SAP PLM Integration as PDM for Pro/E

[skraba]

Our company is exploring options to substitute current PDM system Intralink 3.4 which would eventually due to future upgrades of Pro/E became incompatible and unsupported. The latter is already true.


We are looking for solutions that would'nt only operate as PDM but wouldalso connect SAP ERP system, via design and material BOM's.


We had presentation of the SAP PLM Integration for Pro/ENGINEER product, but are not quite convinced it would succesfully manage Pro/E specific features like family tables, copy geometry features, skeletons, relations,...


Does any of you guys have any experiences with above mentioned product and would be willing to share?


TIA,


Jure

 

[Jacoolo]

At my previous job(300+ Pro/E seats) another PTC product was in charge - PDMlink.

SAP was bounded togehter with PDMLink and engineers had an access to some logistic and production resources.

 

[skraba]

Was SAP bounded with PDMLink via middleware (if so, which one) or was it bounded manually by exporting BOM CSV and importing it into SAP?

 

[Jacoolo]

good question, hard to answer to me now, because I quit that job while SAP and PDMLink integration

I do not know how exactly it was done, I can only discribe the behaviour - all data was stored under Product conditions. Inside its detial page, user got an access to all data related to it as : pro/e models, tests reports, reviews, etc.

In addition, in the product detail page there was a link forwarding You to some SAP details.

As I remmeber right, at that moment, SAP data was not able to be modified under PDMLink environment.

 

[MugenPower]

My advice is simply "Don't go there!". Unfortunately, my company decided to dump Intralink in favor of SAPPLM nearly 2 years ago and it has been a disaster. It's a user's nightmare and requires a lot of IT support. New problems arise regularly and the old ones are never resolved, only workarounds are created to mitigate them

If you use nested family tables, SAPPLM is especially inadequate. Things are so bad that the powers that be are seriously considering going to Soildworks because they've heard it works better with SAP.
Edited by: MugenPower

 

[Crayz]

My company had a significant amount of time invested in the SAP/PLM system before dumping the project and starting over with Windchill PDMLink 9.0. Not sure what details I can share, but the reasons must have been good to throw away the work they already had into it.