What are your reasons for migrating/converting your engineering data? Do you need to switch to a different system because the vendor no longer provides maintenance for the current system? Do you want to create a more homogeneous system landscape? Or do your customers have new requirements that are difficult to meet using your current systems?
Our years of experience, gained over the course of numerous migration projects, help us create a robust plan for your project following an in-depth analysis of existing data. Once properly prepared, we use our powerful tools to implement your project in a structured manner.
A change of system, for example switching to a new PDM/PLM system, means that inventory data has to be transferred to the new system environment. This is done via data migration. A key task in this context involves creating the data model in the target system in such a way that:
To ensure the best possible outcome, data migration needs be taken into consideration at the earliest possible point in time and be incorporated in the specification for the target system.
Switching to a different CAD system, on the other hand, requires data conversion. This involves converting the existing data into the native format of the new tool to ensure that design engineers are able to continue using the data that they have created over the years with the new system.
When switching to a new system, include planning your migration and conversion projects from the start so that the new system can go live on schedule.
Even if moving from source system to target system involves a migration path familiar from previous experience, every conversion and every migration is different for every customer. In addition to analyzing the data model and the type, quantity and quality of the inventory data, it is also important to check whether the source system exchanges data with other systems. This is, for example, the case when article master data is synchronized between PLM and ERP systems, BOMs are transferred to the ERP system, or change requests for product adaptations are managed in the ERP system.
It is a good idea to carry out a benchmark project or, better yet, a proof of concept (PoC) prior to the actual migration. A PoC is usually highly informative because it provides important insights into the subsequent course of the project, the quality of the results that can be achieved, and the time and effort involved. Although a PoC cannot completely rule out the likelihood that further measures and adaptations will be needed during the course of the project, it can greatly reduce it.
Regardless of whether migration, conversion or both are involved, it is important to first determine the architecture of the current data model and examine the existing data with regard to recency, consistency, and quality. If disruptions during the course of conversion and migration are to be avoided, the records need to be cleansed of any inconsistencies and corrupt data before final conversion and migration to the live environment. We help you determine which measures are needed.
Another important key to the success of your project is making sure that you create a detailed conversion/migration concept that is tailored to meet your specific needs, and then put it to the test using reference data.
Over the course of almost 10 years, the team at XPLM has gained a wealth of experience and extensive methodological expertise. Specializing in PLM and CAD system migration, they have developed their own comprehensive conversion and migration environment with its own powerful tools. This means that the experts know how to best migrate and convert the data during live operation.
When it comes to data migration projects, the team relies on XPLM BulkLoader in combination with individually developed ScriptEngines to implement even complex tasks reliably and as best possible.
The team not only relies on the use of a staging database to migrate data from exotic source systems but also to implement special requirements such as linking objects managed in different systems. A real-life example: A manufacturing bill of materials (MBOM) is created in the staging database by merging an engineering bill of materials (EBOM) originally created in PDM and an MBOM managed in ERP so that the result can be transferred to a PLM system.
With XPLM Conversion Factory, the XPLM migration team has developed a powerful environment in which XPLM Migration Manager and XPLM Conversion Manager can be used to explicitly control and monitor different conversion processes. The authoring tools generally determine the conversion tool. As a partner to Elysium, the team uses CADfeature to convert CAD models developed using parametric and non-parametric methods. The advantage of this tool is that it converts CAD data on the basis of features or as boundary representations (B-rep), i.e. the CAD data describes the solid models on the basis of the surfaces that bound the solid. The quality of the result data is very good, especially as it preserves the reference to with the derived drawings.
In the case of particularly large projects, the conversion processes can be parallelized via the XPLM Conversion Manager, which greatly speeds up throughput and thus the project as a whole. The motivation for developing the tool was a project involving approximately 1 million datasets containing 3D views and 100,000 drawings.
The XPLM migration and conversion team, which specializes in the integration of a wide range of authoring tools and systems from different engineering domains, possesses extensive engineering, system and process expertise. The migration and conversion projects that have already been implemented successfully are therefore correspondingly diverse. "Thanks to our many years of experience with migration projects and the flexibility with which we use migration and conversion tools, we can handle complex migration projects together with our customers and partners. Nothing is impossible, but it requires a long analysis and concept phase if the project is to be implemented successfully," Markus Kühl, Director PLM Service.
The prerequisites for successful conversion and migration projects are a detailed review of the current situation, a precise project specification and an in-depth proof of concept. This means that you should find an experienced team of experts who impress you with their know-how, methods and tool set.
