Siemens PLM adopts S1000D to tackle sharing of technical information

Already adopted in aerospace and defense industries, use of the standard in Teamcenter adds efficiency.

By Control Engineering Staff May 7, 2009

Siemens PLM Software, a business unit of the Siemens Industry Automation Division, has

Head-mounted display, virtual training system for the US Army from Inergi, www.inergi.com , was designed using Teamcenter software.

announced support for the independent S1000D technical publication standard within the integrated content management portion of its Teamcenter software suite. Already adopted throughout the aerospace and defense industries, the use of the standard within Teamcenter adds efficiency.

“S1000D is being embraced due to its designed intent to reduce the time and costs associated with publishing, exchanging and maintaining technical information,” says Steve Bashada, vice president of Teamcenter Applications. “Teamcenter users already had the ability to fully synchronize product documentation activities with product engineering activities. With today’s announcement, we can now enable all of our customers producing and exchanging technical publications to experience the efficiency provided by the S1000D standard.”

In manufacturing today, the technical information about a product’s systems, subsystems and components comes from many suppliers. S1000D takes a data-centric approach to the storage and publication of technical information so content is broken down into re-usable “data modules.” These data modules are managed in Teamcenter as a standard compliant Common Source Database (CSDB), then retrieved and assembled to meet pre-defined business and structural requirements.

Using Teamcenter with S1000D support, customers can easily change, control and configure technical information in a collaborative environment that ensures documentation will be synchronized. The result is the opportunity to produce more sophisticated documentation in less time and at a significantly reduced cost.

Siemens PLM Connection annual conference will be held June 1-4, 2009, in Nashville, TN.

Pulling publications staff into engineeringThe content management capability in Teamcenter is a dynamic publishing solution integral to the overall PLM process, enabling companies to automate the assembly and publishing of product or service information in multiple languages and formats. The offering treats product-related documentation as an intrinsic part of the product itself. Using this content management solution, companies can develop richer, more interactive and accurate documentation that is synchronized with the underlying product data. Teamcenter also makes it easy to localize documentation with multiple language support, compile content to reflect product variants, or adapt to match a customized product and deliver that content by appropriate means.

“S1000D is having a major impact on publications in the A&D space,” according to Rick Schochler, COO of Crowell Solutions, a Dallas, Texas based consultancy specializing in business intelligence, content management/S1000D and application development. “One of the major topics that groups are dealing with is how best to handle parts information within an S1000D environment. The ability to reuse product data straight from the engineering source is a huge advantage to writers who need to insure part information is accurate with respect to product configuration. Teamcenter content management provides the ability to do this by pulling publications staff into the engineering repository and sharing that info.”

Parts designed by Intelligraph using Teamcenter software.

Siemens PLM Connection annual conference will be held June 1-4, 2009 in Nashville, TN. See the website for information and registration.

For more information on Siemens PLM Software products and services, visit www.siemens.com/plm

All images shown here were received from Siemens PLM customers participating in the 2009 Global Calendar Program .

– Edited by Renee Robbins , senior editor Control Engineering System Integration eNewsletter Register here and scroll down to select your choice of eNewsletters free

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