Digital transformation: PTC demos new products after good first year in Rockwell tie-up

Heppelmann, using a tablet, shows how to check Volvo engines

The keynote address at PTC’s LiveWorx19 event in Boston, Massachusetts is always a tour de force by the company’s ebullient president & CEO, Jim Heppelmann, and today’s conference opening did not disappoint.

As he likes to remind his audience, the PTC boss comes from a CAD (computer-aided design) and PLM (product lifecycle management) background, so for him the marriage with newer technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), augmented and virtual reality (AR & VR) is made in heaven.

As Jeremy Cowan reports from Boston, today’s launch was a blend of tech-rock show, a catch-up with friends and partners, and a little bit PTC victory rally. If Heppelmann could fly through it in a barrel roll he surely would. He had the attention of 6,500 at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Centre (not to mention another 4,000 streaming the event worldwide) as he talked them through projects with Volvo Trucks (using Creo Simulation) and air & gas handling firm Howden (with ThingWorx and Microsoft Azure IoT), followed by a chat high on a gantry with Blake Moret, CEO of US industrial giant Rockwell Automation on the progress of their 1-year-old partnership.

The first example Heppelmann showed of work being done with industrial partners was the task of minimising the mass of Volvo Trucks’ engine mounts, without compromising performance. The truck maker is using Creo 5.0, PTC’s CAD system to validate designs and try new design formats. Artificial intelligence (AI) then applies simulations to the designs to optimise criteria.

The audience was shown a staffer hard at work at his desk (also perched on high), from where he was achieving an engine mount design that is 50% lighter than the current version. Creo Simulation Live confirms whether he has in any way compromised the design. The engineer moved on to show in Creo the engine digitally installed in its Volvo mount. Says Heppelmann, “I remember it used to take days in the queue to get the attention of the Simulation Team. This takes the pressure off simulation analysts who no longer need to get involved in the design’s early stages and can use higher suites to test later design stages.”

Generate, Iterate, Validate

These are the three stages today; generate, iterate, validate. But every new generation of design brings new complexities, as Heppelmann points out. He has been told by Volvo that there are 1080 design variations possible in their combined truck range, with 260,000 trucks built in 2018. So, IoT and AR need Product Lifecycle Management (PLM); the new generation offers Product Variability Management. As Heppelmann asks rhetorically, “How can you have an accurate digital twin if you don’t know what’s in the engine?”

Training is also impacted; training on engine inspection procedures can take up to five weeks. Heppelmann, using a tablet, showed how it is now possible to show someone with no training to check Volvo engines’ cable routing, that clips and zip ties are all in place, or how paint protections caps on an air compressor are in place. It’s about quality as well as cost control, he insists. These are said to be the two key reasons why Volvo is investing in this suite of manufacturing and supply chain management tools.

How to retain expertise in the business

There was a teaser for it at last year’s LiveWorx but Vuforia Expert Capture was still in development. This year it is available for companies to capture work procedures, enabling them to incorporate them into training for new staff.

The age-old problem of losing expertise when skilled staff retire or leave the organisation can now be tackled by “bottling” the knowledge, as PTC puts it, through digital transformation. Experienced staff wearing HoloLens, or just carrying a phone or tablet can record the procedures they go through in a given industrial process. The recording, overlaid with instructions, can then be incorporated into knowledge transfer instructing novice operators on best practices.

The PTC president calls Vuforia the world’s first enterprise AR suite, and declares that sales have been growing at over 80% per year for several years, so that Vuforia now represents more than 7% of total PTC software sales.

Another success has emerged from the US$1 billion (€0.88 billion) equity investment in PTC by Rockwell Automation (as IoT Now reported in June 2018, see here). Rockwell’s CEO and chairman, Blake Moret (now also a director of PTC), joined Heppelmann on stage to review the investment. What, asks Heppelmann, has been the reaction from customers?

“For Ford Motor Company,” says Moret, “we’re providing solutions to save money and bring products to market faster. It’s been a great start.”

He reports that most sales now are in ‘Brownfield’ sites, factories from different eras, that are now using ThingWorx, for example. “Half the early wins are with software sitting on top of someone else’s systems. Forty percent of the wins have involved augmented reality.”

Later in the day, freelance journalist, Jessica Twentyman, asks Heppelmann for his verdict on the milestones of success in the relationship so far and what’s still on his To Do List? He replies that the companies need to do more to integrate, train and sell together. “This is a ‘Land & Expand’ model. Sure, we want to know you have 20 factories, but we’ll start with just one and prove our value. PTC has already trained 1,500 Rockwell people on Vuforia.

“Blake talked about 1,000 conversations (you could call them salesforce opportunities). That’s a heck of a big pipeline. PTC is sitting on about 4,000 ‘opportunities’ because of its history in IoT. Rockwell is already looking at 1,000 in one year. And 30 projects have already landed. So, in my words not Blake’s, I’d say the partnership is going very well.”

“Not long ago I told him he enjoys total air supremacy in the business of selling digital transformation to factories,” Heppelmann concludes. “There’s nothing anyone else can send up against him that he can’t shoot down.”

Comment on this article below or via Twitter: @IoTNow_OR @jcIoTnow

RECENT ARTICLES

Get a US$50 Amazon voucher for sharing your IoT brand knowledge

Posted on: March 28, 2024

We want to know what you know about the IoT space. Just 3 minutes could earn you a US$50 Amazon digital gift card!

Read more

Enhance EV charging performance with cellular connectivity

Posted on: March 28, 2024

Electric vehicles (EVs) are steadily growing their market share at the expense of internal combustion engine vehicles. The growth is fuelled by several factors. Perhaps most importantly, prices for EVs have started to drop as competition in the industry is intensifying. New players and models are emerging, prompting several established EV makers to lower their

Read more
FEATURED IoT STORIES

What is IoT? A Beginner’s Guide

Posted on: April 5, 2023

What is IoT? IoT, or the Internet of Things, refers to the connection of everyday objects, or “things,” to the internet, allowing them to collect, transmit, and share data. This interconnected network of devices transforms previously “dumb” objects, such as toasters or security cameras, into smart devices that can interact with each other and their

Read more

The IoT Adoption Boom – Everything You Need to Know

Posted on: September 28, 2022

In an age when we seem to go through technology boom after technology boom, it’s hard to imagine one sticking out. However, IoT adoption, or the Internet of Things adoption, is leading the charge to dominate the next decade’s discussion around business IT. Below, we’ll discuss the current boom, what’s driving it, where it’s going,

Read more

9 IoT applications that will change everything

Posted on: September 1, 2021

Whether you are a future-minded CEO, tech-driven CEO or IT leader, you’ve come across the term IoT before. It’s often used alongside superlatives regarding how it will revolutionize the way you work, play, and live. But is it just another buzzword, or is it the as-promised technological holy grail? The truth is that Internet of

Read more

Which IoT Platform 2021? IoT Now Enterprise Buyers’ Guide

Posted on: August 30, 2021

There are several different parts in a complete IoT solution, all of which must work together to get the result needed, write IoT Now Enterprise Buyers’ Guide – Which IoT Platform 2021? authors Robin Duke-Woolley, the CEO and Bill Ingle, a senior analyst, at Beecham Research. Figure 1 shows these parts and, although not all

Read more

CAT-M1 vs NB-IoT – examining the real differences

Posted on: June 21, 2021

As industry players look to provide the next generation of IoT connectivity, two different standards have emerged under release 13 of 3GPP – CAT-M1 and NB-IoT.

Read more

IoT and home automation: What does the future hold?

Posted on: June 10, 2020

Once a dream, home automation using iot is slowly but steadily becoming a part of daily lives around the world. In fact, it is believed that the global market for smart home automation will reach $40 billion by 2020.

Read more

5 challenges still facing the Internet of Things

Posted on: June 3, 2020

The Internet of Things (IoT) has quickly become a huge part of how people live, communicate and do business. All around the world, web-enabled devices are turning our world into a more switched-on place to live.

Read more