Here are the top 10 blogs that our readers loved from this year:

10. Form 3B: Formlabs New Biocompatible 3D Printer

Formlabs released a new Form 3B 3D printer for biocompatible materials. Read the blog if you’re interested in:

Read the full blog here.

9. New Soft, Elastic Engineering Resin from Formlabs

Formlabs released a new Elastic Resin – highly elastic and strong material for prototypes and parts. This new resin is a long-lasting, tear-resistant, and made of resilient material that can withstand repeated use. You may be interested in knowing more if you can relate to these use cases:

Read the full blog here.

8. PLM Apps Benefit Business

Most companies lose a lot of time and money when employees are challenged with finding relevant, up-to-date product data. According to the Harvard Business Review, workers waste approximately 50% of their time locating data, finding and correcting errors, and searching for sources to confirm the accuracy of data. PLM Apps can help.

If you manage PLM systems and organize CAD data within your company you’ll find this blog helpful. In it you’ll read about:

Read the full blog here.

7. ERP vs PLM – What’s the Difference?

We have you take a deep dive into your digital transformation initiatives – which in return, will help you develop the skills to choose the right technology for your organization. This blog breaks down:

Read the full blog here.

6. Bill of Materials Management- What You Need to Know

If you have experience with bill of materials (BoMs) or are just learning about it – you may want to brush up on the info in this blog. We cover:

Read the full blog here.

5. Formlabs Releases New 3D Printers using LFS Technology

Formlabs retired the Form 2 SLA desktop 3D printer and released 2 new printers at the beginning of the year – the Form 3 and Form 3L. Read this blog to find the answers to these questions:

Read the full blog here.

4. PTC Mathcad Prime 6.0 is here!

Mathcad 6.0 is the newest release of PTC’s engineering calculations software for engineers. The release is meant to help improve your productivity and overall usability to make your job easier every day when it comes to math notations in product development.

Here are some of the new improvements:

Read the full blog here.

3. Form 2 vs Form 3: Formlabs SLA 3D printer comparison

If you’re wondering how the Form 3 compares to the Form 2, we’re able to tell you the differences between the two Formlabs 3D printing machines. The Form 2 is no longer available for purchase – but we’ll point out the improvements in the Form 3 (which IS available for purchase) such as:

Read the full blog here.

2. Formlabs Form 3 & Form 3L: Answers to your FAQs

Here are the most frequently asked questions about the retirement of the Form 2, the Form 3, and the Form 3L. Here are a few questions we answer including:

Read the full blog here.

1. What is PTC Windchill Software?

If you’re looking for a new PLM system to add to your organization – try PTC’s Windchill. We’ll break down everything you need to know including:

Read the full blog here.

System integration is much easier than you might think; here’s why.

The idea of linking business systems and consolidating data, also known as system and data integration, has become a major initiative for many companies – but most organizations have no idea where to start. Why? It’s an overwhelming topic! Organizations operate using any number of complex business systems. The idea of connecting everything seems hard. 

We live in world that is continually being transformed by data, yet much of the data we capture is held captive in disconnected enterprise systems that often include ERP, CRM, PLM, PDM, ALM, and QMS systems to name a few. This article explains why it is much easier to successfully integrate data and systems than you think.

What is system integration and how does it work?

System integration involves linking together component subsystems ensuring those separate, specialized business systems function as a coordinated whole. You might think of system integration a way to aggregate business subsystems so all systems within a business environment cooperate together as one.

The importance of system integration

When all enterprise systems work together as one, an organization is able to obtain new levels of role-based productivity and company-wide collaboration.

By combining disparate systems that operate with their own distinct data sets, an organization can improve product quality and performance, reduce operational costs, improve response times, and increase overall value to customers. We’ve watched our customers recognize exponential returns as more systems and users come together. It’s much easier to combine and integrate systems and data than you might think and let’s talk about why.

System integration solutions exist!

The problem with integrating systems/data is not a lack of technology – great system integration solutions exist! In fact, there are numerous connectivity tools and software applications available on the market today, that can simplify and speed up system integration. Many of these connectivity tools work in real-time, between data warehouses, software applications, IoT platforms and more!

Connectivity tools, such as applications and system plugins, enable organizations to easily create an environment of integrated data and information. These environments help manage the business itself and automate many tedious back-office functions related to technology, services, and human resources.

Take product lifecycle management applications (PLM apps) for example.

PLM applications connect all system data (from systems such as ERP, CRM, PLM, PDM, ALM, QMS, & more) and easily transform that data into a single interface with instant visualization. This allows someone from purchasing to instantly access materials, inventory and any other information they might need – without disrupting certain system operators. Furthermore, chances are that a partner from one of your current enterprise systems already is or has a system integration expert that can help you integrate your enterprise systems. (but in the case that you don’t, our company EAC Product Development solutions is capable and happy to help – it is one of many areas that we specialize)

Systems Integration tools are easy to implement

Today many enterprise system platforms can multiplex the reach of information and functionality that you already have on your business and make it reachable.

The steady shift of business systems into web-based connected architectures has made it easier than ever to connect enterprise systems! As a matter of fact, enterprise systems that you’re already using are likely to already have built-in application program interface (API) capabilities.

These built in API capabilities allow applications to talk to each other, while specifying how software components should interact. It boils down to this; get the right software to leverage your system’s API capabilities and you’re on your way to integrate business systems.

System data integration platforms can be affordable

Not only are there many integration applications and tools available on market today, but many of these connectivity solutions are becoming more and more affordable.

One of the greatest benefits of system integration solutions is that they oftentimes cost only a fraction of what it would cost to implement an entirely new enterprise system to do something! And the benefits quickly outweigh the costs when your productivity levels spike!

Integration applications are easy to use:

It’s now easier and less risky than ever to use data integration tools. In fact, many integration applications are designed with the user in mind.

Today many system data integration applications incorporate extremely easy-to-use, ready out-of-the-box features and capabilities! A great example is a tool like ThingWorx, PTC Navigate, or EAC Productivity Apps. These tools are designed to quickly provide integrated access to timely relevant information.

So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to make the most out of your enterprise system data by integrating your systems.

Need help getting started? That’s what EAC Product Development Solutions is here for. It’s our job to make your system integration smooth, easy, and effortless. Let’s talk about the next steps. We would love to help you find a system integration solution that fits your organizational needs. Fill out the form to have someone from EAC contact you about integrating all of your systems, once and for all!

This is a guest blog written by Jonathan Lang from PTC – you can find the original blog post on PTC.com.

While augmented reality (AR) and computer vision technology are making it possible to wear digital clothing, the concept of a digital thread offers a powerful new framework to unlock data accessibility and add new analytical and decision-making capabilities to your business.

The digital thread is proven to drive speed, agility, and efficiency in the products, operational processes, and related worker tasks.

Let’s take a look at how:

What is a digital thread?

Digital threads seek to create homogeneity and simple universal access to data. They follow a single set of related data as it weaves in and out of business processes and functions to create continuity and accessibility.

A digital thread can be created for many different entities and processes. Most commonly, a thread of a product follows the lifecycle from design inception through engineering and product lifecycle management, to manufacturing instructions, supply chain management, and through to service histories and customer events.

This thread enables enterprises to anticipate and effectively communicate bi-directionally up and down stream of where the product is in its lifecycle, ensuring all participants utilize the most current data and can react quickly to changes or new insights.

Similar threads are emerging for entire operational environments and processes – and even worker tasks and workflows – due to the prevalence of digitization across the value chain driven by technologies like IIoT, AR, MES, and others.

Why do I need a digital thread?

Data discovery accounts for a lot of workers’ time. Integration of disparate information systems in retrospect is costly and jeopardizes goals, deadlines, and market opportunities. A 2018 study by IDC of more than 400 professionals who work with data found that 37% of the time they spent ‘getting to insight’ was searching for information, while only 27% was used for analysis.

In the age of digital transformation, new data challenges have emerged, and digital threads offer a solution to improve the speed and agility of enhanced decision-making promised by all of this data. They’re about removing bottlenecks and improving transparency and accuracy of critical business information across the value chain.

How do digital threads enable digital twins?

While there are benefits to this continuity across related data sets and activities, the advanced versions incorporate physical world sensor data through IIoT capabilities or through the use of physics-based ‘virtual sensors’. Utilizing these physical world proxies of products, processes, and even people and their workflows, AI algorithms can test potential scenarios to find optimization opportunities for a variety of outcomes.

When a digital thread or ‘definition’ of a product or process is applied to a 2D or 3D graphical proxy and real-world data is modeled against it, this is referred to as a digital twin. Digital twin use cases include predictive maintenance and service for products and operational intelligence across an industrial environment.

To achieve a digital twin, a digital thread must first be established. Digital thread is predominantly used to unify and orchestrate data across the lifecycle of a product, from original design, to engineering, manufacturing, operation, and service. This enables product manufacturers to analyze a holistic data set, and ensures that functions across the organization are always working with the most up-to-date information.

With the widespread adoption of IIoT technology, connected worker technology like augmented reality, and increasingly sophisticated MES and supply chain networks, digital threads are quickly expanding beyond products to be the connective tissue enabling operational insights. Woven together into a holistic view of an enterprise across many interrelated processes and functions, the relationship between multiple digital threads is referred to as a digital fabric or mesh.

Even today, digital mesh is forming all around us and will be the foundation upon which we architect and orchestrate digital experiences in the physical world in the future.

To learn more about digital twins, read our blog on how digital twins improve future innovation and product development.

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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Making and extending access to product data (also known as data accessibility) is exactly what can put you ahead, especially if your organization has anything to do with product development.

This article explains how to make product data accessible, as well as why product data access is a trend that many organizations are beginning to pursue.

Product data is vital to organizational success

In business and engineering, product development refers to bringing new and existing products to market. During this process, your product data is everything.

Your organization’s product data likely includes computer-aided design (CAD) data, 3D models, parts information, standardized work instructions, product requirements, notes, documents, and more.

This is why your organization’s product development success starts with… you know it… product data.

The reality is, the product data that may only be visible to engineering or management teams is exactly what your entire organization could leverage to make better-informed decisions.

Product data is vital to organizational success because it helps identify business opportunities, predict future trends, and most importantly it is exactly what allows you to generate more revenue.

Data-driven business decisions make or break companies. This is exactly why your product data should be accessible to anyone within your organization who needs it.

People across multiple departments often need to input data into business systems, especially in larger organizations.

If different employees throughout your organization input slightly different information, use non-compatible formats or simply don’t have access to each other’s data – confusion and miscommunication can occur.

These situations lead to mistakes, unnecessary costs, and lost revenue. All of which (I’m going to assume) your business is trying to avoid.

There are many reasons why access to data is important, but let’s address data access methods and tools your organization can use to help extend and make your product data accessible.

The first step to making product data accessible: System integration. System integration  is an ever-popular topic among the IT savvy.

Integrated systems streamline processes, increase efficiency and productivity, reduce costs, and reduce manual entry errors. This is why organizations take steps to integrate business and enterprise systems used throughout their operations.

Integrating your business systems helps keep everyone on the same page by ensuring all staff has access to the same data.

This is especially important when tracking product changes, and I’ll explain exactly why.

Let’s assume an engineer needs to make a last-minute one design adjustment to a product. This is a situation when it is crucial to inform affected departments and stakeholders of product changes as soon as possible.

When system integrations and PLM/ERP tools are in place, everyone throughout your organization (who would need access to specific product data) can access up-to-date information!

Not only does this keep people up-to-date and informed, but it also allows people throughout an organization to compare and contrast the evolution of your products.

Why is that so important?

A cross-functional team’s ability to evaluate the history of product changes through the lens of each individual’s respective discipline will provide a better idea of the impact of product and process changes over time.

By encouraging information-sharing and communication between departments, system integration can inspire collaboration between departments and lead to unexpected business improvements.

When one department gains access to information they didn’t have before, it can help them understand the role in the company better as well as the overall operation of the business.

This knowledge can help them improve performance and productivity, as well as, allow them to make better, more informed decisions.

Recognizing & responding to multiple data user’s product information needs

Although product data management tools (such as PTC Windchill) help organization’s collect and manage data, many enterprise solutions (such as product lifecycle management systems) fail to build user interfaces that non-technical staff can actually understand.

PLM systems can quickly become too complex for many roles across an organization. This can make it hard for users to navigate the system, find information, and ensure they’re getting the right information.

Oftentimes the sole users of PLM enterprise systems tend to be engineers and product designers who create the information. This means other roles are requesting information from the authors, whether they are designers or engineers. 

When this happens, users lose time waiting for the person who created the information, and they take time from the designers and engineers that should be focused on designing and developing products.

The solution: System integration that is focused on data visibility and data accessibility

By integrating your enterprise systems with a focus on data visibility and data accessibility, your organization ultimately supports communication and collaboration across the entire enterprise and value chain.

For instance, product data management tools (such as PLM applications or plugins) can collect and transform your product data. These same product data access tools can also provide a data output with meaningful content, assisting any role (such as accounting, purchasing marketing, etc.) to make smarter and faster decisions which can directly impact your bottom line.

An easy solution to extend product data access

Our company, EAC Product Development Solutions, designed an easy solution to help organizations (like yours) easily extend access to accurate product data.

Our solution is our EAC Productivity Apps.

Our PLM EAC Productivity Applications deliver role-based data mash-ups, that provide just the type of product information that is needed by a particular role.

Our PLM plugin technology works in the back-end to bring together product information stored in multiple enterprise systems (such as ERP, ALM, PLM, QMS, etc) to deliver product data to users in a way that can be easily consumed.

This enables an entire enterprise to get valuable product data and information in just the way that they want it when they need it.

Our Productivity Applications also eliminate time wasted waiting for authors to collect and redistribute product information.

Our EAC Productivity Applications help deliver on the promise of Product Lifecycle Management.

Want to learn more? Let’s have a conversation.