Organization Name: Siemens PLM Software
Industry: Engineering Technology
Name of Contact: Bill Lewis – Director of Marketing, Teamcenter
Web Reference: Siemens Teamcenter
Description of how social media is used for business performance
Founded in 1847, Siemens AG is a globally recognized multinational conglomerate based in Germany. With revenue in the billions, Europe’s largest engineering company is divided into 4 sectors: industry, infrastructure, energy, and healthcare. As the logo depicts, Siemens prides itself on being a globally connected brand.
Siemens PLM Software is a business unit of the Siemens Digital Factory Division, and leading global provider of Product Lifecycle Management software and services with 7 million licensed seats and more than 71,000 customers worldwide. Siemens NX, formally known as Unigraphics (UG) focuses on CAD (Computer-Aided Design) CAM (Computer-Aided Manufacturing) and CAE (Computer-Aided Engineering) solutions.
Siemens PLM Software works collaboratively with companies to deliver open solutions that help them turn more ideas into successful products. Siemens NX transforms the entire product development process with high-performance integrated solutions for design, simulation and manufacturing.
This cutting edge technology has wide applications, and is used in a number of industries such as aerospace, automotive, defense, shipbuilding, machinery, and electronics. Below is a breakdown of recognizable companies and various sectors using Siemens PLM software.
Siemens NX is used for a variety of purposes as illustrated below.
Siemens Teamcenter is a suite of PLM computer software applications. Teamcenter was designed specifically to address the needs of global and often complicated supply chain management issues.
As the name suggests, Siemens Teamcenter invites users to work as a team in a collective environment. It is a prime example of how organizations are using software and social media for collaboration and information sharing.
Bill Lewis, Director of Marketing, Teamcenter says, “Easy collaboration is key for improving the relationship between customers and suppliers. The ability to collaborate affects product quality, improves program performance, and makes everybody involved more successful. Teamcenter helps customers and suppliers overcome many of the hurdles they face when trying to work together.”
“Siemens NX provides a single source of product engineering and process knowledge. Powered by Teamcenter, engineering management allows globally dispersed groups that use different technologies to work as one team and maximize the quality, value, and timeliness of the products they deliver”.
Below is a flow chart demonstrating how Teamcenter works. This diagram illustrates a sequence of movements or actions of people or things involved in a complex system or activity.
The PLM platform allows companies to compete globally by supporting every aspect of product development. NX solutions redefine productivity and efficiency, helping companies deliver more innovative products faster and at a lower cost.
NX provides collaboration, data management, process automation, and decision support tools that help upgrade the development processes to gain and keep a competitive advantage.
Siemens use of eye-appealing logos, posters, brochures, videos, and apps make for a positive user experience. Their marketing material is catchy, simplistic, memorable, and ultimately, effective. Making applications user-friendly and easy to navigate saves users time and frustration.
By implementing Teamcenter software, companies are able to accommodate new suppliers, partners, and customers.
Advantages:
- Enabling dispersed development teams to work together as a single entity regardless of location.
- Implement design-anywhere, build-anywhere initiatives with a single source of product and process knowledge
- Reduce cost and accelerate processes by consistently managing change across your entire product lifecycle
- Eliminate ambiguity and streamline development with clear and concise visual information
- Maximize enterprise performance by bringing industry-leading, best-in-class development applications together in a unified environment.
Active Workspace
Siemens has revolutionized supply chain management. Teamcenter embodies all the key elements such as collaboration, communication, info sharing, resource sharing, joint knowledge creation, and decision synchronization.
Benefits: Everyone gets the info. Clear visibility. Shared data. No confusion. Info up to date. Less errors.
Vision
By developing this software, Siemens saw the potential value. Siemens states, “Collaborate effectively with partners and suppliers with technologies for sharing, communicating, and protecting product and manufacturing process information throughout the value chain”.
Siemens states the following in “Collaborate without Barriers”
Manufacturing companies understand that varying levels of integration with suppliers and partners makes collaboration complex. Information silos lead to incorrect and out-of-date information. Face-to-face meetings with dispersed teams are too expensive to have on a regular basis.
Microsoft and Siemens provide a simple to use, visual collaboration environment that links stakeholders to your single source of manage PLM data, Teamcenter. Companies that can harness the power of social networks can use that knowledge to help drive innovation. Siemens and Microsoft enable corporate social networking that help to capture information by allowing users to use tools they already know and like and collaborate instantly from anywhere.
Furthermore, the company has been operating for almost 170 years which clearly indicates Siemens is a trusted organization. Siemens breaks the barriers common to poor supply chain management. Competent managers support the initiatives, and the company has aligned goals and measures for success. Siemens provides training, accessible resources, and incentives which helps reduce resistance to change. Siemens understands the importance of knowledge.
Join the Conversation
Siemens PLM recognizes the important role social media plays in an organization. Employees and customers can connect through their dedicated social media page featuring 7 different platforms, plus the Teamcenter Blog.
Additionally, there are Teamcenter forums on LinkedIn. Users can share issues or offer advice to other followers around the globe.
Siemens employees are encouraged to participate in the Siemens PLM Community. This forum provides news and announcements, as well as a suggestion board, tips and tricks, reviews, and conference highlights. Employees can chat in “Community”. They can post, search, subscribe, and show support by giving “Kudos”. The goal is to connect with others and the forum slogan is “get the most of your experience with Siemens products”.
Siemens has created a balance between tech and culture. They have introduced measures to promote sharing. In an article about Social networking applied to PLM with Teamcenter, “Siemens PLM Software has embraced the vision of corporate social networks enabled by PLM, and is already delivering social computing capabilities as part of the community collaboration capabilities of Teamcenter,” said Jim Brown of Tech-Clarity. “By integrating Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and Teamcenter, companies can quickly create more effective virtual teams, discover new knowledge and capture existing knowledge for the future.” Design News also featured an article about the benefits of PLM.
Leverage Corporate Social Networking
Refer to slides 21, 30-32, 41, 42.
Siemens brand music
Lessons for Others
- connect people with the right information — don’t make them hunt for it because they might give up
- visual information is best — most people are quicker to understand an image than to read page after page in a report
- make decisions with the customer in mind — what do they want or need?
- analysis should lead design — why waste time on a variant that won’t meet spec?
- apply robustness studies everywhere, from manufacturing variations to design components
- the world is not going to get simpler; create an approach/architecture that lets you be responsive and limber.
- Bottom line: Siemens PLM and its customers seem well aligned in how they view the complexity of their products, manufacturing processes and after-sales support opportunities. Technology is a tool, and an important one, but does not supersede the human’s ability to be creative, to solve problems, to think in new ways. Use technology to connect dots in a big data world. To serve information to whoever needs it, in a context they can quickly absorb for decision-making. Wherever they may be. Contributed by Monica Schnitger
Web References
Submitted By: Brianne Murphy, SMBP Student, University of Waterloo
To contact the author of this entry please email at: b5murphy@uwaterloo.ca
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