CIMdata Publishes eBook: "Are Students 'Real-World' Ready?"

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - July 12, 2017 - PRLog -- CIMdata, Inc., the leading global PLM strategic consulting and research firm, released a new eBook focused on research recently conducted on PLM education, at all levels, from high school through university.

Industrial companies are experiencing a very serious gap in new employees' understanding of PLM and their lack of practical experience using a multitude of concepts that exist in the PLM realm. The result is slower PLM adoption and delayed financial and other benefits. The general lack of PLM education is being aggravated because academic institutions are not providing what companies need. This is not just an issue at the university level, but at all levels of education—learnings for tomorrow's work environment must start much earlier in the education pipeline.

Research for this eBook was sponsored by Siemens PLM Software, a leading provider of PLM software to the global manufacturing industry and in support of education at academic institutions worldwide. The eBook presents CIMdata's perspective on PLM education today and includes results from a survey of PLM educators from around the world. The results and analysis point out some common issues that are impacting PLM education.

According to Mr. John MacKrell, CIMdata's Chairman, "Academic institutions appear to have difficulty positioning PLM outside of the engineering domain and beyond product design documentation (i.e., 2D drafting) management. The approach to PLM that is needed to prepare students to support today's and tomorrow's businesses requires much broader cross-disciplinary thinking, including consideration for simulation-driven product development (SDPD), systems thinking, an understanding that PLM is a business strategy, and discussions about PLM's many impacts on a multitude of business processes and lifecycle decisions, such as product profitability, supplier relationships, manufacturing strategies, product delivery concepts, and product maintenance."

CIMdata and Siemens PLM Software released a whitepaper on this topic on 8 May 2017.