Siemens PLM Software: Design, Develop, Deploy—Digitalized

During the design and development phase of the Composite Crew Module (CCM)’s Pressure Vessel Pathfinder, NASA quickly realized the challenge of enhancing the veracity between the engineers’ projections and the wrinkles, ply angle, and flat patterns that resulted during the development stage. Juxtapose that with the involvement of nine out of the ten NASA sites across the U.S. and several other companies with expertise in design, manufacturing, tooling, and more in the aerospace industry, the complexity grew manifold. During the early development stages, Mike Kirsch, CCM Project Manager at NESC, NASA’s Langley Research Center, happened to see the presentation of “Fibersim”, a comprehensive composite material design and manufacturing workflow solution developed by Siemens PLM Software. Impressed by the presentation, NASA opted for Fibersim that offered benefits such as the ability to export to CNC systems, boundary projection on the tool and overall, the ability to collaborate over an integrated platform in a project involving a geographically dispersed team. Fibersim became an indispensible part of NASA’s CCM initiative, taking pride in closing the “fracture” between the virtual design and the prototype, as affirmed by Mike, “I don’t think it would be economical to construct something like the crew module without Fibersim.”

The quote from Mike is descriptive of solutions that comprehensively streamline and close the missing links of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). Siemens PLM Software, with its recent acquisition of Mentor Graphics, plans to help companies “digitalize” (as opposed to just “digitize”) by stringing a virtual thread across each component of PLM, from the conception stage, all the way through prototyping, production, application, and usage analytics. “Sometimes I’m not sure that our customers truly understand what this really means,” says Tony Hemmelgarn, President and CEO, Siemens PLM Software, “It’s not about taking your existing processes and shoving them into the digital world. It’s not even about best practices; it’s about next practices.” The PLM software solutions provided are in-line with their vision of taking entire organizations along their journey to achieving an optimal Digital Enterprise Strategy.