Rainer Mewaldt

Rainer is responsible for Application Management Services and Cloud Computing in the domain of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) of Atos. As a member of the Atos Scientific Community he is the global track leader for PLM. After graduating in Production Engineering in 1986, he was continuously active on the cutting edge of product creation and development. Responsible for PLM processes and applications inside industry companies for over a decade, he moved to IT consulting and service companies, managing complex projects and offering strategic guidance to their industry customers. Rainer is experienced in various industries like discrete manufacturing, automotive and high-tech like aerospace and healthcare, having profound knowledge in market leading PLM and engineering applications and system architectures. His strength is the ability to match the current and future challenges of a company in product creation with effective and efficient solutions on the process and IT layer.

PLM for Sustainability: the train is running … where?

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February 9th, 2012 Tags:
Posted in Strategy & Innovation, Trends

Designed Environment
Sustainability is a number one topic for product driven companies nowadays. Not a new finding. But it soaked through the whole supply chain meanwhile. “Green-washing” is less possible and companies are facing the challenge to engineer sustainability into their products. This is known as “Design for Environment” (DfE).

Engineers learned over decades how to predict mechanical behavior of components by using FEM analyses and virtual prototypes. It took at least the last decade to get accustom with requirements engineering and engineer to cost. How long will it take until average engineers have common tools and methods to predict the influence of design decisions on the environmental footprint?

Obviously actual PLM systems provide basic functionalities to handle environmental data. But they do not offer out-of-the-box functionality for analysis, relations and predictions. On the other hand, vendors like PE International offer specialized solutions, able to cover highly complex requirements of e.g. automotive OEMs.

The 80% of conventional companies are left in the cloud, do you agree with me?  Companies having demand for guidance and best practice as well as a simple set of PLM functions for the day to day DfE business of the ordinary engineer. Management of environmental data as an integrated part of the product data. Incorporated into the overall change and configuration management process and as naturally imbedded as any classification data. Functions to calculate and simulate environmental parameters throughout the part structure, including supplier and manufacturing alternatives.

Could be a good candidate for a showcase, don’t you think? Any volunteer for a pilot?

Paradigm shift in collaborative behaviors of companies – Part 2

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August 9th, 2011 Tags: , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized

Part 2 – What new challenge are we facing right now?

 

In the first part of my consideration, I illustrated the different collaborative behaviors of companies and what caused the paradigm shifts. I left you with the question: are we facing the next change towards a new level of maturity?

Frankly? You bet!

A growing number of companies realize the new pitfall they are in: the pitfall of lacking agility and innovative strength.

Knowing that most of today’s innovation (increasingly) require the collaboration of bright brains in different companies and that innovation processes usually are iterative and need openness and flexibility, it’s easy to predict that the current hierarchical dependencies are an obstacle. They are limiting the creativity as well as the willingness of individuals to contribute. The result of the whole intent depends on the abilities of the organization on top of the pyramid. read more

Paradigm shift in collaborative behaviors of companies

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July 18th, 2011 Tags: , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized

Part 1 – What has happened in the past?

 

Looking back in the history of collaborative behaviors in industry companies we see row of changing strategies, each spanning roughly a period of 10 years each. Of course, in detail these periods vary from industry to industry and company to company and the transition phases are considerable, but the big picture is clearly visible. Companies behave similar, defining business processes and setting up their IT alike until that specific strategy is facing more and more unsolved challenges, caught in a pitfall that is characteristic of that certain behavior.

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a collaborative business process par excellence. Hence it provides a perfect showcase to illustrate the changing strategies and the reasons for the paradigm shifts.

History of collaboration

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