In the past decade or so of our coverage of numerous topics in the enterprise applications space, every now and then, we come across a vendor whose value proposition, product offering, and install base deserve much more credit and awareness than IT pundits acknowledge. One example of this is privately-funded Omnify Software, the Andover, Massachusetts, (US)-based provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions. The vendor’s product content management solutions have helped over 200 original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and tier two and tier three electronic manufacturing services (EMS) providers shorten development cycles, accelerate product innovation, and improve profitability.
Most of Omnify’s customers are companies with less than $500 million (USD) in revenues. Some are even pre-revenue startups, with the Omnify Empower PLM suite being their very first system of record, given they have no need for a transactional back-office system yet. Given that the vendor’s solution currently supports only English, the Omnify’s primary geographic markets are North America and Europe (specifically the United Kingdom and the Nordic region), with the industries served being electronics, mechanical, medical devices, and defense.
Omnify’s PLM modules have been successfully deployed with over 1,000 installed individual user licenses (in a floating, concurrent user licensing manner) within various businesses, helping them to more efficiently develop products, including wireless network platforms, soft-switch gateways, enterprise border controllers, advanced voice services platforms, aerospace navigation and control systems, digital and sonar imaging products, patient monitoring technology, and semiconductor equipment. As mentioned, Omnify customers encompass an array of business types, from start-ups such as Pacific Biosciences, Rivulet Communications, Still River Systems, and Wavestream to well-established corporations that include L3 Communications, Astronics, Acme Packet, and Cynosure.
Besides its headquarters in Andover, Omnify has offices on the US East and West Coasts. In addition to providing direct sales, consulting, and support services, Omnify Software has established a network of partners to deliver its PLM solutions as business ready. Currently, the vendor has 10 value-added resellers (VARs), which cover the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Nordic countries, which have the expertise and experience to help plan, install, and support the Omnify PLM solutions. Omnify assigns a channel sales representative to each reseller group, which, together with the direct sales force, adds up to over 100 sales and applications support personnel.
Omnify Software Genesis
Omnify Software evolved from Trilogic, Inc., the largest electronic design automation (EDA) VAR in the United States, and still a major Omnify reseller. In 1998, after many years of consulting with customers to help them create or define board-level design process flows and component information databases, Trilogic began to develop the Omnify Tool Suite. The result is today’s PLM system, which addresses the needs of companies seeking to improve their overall concept-to-design-to-manufacturing process.
The origin of Omnify technology is a universal bill of material (BOM) system developed in 1998 by the Omnify founders, and which is still in use by numerous OEMs today. OmniBOM is Omnify's BOM creation and processing tool for creating, editing and processing BOMs. With OmniBOM, users can import BOMs generated in other systems or formats (such as computer-aided design [CAD] and computer-aided engineering [CAE]), normalize, check, and analyze the data; and then automatically feed BOMs directly to other systems such as ERP/MRP or any downstream tool to easily integrate engineering BOMs with manufacturing systems.
According to one case study, OmniBOM provides a clear, concise view of all the changes to the initial BOM, and BOM comparisons are used to catch changes in the BOM from the customer, down to a single-digit change in the manufacturing part number. OmniBOM is lauded, by one customer, as its “most valued daily-use documentation tools [which also] ... enhances documentation communication with [its] customers ....” (For more commentary, visit http://www.omnifysoft.com/customers/Omnify-IMS-PLM-SuccessStory.pdf)
In any case, the PLM technology development began at Omnify in 2000 in earnest. In September of 2001, the Omnify product suite came to fruition with its first beta customer installations, while first customer shipments of the PLM system began in early 2002. Omnify Software was later incorporated in October of 2002. The solid electronic design and manufacturing process knowledge, and customer service-oriented background of the Omnify founders has given the company both a strong sensitivity to customer needs and a deep knowledge of what it takes to integrate engineering concepts, data management, and business systems.
Reflecting this customer-oriented philosophy, the company remains focused on allowing its customers to have a direct impact on the direction of the Omnify technology, ensuring a solution that truly meets their customers’ specific product development needs. To maintain this strategy, which has been in place since the company’s inception, Omnify technology provides an open-architecture PLM system that gives direct access for all groups involved in design and manufacturing processes and allows relatively easy integration to existing engineering and manufacturing systems.
Fast forward to early 2008 when Omnify Software announced exceptionally strong year-end results for 2007, exceeding revenue goals, increasing sales by 30 percent over 2006, and remaining profitable for another year. Omnify has reported steady growth, year after year, as the company continues to deliver comprehensive PLM solutions. The launch of Omnify's next-generation PLM solution, Empower PLM, was reportedly a key factor in the company's 2007 success.
Omnify recently transitioned its PLM technology platform to Microsoft .NET Framework in order to leverage advanced technology that provides a faster and more secure environment. The Framework enhances Omnify's existing open platform for third-party integrations and offers easier customization of user interfaces (UIs) and reports through Web services. This further supports Omnify's commitment to delivering a system that is easy to implement without disrupting existing processes.
While the product suite will be detailed shortly, for now, it suffices to highlight that project management, quality and corrective and preventive action (CAPA) management, and training record management are a few of the key new features or modules in Empower PLM. This new functionality has extended the capabilities of the system beyond traditional PLM to give users direct access to important product data that is often managed in separate systems. Empower PLM thus provides a mechanism to capture design, manufacturing, quality, service, and customer information and tie it back to the product record all within a single environment.
PLM’s Value Proposition, Revisited
Due to constantly changing product content information and shrinking product life cycles, electronics OEM and EMS providers need to enhance communications throughout the design-to-manufacturing process. Omnify Software offers a solution that streamlines the flow of product information among the design environment, both within the enterprise and its supply chain.
The drivers behind Omnify’s existence start with the typical (and yet unfortunate) disconnect between the engineering and manufacturing departments, where manufacturing is not aware of new product releases and revisions, while engineering is unaware of design issues impacting manufacturing and procurement processes. To make things worst, the traditional manual or paper-based processes mean no automated part request process and no electronic engineering change order (ECO) processing. As a result, everyone relies on ineffective (if not even counter-productive) means, like e-mails, faxes or phone calls, and spreadsheets to correct problems.
Last but not least, enterprise systems are still not integrated across all disciplines, so islands of information still exist. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems do not contain enough product data and are difficult to integrate into engineering tools. In other words, due to the inherent transactional purpose of an ERP system, most do not contain the detailed information that engineers need to drive design, including part specifications, design and test notes, and vendor-supplied documentation. In addition, ERP systems typically do not provide the security or capability to enable external manufacturing or supplying partners with direct access to product data or the ability to participate in development processes (for more information, see Can ERP Speak PLM?).
With no enabling technology to collaborate with external resources, the engineering department usually has no system to help manage “pre-release” product data. To that end, the PLM software enables companies to manage and support all the information surrounding their various products and parts—from the initial idea and subsequent design and engineering diagrams via BOMs, manufacturing documents, sourcing details, and maintenance data to product discontinuation, in other words, a “cradle to grave” cycle).
As its name suggests, PLM software was designed to manage product data throughout the entire product lifecycle, but is crucial during the design phase, where engineers need instant access to product data, including specifications, engineering parameters, and documentation. A sound PLM system centralizes all of this information for easy access by all team members by tracking and managing component data, BOMs, product documentation, engineering changes, and revisions, as well as compliance data. PLM systems should also offer the flexibility to support the many iterations of a design before it reaches the prototype and manufacturing phases.
A contemporary PLM system is composed of several elements, including foundational integration technologies like extensible markup language (XML)-based Web services (see Understanding SOA, Web Services, BPM, BPEL, and More) or more traditional enterprise application integration (EAI) tools. Its core functions typically entail data vaults; document and content management; workflow and program (portfolio) management; and information authoring tools and functional applications (see Critical Components of an E-PLM System).
The various sets of these PLM systems’ highly configurable software modules should be easily integrated with underlying engineering, design, and product data systems. Smaller companies often start with basic PDM to provide broader access and reliable documentation, but once the data is under control, more sophisticated workflow, collaborative design, and project portfolio management (PPM) or program management might follow (see The Many Faces of PLM).
Thus, one of the key components of a PLM system is that it provides an automated change management facility that allows dispersed team members to electronically propose product changes (so-called “redlines”) to BOMs, documents, and vendor or supplier information. By leveraging a workflow engine, these changes are then automatically routed to the appropriate resources for electronic signatures, and once all constituents have approved the change, the PLM system automatically updates the affected products with the suggested changes and then provides the updated information to the ERP system.
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