A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

Data and Networks in Engineering Applications

Data and Networks in Engineering Applications
Oleg
Oleg
20 June, 2016 | 2 min for reading

engineering-data-networks

Cloud applications are getting better these days. However, most of existing mainstream engineering applications are still using files to store and retrieve information. Although a lot being said and done in the past about interoperability and data ownership, it is still a problem for most of organizations.

If you think about engineering use cases, data is heavily bounded to applications. Design (CAD) systems are using specific file formats to store data and this data rarely goes away and disconnects from the original applications.

Last week, I attended Autodesk Forge DevCon in San Francisco, CA. Autodesk is developing Forge platform – a set of cloud APIs that can help manage and share design data in different forms and appearances. Data is the most central element of Autodesk Forge and the question how to manage design data and transfer it between applications and devices is certainly the one that drives lot of interest from developers and users.

Autodesk CEO Carl Bass addressed this question in his Q&A keynote session. Here is a specific fragment of his answer speaking about future of data and communication in cloud environments.

Carl’s comment made me think about data networks in engineering environment. Data being held by application and PLM platforms for many years. Data should be managed and controlled.This is a reality and there is a rational to make it that way. And that’s why most of existing applications and data management systems are basically locking data in existing storages and environments.

However, data ownership by applications also brings a significant problem – it sets a boundary for data. Files, Databases, Tenants, etc. – there are many names for these boundaries. Most of them are artificial and caused by existing technologies.

To get data out of applications and to allow data access in the way engineers and applications can use this data, can be a tremendous challenge. To facilitate engineering data hand-off to set data independently can help to improve communication and effectiveness of engineering organizations.

What is my conclusion? The demand of engineering and manufacturing organization is to share data seamlessly. Designers, manufacturing engineers, supply chain managers, contractors should have an access to information. At the same time, locking them in a specific data management system or application is not an option. An existing diverse set of application will not be replaced and for the next decade we will live in the reality of mixed heterogenius cloud and desktop engineering applications Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Want to learn more about PLM? Check out my new PLM Book website.

Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of openBoM developing cloud based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain.

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
17 October, 2011

Reporting is a very important part of product lifecycle management. Actually, without reporting it is hard to imaging how you...

4 August, 2010

It becomes very common to use Wikipedia for most research projects. It becomes an ultimate source of information open for everybody....

2 March, 2024

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, the integration of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems is...

2 October, 2021

Differentiation is a big deal in business and every company wants to stand outside compared to their business counterparts by...

14 April, 2021

I’m continuing to digest materials from last week’s CIMdata Industry and Market Forum 2021. Check my earlier blog – What...

15 December, 2008

The benefits of search solution are obvious. It helps you to find what do you need. Over the past decade...

11 October, 2010

Last week, I attended a conference Lucene Revolution. The show was organized by a company Lucid Imagination, an outfit focusing...

9 October, 2017

Engineering.com article – 4 Things Users Hate Most About Their CAD Systems came to my reading list over the weekend. Take...

10 April, 2009

Everybody wants to have “live access”, right?! I think that the marketing world has finally found the right word to...

Blogroll

To the top