Introduction
Three years ago a group of big name suppliers of computer-aided design and manufacturing software met with their customers in a strategy forum organised by PDD, the London-based product design and development consultancy (www.pdd.co.uk). The aim was to discuss trends in the industry and examine whether customers were getting what they wanted from the wide range of software available. Overall the results were very positive, and both "sides" were keenly aware of how vital a weapon Cadcam is in the battle to improve productivity, raise quality and reduce time-to-market. A report on the discussions appeared in the Financial Times of June 17, 1998.

Since then, there have been dramatic developments in this space. The internet, which only just registered as a factor in the 1998 discussions, has transformed the business environment for Cadcam vendors - who now see themselves as providing one of the key enabling technologies in what is variously called "collaborative commerce," "collaborative product development," and, most commonly "product lifecycle management." Customers, too, are coming to grip with this new world, in which many of the relationships that are crucial to the product development process can be conducted on the internet.

Few would have been able to predict three years ago the emergence (and, in some cases, subsequent disappearance) of online trading exchanges or imagine how widely the internet would come to be used across large manufacturing organisations, especially in the US. Nor was their any reference to the possibility of conducting transactions via mobile phones.

With new possibilities emerging, customers have the opportunity to revolutionise their approach to product design and development. But how many of them are aware of the possibilities, or ready to exploit them? Do worries about security and keeping information up-to-date persist, and are different parts of the organisation really making use of the web to get the information they need from the Cad data? How is the use of these collaborative techniques going to develop over the next few years, and what are the obstacles - technological and cultural?

To discuss these and other issues, a second seminar was held in the autumn of 2001, hosted, as before, by PDD in London, and with the participation of a similar list of customers and vendors.

PARTICIPANTS BY COMPANY - or click here for fuller biographies, corporate fact sheets etc.

IT USERS: Hoover Candy Group(James Hastie, industrial designer), PDD (Paul Pankhurst, managing director and Graham Lacy, head of technical design), Xerox UK (John Strutt, CAD manager) Williams Grand Prix (Andy Hope), Samsung UK (Mark Delaney)

IT VENDORS (includes PLM software vendors and hardware suppliers): Alias/Wavefront (Graeme Berry, industrial design sales), Delcam (Clive Martell, director), Dell Europe (Richard Thwaites, marketing manager, workstation business), EDS PLM Solutions (Geoff Sutcliffe, formerly business development manager), Hewlett-Packard (Ian Gilbert, UK sales and marketing manager for technical computing), Parametric Technology (David Couchon, v-p of PTC Global Services), SensAble technologies (Bruce Boes, v-p of business strategy), SolidWorks (Simon Booker, UK and Ireland sales and marketing director), Think3 (Stefano Cinti Luciane, vice-president of R&D at Think3 Europe)

Section headings

To read the following files you will need Adobe Acrobat which is a free download available by following this link.

Opening remarks

Bandwidth issue - and how it impacts on the ability to co-operate via the Internet

Videoconferencing and other meeting tools

E-business, PLM and the confusion over acronyms

Trust and confidentiality in collaborative product development, and partnership issues

Standards and interoperability issues

Interaction between the user and the computer

Design issues

Recent software developments and what users think of them

Management and cultural issues raised by PLM, and its significance for SMEs

3D Cad - its adoption and development

Future trends and conclusions, impact of manufacturing industry downturn