PLM News | Press Releases

Aras^®, the next leader in enterprise Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software, today announced that the Schaeffler Group, a global integrated automotive and industrial supplier, has selected the Aras Innovator® platform to support its Engineering Cockpit application. Schaeffler´s Engineering Cockpit provides up to 20,000 users with role-based access to information across multiple disciplines, interfaces, systems, and authoring tools to make better decisions. The collaboration with Schaeffler is the first result of the partnership between Aras and IBM that was announced in December last year.

Digital transformation is one of the key issues at Schaeffler. The Engineering Cockpit application is one of the central tools to connect all disciplines and systems. The Engineering Cockpit is a web-based application allowing direct access to development data for a large number of development centers. It supports the company-wide configuration and change management in the initial phase.

To achieve Schaeffler’s requirements for the Engineering Cockpit and to align with the overall digital transformation strategy, the company was looking for a platform that addresses the business needs on the one hand for flexibility, extensibility and redundancy-free project documentation, and for full support of tasks along the product lifecycle on the other hand.

Schaeffler will use Aras Innovator to improve the following key areas:

• deliver a company-wide solution for the configuration and change management process for the Engineering Change Process in six months
• enable Schaeffler’s data integrity and product configuration control company-wide for the product engineering domain
• efficient management of service requests
• cross-disciplined communication as product data and engineering processes are spread over the whole supplier chain
• overarching project coordination
• management reporting and decision support
• integration with enterprise systems (SAP, PTC Windchill etc.)

With its PLM platform, Aras ensures flexibility to connect the different systems of each discipline within a data-based product development process creating the conditions for the Digital Thread and for integration of the IoT platform. The Aras solution delivers a deep integration between systems engineering and the embedded software development tools (ALM/MBSE) within the Engineering Cockpit product configuration control. Additionally, the solution enables analytics from and with the digital platform focusing on system development metrics initially.

“With Aras, we are entering a new sphere of data integration. At Schaeffler, we want to digitally optimize processes and procedures as well as create new service-oriented processes. The next logical step is a deeper integration of our current systems and the data exchange related to that company-wide,” says Dirk Spindler, Senior Vice President R&D at Schaeffler.

“Our platform integrates current systems and enables Schaeffler to preserve investments. By integration we are able to deliver access to all disciplines and processes of the Business of Engineering as well as a configuration and change management,”, says Peter Schroer, Founder and CEO of Aras. “Aras is proud to support, in cooperation with IBM, one of the largest automotive suppliers’ digital agenda.”

About Schaeffler
The Schaeffler Group is one of the world’s leading integrated automotive and industrial suppliers. The company stands for the highest quality, outstanding technology, and strong innovative ability. Its precision components and systems for engines, transmissions, and chassis as well as rolling and plain bearing solutions for a wide range of industrial applications make the Schaeffler Group a key contributor to the “Mobility for tomorrow.” The technology company generated sales of approximately 13.3 billion euros in 2016. With around 85,000 employees, Schaeffler is one of the world’s largest companies in family ownership. It has a worldwide network of manufacturing locations, research and development facilities, and sales companies at approximately 170 locations in over 50 countries.

About Aras
We offer the best Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software for global businesses with complex products and processes. Resilient PLM platform technology makes Aras more scalable, flexible and upgradable for the world’s largest organizations, and a full set of applications provide complete functionality for the business of engineering. Customers include Airbus, GE, Hitachi, Honda, Huntington Ingalls, Kawasaki, Motorola and XEROX. Aras is privately held with global headquarters in Andover, Mass. More at www.aras.com and Twitter @aras_plm