EPLAN and CIDEON: Connecting worlds

Aeroplanes fly us around the world, rockets take us into outer space. Humans have always found a way to overcome seemingly insurmountable distances and obstacles through innovation. EPLAN and CIDEON also connect the most varied worlds with their solutions.

Communication Connects

Common memories connect generations. Typical 1990s? As we remember it: Bleached-blond boy bands burst onto the stage, Jurassic Park brought dinosaurs back, and inline skates replaced rol-ler skates. Everyone wanted a Nokia 3210 or a Siemens S3 so they could start texting. The nineties also marked an exciting decade for the software and IT industries, which became ever more closely entwined through a variety of networks. Prehistoric personal computers – grey boxes, as heavy as lead and extortionately expensive, with keyboards and tiny monitors – became affordable products for the masses. Windows 95 came on the market. Using 56.6K modems, the Netscape Communicator web browser and a brand-new Dell computer (keyboard: Cherry; mouse: Logitech), Generation X wondered: “Am I in?” People worldwide began, very slowly at first, to digitally connect with one another.

The Next Level With Syngineer

With Syngineer, EPLAN and CIDEON have taken an idea from the nineties and further refined it to connect the worlds of engineering: instant messaging. Nowadays we use WhatsApp for private communication, but back then it was via the cult app ICQ (“I Seek You“) – sharing information and discussions with a selected audience in real time. Communication connects, and Syngineer – equal parts task manager, project platform and communication platform – brings this basic principle to the next level specifically for the engineering business. Syngineer is available everywhere through an internet browser, as a direct integration into a CAD system, or in EPLAN. It’s never been easier to supply engineering information to a team and to coordinate the details – all with just a few clicks. The best thing about it: just five minutes after starting to work with Syngineer you’re more productive thanks to simple and immediate implementation without any major installation efforts needed.

Language Connects

What opens doors in the globalised world? Language, of course. Admittedly, EPLAN and CIDEON employees do not speak all of the world’s seven thousand languages. However, these originally German engineering companies have been fluent in the world’s major languages for years: Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi, Arabic, French, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese – to name just a few. This fluency is more than just appreciating language as a reflection of culture: multilingualism is actually becoming increasingly important in the era of globalisation – or so say those who haven’t made the cardinal error of underappreciating the power of culture in the battle for market share. The fact is that culture affects how people think, act and communicate. This makes language an asset for business, a truism that also applies when globally networked engineering processes must be implemented at a local level. With this in mind, EPLAN and CIDEON offer their expertise at over fifty locations around the globe, exactly where it is needed – directly on-site.

Advancing Dialogue With Bits and Bytes

As providers of software solutions, EPLAN and CIDEON also use bits and bytes to advance dialogue between customers, partners and stakeholders. The EPLAN & CIDEON Virtual Fair gives customers and interested parties a vivid trade-show experience on their PC, smartphone or tablet online, without jet lag or lost working hours. Both the solutions and presentations are demonstrated live. Attending the Virtual Fair, which will be happening again in 2018 following the successes of previous years, is easy: just register and log in to be able to participate online in presentations or chats with experts from around the world, at EPLAN and CIDEON’s engineering stand. It’s all in the mix – expert teams answer questions live in all the most common national languages. Software solutions and information services, like EPLAN Data Portal, have multilingual set ups.

Integration Connects

So much has been said and written about the digital transformation that it is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between fact and fiction. What becomes apparent coming back down to earth is that soon the products and processes for manufacturing plants will only be available as doubles – analogue and on the computer. Putting both of these into practice can simplify things and make them more profitable, to the point where the digital image powers the real world implementation with the accuracy of a Swiss watch. Ensuring that the gears of the IT environment scattered around the world all work together like clockwork is harder than it looks. While the triumphant march of specialist software in the 1990s drove individual departments to higher levels of efficiency, it happened in isolation. Nowadays, the insular solutions in development and design, materials management and manufacturing, sales and management carry a considerable risk of errors and waiting time when it comes to data transfers. Do interfaces solve the problem? They clearly do and don’t, since you’re still hopping from island to island no matter how you get there. Those who rely on integration, on the other hand, can provide information to productive staff from a single source of truth. How do users get structured, logically linked product data quickly and dependably that is consistent throughout the company, from development, production planning, manufacturing, procurement and sales down to maintenance and repair? If they’re on the SAP system, they can do it with direct integrations from CIDEON. CIDEON – an SAP Platinum Partner – utilises the strategic integration platform SAP Engineering Control Center (SAP ECTR) as the flight deck for direct integration of market-leading MCAD and ECAD systems into the SAP PLM system. CIDEON direct integrations are currently available for AutoCAD, Inventor, Solid Edge, SOLIDWORKS, and, in the ECAD segment, for EPLAN Electric P8.

From Isolated Solutions to the Big Picture

SAP ECTR is an SAP system component for managing and controlling all documents, processes and data along the entire product life cycle. When companies uniformly integrate all types of authoring tools into SAP PLM, they create a central repository for locally created product data. In other words, the islands supply the mainland. CIDEON’s direct integration provides seamless management of components, parts and drawings, including the dependent documentation from development of hardware, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, electro-technical designs, simulation and software, as structures within SAP PLM. And what works today will work tomorrow as well, because the new SAP S/4HANA business suite supports SAP ECTR.

Movement Connects

Cloud-Computing, big data, mobility, Industry 4.0: these varieties of digitisation are among the top issues of our time. But what strategic commercial goals are these major trends – basically just means to an end – setting into motion? A management expert will focus on optimising the relationship between production factors and product results, whereas a sales rep will talk about gains in efficiency. If agreement can be reached on increasing work productivity and innovative power, then normally every link of the value creation chain gets upended in the search for untapped potential. A lot is already in motion: hardware, software and machinery have been brought up to date in a targeted manner. Employees are achieving more, thanks to job enrichment programmes, training, team-building measures and symbolic management. Despite this, even tried and tested business models are suddenly being called into question under the massive pressure of global competition. Agility and room for manoeuvre dwindle, and the feverish search for new rationalisations sometimes becomes grotesque. Yet a simple change of perspective is all it takes to recognise how a company can become more economical by multiples rather than mere percentage points: integration is the engine keeping everything moving. Integration doesn’t focus on isolated segments of commercial activities but hones in on their interactions instead: the processes. This is where the hidden value is. The major players in the industry have demonstrated how this can work, with the technical and organisational broadening of their workflows. Their customers and suppliers then evolve into new, natural partners in the productdevelopment process – agile methods transferred to product development make projects and processes lean and effective. Organisationally speaking, integration occurs both horizontally and vertically: around the globe, departments with similar specialities, such as design, will all work with the same software tool – at the company in question as well as its partners and suppliers. This standardisation ensures more transparency, more validity and more consistency of data.

It’s all about Engineering

But the real value in integration is how it puts end-to-end processes in motion that decades of normal operations have been unable to reproduce perfectly in the real world. It accelerates embedding of CAE, CAD, PDM/PLM and ERP via interfaces – as with EPLAN Platform – instead of maintaining established islands of knowledge and sometimes even stone-age methods of data transfer that quickly lead to process and project disruptions. This strategic integration platform in the ECAD segment has been opening doors since 2006, as a symbol and driver of networked processes that generate added value through optimised cooperation. EPLAN Platform was designed to supply all EPLAN applications with the same source data and functions. Those who claim that it’s all about engineering, as EPLAN does, are constantly thinking one step ahead for parallel project processing via integration. Industry-tested interfaces to ERP/PDM/PLM systems (SAP, PTC, Siemens Teamcenter, Autodesk Vault, Pro.File etc.), production interfaces (Komax, Kiesling, Steinhauer and others), and PLC interfaces (Rockwell Automation, Siemens) are pioneers of seamless digitisation of all processes and data – from engineering to manufacturing to operations and maintenance. This is the only way that smart engineering, smart production and smart data will be brought to life.

Innovation Connects

When should you believe the hype? This question is especially common when a large amount of money is on the line for a potential innovation – particularly in the stock market. Buy it, but when and at what price? Is it a short-term gamble or a solid, long-term investment? What does the riskreward ratio look like? Entrepreneurs and CEOs, factory managers and technical purchasers must deal with these questions almost every day in view of the colourful bouquet of technological innovations that presents itself. Will this new product or new process solution be as old as today’s newspaper two or three years down the line? Return on investment is important, of course, but what’s the timeframe? Does this innovation primarily address a current, isolated problem within the company, or is it designed for lasting optimisation generally? Does the provider have the work force, expertise and financial muscle to undertake the continuous development work needed for a future-proof solution?

Industry 4.0 Made Tangible

Only experienced decision-makers can decide whether an innovation represents a spectacular paradigm shift or is just a retread of a golden oldie: the first truly major projects are not implemented until the initial excitement has ebbed. This is what has happened in Haiger, Germany, where the control cabinet and switchgear system engineering spread out over the twelve hundred square metres of the Rittal Innovation Center showcases what can actually be achieved through the consolidation of digital and physical workflows. It’s a hands-on demonstration of Industry 4.0 for the customers, developers and partners of Rittal, EPLAN and CIDEON: using the machines and tools at the stations, they can discuss all process steps and develop solutions for specific everyday situations – from engineering to materials delivery, parts preparation and parts processing, all the way to the finished product. The connecting element here is the virtual prototype of the control cabinet, its digital twin. And it works: the content that is developed, designed and engineered using smart engineering tools such as plan Electric P8, EPLAN Pro Panel, Rittal Therm, Rittal Power Engineering and the newest product configurators moves seamlessly into automated manufacturing. When the value chain is stable, new ­methods ranging from “Configure to Order” to ­“Engineer to Order” can go from imagination to implementation.