The hub of the matter

Production software can mean different things depending on where you work in an organisation. The design side deals with geometry, and production software is covered by

, CNC or DNC. Manufacturing is all to do with workflows and/or transactions, and production software usually means things like MES and ERP.

Because the data structures supporting these two activities are, by necessity, completely different, there is a whole raft of software — usually called middleware — that sits between these two extremes to make them work.

Unfortunately, in many cases new PLM and/or ERP customers fail to understand the extent of their potential reliance on essential middleware when they buy their new systems. In both cases salespeople tend to minimise the potential challenges.

Oracle has considerable experience in making CAD information accessible to ERP systems. The data integration problem is exacerbated by the fact that lead times are getting shorter and there is very little time left in design and manufacturing programmes for sorting out data incompatibilities. Even SMEs can have 14 or 15 different manufacturing systems, and every time a change is made to the bill of materials all of these systems have to reflect the change.