New enterprise product-line engineering solution from BigLever extends PLE to Advance Digitalization

Supplier of Product Line Engineering (PLE) tools BigLever Software now offers next-generation Enterprise Gears software. The new software delivers a web-based interface (that makes Gears fully accessible for all users) and a server API that enables seamless integration of PLE with other tools, processes, and enterprise systems.

With Enterprise Gears an organization can advance and accelerate its digitalization efforts by implementing a feature-based PLE approach throughout the enterprise and across product lines.

“Organizations face enormous challenges in managing the complexity of product variation across the interconnected engineering and operations lifecycle,” said Dr. Charles Krueger, CEO of BigLever Software. “This complexity continues to grow with the Internet of Things (IoT) and other emerging digital technologies. Digitalization is key for companies to remain competitive, yet these efforts can be greatly impeded when a unified, enterprise-wide variant management solution is missing.

“Enterprise Gears lets organizations leverage the full power of feature-based PLE to fill this gap. Now, digitalization initiatives can be expanded and accelerated by using PLE to manage product diversity, not only across the engineering lifecycle, but also throughout the full enterprise lifecycle from portfolio planning and engineering to supply chain, manufacturing, sales and service.”

Some of the world’s largest forward-thinking organizations are using feature-based PLE to gain competitive advantage through order-of-magnitude improvements in productivity, time-to-market, portfolio scalability and product quality. BigLever’s Enterprise Gears PLE solution offers the only complete, out-of-the-box Feature Content Management (FCM) system, which allows companies to easily capture, share and manage product features across the product line, as well as across tools, processes and organizational functions. With the FCM system provided by Gears, companies can establish a “single source of feature truth” for an entire product family – eliminating the need for multiple feature management techniques across the enterprise. This breaks down organizational silos and improves communication.

“Digital technologies are creating a new level of complexity, expanding product engineering boundaries into a broader ecosystem,” said Michelle Boucher, Tech-Clarity’s VP of Research for Engineering Software. “This new ecosystem cuts across disciplines for developing, managing and evolving product lines and requires tight integration with multiple enterprise data sources, systems and tools.”

“BigLever’s new server API should help companies connect with enterprise systems and applications for a consolidated view of variant feature options across the product line. The web-based interface should make this variant information available to more groups, including those with non-technical roles. These new enterprise-level capabilities should support better collaboration and lead to greater efficiency.”

A web-based interface provides all users with browser-based, role-specific access to the appropriate view of Gears they need to do their jobs. This makes Gears fully accessible and easy to use for everyone – enabling PLE to be more quickly adopted and implemented across organizational functions.
The Gears Server API connects Enterprise Gears with existing enterprise systems or custom interfaces … for sharing feature content information and generating new views. The API integrates with other sources and digital initiatives, allowing organizations to capture FCM data that can be used, analyzed or manipulated in other applications such as portfolio management, ERP and sales configurator apps.

Supporting Digitalization Initiatives

Enterprise Gears supports IoT and digitalization by automating and simplifying the creation and management of digital twins. A manufacturer uses digital twins – virtual representations of a physical product or object – to remain connected to its products after they leave the factory. When these digital twins have been produced using a feature-based PLE approach, the manufacturer cantrack, maintain and evolve each product based on the specific features that the product contains. This capability is critical in industries such as automotive, which is using IoT to remain digitally connected to 70 million new feature-unique automobile digital twins each year, conducting ongoing and preventative maintenance and product upgrades.

In addition to Enterprise Gears, BigLever will continue to offer the current Gears version for those who need or want the full desktop Gears experience.

BigLever Software is the long-standing leader in the Product Line Engineering (PLE) field. BigLever’s holistic onePLE solution delivers the leading-edge Gears technology, proven methodology, business strategy and organizational change expertise needed to efficiently transition to and operate a game-changing PLE practice. The company’s state-of-the-art PLE methods and tools provide one unified, automated approach for feature-based variant management. This approach extends across the full lifecycle, including engineering and operations disciplines; software, electrical, and mechanical domains; and tool ecosystem. Some of the world’s largest forward-thinking organizations across a spectrum of industries are leveraging BigLever’s PLE solution to engineer their competitive advantage through order-of-magnitude improvements in productivity, time-to-market, portfolio scalability and product quality. BigLever Software is based in Austin, Texas. For more information, visit www.biglever.com.