PLM Center of Excellence

PLM for Embedded

Product Development Challenges, Experiences
and Solution

May 2009

PLM Center of Excellence | May 2009

Table of Contents

Abstract

Introduction

Embedded product development life cycle

Typical challenges in Embedded Product

Development Life Cycle

What is PLM?

How PLM can help in addressing the challenges

in Embedded Product Development?

What are the benefits with PLM?

About HCL

12

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PLM Center of Excellence | May 2009

Abstract
In Todays scenario, Manufacturers across all industries have increasingly
incorporated electronics and software into their mechanical products in order to
deliver features that customers want at a competitive price. However, embedded
product development has set of challenges in integrating multi-disciplinary
design teams into a coherent, synchronized product lifecycle.
Product Life Cycle Management Solutions provides the enterprises a rich
environment for the collaborative development of mechanical, electrical,
electronic and embedded software technologies in a single source of product
and process knowledge. Enterprises have increasingly realized the need for PLM
systems and have also implemented them to address the challenges during the
product development life cycle.
This white paper attempts to detail out the typical set of challenges in embedded
product development life cycle and how Product Life Cycle Management (PLM)
can be leveraged to address those challenges.

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PLM Center of Excellence | May 2009

Introduction
Todays products have many advanced features enabled through the use of
software-driven electronics. Automobiles have advanced safety features, automatic
controls and service diagnostics. Home appliances have software-powered
controls designed to provide automated features and energy saving controls.
In order to compete, Manufacturers need to be able to synchronize all aspects of
complex product and process design, pushing all systems engineering and design
issues to the front of the process whenever possible. They must optimize product
performance, integration and quality by unifying interdependent mechanical,
electrical and software subsystems many of which may be designed and built
by suppliers.
Developing these embedded products involves a set of challenges in coordinating
the disparate engineering disciplines on a single design.
All the above results in products with complex multi-disciplinary design, increased
product data and information to be managed and shared in an organized,
centralized and real-time manner across an extended enterprise.
Hence organizations are in need for a system that can address the rising complexity
of products, need to collaborate real-time, manage product information in a
centralized location and yet make it available to different functional groups of
users across the geography.
Product lifecycle management, or PLM, solutions can provide an ideal
framework for implementing enterprise-wide new product development goals.
Organizations have increasingly realized the need for PLM systems and have also
implemented them.

Embedded product development life cycle

New product development life cycle for embedded products typically involves
the following important phases Concept, Requirement, Design, Embedded
software development, Mechanical development, Hardware schematics/board
layout, Prototyping, Hardware & Software integration, Verification and Validation
(V&V), Electronic packaging and may be system integration, Compliance
pre-scanning, System testing, Manufacturing transition, Production and
Support/ retire.
Following diagram represents the typical new product development cycle and key
functional areas for a typical embedded product

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PLM Center of Excellence | May 2009

New product development cycle and key functional areas for a typical
embedded product

Typical challenges in Embedded Product

Development Life Cycle
Embedded product development is a difficult proposition: bring together multiple
highly complicated disciplines with little understanding or visibility into their
companion areas. Following listing provides the list of some of the challenges in
the embedded product development life cycle.
Product complexity: Developing embedded software is complex as it involves
interfacing with various sub-system with real time requirements and with minimal
resources to accomplish the same. Ensuring all design requirements are met in
the final system requires close track of requirements across various disciplines.
In addition, it is very difficult to understand the impact of design change across
disciplines.
Isolated functional teams: Software development teams are not integrated
with electronic and mechanical design teams. Early identification of system level
problems is very difficult because of the isolated teams.
Too many product variants: Products are increasingly differentiated on the
basis of their embedded software features.
Distributed design groups: It is difficult to manage the growing number of
distributed design setups. Geographically distributed design teams often face
issues in accessing right information during the product development.
Compatibility: Development teams find it hard to identify which hardware/
software modules are compatible. It is very difficult to identify and manage huge
number of software enhancements/upgrades over a period of time in the case of
longer product life cycles, typically medical, automotive, aerospace and defence.


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PLM Center of Excellence | May 2009

Unavailability of experienced system engineers: Difficulty in finding and

hiring experienced system engineers/lack of cross functional knowledge
Difficulty predicting product behaviour: Difficulty predicting / modelling
system product behaviour until physical prototypes exists. Understanding the
interdependencies of the software design with other cross functional designs is
often late-stage process conducted only after the software is uploaded to the first
prototype.

Debugging software problems and issues are not easy in a real

time environment
Hardware resources like memory (RAM, ROM), processor bandwidth etc required to accomplish the product development are not abundant and have to
accomplish product with less RAM/ROM. This is not the case in a PC based
software development
Since the target platform where the embedded software executes is different,
than in software that executes on a PC, debugging is difficult and requires use
of good debugging tools
When an issue/problem surfaces, generally it is very difficult to find if
it is due to hardware or software etc or is it combinational? This poses
great challenges
Embedded product generally requires interfacing with multiple systems and
these systems are not readily available during development requiring use of
simulated environment during early phases. If these environments are not
exactly identical to the final environment, considerable challenges faced
during final testing

Software development is often outsourced, but system integration is still the

responsibility of the OEM engineering group
Software lifecycle issues increase todays service and repair costs

What is PLM?
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a strategic business approach that
applies a set of business solutions in support of the collaborative creation,
management, dissemination, and use of product records across the extended
enterprise spanning from product concept to end of life.
Product Life Cycle Management Solutions provides the enterprises with a
rich environment for the collaborative development of mechanical, electrical,
electronic and embedded software technologies in a single source of product
and process knowledge. PLM helps to establish a common data model across the
engineering domains facilitating individual development teams can retain their
mechanical, electrical, electronic or software focus, while working in-context and

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PLM Center of Excellence | May 2009

together to meet the overall development goals. Following diagram depicts the
typical set of functionalities during the collaborative product development are
supported by PLM.

PLM enables Collaborative Product Development

Design to Manufacture with PLM as core IT strategy
E-BOM -> MBOM
Manufacturing Feedback
Process Configurations/ Recipes
Work Instructions
Manufacturing Routes
Operator Training Specs
Consumable Specs
Packaging/Labeling Specs
Tooling Designs

Suppliers
Preferred Parts
Approved Vendors

Procurement

BOM Spec
BOM Changes
Design Specs
Design Feedback

Distributed Mfg

Manufacturing
Conformance Specs
Conformance Reporting

Collaborative
Product
Development

Engineering

Models
Drawings
Simulations

Service

Marketing
Sales

Design Partners

Product Concept
Product Requirements
Market Requirements
Brochures
Data Sheets

Regulatory

Proposals
Customer Requirements

Service Parts Catalog

Service Manuals
Training Manuals
Issue Reports

Customers

How PLM can help in addressing the challenges in Embedded Product Development?
The following processes or features help in collaborative design across multiple
functional teams geographically distributed and right product at first time during
the new product development life cycle.
Single source of product and process knowledge

PLM solutions combine existing business systems (Enterprise Resource Planning,

Computer Aided Design, Supply Chain Management, Document Management
Systems, etc.), providing a single source for product information including Bill
of Material (BOM) and supporting collaboration and communication within a
project environment.
It integrates multi-seat and multi-disciplinary design workgroups into a single
environment. It allows concurrent design and design re-use as well as product
visualisation for the entire enterprise.

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PLM Center of Excellence | May 2009

PLM offers vaulting, versioning control, check-in/check-out and security

protection capabilities enable the enterprise to manage and control this aggregate
knowledge in PLM global repository.
Global Collaborative platform

PLM provides a framework enables associative product development across

multiple functional teams. It also provide seamless collaborative design
environment in case of geographically distributed design groups.
PLM also enables product teams to work with their suppliers, allied partners
and trusted customers in a real-time environment that facilitates the rapid
formation of sourcing teams, concept studies, program reviews, design reviews
and engineering change processes.
Manage software binaries as parts

PLM provides integration with software development tools, e.g. IBM ClearCase,
Rational Rose, etc, ability to manage software binaries/builds as parts and the
appropriate links to the mechanical and electronic component configuration
are established.
Changes to software (and the associated electronic and mechanical equipment)
under configuration control must be approved before being incorporated. This
enables designers, developers, manufacturing, and service personnel to access the
product information and see the complete definition at any point in time. It also
ensures that they work with (and dont violate) the correct configuration of the
version upon which they are working.
Workflow and CMII compliant Change Management

CMII (Configuration Management II) is a revolutionary business model, which

has replaced traditional change management strategies all over the world. CMII
provides a business process infrastructure that enables Project Management and
Quality Assurance to perform their tasks reliably and efficiently.
PLM tools provide workflow capabilities that enable review and release processes
for enterprise data like parts, documents etc.
PLM enables the organizations to implement change management at an enterprise
level and also ensures that downstream agencies, internal and external partners
and suppliers are fully integrated in this process.
Efficient Product Configurations Management

PLM provides the product structure, BOM views, alternates and substitutes,
effectivities and configuration management functionalities. In addition, it enables
the product development teams to integrate information generated by multiple
applications and create higher level product representations (such as product
models, product definitions, product configurations, and virtual prototypes).


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PLM Center of Excellence | May 2009

Systems Engineering and Requirement Management

PLM provides System Engineering and Requirements management capabilities.

Systems Engineering enables product teams to optimize the tradeoffs made at
multiple stages in a decision-intensive product lifecycle.
Requirements management capabilities allow an enterprise to define, capture,
engineer, manage and leverage product requirements and compliance regulations
on a repeatable and rigorous basis.
Leading PLM tools offers integration with requirement management tools
like DOOR.
Program and Project Management

PLM tools provide program and project management capabilities that product
teams can leverage to plan and manage lifecycle projects on a real-time basis.
It offers resource management, project schedules, WBS, tracking and reporting
capabilitiesetc. It also provides integration capabilities with other Project
Management tools, like MS Project etc.
In addition, PLM offers the following capabilities.

Product Visualization

Document Management

Component Classification Management

Quality and Regulatory Compliance

Integration with design and development tools, legacy/custom applications,

ERP, MES etc
Supply Chain Management

What are the benefits with PLM?

PLM offers the following typical benefits:

Reduction of product development costs and design cycle time through

design automation
Eliminate rework while maximizing design and knowledge reuse from one
project to another
Integrated visualization and collaboration capabilities enable widely dispersed
product team members to view, mark up and exchange these higher-level
product representations
Reduction of cost overruns by quantitatively estimating costs during the design
process using trade-off analysis programs or sophisticated cost models

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PLM Center of Excellence | May 2009

Integration of workflow processes that can be executed more rapidly by reducing

or eliminating manual work and/or increasing engineering productivity
Collaborate efficiently across the Supply Chain and increase Inventory Turns
and Visibility
Efficient global product development by facilitating collaborative design in
distributed design environment
Reduction of hardware investments through more efficient workload
distribution, effective use of legacy systems or implementation of more
efficient technology
Improvement in product quality by applying quality engineering throughout
the entire design processfrom conceptual and preliminary design through
final detailed design
Reduction of warranty costs by applying design for quality methods to ensure
more reliable and robust products are delivered to the market.

Effective Requirement Management and Systems Engineering

Standard Engineering processes across the enterprise

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Build the products right the first time by designing multi-disciplinary

components in a single digital product definition and by evaluate many more
design alternatives

Regulatory Compliance compliance management throughout the product

life cycle
Improve change process efficiency by using a single source of mechanical,
electronic and software design information

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PLM Center of Excellence | May 2009

About the Authors

Murthy is a senior PLM consultant in the HCL PLM Centre of
Excellence. He has extensive experience in PLM Consulting, Solution
Architecting and PLM implementation across various industry domains.
He can be reached on Murthy.Acholi@hcl.in for further queries.
Manohar S Senior Project Manager, manoharsn@hcl.in working with HCL
Embedded System Group of HCL for more than 10 years and have worked in
executing embedded projects in Industrial, Automotive and Medical Domain.

About HCLs PLM Practice

HCL is bringing 10 years of PLM domain expertise for developing, enhancing
and supporting PLM engagements for large clients in Automotive, Aerospace &
Defence, Manufacturing, Electrical, Retail and Med-devices space etc with leading
PLM tools like Siemens PLM Teamcenter, PTC Windchill, Enovia MatrixOne,
Smarteam, Oracle Agile and SAP PLM.
For any queries on PLM, please contact Atul Tiwari, Head of PLM
on Atul.Tiwari@hcl.in
11

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ABOUT HCL
HCL Technologies
HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company, working with clients in
the areas that impact and redefine the core of their businesses. Since its inception
into the global landscape after its IPO in 1999, HCL focuses on transformational
outsourcing, underlined by innovation and value creation, and offers integrated
portfolio of services including software-led IT solutions, remote infrastructure
management, engineering and R&D services and BPO. HCL leverages its extensive
global offshore infrastructure and network of offices in 20 countries to provide
holistic, multi-service delivery in key industry verticals including Financial Services,
Manufacturing, Aerospace & Defense, Telecom, Retail & CPG, Life Sciences
& Healthcare, Media & Entertainment, Travel, Transportation & Logistics,
Automotive, Government, Energy & Utilities. HCL takes pride in its philosophy
of Employee First which empowers our 54,026 transformers to create a real value
for the customers. HCL Technologies, along with its subsidiaries, had consolidated
revenues of US$ 2.0 billion (Rs. 9,842 crores), as on 31st March 2009. For more
information, please visit www.hcltech.com
HCL Enterprise

HCL is a $5 billion leading global Technology and IT Enterprise that comprises

two companies listed in India - HCL Technologies & HCL Infosystems.
Founded in 1976, HCL is one of Indias original IT garage start-ups, a pioneer
of modern computing, and a global transformational enterprise today. Its range
of offerings spans Product Engineering, Custom & Package Applications, BPO,
IT Infrastructure Services, IT Hardware, Systems Integration, and distribution
of ICT products across a wide range of focused industry verticals. The HCL
team comprises over 60,000 professionals of diverse nationalities, who operate
from 23 countries including over 500 points of presence in India. HCL has global
partnerships with several leading Fortune 1000 firms, including leading IT and
Technology firms. For more information, please visit www.hcl.in