This year’s PLM Experience Day is aimed at strategists and leaders as well as those who develop, introduce, maintain PLM solutions and have an interest in PLM in a holistic perspective. An important aspect of the event is that you are not tied to any specific software developer.
The program will consist of different players experiences and learnings as well as discussions around selected themes.
As mentioned in the introduction above, the organizer has presentations from prominent companies such as Siemens Energy, Munthers, Epiroc, Ericsson and, from the academic world with representation from KTH (The Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm).
Among the headings under which these company representants will speak are the following:
Product configuration through the product life cycle
Software Bill of Material – “modularization gone wild”
Modularization – how to do it?
How should one proceed with variant control downstream?
Higher education in PLM – matched to industry needs
The event takes place on Thursday 19 September at Skeppsholmen in Stockholm. The notification for those who wish to register is sent to the following e-mail address:
PLMExperienceDay@altegra.se
”From DESIGN to MAINTENANCE: The advanced PLM system behind the new Swedish SUBMARINE A26 which will sharpen NATO’s northern flank”
For those who want to read more about one of last year’s event’s most appreciated lectures, we recommend reading the in-depth interview with Saab Kockum’s Pål Almén (pictured above) – the link is ns at the bottom of the text.
The company works with digital software from PTC, AVEVA and BAE SYSTEMS/Eurostep related to things like CAD, MBD, concurrent engineering, digital twins and threads.
The background is that the aim in product development work is today generally set on holistic, comprehensive solutions, which tie together not only the value chains of product development, but also what happens to the product during the rest of its life, maintenance included. Capable data management backbones and parallel organizational setups are needed to bring these pieces together; PLM platforms and work structures that can handle the complex tours through the systems. The pieces are clearly connected in that, with a relevant digital tool arsenal, it becomes possible to support the organizational arrangements needed to start the journey towards, among other things, extended process automation.
No one escapes these aspects, regardless of industrial activity. The defense equipment side is no exception and seen from the perspectives mentioned above, Swedish submarine developer and warship shipyard Saab Kockums is particularly interesting. Not least in the spotlight of Sweden’s new NATO membership, where, among other things, the various ships of the Swedish navy have been important quality factors. We are talking here about advanced naval forces, such as U-boats, signals intelligence vessels, surface vessels based on stealth technology, patrol boats, Stirling engines and the like that are developed and built at Saab Kockum’s facilities in Karlskrona and Malmö.
In today’s article, we have taken a closer look at the U-boat side and the model that is something of the crown jewel in the fleet, the A26 submarine. We have met the IT leader at Saab Kockums, Pål Almén, who during the recent PLM Experience Day event in Stockholm, talked about the investments in MBD (Model-Based Definition), concurrent engineering, digital twins and threads. He also summarized the challenges from, among other things, a maintenance perspective:
”A U-boat project takes about 7-8 years in terms of product development. After that, they should be operational for, say, at least 30 years. The first maintenance comes after two years, then there are major maintenance efforts every eight years. That says a lot about the complexity and demands of data integrity over time,” Almén explained, adding:
”Just take this: What does the U-boat look like after ten years? In the same way as when it left the Kockums yard? Hardly! A U-boat covers a total of around 600,000 parties. During the first maintenance after two years and the following two-year maintenance, a lot of parts are replaced and between 500 and 2,000 new ones are added. Then we have the more extensive eight-year maintenance/modernizations, which can result in between 10,000 and 50,000 additional new parts each time.”
It is not difficult to see the extent of the challenges in gaining systematic control over this. And as I said, the PLM tools play a crucial role. Today, the latest PLM modernities also come into play here. Overall, we therefore work with a digital twin and wire concept with three connected, parallel digital twins:
* One for the U-boat under development and production
* One for the U-boat in operation
* One for the U-boat’s maintenance
The main commercial tools on the PLM side are: PTC CREO (CAD), Windchill (PLM/cPDm), AVEVA ERM (ERP) and BAE Systems/Eurosteps ShareAspace (PLCS/standards-based data backbone). But how does it all work in more detail?
Here is the link to PLM&ERP News article from last year’s PLM Experience Day.
