London—Nov. 7, 2014—Bentley Systems and Siemens PLM Software announced their latest actions to further enhance the integration of the digital product and process lifecycle with the factory’s digital design. The companies integrated Bentley’s point-cloud building information modeling (BIM) advancement with the simulation tools in Siemens’ Tecnomatix software for 3D digital factory automation. This enables users of Siemens’ product lifecycle management (PLM) software solutions to work from enhanced 3D digital models of existing factories in their “as-operated” conditions—by leveraging the models created from point clouds captured through scanning.
As a result of the new integrated solution, manufacturers can benefit from:
- An earlier start of production by avoiding construction or production line interferences;
- Better quality designs with increased production throughput, reached through accurate simulations of all potential factory layout configurations;
- The rapid creation of as-built plant models, reducing the time and costs associated with modeling the digital factory;
- The ability of the point-cloud model to serve as the as-built/as-operating record of the line, enabling improvements to operational performance through the factory, product and process lifecycle.
To enable these benefits, information mobility and work process breakthroughs, Bentley and Siemens PLM Software expanded their existing relationship. Bentley’s industrial BIM applications already leverage several of Siemens’ PLM Component software tools including Parasolid software, D-Cubed software and the JT data format. As a result of this agreement, Siemens PLM Software will now leverage Bentley’s Vortex point-cloud technology and incorporate it into other appropriate Siemens applications as the opportunities continue to expand.
Dick Slansky, senior analyst and PLM research director of the ARC Advisory Group, said, “They are now delivering a solution for integrating product, process, and production design with the factory infrastructure that significantly benefits manufacturing original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and their suppliers. Through the shared knowledge of product and factory/plant lifecycles, users have access to higher quality information provided by the OEMs. In turn, OEMs and suppliers can expect a reduction in launch time and costs, improved validation of the digital factory, and predictable asset design and installation.”
Faraz Ravi, Bentley Fellow, Bentley Platform Solutions, said, “At Bentley, we are gratified to be seeing what we call reality modeling yielding such benefits for product and production lifecycles. In industrial plants, occasional surveying can now become almost continuous immersive scanning. Project and asset performance are both improved through information mobility of point clouds by way of Vortex technology. Most significantly, this can now increase industrial agility and quality by enabling shorter product and process design cycles.”
Al Hufstetler, vice president, Siemens PLM Software, said, “We introduced targeted customers to early integrations of our software, which leveraged the Bentley Vortex tools, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. The value added by bringing the as-built digital factory design into our Tecnomatix process simulation and planning products is clearly a great first step in our adoption of the Bentley tools. Process planning and plant floor designers will benefit from our partnership, which not only enables faster and better iterations, but also provides greater visibility into the path of construction and manufacturing performance.”
