General Motors Transforms Design Output on Global PLM
Posted on: Wednesday, 24 August 2005, 03:00 CDT
General Motors, which is six months into a three year upgrade roll-out of its universal UGS Teamcenter PLM (product lifecyde management) environment, due to provide shared real-time data across all functions for 60,000 users globally, says the system is already proving its worth.
Diane Jurgens (right), director of product development IT and systems, says that vehicle development times, for example, have fallen from 40 months to 18 months, and in some cases 12.
She also says that vehicle output is up 33%, and that worldwide last year, the developing system helped GM to launch more new product than ever: 48 vehicles and 13 powertrains.
Jurgens says it's not all down to the IT, but that changing from 24 CAD systems in 1996 to one for all of vehicle engineering, powertrain and fabrication everywhere (UGS NX) - and latterly managing it all on UGS Teamcenter PLM - is transforming the organisation.
"For us, collaboration now goes beyond engineering - the community includes starting with the creative processes, the concept vehicles," says Jurgens. "It flows through engineering, manufacturing engineering, and the support functions, finance and purchasing. We now have alignment of all functions."
She says the improvements are the result of business process re- engineering and IT. "Those together have helped reduce the timeframes - and it's not only how fast we can go, but the volume of programmes we can execute."
Jurgens says that learning the new systems is also going well, including beyond engineering. "For the most part, the tools are easy to use... The user interfaces have evolved quite rapidly: everything is converging on a Windows like GUI that people are familiar with. It's a huge benefit."
i Enter 104 at www.mcsolutions.co.uk/enquiry
Copyright Findlay Publications Limited Summer 2005
Source: Manufacturing Computer Solutions
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