Product Perfect: Hans-Kurt Luebberstedt

When EDS decided to acquire SDRC and Unigraphics, it took the industry by
surprise. Today, as EDS PLM Solutions, the recently-created $1-billion business
unit takes shape, the company is banking on experience, and on sheer size. EDS’
new Asia-Pacific president HK Luebberstedt talks about the implications of the
agreement

Post-merger issues and plans…

The merger will have a significant impact on the industry we are in. First of
all, it combines two almost same-sized companies that are equally well
positioned in their field. While this makes it somewhat difficult it is exciting
at the same time as we can double our strength in the market. Of course, this
also means we have a lot of work to do. We have to manage the combined product
portfolio. We have to refine the new organization that we now have and we are
already moving very fast in that area. We are trying to consolidate two
independent entities. For this, we also had to terminate some of our workforce
where we had double positions. The most affected areas were administration,
product development and marketing. However, the sales staff had little room for
reduction because we wanted to have a strong presence on the field. We are
organizing a series of conferences across countries for our customers to have a
clear view on exactly what we plan to do.

EDS moving into products…

It is true that till now, EDS has mainly focussed on services, starting from
high-level consultancy down to outsourcing. The company’s services offering
was focussed primarily at cutting down costs and helping customers reduce their
efforts in overall management. It was felt that rather than just cutting costs,
we should also help clients in finding new opportunities. With solutions from
the PLM portfolio, we will be able to take them a step beyond just managing
costs. We can help them increase innovation, produce new and better products
faster so that they could find new marketing opportunities.

The new product roadmap…

The new entity, which is called product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions
aims to deal with all the data in the product development process, starting even
before the product is designed, through the various stages–designing,
engineering, verification process, production and manufacturing up to services.
As of now every single product belonging to both companies is being retained and
maintained, but how long we can do that will depend largely on our customers’
usage. We have promised them complete support as long as they want to continue
using the product so that their investments remain protected.

There are two main areas where our products are positioned and we have
defined our position clearly on both. On the CAD/CAM side, we will continue with
all products from SDRC’s Master Series (MS) and Unigraphics Solutions (UGS),
but with a clear intention of eventually migrating into one product line that
combines the best functionality of both. For instance, while UGS is stronger in
manufacturing and production, SDRC is good in analysis and simulation. The new
product line, which is called UG MS, will evolve by 2003. In the PDM) arena,
especially for organizations like Boeing that have thousands of users working
concurrently, we now have end-to-end enterprise-wide large scalable solutions on
our portfolio.

On SMEs…

There is quite a lot of potential indesigning consumer goods or simple parts.
We have the mid-range solution called Solid Edge from UGS, which is less costly
and now has enhanced the functionality almost comparable to a full-blown CAD
high-end system. This is very effective for the small-sized enterprises,
especially when the product being produced doesn’t require huge volumes of
data. For instance, when you have to create a car, you need to have 40,000
parts. But when you have to produce a simpler product, you may need to manage
only 50 parts. In fact, with our mid-range products, we have been able to
address the needs of a much larger number of manufacturing organizations, which
couldn’t have afforded a high-end product.

On CAD/CAM solutions…

The industry has seen lots of changes, especially over the last few years. I
feel CAD/CAM products have today become more like commodity items. They are not
just restricted to a few specialists. People can just buy the product and start
using it with very little need for training unlike in earlier days. Not just the
product has become more self-explanatory, even people have become more
tech-savvy. The focus now is on making better use of the data available, where
we start from defining what the product should be like through to sharing the
data across the globe and moving into SCM and CRM. While a 3D CAD/CAM solution
still remains an important piece in the chain, it is taken as a given. The scope
of product lifecycle management has increased.

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