Review: .riess engineering Update 18.0
Read everything about this years user meeting for the integration of PTC Creo into SAP PLM.Since the Radisson Blu Hotel in Karlsruhe/Ettlingen was very well received by customers as the new venue for the annual UPDATE last year, .riess engineering's UPDATE 18.0 took place again there on February 28, 2018. Once again, the number of participants at the user meeting on the integration of PTC Creo in SAP PLM had increased: Many existing CAD Desktop customers who are planning to migrate to SAP ECTR and the SAP ECTR interface to PTC Creo and wanted to inform themselves in detail about the new functions of the solution attended the event along with many new customers and interested parties who wanted to get an overview of the solution and network with existing customers. They were all equally interested in strategic and new information about SAP PLM directly from SAP, seeing live demonstrations of use cases and following two customer presentations on the SAP ECTR interface to PTC Creo.
Wolfgang Schukowski, Managing Director of .riess engineering europe gmbh, welcomed not only the customers, interested parties and partners at the beginning of the day. “We also welcome today's key player: the Digital Twin. The main requirement of the Digital Twin is to improve performance and optimize processes by using the Internet of Things – everything is smart, connected and intelligent.”
SAP opened the official presentations of the day with the keynote speech “Digital Products and Asset Management and the Network of Digital Twins”. The Chief Product Owner Strategy & Ecosystem SAP PLM at SAP SE explained the interaction of the “Digital Twin Network” and digital transformation in the context of PLM, PPM and asset management.
After the subsequent coffee break, all participants were curious to hear ASM International's first customer presentation of the day on improving performance and controlling product lifecycle costing with SAP PLM, the SAP Engineering Control Center and the PTC Creo interface. The Director of Global Engineering and the Senior IT Business Architect of the company, both from the company headquarters in the Netherlands, presented the visions and initial situation — and hence the optimization potential — as well as the challenges of a worldwide SAP PLM project with the harmonization of four development sites on three continents. The remarkable thing about this customer project is that Creo users receive a CAD release upgrade from PTC Pro/ENGINEER to PTC Creo “in one go”, a PDM system change from PTC INTRALINK to SAP with ECTR and Creo, as well as a completely new and optimized PLM process deeply integrated into SAP ERP. One site is already using the solution fully productively, another three sites will be migrated and the solution rolled out in the next few weeks.
The guests were interactively involved in the topics and discussions by the two speakers during the extensive Q&A session after and during the presentation. The “pain points” that both of them kept mentioning, which are probably present with all customers during the implementation of such a complex project, were among the most popular topics during the lunch break and throughout the whole day. “These can definitely be solved and eliminated. It is not only a matter of skill, but also of will,” said the two specialists responsible for the project.
After the lunch buffet in the atrium and SAP BluLounge, with the “Roadmap of SAP Engineering Control Center”, the Product Owner SAP PLM of SAP SE presented innovations of the current and next version of the strategic integration platform for SAP authoring systems. Among other things, the “Influence Portal” was presented to the participants. Customers can use it to continuously submit suggestions for improvement to the solution that are then evaluated and implemented via a defined process at SAP. This is customer proximity at its best!
The guests were especially looking forward to the live use cases with SAP Engineering Control Center and the PTC Creo interface prepared by the .riess engineering team. The .riess engineering employees responsible for Innovation & Business Development, Denis Gierich and Ralf Kairies, demonstrated new functionalities and processes in practical use cases live on the system for one hour. The use of the PTC Creo Unite Technology with SAP ECTR, which is of particular interest to multi-CAD customers, was discussed in detail. “New functions for everyone”, such as the change of the working directory, fast load, standard parts management, UDF as well as many others, completed the presentation. The guests were very satisfied with the development progress of the solution. This became clear in the Q&A session at the end of the presentation and the discussions between customers, interested parties, partners and the .riess engineering team during the subsequent coffee break. Existing CAD Desktop customers were particularly eager to learn more about the functions presented and were convinced after the presentation, if not sooner, that a migration from CAD Desktop to SAP ECTR can now be carried out virtually “without functional losses”.
After the break the partner companies CIDEON and SEAL Systems heralded the last round of presentations and introduced the development cooperation between the two companies. This cooperation came to pass because of the challenges in conversion and output management with the future use of S/4 HANA and cloud technologies which will be mastered together in the future. Whether conversion or output management, whether the customer's solution provider used to be CIDEON or SEAL Systems — there is only one common solution under S/4 HANA. In the future, the two companies will work hand in hand on these solutions for the benefit of customers and to protect their investments.
The last highlight of the day was RENK AG's reference customer presentation on the introduction of an integrated Industry 4.0 process with ECTR and FCTR. The person responsible for the customer from the SAP project management and project manager of the subproject “Changeover from CAD Desktop to ECTR/Creo” was the perfect speaker. Extremely competent and refreshing, he was able to captivate the guests from beginning to end even at the late afternoon hour. With a focus on migrating CAD Desktop to ECTR, he reported on the initial situation and IT system landscape at the locations, the selection process and decision making, the desired process (SAP as a “single point of truth”) and the current project status. Congratulations on this excellent presentation, which was met with loud applause from the guests.
After a 15-minute Q&A session that satisfied all participants, Managing Director Wolfgang Schukowski concluded the event and invited the more than 100 guests to a champagne reception and evening buffet at the RHAPSODY restaurant. There, customers, interested parties, SAP specialists, the CAD integration partners and .riess engineering talked some more for several hours and enjoyed excellent food in a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere.
The following day, the traditional workgroup meeting for the integration of PTC Creo in SAP PLM took place in the .riess engineering offices in Karlsbad. Following the product name, the workgroup was given a new name: “SAP ECTR interface to PTC Creo”.
We would like to express our gratitude to all participants and guests for these two very successful days!
The .riess UPDATE 19.0 will take place in February 2019. We will notify you of the exact date in good time.