More News and Coming Events
We just completed some very interesting events and trade shows. I thought I would spend just a few moments to give you my impressions and perhaps some insights:
On April 23-24 were at AUTOe in Rochester Hills Michigan, on the campus of Oakland University. This Product Lifecycle Management themed event is always a good show. Dr. Michael Grieves and the Oakland University Team continue to impress. The speakers (present company excluded) were wonderful. Due to the proximity to many of the world’s premier automotive manufacturers and suppliers, the show is appropriately focused upon the challenges and opportunities these manufactures face. Of course, other industries face similar challenges of making things work on a global basis, so it’s not all automotive.
For me there were some key takeaways:
o Supply chain integration is still crying for standards. Despite years of effort, there is still much room for improvement.
o PLM solutions have clearly gone from “toys” to “tools” in manufacturing. The leaders have made the transition to electronic processes in manufacturing engineering and plant floor operations. The story that began in product development continues to grow. It is interesting to see how the best companies are better leveraging their investments in CAD to make it available to the enterprise.
o The industry has, for the most part, mastered data exchange and data sharing. Collaboration is clearly the direction for the industry. To me, the winners will have learned how to move from proprietary interfaces to portable interfaces. Collaboration will be natural and people-centric. Data management will be a feature of collaboration solutions, not the main event. Several of the presentations, including mine, focused on the need to get to the next level of collaboration.
Members of the Adobe Team participated in Design and Manufacturing South in Atlanta, April 24-26. Naturally we feature Acrobat 3D. This was a good show for us. We talked to hundreds of customers, which is always the most enjoyable part of the job. Of course our marketing people like to touch base with as many customers as possible, so the “traffic” is appreciated. More important to me is the opportunity to discuss challenges in interoperability. We get lots of questions about support for PMI and Meta-data viewing, for major CAD applications , which is a definite need for certain manufacturing workflows. Yes, Acrobat 3D version 8 will provide the needed function. We also get many questions about comparisons to other visualization tools. People appreciate that A3D is a collaboration tool first, and usually start to describe current and planned uses in areas like bid packages, manufacturing work instructions and technical illustrations where document-based collaboration is huge.
We were at the SME Interoperability and 3D Collaboration Event at the Marriott Renaissance in Detroit on May 2-3. This was an outstanding event, and lots of fun for me personally. I discussed design collaboration and CAD data interoperability on May 2, in the afternoon. I also participated in a panel moderated by David Prawel of Longview Advisors: “Lightweight 3D Formats – Ask the Vendors” on May 3. Check out Longview advisor’s 3D Ubiquity Blog http://3dubiquity.com. The depth of the questions and insights from our customers was really amazing. In addition to the normal demonstrations and sharing of information about product, I walked away with several “to-dos” to help customers and answer their questions. There seemed to be a number of people who were interested in things like adding animation in the 3D Tool Kit portion of A3D. For those of you who would like to see what the Tool kit is for, or maybe get a “tune-up” on how to navigate it, there are some good tutorials on line at www.adobe.com. Just look under products -> Acrobat -> Acrobat 3D. By the way, I still have a few “to-dos” to follow-up on. Hopefully I’ll be up-to-date shortly.
What’s next?
The rest of May will be taken up with Adobe marketing events, webinars, numerous customer visits and some exciting work with partner companies. Two events planned for early June look to be super opportunities:
1. The PTC User World Event June 3-5 in Tampa Florida. I will once again be presenting at the conference. I’m looking forward to seeing you in Tampa. Check it out at www.ptcuser.org.
2. The Atlantic Design and Manufacturing show is scheduled June 12-14 in New York. Stop by and say hello if you plan to be there. You can check out the show at www.atldesignshow.com.
That’s all for now. Comments welcome and appreciated!