it easy enough for you to gather. Add Related Item Sheets Adding related item sheets takes the above one step further; instead of just having knowledge about the related drawings to an assembly you can also very easily add all related attachments to the related items as well providing a TRUE drawing package for a design. Figure 3 Batch Plot Selection Tools Productstream Explorer Productstream explorer is the perfect application for the Manufacturing Shop Floor user or the person that simply needs to access only RELEASED data. This is a very important concept for the web client; make sure that consumers of this information don t see anything but what is valid and approved. Productstream explorer offers a handful of features but they are typically broken down into three areas: Search The ability to find information that you re looking for via simple or advanced searches. Brian Roepke AU

6 View the ability to view data from the system; contained only to that which has been released or is ready for manufacturing 1. Print The ability to print out high fidelity drawings or BOMs. Figure 4 Productstream Explorer's Interface In addition to its targeted nature of providing this information, Productstream Explorer is also a web based application which makes it easy to deploy and manage to large groups of people. It also offers centralized administration of access control and column configurations. Management Let s face it we all have bosses; it s either our management or our customers and many times part of our job is not only doing it well, but letting others know we did it well. This section is going to show a great way to do a little data mining from Productstream that will allow us to better understand the efficiencies of our engineering process. ECO Reporting Each and every one of us probably has seen a form like the ones in the image below a Stack of paper that gets passed around from desk to desk until the change is officially done. This is our task list, our communication model and our tracking device 1 This can be configured to allow users to see data that is in other states than released, but this is the most typical workflow. Brian Roepke AU

7 You want the truth? Paper forms, Word and Excel and anything like this are all terrible at each of those tasks. Figure 5 Typical ECO Forms Productstream offers an electronic way to manage your engineeringg change process in its entirety. This offers a TON of advantages over the change management process such as the following: Parallel Sign Offs The ability for more than person to sign off and approve or reject changes making them faster to flow through the stack. Roles and Responsibilities Dedicated roles such as responsible engineer and approver make it easy to assign the right person to the right task. Notifications s are sent out only when users need to take an action. Task Lists A list is maintained at all times when people have action to take on a change order. As soon as their task is complete, the task goes away. Historical Tracking The ability to answer the question; Show me every change that was ever made against this part Try doing that with your stack of paper! Integrated Markup Save redlines of drawings so you know exactly what was indented to be changed and by whom. Reporting Generate reports based on your historical ECO information gaining powerful insight to your change management process. For this section we ree going to focus on one and only one thing; change order reporting. Reporting (in my opinion) is the most powerful way to take advantage of moving to an electronic ECO system. Knowing more about what you re doing can help you make your process more efficient in the long run. What kind of questions can be answered? On average how long (days) does it take me to complete a change order? Brian Roepke AU

8 Who are the fastest and slowest people in the company in regards to completing change orders? What department generates the most change orders? Do we finish the high priority change faster than the low priority ones? What types of change are most common? Simple drawing updates? Massive changes? Changes with full scrap disposition? All of these and more can easily be answered by leveraging Productstream. ECO Properties The first and most important part of this is to ensure you are tracking the right data. This data is captured in the form of ECO Properties. These properties are easily retried from your existing forms but it s also important to think about any other questions you want answered (for example: Does sales create more changes orders than they should? ) Figure 6 Change Order Properties Create a Custom View Finally you need to set up the reporting. This will be done by leveraging a few features from both Productstream and Microsoft Excel. The first thing we ll do here is create a custom view that will be used for exporting data. Brian Roepke AU

9 Figure 7 Custom Views This custom view will be configured with only the columns that we will need for the report and we ll save it like this view so we ll be able to repeat this export over and over again. (See the Productstream Help file for creating Custom Views ). You ll notice in the following image that only the relevant ECO data is show for export such as: number, date information and custom properties from the previous step. Additionally we can apply a custom filter in the view as well to filter on only certain ECO states such as Closed. Figure 8 Custom View Columns Creating the Excel Report To create the ECO report, launch Excel and rename your first sheet Master Data. The name isn t important but what is important is to have a single sheet where all your exported data is dumped out of. Brian Roepke AU

10 Using the Export command on the File Menu in Productstream you can export a report of all the data from your Custom View Filter. Next we need to create a pivot table. Pivot tables are VERY powerful ways to analyze data in Excel. If you re unfamiliar with them look them up in the help system for more information. One tip that I use to make the creation of these easier is to build them as a pivot chart instead of a simple pivot table. We ll need a chart eventually but if you create the table as a pivot chart it can be easier to visualize your Pivot Table creation (the chart will update real time.) Brian Roepke AU

11 Finally to round out your reporting create a series of other pivot tables analyzing different types of data. Make sure to play around with the tables to get different results based on the way you stack up the data. Below is an example of a report showing the average days closed vs. the planned due date. This is a little more complex chart but really shows the power of this reporting tool. Brian Roepke AU

12 External Suppliers and Users Figure 9 Example Report for ECOs External suppliers are a key component to the manufacturing process. They need the right data at the right time and in the most efficient format as possible. This section will focus on different data sharing techniques for peoplee outside the firewall. Automatic DWF Publishing The cornerstone of the sharing process in Productstream is the lightweight and portable file format DWF. By now I m sure you ve heard of the DWF format from Autodesk and even know some of its advantages. With each new year you ll find that the DWF format becomes even more powerful and an even more critical part of the design and manufacturing process. Brian Roepke AU

13 Figure 10 3D DWF Viewing Productstream leverages the DWF file format in many ways for communicating and sharing data. In order to leverage these functions you ll want to make sure that you have the DWF publishing turned on. The following are a few of the areas that take advantage of the DWF format. Quick Viewing Batch Plot Pack and Go Water Marking Productstream Explorer Figure 11 DWF Publishing Project Freewheel In addition to the many ways that Productstream enables for design sharing there is a new technology from Autodesk that makes it extremely easy for you to share 2D and 3D models Brian Roepke AU

14 with anyone without the installation of software. The technology is known as Freewheel and offers a zero install experience. Essentially how the software works is that a user uploads a file to the Freewheel server (hosted by Autodesk) and a URL is generated. This URL can be ed to anyone and in turn viewed without installing any software. Figure 12 Project Freewheel For more information and to use Autodesk Freewheel please see the following link: Project Freewheel on Labs Additionally there is a new technology preview version of Freewheel available on Autodesk Labs ( that allows you to add a new level of collaboration to your projects. The latest version of Project Freewheel allows multiple users to view a single shared session that works across locations providing real time view manipulation, markup and chat. In the past this technology would have cost you thousands of dollars in software or services to enable, now from Autodesk you can leverage this for free 2. 2 Applications on labs are available to try during the technology preview period. They may or may not become a product at a later time depending on the customer feedback. Brian Roepke AU

15 Remote Engineering Sites Another challenge this is becoming more and more typical is the need for multiple design locations around the globe to share data and communicate on the same projects; some of the challenges around this are as follows: Concurrent Engineering Users need to know who is working on what and when. This is a critical part of the concurrent engineering process. When sites are spread across multiple locations this problem gets harder to solve. Data Sharing and Reuse Reuse is one of the number one things companies can do to save on the bottom line cost of producing equipment. Without an efficient way to share data engineers are forced to create new designs rather than reuse causing multiple part numbers, inventory issues and increased cost to manufacture. Centralized Search Being able to reuse means being able to search and find data. When sites are spread across multiple geographies it becomes almost impossible to find what you re looking for. Fast Access And of course users need to work as fast as possible. It s inevitable that data will need to be copied back and forth from time to time; from location to location and in turn engineers and designers spend their precious hours waiting for these operations. Productstream Replicator was designed to address these issues in a simple and efficient way. Productstream Replicator Please see the related class while at Autodesk University for more information on Productstream Replicator: GD319 1 Working Here, There & Everywhere Multi Site Data Management Ross Tanner 29 Nov 07 5:30 pm 7:00 pm Figure 13 Multiple Design Sites with Productstream Brian Roepke AU

16 Other Business Systems One of the biggest ways to achieve a return on your investment in Productstream is to integrate the data from Productstream with other enterprise systems in your organization; for example an ERP system or an enterprise PLM tool. Business system integrations can provide a high return on investment for many reasons; here are a few that highlight them: Accurate BOM Data Since BOM data is driven from the CAD system into Productstream the data flowing to the business system is guaranteed to be exactly the way the engineer authored it. No chance of errors or typos. (Transposed part numbers, quantities and errors in BOM structure). Quicker BOM Entry Data can be automatically synchronized in seconds, not hours of typing. Enterprise Viewing Ensure that all the proper viewable are synchronized in such a way that everyonee in the company can get access to them. Many companies who use these integrations can find up to a 10x process efficiency increase around BOM after they are in production. A huge value! Productstream Connect Please see the related class while at Autodesk University for more information on Productstream Connect: MA215 4 Integrating Autodesk Productstream with Enterprise Applications Martin van der Roest 28 Nov 07 3:30 pm 5:00 pm Figure 14 Productstream Connect Brian Roepke AU