How ideaForge Is Overcoming Top Three Challenges of Product Design Using PTC Products

00:00 Perfect. So first of all, welcome everyone to yet another PTC Talks, where we are excited today by having Ankush from IdeaForge, who will have a session about how IdeaForge is overcoming top three challenges of product design using PTC solutions. My name is Torbjorn Pixell, and I'm the alliance manager for PTC in the Nordics, and we are running all these webinars on Fridays every week, same time. We also invite customers and partners for some inspiration on digital transformation to see what is possible and how to make things happen.

00:32 And all the past webinars have also been recorded and are to be found on the registration site. But the agenda for today is, first, a quick overview of PTC by my colleague, Carl, from the customer success team, and then Ankush will run and show how to introduce himself and touch base on a few challenges, how to address these, and then explain some of the business outcomes. And at the end, we are also having a Q&A session, so please keep your questions to the end, or you may also put them in the chat, and we will pick them up later on. So now over to you, Carl.

01:04 Thank you, Torbjorn. So PTC is an international software company with headquarters based in Boston. We're developing software mainly for manufacturing companies since nineteen eighty-five. We offer, tools for digital transformation, such as CAD for design, PLM for managing data, IoT to connect products or manufacturing operations, and augmented reality to visualize and interact with the digital thread. To you, Ankush. Okay. Thank you, Carl. So today Hello, good afternoon, everybody.

01:36 Good morning. I will be presenting, how to optimize the product design, with ease and prioritize our data and, and keep it secure. I am a project manager at, IdeaForge. Previous to this, I was working with Bosch. I was working on steering column design development. I was also lean navigator, project manager, program manager and Scrum Master. Plenty of roles I played. Previous to that, I was working with Safran Aerospace India. From Safran, I was, recruited to Airbus industry,

02:07 where I had an opportunity to work on Airbus A350 electrical harness installation and also A350 engine pylon design dossier release management. And during my time with in Airbus, I learned, to start to, use PTC products, for, configuration management, change management, managing, CAD data in, PLM. We used, Windchill there as well.

02:37 And now, when I am a PLM project manager at IdeaForge, I have a task to, implement newly a PLM over here, which is a, a, a tough, and a challenging, task. Hello. Now, a little bit about IdeaForge. IdeaForge is a drone manufacturing company, and, it's an OEM. It was founded back in two thousand and seven, and, with the team of dynamic IIT, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay graduates.

03:11 And it is backed up by leading organizations like Infosys, Qualcomm, Celesta, ProAntine, and, it has been adopted by many different customers, as you see over here, which are Indian forces and also, top enterprise. It has got, the big largest order of many UAV contract in the world. It was to Indian army and after, we had that order, the, increased, and now, we got another order from Indian army, which is also the biggest order

03:42 in the world for the mini UAVs. Yeah. Our drones are utilized for defense, homeland security, mapping and enterprise operations, and we also helped, around six hundred and sixty K villages for land records. We have strategic partnership with Infosys, Larsen & Toubro, and Fractal for, AI and ML. We have over twenty-eight intellectual property, and, Drone Industry Insider has ranked IdeaForge as a seventh global,

04:16 in two thousand and twenty-two for the dual-use civil and defense, drone manufacturer. As you can see the timeline, we started the birth of an idea, two thousand and four. Then there was a validation, and after, there were Mumbai attack in twenty-six, by eleven, and that is where we thought that, we should start, surveillance, and, help to the, public. We launched, our first drone in two thousand and nine, and then we had a good,

04:50 tech built in, two thousand and ten to two thousand and twenty, and now we have very good products, as you can see on the screen. These are our products. We it's ranging from, two kilo to seven kilo and, with the field of view, fifty-four degree wide FOV to narrow FOV, two degrees. The range of two to twelve, fifteen kilometer and flight time, twenty-five to one to twenty minutes. And these are the range of our products. We started Rhino, Ninja, Q4i, Q6, Meta V4, and the wonderful Switch.

05:25 And, every fifty-- every five minute, a drone takes off in India, which is made in IdeaForge, and we have completed over three lakh flights successfully. So a couple of application you can see of the drone. Day surveillance, night surveillance. We have high-altitude mo- monitoring, and we have target tracking. Then surveille- surveying and mapping application, urban planning, house building, then, mining, the three-D model of the mi- mining, so that the,

06:00 the mining industry list can take a call on which area to do the mining and which area there is more, concentration required and Volumetric es- estimation, railway track marking, these are a couple of applications. Then agricultural precisioning, mapping of the agricultural land, up-to-date land records, drainage, system, for irrigation planning and mapping of-- for the multispectral mapping for precision agriculture.

06:31 Plenty of, awards that our company has, received, including the one from, Shri Mr. Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Honorable, Rashtramantri, Shri Rajnath Singh. He has launched one of our product and then Defense, Defense Ministry Rajnath Singh has, acknowledged our product in Aero India two thousand and nine-- nineteen. And then, Lieutenant General K. Jawhar has interacted with our CEO during Aero India

07:04 twenty nineteen. It is the most awarded, organization when it comes to drone industry in India. Hello. Now, having said that, many different products, being very successful, how did the IdeaForge, make all these things possible? Every, like any other organization, our organization also have, some principles, under which we, we work.

07:34 We want, to be a market leader. In order to be a market leader, the organization, want us to do a faster design cycle. And how we can start to reduce the de-design cycle, that's, that's the que-- that's the question. We, we, we can eliminate some of this. Let's, let's, like you see on the left side, we have requirement gathering, designing, procurement, prototyping, validation, testing, review, and then release. So this is a normal, design cycle. And it, it takes more than two weeks for us to, com-complete, the one design cycle,

08:08 and then two more weeks and two more weeks. The management cannot wait for one and a half month because by that time, there are other competitors who will bring in the drone, and it is tough, tough for us to, to, to win the, the, the contract or win the challenge. Now, in order to have faster design cycle, we, How, how did we achieve it? Is to have the right resource and proper training in place, because without the proper, resources,

08:38 it is not possible to com, complete any activity. So PTC products, help us to, do the designing in a faster way and, collaborate, in a, in a faster way. But once we have a new software with in front of us, the biggest hurdle is the training. How, can we do the training? And, it, it can be done once or twice, but, PTC, associates and PC-PTC partners can help us to do the training. Whenever we require the training, it is a normal training to get the user interface.

09:11 It is also to, to deep dive into the, the kind of products or kind of, modules we want the training. But, there is also continuous, learning. Whenever we require a deeper training, PTC, associates and their, partners, they help us to, resolve our, training needs. Yeah. So that's how we, we, we are able to reduce the design cycle by knowing the right tool and right, techniques.

09:45 The, the second challenge what we faced was, collaboration. Without a CAD and PLM tool, it is difficult to collaborate and it is difficult to, inform the changes, not even, between department, but also between the teams. That is where, the product lifecycle management, software comes into picture. Whenever I have-- So in one team, there is a change in the design. For example, we place, we design the battery, and, then there is another team for,

10:18 packaging for the, the battery. And if I change the, the length of the battery and, how did I communicate with the, packaging team that there is a change in the length or the change in the shape? How do we quickly adapt without having multiple discussions, meetings, sharing of the CAD files, via, via, some means like, in a shared drive or It is always, difficult to track those changes.

10:48 There is no single source of truth. Like, was this the latest or what that was the one you sent me yesterday or was it your colleague who sent me? It's always the confusion. With PLM in place, we have single source of truth and, we, get the constant updates between the two teams. There's no requirement for collaborate, for a separate meeting to collaborate, or sending information via email or feedback. The-- Whatever models have been modified, they are saved in PLM.

11:18 We, we modify in Creo and save in PLM. It goes, it goes to the server and immediately the changes are visible to the, the, imme-immediate next, team in the digital mock-up. So that's how we are able to collaborate. There are ways that, it, it indicates that there is some change in the neighboring co-components and that is where, it helps us to resign, to collaborate and to, also, have faster design

11:49 cycle. Yeah. Now, in between different teams, how the PLM help us? So, once I complete one complete, one drone, design and development and I'm, and I'm good to go and release it to production, at the same time, there are some activities required by another team as well. Let's say, for example, we want marketing team to start the market-- building their marketing collaterals, flyers, videos to, start the,

12:20 the shooting, and then they want to, up-- upload all the information in the social media, plan for the events. But how did the marketing team will come to know that what is the right time to start their activities? So in PLM, we have, soon as there is a particular, product development life cycle where we complete our one stage of the, product development, the marketing team is being informed, and then the marketing team starts their activities. They are ahead, they have aligned their activities according to a product completion,

12:52 product release, and then they started. This is where we save the time. Yeah, so there is a greater collaboration when it, when, we use both CAD and PLM tool together and, do the organization-wide, wide training. Now, the third and the most important challenge that we faced was the data security. Being a market leader, we, everybody's eye is on what is IdeaForge, doing further. And, we have fear that, the,

13:25 there is a lot of, stealing of the data possible, if we keep it on, on cloud. It wa- it was a tough call for me to get it convinced, with my, superiors that, the cloud is the right place we, we should keep because, anything might, might, might happen. Any natural calamity might happen, and we might lose the data if we keep it in our hard drives, or if we keep it in the server room here itself. Why not to keep it on cloud? But, then the question was about the data security.

13:58 If the data is stolen, how will we, deal, deal that, situation? So the intellectual pro-- the, the, multi-layer security and the, the, multi-layer architecture of, PLM g- gave us those, confidence. There is a high level of data encryption when the data is being sent and brought back, from, from the local machine to the server. And, that data encryption, help, makes, makes the data, stealing, useless.

14:33 If somebody steals your data, which is encrypted, he just, see a dead file and he don't, he is not able to, open or make any sense out of that. So that gives us they gave us a good confidence that, yes, cloud, is the right place. We can keep our data, it is safe and, PLM servers, they, they are, designed in such a way that we can scale up as, as the organization is growing.

15:03 This was also one of the need, that, they asked me, "Akush, today you are saying that our server will be like this of this much capacity. What if we scale up? We bring in, a couple of more products into our, portfolio. How will we go about addressing the, the in-increase?" I said, the, the multi-level architecture is able to scale up as higher, as higher, as we grow. So, there is a plenty of opportunity, for us to stay, to grow, and, and,

15:35 it is a very safe environment. Yeah. So, another, question was, how do we go about monitoring and controlling our, our data? How it is being stored in, in the PLM? Then, we thought of starting, a system and business administration. We got, PTC Learn subscription, which, help us to start

16:07 learning how the system administration is done, how the business administration is done. And now we have a full-time, PLM administrator in-house, who takes care of our data and its, access and visibility to different, teams. Because being a defense organization, it is very important for us to keep our data secure, not even, inside the comp not even, for, for firewalling outside the company, but also firewalling inside different teams.

16:38 So because there are some projects, which requires top level of security, and that gives our customers also confidence that, yes, their data is secure and, they can rely us, on, on, design and development of our products. Yeah. So, to summarize, yeah, we found a greater benefit, working with PTC and, as, as I said, IdeaForge is a growing organization.

17:10 Now is the right time when we are scaling up, we are bringing in new products, we are, inviting, new people to join our company and, this is the right time to introduce, PLM and, so that, we get the, the right resources in place who are, you know, trained in, product lifecycle management and, you know, as a, as the company is growing, and bringing in new product, it is better to be organized, better to be safe and secure,

17:43 yeah. So, next is the PTC product, help us to reduce the design cycle because there is no much confusion, in between teams, about the, the changes in the design. The-- it is very smoother and very faster to do the design. And, collaboration between the team members, in between teams and across the, the department, we are able to, you know, save a lot of time and,

18:14 collaborate, seamlessly. And, lastly, we are, we are, we are, assured that our data and everything is secure. So that, that brings me to the, to the next, topic, which is the, question and answers. Carl, over to you. And we are open to- Yeah, fantastic overview, fantastic session, and it was a lot of, I mean, good, insights here. Definitely a good and interesting showcase.

18:45 So- Exactly, yeah. Then, I mean, let's open up for any questions you might have in the audience. So just raise your hand and see if you have any questions here. Let me see. I will just Up here. There we are. I think we have one here. And could you share any kind of, I mean, return of investment numbers by using, I mean, Windchill and Creo in terms of, I mean, reduced cost, increased efficiency, maybe,

19:16 I mean, time to market or anything like that? Right. So, there, there were, there were quite a few opportunities, with our customers, and I remember, taking some, some hard calls, any, any, a year back, before implementing, Creo and, P- PLM. It was difficult, it was, because there are, there are opportunities coming up, and we have to quickly do the prototyping and testing and, you know,

19:48 the designing somewhere, you know, we are lost in the design. We want to do very quick, things and, you know, some of the things are skipped and, that, that led us to, you know, not achieve the outcome of our in- of, of our design investments. And, so out of two opportunities, we had to choose one opportunity, w- w- which we were able to crack. But now, with PLM in place that, we are able to address, many,

20:19 many different opportunities in, in panel and, because now we can, we can rely on the design, we can rely on because there are proper data being maintained, and, there is a lot of time being saved. So that I call as a, as a return of investment if we are able to address at least, you know, a little bit more opportunities than what we were able to do before. Yeah. Of course, PLM is a huge investment, and,

20:49 you know, the, the return of investment, you will not realize it, little sooner, but, later you will realize that I have kept all my organization data, safe and secure, and it then the record is being maintained. And whenever I want to retrieve that, data, it, it, it's in, it's, just a couple of clicks away. But if, the team is working hard, they are making lots of design, and you do not save the data in PLM, you just save it in some hard disk,

21:19 and after a couple of years, it is, it is lost, and then the computer is transferred to another person and the next person, and then sometime, after four, five years, the computer, you have to, retire, and then the, the data is, mistakenly lost. There are multiple copies of different data, and it is difficult to, you know, find out the, the right source of truth. I made that product five years back. I did the complete designing. There was a lot of different prototypes, a lot of different ideas came into my,

21:52 researchers and engineers mind. But where is it now? I did not see, I don't see them. The But this is where the, real, return of investment will come to you. You save your all the information in, in one place, a single source of truth, and then you have, your, you know, the, the, the greatest asset is your, design knowledge, the, the, from the research and development that, that you save it in PLM engine.

22:23 Right. Thanks. How I mean, what, what's your recommendation actually, I mean, on how to get started with any kind of, I mean, PLM and Creo, product? I mean, who should get in- engaged in the organization? What kind of, I mean, positions you- Mm-hmm should be there, I mean, to really make sure that you're driving it and going forward? First and foremost, you should hire a PLM project manager because the,

22:56 the one person who is dedicatedly, starting to, you know, start, the planning of how it has to be implemented, who will, who all will be the stakeholder because PLM is the, tool which has to be implemented across the organization. So we picked up a, a core team, and, and, we had the head of departments who were the initial ones to start, the product,

23:26 lifecycle management, requirement gathering and, start the training of them. This helped us as a, as a stepping stone to, you know, get the PLM implemented. And the stakeholders, it comes from the top management, till all the designers, and all the, even the, the downstream departments, like, process, quality, production, after sales, all should be marketing. Everybody should be trained to tell them that this is how the our,

23:59 product lifecycle system is going to work. This is how our products will be placed here and how they will be, released or how the change management will take place so that everybody, are aware of how the, the changes are happening and how they will be reflected. So involving all stakeholders, right from top management to the, all the downstream departments, is important and, this is how, we, started implementation of, PLM.

24:29 Now the, we are in a stage where, where now we have completed the engineering side of, PLM implementation. The next is the SAP side of, implementation, the procurement, and the, procurement planning and, ordering of our, the components. So it happens through SAP when I release in Windchill, and now we are, connecting also to SAP. So this is our next, milestone that we are targeting to complete in a, a, in,

24:59 in a couple of weeks from now. Thanks a lot. Good answer. So we had another question also from Ugo. Do you have any military drones operating in Ukraine today? I mean, since, I mean, we know that they are, I mean- used quite a lot. Yeah. I would not, disclose the customers, but, definitely the, the drones are, today's, need for the,

25:32 s- situations where the lot of surveillance is required, lot of, you know, defense, tactics are, are done by defense dr- drones. They are able to gather a lot of information, about, what's happening on the other side, so that, proper planning can be done. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. Also, had another question here. I mean, what kind of, I mean, external support, I mean, did you have, I mean, to do,

26:02 I mean, the implementation work, imple- integration and deployment and stuff? Right. So, we had, an implementation team, who helped us to start, implementation. There was a lot of, help from PTC side and, PTC partners who helped us. There is a Unisim solution, here, in India who helped us to, start, you know, planning for what kind of hardwares will be required,

26:33 what kind of cloud will be required. They have given us plenty of options, by, analyzing what kind of data we are having. How it is a huge amount of data and going further, five to 10 years, from now, how will be our data. Accordingly, they have given us various options, how we can do the setup, of our, PLM and, this was one support. And the second thing was, once we are, it is implemented,

27:05 the second hurdle in front of us is the training to, to get everybody accustomed to the PLM because we are starting from no PLM to PLM. And, here it is, more difficult when you're switching between one PLM to another, it's easy because people know what is, PLM, how it works, and it is easy. You just know to know what, are the option in the new software. But here we are starting from zero PLM to a new PLM. It was difficult. The training was le- done in length and breadth and, PTC trainers, help us to, you know, overcome this challenge.

27:39 Secondly, we have the learn subscription, which help us to, you know, train ourself individually and, at, at our leisure time as, we They are planned trainings and we can, take our time. There are virtual computers, which, help us to, start practicing the exercises during the training. That is very helpful and I really appreciate, PTC, about,

28:12 a- about this kind of, training support. And, lastly, for the Creo, we have our, Creo, when we buy, let's say for example, we buy 10 softwares of Creo, and then there are 10 more softwares, that PTC provide us to, as a home license to, so that our, associates can take this license at home, install in their home computers and train it during the offline, off timing, during the weekends and when they come back and, for work and they have this,

28:44 work license, which is, very easy, for them to adapt. Thanks a lot. I also had one question regarding, I mean, what, what do you see as the, the biggest, I mean, advantages of, I mean, using, I mean, Creo and Windchill all together? Yeah. The, the biggest advantage is the time. It, it help us to save the time- which, which otherwise would have been very, very lengthier today when, when I want to find out, the,

29:16 design data of my older products before PLM, it takes, plenty of time. Oh my God, where it is? Where is, where are these files? Where are that files? Okay, whenever they, they I combine them, they are not able to open together, or they're not able to, to fix. Okay, this is not the latest model. That is not the latest model. It, it, it's very difficult to get the right data, when I want, even, even if I want to calculate what was the cost of the product that time and now, and I, I want to calculate the cost, it is difficult because, I, I don't have the right data in place.

29:48 And, and, and the things are not, not, not, or- organized. With PLM, it's, it's easy. I just, just go, go to the proper bill of material, and I, and I go to SAP and I get the, get the entire information, in, in a few clicks, in a very few minutes. That's the biggest advantage, the saving of the time, because of the proper data, saving and organizing. Fantastic. Thanks. And, folks, time is unfort- unfortunately running out, so many thanks everyone for joining and of course, a special thanks to you, Akash.

30:22 And next, week's PTC Talks, is actually postponed because we have this big, customer and partner event, LiveWorx, in Boston next week. So the next PTC Talks will be on the 26th of May with an interesting session about CoBeamr and a co- customer reference case in the automotive industry. So stay tuned for that and I wish you all a fantastic weekend. And a- again, thanks everyone for joining. Bye.