Collaboration
     & Interoperability
                            Congress - May 3-5, 2010

Joe Schaefer

Director of Products
Actify

It is well understood that most if not all engineers in an organization need access to CAD data.  This is the primary selling point of the paradigm switch from PDM to PLM.  Basically we are saying that anyone who touches the process of making a part needs access to the data and that is the purpose of PLM.  But what about people that are traditionally thought to be outside this direct interaction with the product who generally rely on engineers for their information?.  Before the PC, companies had pools of typists to take hand written notes and turn them into letters to be mailed.  Today we don?t want employees to ask other employees for information if they could do it themselves.  One area that is going through this transition today is the task of processing requests for quote.  Much of the information that is necessary to process the RFQ has nothing to do with the part? Such as ? is the customer new (if so, perhaps their credit is suspect); do we apply a discount or not, etc.  In the past these people would ask engineers if the part is something the company should bid on.  Some companies have created rules that allow non-engineers to make this determination.  For example: does the part have the proper size, is it too big or too small, what is the volume (so price per part can be calculated), etc.  Without access to the product data, the RFQ processor has to ask the engineer.  In this presentation we will dive into the challenges of providing CAD data to this person and try to postulate how this trend is going to accelerate in the future.

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Speaker bio:

Joe Schafer has been in and around the CAD industry for twenty years.  Not as a CAD user, but on the side of developing and implementing CAD and CAD based system in different industries.  For 15 years he specialized in integrating product data in the metrology process.  Starting at Valisys and Tecnomatix with products that created measurement plans for CMMs directly from CAD data.  Moving onto to UGS where he worked to integrate PMI between NX and Teamcenter and incorporate measurement results into Teamcenter for reporting and analysis.  Currently he is working for Actify Inc. where he divides his time between defining the direction of product development as a Product Manager and being the director of Products who is responsible for development and QA.  Actify provides product data collaboration solutions that enable mid-market manufacturers to find, use, share, and mange product data in a secure, accurate, and cost-effective way with internal organizations, and external partners, to shorten cycle times and improve operating margins.