Learning about ALM at Planet PTC Live 2012, or Why Application Lifecycle Management for Software is Important in PLM
CADplace sat down with Matt Klassen, Marketing Director for ALM Solutions, at Planet PTC Live where Matt was able to explain the demands for managing software within a PLM environment. The need is increasing as the amount of software and software components in manufacturing explodes. Having an integrated ALM and PLM system as is possible with Integrity and Windchill 10.1 helps many of PTC's customers manage this growing complexity within their businesses.
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ALM, Application Lifecycle Management, solutions provide PLM-like capabilities to managing software where system complexity or regulatory requirements are high. Matt Klassen describes how more and more manufacturing customers and engineering clients at PTC are running into this problem in their businesses. First, the amount of software is exploding in engineering and manufacturing. Continental has gone from needing 2 hardware engineers for every software engineer to the inverse. Other clients like Cisco have a 10-to-1 ratio.
Matt Klassen describes the exponential growth in complexity due to software in manufacturing and engineering projects.
Software is not only adding more value to manufacturing products, it is adding issues to change-management. At the time in the design cycle when hardware changes are coming to an end, the software changes are typically increasing. This brings more complexity to the second half of a project increasing the risks for over-runs and missed targets. Products like Integrity with its newly added integration with Windchill manage the complexity for the software systems and allows that system information, from requirements to component level change status, to be published to the broader team and tracked through the Windchill PLM system.
Additionally, more traceability requirements related to the software components of a system are entering into the engineering and manufacturing domains. Risk analysis and safety requirements are required which must be traceable from the system requirements through to the lower-level components, all the way into the source code. It is easy to imagine how rapidly the complexity related to managing these development projects grows.
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PTC's Marketing Director for ALM Solutions explains how the complexity of manufacturing systems has exploded and how Integrity and Windchill help companies manage their businesses.
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