- Solve the problems right the first time
- Reduce equipment downtime
- Improve your bottom-line
Technology solutions available on the market today truly have the capability to empower you and your organization; especially during times like these where communication and collaboration are vital to your success.
Today, a high-performance workforce requires expensive training programs, equipment maintenance, travel budgets, and support systems. Yet, many are facing problems due to limited travel, social distancing, and enforced remote working policies.
Vuforia Chalk creates a new way to tackle these business requirements, and even better yet, we are offering free access to Vuforia Chalk for a limited time to help Manufacturing and Service organizations cope with the COVID-19 Crisis.
Vuforia Chalk Free Access Program
The Vuforia Chalk Free Access Program is available right now through August 31st, 2020. Fill out the form at the top of our Vuforia Chalk webpage.
Once you’ve filled out the form you’ll be auto-enrolled in our Vuforia Chalk Quick Start Program – a free consultative guide to get you started with the software on the right foot.
What is Vuforia Chalk?
Vuforia Chalk is an easy-to-use, powerful remote assistance support application that allows your workforce to collaborate in real-time, from anywhere. This application combines real-time video with advanced AR technology to create a simple and intuitive user-experience that anybody can use.
Why Vuforia Chalk?
The Vuforia chalk app is a great entry point for Augmented reality, especially when it comes to existing and long-standing workforces.
Why? Because it is simple and intuitive to use. This application requires a minimal amount of training, and doesn’t involve the use of specialized equipment, like many other Augmented Reality applications on the market today.
With Vuforia Chalk users are able to use mobile devices they already own today, meaning your most experienced minds are accessible anytime, anywhere.
How Vuforia Chalk enhances remote collaboration
Vuforia Chalk lets your employees share a live view of their workspace with an expert, or co-worker, allowing your workforce to easily connect for support or training.
With Chalk, simple instructions can help your team solve complex problems quickly and effectively while reducing costs and increasing technician efficiency.
The AR application also allows both users with the ability to draw on the screen directly from their mobile device to provide instructions as if they were right there face-to-face.
With Vuforia augmented reality, your annotations stick exactly where they are drawn, even when you move around as you work. In fact, you can even pause the live view to draw easy to follow, multi-step instructions.
Chalk is ideal for service and training, as well as other forms of collaboration too.
It makes it easy for your team to work together or give feedback from almost any place in the world – saving you time and money.
Having your best minds on a job remotely allows your organization to:
With Chalk’s simple learning curve, organizations are now able to implement an AR strategy into their business quickly and effectively, allowing even the aging workforce to be able to learn to use the tool efficiently.
Start using Vuforia Chalk for Free
Get enrolled in PTC’s Vuforia Chalk Free Access Program by filling out the form on our Vuforia Chalk webpage – which will auto-enroll you in our Vuforia Chalk Quick Start Program. Here’s the guide for reference to see what to expect.
In light of recent developments – Our top priority is to protect the safety and health of our employees, customers and community and to help prevent the spread of novel coronavirus (COVID-19).
We are continuing business as we have for the last 24 years to serve our customer needs while also taking all the necessary precautions to keep our employees and customers safe.
However, we are minimizing larger gatherings, such as conferences, trade shows, workshops, and on-site meetings and training. We are offering customers the option of live video conferences and webcasts conducted online in a safe virtual space – we have found this to be very effective in most circumstances.
We want to help you overcome remote challenges
Productivity improvement, process optimization, and maximum return on investment have become the watchwords of industrial production worldwide, especially at a time like today.
Our organization has grown over the years by helping companies leverage remote access and monitoring connectivity solutions. In fact, almost everything we do helps enable remote access to data.
We invite you to explore options that may help your team overcome any remote challenges you may be experiencing. As we know it is critical to continue conducting business as usual during this time.
Vuforia Chalk: Quickly solve technical challenges via remote transactional AR app
Vuforia Instruct: Create powerful step-by-step instructions
Vuforia Studio: Create AR experiences to enhance sales efforts with virtual product demonstrations
EAC Productivity Apps: Avoid disrupting engineers with role-based access to product data
Design & Engineering Services: Overcome backlog of engineering projects
Remote Software Training: Help your team stay sharp during this transition with PTC certified training courses. We deliver everything from Windchill Administrator courses to training classes for specific PTC Creo tools and functionality.
Although our variety of solutions expands much wider than what we have highlighted in this article, we would love to help you navigate affordable solutions that could easily integrate with your business environment and help you work better remotely.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us directly. We appreciate your ongoing support and look forward to assisting you in anyway we possibly can.
Warmest Regards,
The EAC Product Development Solutions Team
Communicating product data across an organization is complex. Let’s talk about how to make it easier.
Different departments gather product data from a variety of systems including Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Systems, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems, Manufacturing Execution systems (MES), and Quality Management Systems (QMS) and more, how do we know our organizations are making the most out of all this information?
Just think about it for a second. Our systems speak different languages, AND our departments often aim for different goals.
With an estimated 90% of the world’s data created in the last two years alone (Conner, n.d.), it’s no wonder that companies are having a hard time using it all. The IDC estimates that just 0.5% of the data companies produce is ever used. It’s time to change that.
Here are 9 Ways Your Business Will Benefit From Connecting Your Data systems.
1. Increased Usability
Data experts believe that if Fortune 1,000 companies increased the amount of data they used by just 10%, they could realize over $65 million in additional net income (Marr, 2015). Not only are these numbers huge, they also help make my case about the critical importance of data usability.
The truth is – any one specialized system is often too complex for many non-specialized roles to navigate, find, and transfer the right information. This often leaves separate departments accountable for storing and sharing uncontrolled, out of date versions of product data. It’s not because they don’t WANT to use the right information. It’s because system complexity and interdepartmental gates make it hard to consistently get the right information.
So how do we make product data more usable?
A) Consolidating product data from disparate sources into one single system.
B) Give users a way to access the system using simplified role-specific dashboards.
2. Better Data Access
The most important reason your product data shouldn’t (internally anyway) be kept secret is because product data is your company’s most valuable asset.
Not everyone who needs access to specific product information hosted in your PLM system is from your engineering department, so don’t force them to go through the same vigorous Product Lifecycle system training. Don’t make them navigate an engineer’s world one click at a time.
In order to effectively use data, our departments must have ready access to it. We must make rich product information easy to accessible for a broad set of roles.
By creating an organized system that connects all of our product data, your organization will make information easily accessible to users beyond those who have created it.
Just think of the possibilities that come from connecting multiple systems and delivering information to all departments through a single window.
3. Complete Data
Imagine an entire enterprise with access to real data, at the right time, when it’s needed.
By connecting your product lifecycle management systems with your other enterprise systems, every stakeholder within your organization can impact the value flow of product data through your organization. It also equips team members to consistently drive critical decisions with the latest, most accurate information.
4. Better Insights
Better access to data = Better insights.
Your business teams can and should demand a lot of your PLM processes and solution.
This is one of the reasons why your organization should consider integration technologies and custom front-end solutions – Such as PLM applications.
A data-driven enterprise with insights into how current products and processes can be optimized can drastically improve productivity. Doing this requires teams to have access to up-to-date, accurate product data.
5. Better Decisions
Ready access to information is especially important to any company developing products.
Users without access to the system of record resort to error-prone workarounds that can result in inaccuracies, quality problems, and waste.
Decisions made from out- of- date inaccurate data threaten product quality and delay time to market.
Providing everyone in your organization with broad visibility into the system of record will drive better, more accurate decisions. This will ultimately improve quality, reduce waste, scrap, rework, and help you meet your time to market goals.
The analytical possibilities that come with connecting your data will help users across your organization make accurate product decisions throughout the entire development process.
6. Better Products
Who doesn’t want to create better products faster?
Providing your organization with universal data access will allow your company to drastically accelerate product development.
How so?
By connecting disparate systems, you will have access to real-time data allowing you to make better product decisions.
Because your decisions and actions are now driven by up-to-date information, you will achieve a higher product quality.
7. Increased Productivity
Why waste time manually reading, entering and analyzing data? It could be automatically collected, filtered, and combined.
By collecting your product data in one system and providing a simplified role-based interface, any user within your organization can access contextual, up-to-date, real-time product information anytime they need.
I guarantee your productivity will grow when your organization is able to plan earlier with manufacturing, order materials sooner with purchasing all while your engineering team is spending less time pulling reports.
8. Increased collaboration
Using a system that provides role-based data access to stakeholders throughout your organization provides every role with an ability to quickly understand the status of a part number and how the parts fit together in a design.
This will not only help mobilize and inform the work of teams throughout the organization, but it will also help maximize the success of your product development.
Giving your team the ability to extend and connect your PLM data into the rest of your enterprise will rapidly increase the overall effectiveness of your organization.
9. Real Results
The ultimate benefit your organization will achieve by connecting your data systems stems from your ability to acquire real results.
What does that mean?
Positive results have a tendency to snowball into more and more success. Results give your organization the confidence it needs to quickly deliver value. Providing access to the right information empowers a team, department, company to reach their true potential.
We want to help your company thrive. Our EAC Productivity Apps give your organization a way to connect disparate enterprise systems and easily deliver role-based dashboards to increase user confidence and productivity.
Our world is rapidly becoming a place where big data reigns supreme. Just like a king!
Product lifecycle management is an all-encompassing technology solution for integrating and managing all types of data inherent in the design, development, production, support, maintenance and final disposal of manufactured goods and product offerings.
The ultimate goal of product lifecycle management is to accelerate the entire cycle of product development and improve business efficiency and profitability. In its most basic sense, PLM software is a collaboration tool that facilitates organizations to manage their product information across a wide spectrum of internal and external business processes and functions.
PLM is an integrated system that facilitates the collection, sharing and management of crucial data – a broad-based approach that governs the development of a product right from the idea conception to the ultimate disposal.
One System for Everything: Product Lifecycle Management
The product lifecycle management is a business process management tool that serves as a repository for every teeny little bit of information that might affect a product offering. It is essentially the first place where all product information comes together from different stages of production – be it supply chain, production, procurement or marketing. By consolidating diverse systems in an organization, PLM helps create a coherent data structure to develop, manufacture and retire products.
One of the most compelling benefits of the product lifecycle management approach is to empower businesses to make smart, timely and information-driven decisions at each stage in the overall product lifecycle. Of course, your product development process is unique to your company and a one-fits-all PLM approach might not work for you.
However, like most businesses, your company also depends on the quality of data that is available to make critical decisions on a day-to-day basis. PLM offers a unified, collective intelligence that helps improve the strategic decision-making process, define processes and workflows, eliminate process bottlenecks and accelerate the overall product development process.
Get the benefits that PLM has promised for years
The cradle-to-grave approach of product lifecycle management offers many benefits for companies seeking more efficient, profitable product development, and management solutions.
In the present scenario, PLM has emerged as a single vital source for managing the different aspects of product management throughout the production, development and retirement processes.
It is no secret that faster product development and shorter lead times to market have become the key to marketplace competitiveness and success. With PLM solutions, the product can be developed and finished faster. As a powerful enabling technology platform, PLM applications help integrate people, processes, business systems, and of course data to streamline the product information spinal column for your company.
The innovative technology of PLM enables your business to reduce production and material costs through prototyping, waste reduction and savings through the full integration of engineering processes and workflows. This naturally leads to enhance production efficiency and increased productivity. The robust data analytics tools, such as visual analytics of a PLM application simplify the overall processes, workflows, communications and information flows throughout the production cycle.
It leverages the full potential of integrated business systems and functions across the company, from supply chain to production and from compliance to financial divisions. Product life cycle management solutions ensure more transparency in policy disclosure and the organizational decision-making process.
Acting as a line of a message between owners, managers, suppliers, employees and customers, PLM aids open communication and conversation amongst the various stakeholders. This helps you identify and understand what works and what does not work for your company.
What to look for when purchasing PLM software
When people purchase PLM systems, they essentially invest in technology which provides a wealth of ease and convenience given that the systems are extremely complicated. This is a core reason users often find it difficult to navigate these systems, let alone make full use of all the features it offers them.
When selecting a particular PLM solution for your business, it is important to ensure that it is easy to use, navigate and apply in the various stages of the production cycle.
Another feature to consider is the ability of the PLM software to integrate with and complement readily with the systems and processes already in place at your organization.
The PLM application that you procure from a vendor must come with certain features such as BOM (Bill of Materials) management, reporting and analytics, quality management, change management and product data management.
While these elements help in the overall coordination, tracking, control and management of the various workflows involved in the production, the best PLM software should also offer functionally enabling deeper supplier collaboration, flexibility and accessibility, speed of implementation, environmental compliance and support for existing organizational systems.
PLM Applications for any PLM system
So what are we suggesting? Our solution to an easier way for everyone in your organization (not expert PLM users) to use Windchill and find product data is our EAC Productivity Apps. You can learn more about our EAC Apps on our website.
EAC Product Development Solutions introduces the powerful EAC productivity applications that make it easier for you to view, understand and manage product data.
With one single, simple and powerful interface, you can make better, faster and more effective decisions at your company. Our PLM system applications are compatible with product lifecycle management systems, thereby offering an integrated technology platform for multiple enterprise systems including ALM, MRP, ERP, SLM, CRM, Accounting, and PLM (Windchill). The cookie-cutter PLM solutions by most vendors tend to be overly complicated which inhibit your ability to consolidate task workflows and streamline production processes within your organization.
Our PLM apps work as a connectivity tool, to transform the entire PLM experience. They facilitate user experiences by allowing them to perform functions without prior training, making the PLM interface easy to work with. EAC Productivity Applications provide an added advantage of connecting with a PLM system and altering the user interface, making PLM easy to understand. They have the capability to pool data from many enterprise systems and put it on one screen.
Our goal is to give power to the manufacturers.
We have successfully eliminated the common PLM system bottlenecks and complications by coming up with our own PLM solutions that reduce the bare bones you might experience in run-of-the-mill PLM software and applications available in the market. Our PLM applications were developed to offer you a perfect user experience by improving accessibility to critical data.
With our top of the line PLM apps, everyone can use the system with relative ease and businesses can fully tap into the large PLM investment they were initially promised.
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this educational video on our EAC Apps:
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Here’s why every manufacturing company should be considering product lifecycle management applications.
Expand PLM software usage throughout your enterprise with PLM apps
Let’s face it, no company uses a single product data management system (PDM) or a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system for ALL of its organization’s needs.
Your organization likely uses an abundance of different technology software to collect and store data. These technologies can include customer relationship management (CRM) systems, quality management system (QMS) software, enterprise relationship planning (ERP) systems, application lifecycle management (ALM) systems, and so many more.
If your organization currently uses a PLM system, odds are you most likely paid a pretty penny for it. So why not make the most of that product lifecycle system investment and use your system’s complete functionality?!
Product lifecycle applications support, enable, and enhance the value and footprint of PLM software. PLM Apps go a long away to assist and ensure consistent access to up-to-date product data. They can help expand controlled access to valuable content and give functional groups a single simplified view of files, data, and content all within a single browser-accessible screen.
You’re going to want to invest in these kinds of advanced technology solutions that simplify data gathering processes and expand the value of your PLM investment. PLM apps are meant to help you find data easier which reduces user frustration and helps take productivity to new levels within your organization.
PLM applications, also referred to as PLM system plugins, deliver on the dreams of many organizations. They are a simple solution that drastically increases enterprise PLM usage.
PLM apps integrate siloed data from disparate systems
With the use of multiple complex enterprise systems, your organization’s data is most likely held captive in siloed systems. Many PLM applications help connect these disjointed enterprise systems using common application programming interface (API) connection abilities.
PLM apps simply pull data from other enterprise systems into a new user-interface through API integrations. They don’t rely on interface features from other enterprise platforms or systems (besides the data and information they extract), therefore, they are less likely to be affected by a new release of the underlying enterprise systems!
PLM apps simplify searches for the occasional PLM software user
PLM apps change the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) of your PLM system so that it’s easier to use. This can be useful for occasional or novice users who can feel overwhelmed by the complexity of their PLM system compared to those that use their PLM system on a daily basis.
PLM applications offer user-friendly interfaces that simplify the complexity of PLM systems and make it easier to search, find, locate, and understand product information. In fact, many of these tools even allow organizations to adjust settings for specific users (such as purchasing, marketing, accounting, etc.) so they can access the direct information they need.
PLM apps Many customers we work with use complex product lifecycle management systems such as PTC Windchill or Siemens Teamcenter. Due to the robust capabilities of these enterprise systems (and other PLM systems), many users find product data hard to navigate – especially if they aren’t daily users within these systems.
PLM apps speed up product development processes by providing users with complete access to real-time complex enterprise data.
Product lifecycle applications really do make PLM easier – see it for yourself by watching this short PLM applications video.
Customize PLM apps without disrupting your PLM software
PLM applications and system plugins offer simple and easy ways to customize enterprise product data systems. A PLM Administrator can customize the apps to conform to their company’s goals and prioritization of tasks without disrupting the PLM software itself.
Time after time, we see organizations add PLM customizations to their mainframe PLM software, only to wind up facing dozens of challenges as new system software versions get released. Because PLM apps are an extension of PLM software systems, they are minimally affected by upgraded software versions and updates (if at all).
PLM apps provide organizations with the ability to easily custom tailor simplified product lifecycle management interfaces or mashups. This functionality provides additional value and integration capabilities with other enterprise systems.
PLM Applications offer a brand-new UI for your intricate product data management system; enabling a fresh and simple user experience. They also have started to help organizations solve problems easier and faster with direct, accessible, and instantaneous insights from data.
Your systems are only as good as how you use them. If employees struggle to navigate your product lifecycle system interface, PLM apps are definitely something you should be looking into!
How PLM apps drive flexibility within your organization
PLM applications provide access to PLM information to employees outside of engineering such as marketing, sales, finances, and procurement.
Access to PLM system data provides another way for teams to identify the broad scale of their day to day activities and information. This can help teams understand and prioritize tasks to be more efficient and productive.
This flexibility allows teams to work the way they want. By enhancing a complex system and tailoring each end-user experience, it’s easy to see how these PLM system plug-ins can drastically improve productivity and drive value across an organization.
What is better than providing every department with product information that they want and need to do their job?!
Want to learn more about PLM Applications and how they could pair up with your current enterprise systems? Let’s have the conversation!
