Solutions for Document Distribution for Siemens PLM Teamcenter

Siemens PLM Teamcenter is a system used by many enterprises for handling the designing and development of products. It plays a major role in supporting and delivering complex products and maximizing productivity while streamlining the sales.

Drawings, files, charts are a part of the system and these have to be altered, approved, converted, and distributed as per the production order. If handling the entire process of designing falls on the Teamcenter, it cannot on its own convert and distribute the documents to various locations. To make things easier, the output management system is installed and integrated into the existing Teamcenter to take over the document conversion and document distribution solutions.

A pre-defined template can be updated with the distribution orders and the system will automatically carry out the instructions. Rule-based document for delivery to particular recipient groups, conversions to specified formats, creating a table of contents of the data that has to be distributed, bundling together the documents as delivery packages, delivering them and taking feedback in the form of receipts, saving those for future references are a part of the process.

The document distribution solutions allow the business enterprises to send the data in both electronic and paper formats to various locations simultaneously. Email, FTP access, web portals, zip files or print the data on paper at the designated printer; the system handles it all. The entire process of the document distribution is kept transparent, can be replicated, and is traceable. Each stage of the process is made note of in metadata and the administrators can access it for references at any given point in time.

Here are some of the reasons to opt for the output management system for the Teamcenter.

• The system can be fully integrated into Teamcenter.
• There is an automatic distribution of documents to diverse recipient groups (Email, print, offline storage).
• All the native formats such as CAD, Office, etc. are converted to neutral long term format prior to the distribution process.
• Interactive or batch/workflow-based job resolution.
• All the parameters can be defined and controlled from the Teamcenter. The templates can be reused which makes the compilation process easier.
• Date and timestamps, watermarks, digital signatures are added during the conversion process. Optical static elements such as logos, graphics, or Fest-Text are supported by the system.
• Search, process, and send the tender and order documents as per supplier requests.
• Collecting the single documents and creating a manual of the product can be done automatically.
• Automatically searching and printing large amounts of documents or distributing them to different devices based on the pre-set of instructions existing in the system.
• Every release process can be recorded in Teamcenter. The format and content of additional information will be adapted according to customer requirements.
• Recording of order information for order monitoring and easy repetition of the job.

The document distribution solutions can be extended to provide company-wide output management. It provides optimum plot management for high-volume printing and large-sized output from Teamcenter. It is one output system for diverse formats.

Print the output in a smaller format such as a printer or a large format such as a plotter. The formatting and processing is device independent while the stamps and watermarks are freely configurable. The administration console is used to monitor and the system and the print operations.

Each of the industries and departments can benefit from integrating the output management system to the Teamcenter. For example,

• Aviation: Protection of export control regulations, documentation of release processes of drawings are taken care of.
• Automobile Manufacturers: Automatic distribution of tender documents is handled by the system.
• Plant Engineering: Creating and distributing the construction order to contractors and subcontractors.

Only a little of the manual effort is required for the selection or sorting of the documents. Most of the process is automated and taken care of by the output management system while nothing changes for the end user. Employees can work as before on Teamcenter while the process takes place in the background. The final result or the output will be reflected at the end user after the completion of the task.