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Collaboration across the entire organization

SolidWorks Product Data Management Software Solutions & Services

Supporting and encouraging design collaboration, design reuse, and increased cooperation among previously isolated departments, customers, and external partners are important components of an effective, mainstream PDM system. SolidWorks Enterprise PDM allows manufacturers to set up, administer, and adjust the characteristics of their vaults to meet their unique development requirements. Replicating portions of the SolidWorks Enterprise PDM vault to different servers, or providing secure web access to design data at the user level, enables product development organizations to support collaboration anywhere in the world.

 

Distributed design environment

A group of designers in Canada, for example, can access and reuse designs developed by engineers at a European sister company to create a product for the Canadian market. With SolidWorks Enterprise PDM in place, design engineers anywhere in the world can safely collaborate on the same design simultaneously, or can make derivations from previous designs, without the risk of overwriting, deleting, or otherwise damaging valuable design data.

As a result, distributed global design teams are becoming more commonplace among multisite, multinational companies. SolidWorks Enterprise PDM supports this distributed design environment, eliminating the shortcomings inherent to moving large amounts of data over a WAN (wide area network).

 

Figure: SolidWorks Enterprise PDM vault replication process

Replicating portions of the SolidWorks Enterprise PDM Network Vault to different servers or
providing secure web access to design data at the user level enables product development
organizations to support collaboration anywhere in the world.

 

Allow all company departments to access data

Through the Windows Explorer-based interface, SolidWorks Enterprise PDM provides manufacturers with the flexibility and ability to manage access to design data by other departments—such as marketing, purchasing, and manufacturing. Processes that once occurred sequentially can now take place in parallel, further boosting productivity and speeding time-to-market. Marketing can access photorealistic renderings to conduct field research, produce brochures, and create web pages much earlier in the process. Purchasing can access drawing files to solicit quotes for components, materials, and services more quickly, while manufacturing can access BOMs and complete production planning more efficiently.

 

Provide customers or external partners access to design data

SolidWorks Enterprise PDM also provides the opportunity to open up portions of a design vault to customers and external partners. In many industries, customer input is a vital part of the product development process. Providing controlled customer access to specific pieces of design data can contribute to moving the development process forward. Manufacturers can also make select portions of the vault available to contractors, suppliers, and external partners to further improve communications and collaboration. With the proper permissions, production specialists in China, for example, can access design data from vaults located anywhere in the world to resolve manufacturing issues.