You may have recently picked up the news about how Right Hemisphere has partnered to tightly integrate its technology into the Documentum platfor\m.  Not yet?

• Be sure to check out the news HERE
• You can even go to the EMC web site and see a presentation of the joint solution HERE

What better way to bring engineering data to downstream users than to incorporate CAD data directly into workflows driven by this enterprise document management standard??  The partnership is really a win-win-win for Right Hemisphere, EMC and our customers combined.  When we first started talking to EMC, they told us that as part of what manufacturing customers were doing with Documentum, that adding access to CAD data would be a big help for workflows like technical pub’s, MRO and digital assent management for marketing.  The issue was that there already were PLM systems for that and if they added CAD data into Documentum wouldn’t it be competing or duplicating those systems?  The solution was Right Hemisphere which could incorporate just about any native CAD format and process into a agnostic data type that could be searced and processed automatically depending on the requirements of the workflow or end user’s needs. 

By directly integrating Right Hemisphere’s infrastructure (Deep View, Deep Access and Deep Server), Documentum users have the ability to conduct federated searches for both documents and product data in a single environment.  This is VERY cool unto itself!  So how does the rest of the process work?  Once a user finds the correct product data, then “renditions” (EMC’s terminology for derivatives) can be generated and the document production and delivery process is off and running.  What is so powerful about this combined solution is that CAD data is now a native data-type in the Documentum environment that can be incorporated into complete end-to-end document production and delivery workflows with full change management supported.

Right Hemisphere’s goal is to enable the visual enterprise and the best way to do that is not force businesses to add new end user applications and/or changing processes, BUT enhance them visual product data that directly supports business processes downstream from engineering.  This partnership and integration allows a worldwide installed base of Documentum users to do just that…and the solution is available TODAY.  I am sure your EMC account manager would be happy to show you this new offering.  Check it out.

Regards,

Rix Kramlich

VP of Business Development and Marketing

April is always a big month here at Right Hemisphere.  Aside from kicking off a busy event schedule, we kick off our new fiscal year.  We’re pleased to announce that despite the challenging times we posted record results again for the year ending on March 31, 2009.  We cannot begin to voice the value of our customers in not only supporting the company’s growth but also supporting the company’s vision, which leads me to our next story…

The Right Hemisphere Customer Leadership Summit

On Monday April 13, we conducted out first Customer Leadership Summit at the Xona Resort in Phoenix.  10 of our best accounts took time out of their busy lives to sit down with Right Hemisphere to understand their needs, issues and discuss near and long term product direction.  What was interesting was not only the diversity in verticals (commercial aviation, defense, mining, medical equipment and others) was the diversity in departments represented.  An open discussion about how companies leveraged product data downstream was very eye opening as usage in areas like tech pub’s, service, manufacturing, simulation, supplier collaboration and other use cases were discussed.  One thing is for certain the Customer Leadership Summit is here to stay!

COE

The following week took Right Hemisphere to the annual COE event which was held in Seattle this year.  The event attracted 1,200 last year and this year brought in 800.  While that is not great, it is not a bomb.  The keynote was anchored by Kevin Fowler, Boeing’s vice president of systems integration, processes and tools, who talked about the broad goals for the 787 program.  It was really a very interesting and detailed overview of how they wanted to build on the 777 MBD success to develop a data pipeline to the entire value chain with the 787.  While he provided justified kudos for the ability of the CATIA product to handle the complex design challenges of building a heavily composite-based aircraft he pointed out the limitations of the of the overall DS infrastructure to deliver product data elsewhere including key areas such as manufacturing.  We, of course, were very happy to have Kevin point out the their EID project, which provides U3D-based PDF doc’s for 787 parts, was a great success and executed by none other that Right Hemisphere!  Its not often that Boeing mention’s their vendors and we expect to build on that success in other 787 use cases and programs going forward.

What is 6?

Good question!  Stay tuned to Deep 3D to find out more…

Regards,

Rix Kramlich

Vice President of Marketing & Business Development

Right Hemisphere

As a San Franciscan I can tell you that April 18, 1904 is universally regarded as both the worst and best day The City had in its history.  The earthquake and subsequent fires literally leveled huge portions of the city which had undergone explosive and largely ad hoc development since gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in the Sierra Foothills launching the Gold Rush of 1849.  In typical San Franciscan and American spirit, the displaced masses dusted off and began rebuilding with the opportunity to shed old conventions and pursue a vision that could have never been possible without the travesty.  Today San Francisco is a well organized and vibrant city that has directly benefited from the rebuilding made possible by the 1904 disaster.

On Monday The Institute for Supply Management released it results for January and the good news is that the index climbed from 32.9% in December to 35.6% in January.  The bad news is that any figure below 50% indicates contraction. So what does this all mean?  “It simply says we’re finding ourselves somewhere near the bottom,” said Norbert Ore, chair of the ISM factory survey committee, To turn back to our comparison to San Francisco it says that the shaking has stopped and most of the big fires are out but as the picture above suggests we may have the worst behind us but the landscape around us is looking pretty bleak.

Again, like San Francisco, we are seeing companies looking to forge new directions and rebuild business processes and systems in ways that they may not have had incentive to pursue in times past.  Fundamental questions about how companies plan to accelerate revenue and lower costs are at the heart of the issues we see being debated and addressed today at leading manufacturers.  IT innovation has always been about automating manual tasks as they relate to critical business processes.  This is at the heart of Right Hemisphere’s technical capabilities and core value proposition.  What we are also seeing are requirements that relate to being able to deliver business value NOW and LEVERAGE as much preexisting investment in systems and processes.  What that means is that “Visonware” pitches that cannot be backed up by successful implementations are not lasting very long in the funded initiatives that still exist.  Furthermore any solution that requires a “rip and replace” strategy are similarly being pushed aside quickly as well.

A good example of what I am talking about above is being proven out in the real world and summated well by our recent announcement of Spirit AreoSystems selection of Right Hemisphere’s Visual manufacturing solution.  It encapsulates much of everything I mentioned above and we continue to see progress in terms of major manufactures adopting Right Hemisphere-based solutions.  The concept of leveraging engineering data to downstream users is not new, but having a proven, flexible and scalable solution to do it is.  A colleague and I were recently citing Geoffrey Moore’s famous “Crossing the Chasm” maxim from 1991 as a pointer to what we believe is happening here.  Given the very difficult state of the economy my colleague suggested that it is more like being “Kicked Over the Chasm”.  All chiding aside, we are very aware of how difficult a world it is out there for manufacturers and we are working closely with them as true partners to make fundamental changes in how they do business and execute their core business processes.

Rix Kramlich

Vice President of Marketing & Business Development

Right Hemisphere

One of the new features I want to review in Deep Exploration 5.5+ is the addition of Procedures to the Steps User Interface (UI).  In fact we renamed the UI to “Steps & Procedures”. 

To activate Steps & Procedures UI:

Right Click > Menu Area > Select > Steps & Procedures

Procedures are essentially a group of Steps, and can be used for a wide variety of solutions.

 Steps & Procedures Use Cases:

• Real-time 3D visual manufacturing work instructions.
• Real-time 3D maintenance procedures.
• Technical Illustrations
• Training
• Sales & Marketing

 New Procedure Features:

• Expand & Collapse Procedure to view Steps within a Procedure.
• Multiple Procedures supported in .RH file. Examples:
  • Assembly Procedure
  • Disassembly Procedure
  • Maintenance Procedure
• Double Left Click on Procedure to Play all Steps.
• Direct Text Editing of Procedure Name
• Play selected Procedure will Play all Steps contained within a Procedure or selected Procedures.
• Reset selected Procedure will reset the 3D Scene and all Animation Sequences to the first Step within the selected Procedure.
• Reset to End of selected Procedure will jump the 3D Scene to the last Step within a Procedure and to the end position of any attached Animation Sequences within the last Step.
• Rt Click > New Procedure
• Rt Click > Rename Procedure
• Rt Click > Delete Procedure – Deletes the Procedure and all Steps within the Procedure, but does not delete Animation Sequences.
• Rt Click > Duplicate – Duplicates a selected Procedure and all Steps within the selected Procedure
• Rt Click > Duplicate & Reverse a selected Procedure enables the automatic creation of an Assembly Procedure from a Disassembly Procedure and visa versa.
• Rt Click > Reverse Procedure – Reverses the Order of the Steps within a Procedure and reverses the Animation Sequences Order and direction within the Steps
• Procedure Thumbnail v5.7+
• Procedure Description v5.7+

 Procedure Limitations:

• You can’t have a Procedure within a Procedure

 New Step Features

• Play selected Step or Steps.
• Multi select Steps using Shift and or Ctrl Keys for moving and deleting Step selections.
• Single Left Mouse click Step Thumbnail to Play Step.
• Direct Text Editing of Step Name & Step Description – enables quick editing of Step Properties without having to open the Steps Properties dialog.
• Rt Click > New Procedure from selected Steps will create a New Procedure that contains duplicates of the selected Steps.
• Rt Click > Update Render Mode will update a selected Steps render mode to the current render mode state.
• Rt Click > Selected Steps “Move To” and “Add To” a Procedure.
• Rt Click > Render to Raster Image file.
• Rt Click > Render to Video file will render selected Step or Steps and Animation Sequences to a .AVI file or frames including Step subtitles.
• Rt Click > Render to Vector Image file.
• Rt Click > Sequence Highlight will automatically highlight all objects that are animated within attached Animation Sequences per Step.
• Rt Click > Selection Highlight will highlight any selected objects.
• Output Size options are now persistent per Step.
• Create Dummy Sequence for Each New Step (See Step Options Dialog Below)
• Drag & Drop Animation Sequences Onto Steps v5.7+
• Show Subtitles per Step v5.7+

Animation Sequences

• Direct Editing of Animation Sequence Name
• Reorder Animation Sequences by dragging within Animation Pane.
• Rt Click > Sort by Name option
• Rt Clck > Duplicate and Reverse a selected Animation Sequence
• Rt Click > Combine Sequences will merge multiple selected Animation Sequences into a Single Sequence
• Drag & Drop Animation Sequences Onto Steps v5.7+

As you can see we have done a great deal of work on the authoring of Steps & Procedures to make vertical solutions easy to author.  I hope you enjoy the new features and visit our Support Forums or Knowledge Base to ask questions or look for an answer to common questions.

Regards,

Lars Olson
Product Manager

No, its not the sequel to the Dickens novel, rather a perspective from three stops on our recent Advent of Visual Manufacturing Seminar tour.

Over the past couple weeks; I was fortunate in being able to represent Right Hemisphere alongside David Prawel from Longview Advisors in presenting a perspective on the challenges facing manufacturing companies today. And how these challenges are driving the need for deployment and adoption of Visual Manufacturing methods throughout the product lifecycle. David authored an intriguing whitepaper on the topic which became the foundation for the presentation. You can download a copy of the whitepaper at the Longview Advisor site http://www.longviewadvisors.com or on the Right Hemisphere site http://www.righthemisphere.com for your reference as well.

During the tour we dovetailed two COE (CATIA Operators Exchange) events, the Automotive Workshop in Detroit and the Aerospace Workshop in Wichita, we also visited the Great Northwest city of Seattle – Boeing country. So why did I chose to title this blog entry “The Tale of 3 Cities”? It is an attempt to describe the stark differences in the opinions, attitudes and general market outlook being articulated by those attending these specific events.

The COE show in Detroit was lightly attended and most of the discussion was centered on how the economic conditions in the US were causing strife in the automotive markets and putting pressure on the entire supply chain associated with this industry. There was talk about the speculated merger between GM and Chrysler and what impact that would have on the market and jobs.  All were concerned about the continued threat of foreign competition and the window of opportunity the US financial and economic conditions presented for greater innovation market penetration by these companies. Even though David’s research and our presentation confirmed that the standardization and optimization of processes through the leverage of 3D design models throughout the lifecycle will help improve productivity, reduce training time, provide flexibility in resource utilization and truly enable getting more done with less resources, I left Detroit wondering if these companies would recognize the value of Visual Manufacturing especially in this time of difficulty.

So on to Wichita, the host city for the COE Aerospace Workshop and the improbable hub of the aerospace industry located in the heartland of America. Here the world seemed quite different. Attendance was much better at this event and the discussions were not about the strife in the industry but rather the demands being placed on these companies to deliver product on time, on budget and with the level of quality and reliability customers in this sector demand. A really different conversation!

It was clear that these companies were looking for ways to improve their manufacturing methods and practices. They understood that 3D modeling had improved the design of their products but had little impact on manufacturing processes. Visual Manufacturing was high on their list of priorities as they saw the benefits of the approach. Time after time we heard the benefits of improved visual aids on the shop floor in assembling complex subsystems of their aircraft and the ability to integrate 3D models to the manufacturing process for automated change management. Ironic that the mid-America town of Wichita has become a thought leader in manufacturing process optimization – funny how product demand can drive manufacturing innovation.

Next stop Seattle, which had very much the same feel as Wichita – this event was not connected to COE, but the attendees of the luncheon were predominantly from Boeing and they “got it”…in fact, they had tried to build some Visual Manufacturing technologies on their own, only to find it difficult to adapt to the various 3D file structures and to build applications downstream that were effective for non-CAD literate users. But clearly there were the same issues and needs articulated by those in Wichita. The major difference between the companies in Wichita and THE Company in Seattle was the scale, complexity and magnitude of the issues. This is probably why they tried something on their own and their sense of urgency around exploring solutions in this area was of high priority.

It became clear that manufacturers with complex products such as aircraft were trying to better the manufacturing environment with improved work instructions and visual aids, but found it difficult to stay current with the changes and customizations in their designs. An integrated environment with automated change management from design to manufacturing was the answer they were looking for. But when looking at deploying solutions for Visual Manufacturing it is also important to remember that this is the “life-blood” process for these companies – if the solution substantively disrupts this process, it will be met with strong resistance.

So all in all, the trip went well and the Tale of Three Cities was written with one common theme – those who understood the concepts and value of Visual Manufacturing were keen on deploying it, those who were distracted by other issues will get around to it – eventually…

Bob Merlo

Director of Worldwide Marketing

Right Hemisphere

Spend a couple of minutes checking out this comprehensive video overview of Right Hemisphere’s technical illustration solution by our resident expert Gary Burns

Enjoy!

This news is just in from the government which is very interesting and reflective of what we are seeing in the real world.

 “New orders for manufactured durable goods in September increased $1.6 billion or 0.8 percent to $207.8 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This was the fourth increase in the last five months and followed a 5.5 percent August decrease. Excluding transportation, new orders decreased 1.1 percent. Excluding defense, new orders decreased 0.6 percent.”

http://www.census.gov/indicator/www/m3/index.htm

While the bad news is that overall durable good orders are down a good 1.1%, the overall number was up almost a full percentage point.  Why was that?  In a word; aircraft.  New aircraft orders soared and it will simply compound an issue we see in the market relative to backorders in the A&D market.  Companies are making it a priority to make significant percentage gains in the ability to move aircraft through the production process in order to ship product and realize revenue. 

We sponsored a research piece in the spring called “MBD for the Masses” from CPDA and it uncovered telling feedback that has direct bearing on why we are seeing a surge in adoption of visual manufacturing initiatives today:

“Most companies indicated that their first priority centered on the communication between design engineering and the manufacturing realm, both with manufacturing process planners who decided and detailed how a product would be manufactured and with production and assembly staff on the manufacturing floor.”

This insight, in turn, is translating into initiatives focused on connecting PLM to MES environments to integrate and automate how data is processed and delivered to drive manufacturing efficiencies.  They key issue is being able to provide accurate representations of each plane and its associated interactive visual work instructions based on configuration data from the ERP system and product data from the PLM system. Based on our standing room only ‘Visual Manufacturing’ seminar event the other day at COE Wichita, interest in finding out how to address these issues is very high.

To learn more feel free to check out the following links:

“MBD for the Masses” on demand webinar with CPDA

http://www.righthemisphere.com/webinar/mbd/registration_recordedWebcast.php

“The Advent of Visual Manufacturing” on demand webinar with Longview Asc

http://www.righthemisphere.com/webinar/visualManufacturing/registration_recordedWebcast.php

Stay tuned for more on this subject.

Regards,

Rix Kramlich

Vice President of Marketing & Business Development

Right Hemisphere

Many thanks to Andy Morris who is the President of Visual Aircraft in Austin, TX for giving us the okay to share these short tutorials they have created to show off different uses of Deep Exploration. You can learn more about Visual Aircraft at http://visualaircraft.com or look these and other videos up on YouTube.

Thanks again Andy!

Deep Exploration 5 Tutorial

Deep Exploration 5 IETM Example PDF

Our creative team has been hard at work to building new materials that better show off the scope of Right Hemisphere products and solutions.  Enjoy this latest work!

Given the fact that its election season, I thought I’d channel James Carville for a little ‘liberal’ interpretation of his most famous quote.  But what does this all mean?  Well,  over the last couple of months we have been very busy launching a number of derivative versions of our Deep Server product to accommodate new market opportunities.  The Deep Server Enterprise Edition is a version that is line with what we have been offering to date via our direct channel to large manufacturing entities looking for scalable, robust and customizable solutions to core business problems.  Our new ‘Workgroup Edition” is a lower cost, less scalable version of our enterprise product tuned to the needs of departments or SMB’s that our expanding VAR channel will represent.  The last version is our ‘View Edition’ that is dedicated to generating content for partners that OEM our Deep View technology *into* their product.  As we have mentioned in this forum before, SAP PLM has done this and they rolled out the story to analysts and customers on September 15 at their annual ASUG conference in Nashville.  We were on hand to directly participate in this effort and even presented at their analyst day.  Below is a write up from Dick Slansky from ARC Advisory Group that captures the gist of what the story was;

SAP PLM Focuses on End-to-End Business Processes

By Dick Slansky, ARC Advisory Group

It was clear that SAP was articulating an enterprise strategy that involved the PLM, SCM, and Mfg. domains along with a very process-driven approach that integrates product design, manufacturing build, and services in a holistic end-to-end approach.  Additionally, SAP envisions this process-centric approach as a way to deliver more value to their customers by enabling them to optimize and streamline the overall design/build/support process which can ultimately lead to increased productivity and market response.

…and then he goes on to talk about Right Hemisphere’s role in fulfilling this vision:

[Right Hemisphere] provides the capability for SAP PLM 7.0 to extend and integrate product data across all business processes that involve not only PLM domains, but also ERP, SCM, MES, and Mfg operations.

What SAP and RH are doing is taking a historically engineering centric definition of PLM and making a business centric solution wherein product data is distributed across multiple silos, business processes and business applications.  The key is that their product is the catalyst and has unique and common integration capabilities that make this viable.  What we are learning here and at so many other customer sites is simply that businesses what to leverage and add value to their investment in the systems and processes that allow their company to operate, not necessarily to change them.  So in order to do that you need to understand the nature of the business’ problem, how they work today and then work back through the processes and supporting systems to solve that problem.  What we are seeing over and over is the need to bring engineering data seamlessly into these environments in a way that adapts to the end user’s needs. That means delivering data in a way that is accurate, useful and in the context of how they work.

So it really ends up being all about delivery in terms of fulfilling an overall PLM strategy.  This is an area that we are very focused on and in the coming months you will be hearing more from us about this particular subject.  Given the nature of the world economy today, businesses will be required to be able to do much more with what investments they have made to markedly improve top line growth first and foremost and then reduced cost in conjunction.  What will be of paramount importance will be the ability to extend existing systems and processes to make everyone across the value chain more productive and accountable to the bottom line…and this is what our next developments will continue to improve upon and enable. Stay tuned.

Regards,

Rix Kramlich

Vice President of Marketing & Business Development

Right Hemisphere

PS: Come out and see David Prawel of Longwood Asc and Right Hemishpere LIVE at our continuing Visual Manufacturing Seminar Series next week (Oct 27-30) at COE Witchita, Seattle and El Segundo (LA)!  Click on the link above to learn more and register.