As you already know, speed-to-market is one of the most important factors for achieving sustainable, profitable growth. At the same time key business challenges exist that make this goal increasingly difficult. Some of the most prominent are:

• Globalization – The need to serve global markets and to work in a globally distributed environment.
• Product Personalization – The demand for greater customization of products, but with the same time and cost benefits seen in a mass production environment.
• New Technology – The agility to effectively identify and deploy advancements in technology that improve competitive position.

A decade ago companies were able to deliver products to market at a slower pace than that of today’s global environment. Additionally, since the pace of change and new competition was much lower then, companies could still achieve some level of success even when their products did not directly meet all of the needs of the marketplace.

Today, however, companies need to be more than twice as fast to market as they were 10 years ago, and they must be much more confident in the capabilities and quality of the products they deliver. Making the right decisions in a much shorter time frame is now the key to success.

UGS PLM Software is focused on helping companies move fast in today’s complex business environment while also increasing their confidence in the decisions that they must make along the way as they turn an idea into a delivered product – in essence, helping them go from the idea to the truck in the fastest time possible with the greatest assurance of success.

Siemens has been helping customers increase speed in their production processes by integrating the physical environments of production automation and manufacturing execution. Through concurrency of these processes, customers have been able to realize reductions in time-to-market. At the same time, UGS has helped customers achieve concurrency in their product development processes by allowing them to design, develop, validate and manage products and processes in a digital environment.

At the conference we explored how combining these strengths of Siemens and UGS will enable us to deliver, and over time, further accelerate speed and confidence. We see that companies will gain confidence by being able to prove product performance, cost and manufacturing virtually before committing to the expanse of physical builds. And all along the development phases, the information is captured in a knowledge base that can be leveraged across the organization and can be used in gaining even greater advances in speed and confidence in future product development projects.

Our lifecycle data and process architecture is the underpinning for this integrated environment of product and production. We have built in data items that know how to represent the requirements, the electronics and the software, but also the production processes and resources. We want to utilize this data foundation and leverage this down into production so that there is a single source of information that is synchronized across a full set of disciplines, enabling more effective decision making.

Our goal is to deliver this unified product and production platform on top of a rich lifecycle data and process architecture which comprehends the breadth and depth of the product and process information which is encountered across the lifecycle.

As we continue to extend the richness of the data model, we will also be able to make detailed product and production data available to support the needs of a broader set of enterprise applications such as SRM, SCM, ERP, CRM and Service. This will extend the value of both the upstream and downstream functions as they will benefit from a greater level of data granularity relative to the product and production environment. And our open data model allows for the free flow of information back and forth across these other enterprise applications.

Of course turning long term vision into reality requires a plan, which we also discussed at the analyst forum. “Project Archimedes” is the initiative we have launched to define specific projects that will bring product and production environments together in the future and provide maximum customer benefit. Within Project Archimedes the combined teams of UGS and Siemens looked at many different “use cases” across all industries and selected five to focus on based on the depth and breadth of value they offer across the product and production lifecycles. They include:

• Adaptive Manufacturing – integrating the process definition work we have done with UGS Tecnomatix™ software with the automation definition work Siemens has done.
• Virtual Commissioning – validating the process and automation definition. This work already started almost two years ago with a partnership between Siemens and UGS.
• Harmonized Lifecycles – integrating the PLM backbone with the production environment.
• HI-FI Machining – creating a tighter link between CAM and physical controllers.
• Mechatronics – the combination of mechanical and electrical design to meet emerging requirements for embedded systems.

These projects promise to deliver value that would not be possible without the technology Siemens and UGS have together.

We believe that deploying our vision will deliver profound changes and new value in PLM where customers will increasingly see movement:

• From concurrent processes to concurrent disciplines.
• From data exchange to common information sharing.
• From design for manufacturing to design for MY manufacturing.
• From product simulation to lifecycle simulation.
• From time-to-launch to time-to-money.
• From departments of innovation to Global Innovation Networks.

Responses from the analyst community following the event affirm the significance of our position and direction. For example:

“Only significant changes make sense now that the PLM market will undergo overdue, but imminent, accelerated maturing. We can speculate as much as we want, but there are not too many meaningful matches left out there that can establish the breadth and scope of the coverage we will be witnessing from UGS in the coming years. Better prepare for a big one.”
- Collaborative Product Development Associates, LLC
PLM technology race heats up – what lies ahead for UGS… and others? (June 21, 2007)

“For those companies in markets where innovation and time-to-market are important, the combination of Siemens’ manufacturing applications with UGS’ PLM solutions provide an attractive proposition.”
- Dick Slansky and Ralph Rio, ARC Advisory Group
The Integration of UGS PLM into Siemens A&D (June 22, 2007)

“Barely two months after Siemens bought UGS, Siemens UGS PLM Software has already made progress in articulating where it’s taking its newly combined organization.”
“The design-to-manufacturing story is an important component of PLM, and the company is positioned well to support this.” - Michael Burkett, Jeffrey Hojlo, Simon Jacobson (AMR Research)
UGS PLM Software Post Siemens Acquisition: What to Expect (June 21, 2007)

As I have written before, we remain fully committed to investing in and growing our current PLM solution set. But we are also very excited about the future and the enhanced opportunities we will be able to provide to our customers over time. If you would like to see more of the information we presented at the Analyst and Media Forum, please contact your local UGS PLM Solutions representative who will be happy to share with you additional details about our solutions today and vision for tomorrow.