Siemens PLM Software has tied its digital engineering, simulation, product lifecycle management, manufacturing, and factory layout systems to optimizing the product development process from design to manufacturing processing, plant layout, and beyond, said Chuck Grindstaff, Siemens PLM Software president and chief executive officer.

Grindstaff spoke during Seimens PLM Connection 2016 held in Orlando, Fla., this week.

The beyond refers to a system that compiles supplier and product user information, which can then be returned to the engineer for analysis and further product improvement, he said.

The initiative aims to digitize the entire product workflow on a cloud platform, Grindstaff said. Digital information resides on the company’s Teamcenter PLM system, which acts as a backbone. Another manufacturing operations management backbone ties a manufacturing execution system with quality and other manufacturing applications as well as with Teamcenter, he added.

“Our customers can mange product complexity—everything from product and manufacturing constraints to regulatory requirements and product targets that come from the physics of the situation and from the marketplace,” Grindstaff said. “And they also can manage and optimize against constraints like capital and factory constraints.

“The result is a digital twin that enables simulation of changeover operations and product flow across the entire lifecycle of the machine,” he said.

In other words, designers can create models with the NX CAD application, analyze them the fluid flow software Star-CCM+ from the newly acquired CD-adapco or with another Siemens analysis operation such as LMS. All this information sits on the Teamcenter PLM application.

Part or assembly manufacturing can be planned through the Tecnomatix manufacturing planning system. Part and robotic product assembly can also be planned for the factory floor to ensure factory cells are ergonomically designed and that human and robot can work safely together. All systems and software are from Siemens.

The tied systems also allow systems engineers and electrical engineers to work together with mechanical engineers on overall product development, Grindstaff said.

“We need to integrate these disciplines because disciplines are changing,” he adds. “A car is as much as software as well as a mechanical platform because it includes things like the entertainment system.”

Because all these systems—including the quality assurance application—are integrated, a manufacturing supervisor would be able to request a change from engineering, who would see that request, make the design change. Manufacturing assemblies needed to create the new design would be automatically updated based on that change, Grindstaff said.

Controllers and sensors can be integrated within products at the design stage for product feedback via the Industrial Internet of Things, he added.

“So then sensor data coming off, for instance, a oil cooling system on a wind turbine makes some sense,” Grindstaff says. “You know what conditions it would be in to operate within the range coming off the device. Now has a context and we can predict the failure of windmill from failed cooling system components weeks ahead of time. In the past that might have meant a fire on top of the windmill.

The sensors also allow for the optimization of the entire wind farm, he added.

“We can model turbulent flow between turbines to see how the farm should be laid out,” he said. We can see which way the wind blowing to get the best results for a certain timeframe. We can ensure all turbine parts are operating at peak performance.

“That kind of thing is possible only when information travels all the way through the digital system,” he said.

It is through Omneo, a big data analytics solution, that engineering organizations and manufacturers will have the potential to unearth product performance intelligence that will enable them to identify and resolve complex product issues in a short period of time, Grindstaff said.

Omneo brings together big-data sources such as PLM, enterprise resource planning manufacturing execution, quality management, and customer relationship management systems in one hub. It is here that engineers can find and isolate issues with products after they’ve been delivered. The system is capable of determining a performance issue was the result of a particular supplier and its work on one particular day, he added.