The idea of digital transformation in manufacturing, i.e. that all the information needed to make appropriate and timely business decisions is available to anyone who needs it, is now part of future-facing industrial outlooks.

This is even truer in product development. While, in the past, design systems, CAD and PLM software were relegated to unconnected company silos, today, thanks mainly to the introduction of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), the production environment and design facilities are no longer isolated, but work together to meet the primary needs of the entire company: improving efficiency, and engaging stakeholders in dialog to improve quality and time to market.

Today, cutting-edge end-to-end PLM Software is able to enhance the use of information; if this type of solution is combined with the IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), then it forms the foundations for a proper Industry 4.0 implementation.

Smart products 
Products which integrate with the user experience in real time, generating and transmitting up-to-date information 

A transition model to the Smart & Connected Factory indeed requires a well-defined path that focuses on the awareness of available data and the definition of “digital product” which contains all the most relevant and up-to-date information on the product, and which integrates with the experience of that product. This is where a complete and innovative PLM system provides a solid engine for generating the necessary information, which is no longer scattered across different systems and difficult to update.
 
Through integrated IIoT and PLM solutions, the management of the entire product lifecycle can be optimized, from conception to creation, data management, pickup and aftersales service, with the following goals:

• Reducing errors in the product design phase, increasing quality, and optimizing time to market
• Generating dialog between stakeholders, enabling a simultaneous design process between partners, suppliers, and other teams
• Accelerating innovation in industrial processes by managing and analyzing data from machinery
• Improving customer retention through predictive maintenance, prescriptive analysis, and optimization of support through AR (Augmented Reality). 

A complete and innovative PLM system provides a solid engine for generating the necessary information, which is no longer scattered across different systems and difficult to update. Thanks to the PLM, manufacturers are able to manage complex cross-functional processes, coordinating the efforts of both internal and external distributed teams. Lutech’s PLM solution, PTC Windchill, enables teams to quickly access information and optimize working times, through:

By adopting a design process that enables companies to acquire the comprehensive digital prototype, they can detect and correct design errors and move to a simpler, simultaneous design process with partners, suppliers, other teams and disciplines.

In addition, companies can automate the creation and production of certain final design results. In this way, designers can speed up routine tasks such as importing a model, but also higher value ones, such as creating complex surfaces, renderings, and animations. This allow reduced cycle times to be achieved and employees can devote more time to higher value acivities.

In addition to PTC solutions for manufacturing, Lutech manages PLM projects for CPG (in the food, chemical, pharma and beauty sectors), thanks to the 3D Experience ENOVIA solution by Dassault Systèmes

Augmented reality can provide added value to your business in many areas:

• Production: increase technical expertise, optimize production output and reduce assembly errors
• Service: reduce service costs and resolution time, increase success rates
• Sales and Marketing: eliminate shipping of physical samples and provide customized immersive demos

Lutech's PTC solutions to open up the future to its industrial customers are ThingWorx and Vuforia. These solutions offer tools and technologies that enable the rapid development and implementation of powerful Industrial IoT applications and augmented reality (AR) experiences.

A key differentiating factor is the integration of ThingWorx and Vuforia® technologies, which allows large amounts of data to be conveyed and contextualized in a very short space of time. This translates into huge efficiency improvements for processes, with benefits that are passed on to the entire value chain.

The value of an AR solution integrated into an IoT platform is that the data which are managed and processed are fully available for the augmented reality model.

This allows, for example, those responsible for maintenance to view information from different information systems in Augmented Reality to have a list of the latest findings on each component. In addition, the operator will have safety information for the type of work to be carried out, assembly/disassembly sequences, and spreadsheets to update information in real time and speed up operating processes.

In conclusion, the use of integrated PLM, CAD and IoT platforms with additional Augmented Reality functions – such as those from world leader PTC, which Lutech provides to its customers in complex and structured manufacturing contexts – allows companies to automate processes as much as possible, to standardize the information flow through the different company application systems, to produce real-time analysis and simulations in a predictive and monitoring perspective and, finally, to monitor and optimize the performance of systems, processes and connected devices pursuing a single corporate goal of efficiency, quality and total control in the management of the product lifecycle.