The Benefits of PLM-based CAPA Software

For manufacturers in industries that produce some of the world’s most complex products, effective quality management continues to be a competitive advantage. Whether in automotive, aerospace and defense, industrial equipment, electronics, or medical devices, companies are increasingly moving to a customer-centric model that includes social media monitoring and big data analytics at the point of sale. Even slight quality issues can have a ripple effect felt through the entire organization.

In today’s mobile and always connected environment, it is critical that discrete manufacturing companies can quickly and effectively sense and respond to quality issues originating anywhere in the value chain. This is possible with a holistic approach to quality. However, there is only a small minority of companies that have aligned the necessary leadership, business process, and technology capabilities to start taking an enterprise approach to quality.

This Research Spotlight aims to highlight best practices for managing quality across the enterprise, specifically as it pertains to creating a closed-loop quality management environment with the use of PLM-based corrective and preventive action (CAPA) software. It will touch on the following areas:

• Market drivers pressuring discrete manufacturers to focus on improving the quality of processes and products
• Addressing market drivers by taking a PLM approach to quality software
• A look into the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) companies are using to measure the effectiveness of quality initiatives
• The people, business process, and change management capabilities needed to ensure successful technology deployments
• Actionable recommendations for deploying PLM-based CAPA functionalities

By reading this Research Spotlight, executives on the quality management journey will be able to refine their approach to quality software, enabling communication and collaboration across the value chain. This holistic approach to quality will help create a market-leading customer experience in today’s unforgiving environment.

Luxion and Siemens Introduce New Integration for Solid Edge Users

Luxion, makers of KeyShot® and the leading developer of advanced rendering and lighting technology, recently announced the immediate availability of a custom developed plugin that tightly integrates KeyShot with Siemens PLM Software’s Solid Edge® software making it a preferred rendering solution for users of Solid Edge. This plugin is available free of charge from the KeyShot website.

With KeyShot, Solid Edge users now have the option to increase the quality of their photorealistic 3D renderings, animations and interactive visuals used in communicating concepts, delivering internal presentations, developing digital prototyping and creating sales or marketing visuals. The integration allows KeyShot to be launched directly from the Solid Edge interface, automatically sending both the design and all the assigned material appearances to KeyShot.

Through the speed of KeyShot’s real-time ray-tracing interface, further refinement of material assignments and lighting is quickly accomplished, and the changes are immediately displayed to the user. The plugin implements LiveLinking™ which allows users to integrate KeyShot deeply into the product development process by pushing any changes to the Solid Edge design directly to KeyShot without losing any of the material assignments, animations, lighting and camera settings. This is the tightest integration of KeyShot available in the 3D CAD software market.  This unprecedented integration enables users to save time and improves the efficiency of designers, engineers and others creating 3D visuals.

The integration with KeyShot also allows users to transfer material assignments over to KeyShot for further development and for the creation of KeyShot animations or KeyShotVR’s, an interactive visual to present models on browsers or mobile devices.

Dan Staples, Director, Solid Edge Product Development, Siemens PLM Software says, ”The integration of KeyShot with Solid Edge is an important step in providing our users with a smooth and effective method for creating high-quality, 3D visuals. Changes in the Solid Edge design can be immediately reflected in the KeyShot environment, allowing high-quality visual communication to become a key part of the design process.”

“We are recognizing the momentum of Solid Edge in the industry”, said Thomas Teger, Vice President of Products and Strategy at Luxion. “The Solid Edge user base spans a wide variety of industries where visuals are part of the entire design process. The integration of KeyShot with Solid Edge provides even more flexibility for them as a solution that delivers amazing images of their designs within a matter of minutes.”

Pricing & Availability
The plugin for KeyShot and Solid Edge ST6 will be available free of charge from the KeyShot website at www.keyshot.com/plugins.