Nanga Days: Does the PTC vision for agile product development work?

At this year's Nanga Days in Stuttgart, Mark Simpson from PTC presented their strategy for agile product development. What PTC presented is definitely going in the right direction. However, I found it surprising how AI and MBSE were positioned.

Good exchange at the Nanga Days

The Nanga Days are organized annually by Nanga Systems, a company that focuses on digital transformation, especially in product development. The event is, similar to MESConf and Automotive Day, a "boutique conference" which, with around 100 participants, provides a great opportunity for an intensive exchange with like-minded people.

I myself was represented there with a short presentation and, together with Geza Velkey Raiqon AI an AI platform for vehicle development.

PTC is one of the many partners of Nanga Systems, which is why Mark Simpson, VP Product Management / ALM, also gave the keynote speech on the second day.

PTC

PTC is an important manufacturer of tools for product development. The company grew up with CAD and PLM (Windchill), but has put together an integrated portfolio of products over the years. About the PTC platform strategy I last reported in 2021However, the company had since purchased two important tools for systems engineering, Codebeamer and Pure Systems.

In the keynote, Mark described the development of PTC as follows:

The evolution of PTC:
CAD → ALM → PLM → IoT → SLM → AR

Agile product development at PTC

Mark is an industry veteran and emphasized that the digital transformation in product development has been going on for 40 years now with no end in sight. I couldn't agree more! Mark identified five trends that are forcing change. These are not new, but here is the list again:

• Change in the working environment - Employees have higher expectations of employers than 30 years ago, there is less continuity and a shortage of skilled workers
• Volatile supply chains - Global dependencies and geopolitical risks lead to uncertainties and disruptions
• Software-driven innovation - Hardware becomes a commodity, differentiation takes place in software
• Sustainability - Companies are under pressure from customers and legislators to assume ecological responsibility
• Service optimization - Customers expect everything to be faster, better and cheaper.

To visualize the solution approach, PTC has been using the following image for a while now, which also shows the tools used for this from the PTC portfolio at the bottom:

It's easy to see here that this process needs to be iterative and agile. Unfortunately, there are a lot of gaps here, as Mark confirmed. Many companies still develop according to a waterfall approach.

Many industries are trapped in the waterfall mentality

Systematize digital transformation

PTC has broken down the transformation of the individual areas as follows:

• CAD: Digital defined Physical (Computer Aided Design)
• ALM: Digital controls Physical (Application Lifecycle Management)
• PLM; Digital managed Physical (Product Lifecycle Management)
• IOT: Digital connects Physical (Internet of Things)
• SLM: Digital receives Physical (Sustainability Lifecycle Management)
• AR: Digital extended Physical (Augmented Reality)

In addition to the replacement of ALM with Codebeamer, PTC had already CAD area through the acquisition of OnShape updated a few years ago. I am impressed with OnShape in that it allows scalable CAD in the web browser.

What about AI, systems engineering and MBSE?

Of course, AI was also a must and was defined as an important part of the PTC strategy. However, the details were rather thin on the ground. Mark emphasized that customers want to hear a story about AI, but would then be willing to wait for the feature in the product. This certainly makes sense (we see far too much immature AI in products), but Mark didn't tell us exactly what the PTC story on AI is.

Although there was a slide that listed PTC Modeler (formerly Windchill Modeler); when asked about MBSE, Mark referred to Hedley Apperly at PTC. Mark emphasized that he works closely with Hedley and that modeling and MBSE are strategically important for PTC. But only time will tell whether this is really the case. At least in this keynote, Mark treated the topic of modeling in a stepmotherly fashion, with the topic of systems engineering simply not appearing at all.

However, Mark also mentioned that SysML v2 plays an important role at PTC and that there would soon be a SysML v2-capable tool. I am curious!

Conclusion

There wasn't much that was really new in this keynote, but I like the PTC approach, which I perceive as somewhat more flexible than that of other portfolio providers such as IBM and Dassault. I was a little disappointed about the lack of SE and MBSE. I will keep my eyes open for news from Hedley Apperly, who may have more to say on the subject.