SolidWorks World 2009 Interview With Rich Allen

Rich Allen is one of my favorite SolidWorks’ employees (it’s a long list, by the way). He is the Global Product Manager, PDM Products, SolidWorks Corporation. I’m a PDM advocate, and I like to discuss PDM with Rich, especially Enterprise PDM.

Hi Rich, thanks for taking the time to meet with me today, I really appreciate it.

Always a pleasure to speak with you Devon.

How can PDM help all SolidWorks Users?

PDM can help all SolidWorks users be more productive and efficient. It all starts with the Vault. By centralizing Engineering information such as parts, assemblies and drawings files, users can more quickly find the data they need and even more importantly know it is the right version. When it comes to sharing information, PDM again is an invaluable tool is assigning work, getting electronic signatures and accessing information from multiple sites. We believe that every SolidWorks user, should create a PDM Vault and as a minimum get their SolidWorks data under control. Then they can add supplementary information such as specifications, quotes, pictures, compliance records and more.


What are some of the guidelines to help a company decide when they need a PDM system?

There are a few rules of thumb you can follow in terms of number of users, projects and files, such as typically 3 or more users or 2 or more sites or any engineering collaboration. Another metric is to listen to the engineering staff and see if they are having a hard time finding the right version of documents and if they ever overwrite each others files. As the average engineer spends 30% of their time searching for information and PDM can reduce that by at least half, the vast majority of SolidWorks users would benefit and achieve a fast return on investment by implementing a simple PDM system such as SolidWorks Enterprise PDM. If a company using SolidWorks is not currently using PDM, are there any steps they can take to start preparing for the day when they will implement PDM? Often the hardest part of getting started with PDM is to clean up your data. This means, that many companies have multiple versions of the same document in multiple locations. So a part file may exist on 5 user hard drives and the network server. Sometimes they are all different and it can be hard to know which the latest version is. So, implementing manual systems, while not as efficient as PDM, would be a good start to cleaning up the data so it could be imported into the future PDM system.

Why start with a basic PDM implementation and build on that success?

PDM can solve many problems and help multiple users and departments communicate, collaborate and control information. The most successful companies start with the basics, getting documents in the Vault, learning check out/in procedures, working with versions and revisions and making sure everyone has the latest copy of files. By starting simple, you get many benefits. It is easier for the users to absorb and use a new streamlined system. As they provide input, you can make improvements gradually over time based on actual user feedback, not initial guesses. From a management perspective, smaller projects are less risky and when you can demonstrate a return on investment of less than one year, sometimes as little as 5 months, you build confidence in the management team which will help justify funding and approvals of future projects.


When a company wants to start managing files using PDM, can they go right to Enterprise PDM?

Yes, SolidWorks Enterprise PDM is designed to be simple enough for first-time users, yet scalable to accommodate hundreds of users across dozens of sites.

Do you see a time when PDM is just considered another tool, like Save or Save As?

We are close to this today as SolidWorks users (as well as Word, Excel or any Windows application) can do a File/Save As and simple save files directly into the Vault. One of the biggest benefits of SolidWorks Enterprise PDM is that it is built as an extension of the Microsoft Windows Explorer and therefore automatically links and works with every application on your system. So in effect, PDM is truly transparent, just hit Save, like you were going to anyway. But now that the documents are in the vault, they can be more easily found, controlled and shared.

Thanks for meeting with me, I look forward to seeing you next year at 2010 SolidWorks World, Anaheim, CA.

Thank you Devon.