9.19.17
BigLever Software, the long-standing leader in the Product Line Engineering (PLE) field, and Method Park, market leader in engineering process management, announced today that the companies have developed the Feature-based PLE Process Framework, which provides an off-the-shelf template of the best practices that have enabled the industry’s most notable PLE success stories. The new framework, which is currently available, combines Method Park’s Stages Process Management System with BigLever’s 3-Tiered PLE Methodology to allow companies to accelerate their transition to PLE practice and achieve cross-functional alignment throughout the enterprise.
Companies can use the process framework to optimize their PLE operations by improving communication and collaboration across software, electrical, and mechanical domains and avoiding the pitfalls of ad-hoc and one-off approaches. BigLever has incorporated the new framework as a key part of the company’s holistic onePLE solution.
“Organizations face mounting challenges in managing increasing demand for product sophistication and diversity, and the resulting complexity,” said Dr. Charles Krueger, BigLever Software CEO. “Feature-based PLE addresses this complexity by providing a unified variant management approach across the enterprise – from product portfolio management to marketing, engineering, manufacturing, sales, and service. We are excited to team with Method Park to bring the Feature-based PLE Process Framework into our onePLE solution. This new framework provides clear, concise guidance regarding proven PLE practices and enables the essential process governance that organizations need to efficiently manage their PLE deployment under the onePLE approach. Companies can speed PLE adoption by tailoring this process template to align with their organizational structure, process workflows, practices and overall business model.”
“BigLever is the one-stop-shop for PLE and we are very proud that they chose our Stages platform to build the PLE Process Framework,” said Dr. Erich Meier, Method Park CTO and creator of Stages. “Together we can boost our clients’ PLE capabilities and empower them to quickly roll out new processes across their organizations. Stages is already widely used for managing engineering processes and our clients will benefit from the tremendous PLE knowledge that is codified in the new framework.”
Feature-based PLE dramatically simplifies the creation, delivery, maintenance, and evolution of a product line portfolio by using a shared set of engineering assets, a managed set of features, and an efficient means for automating the production of the product line. As PLE evolves into an enterprise-wide solution, it is critical for organizations to establish their own framework for PLE operations. The new process framework provides a fully customizable Concept of Operations (ConOps) template that lays out the organizational structure and puts that structure into motion by clearly defining the organizational roles, responsibilities, and processes needed to operate effectively under the PLE paradigm.
Based on BigLever’s 3-Tiered PLE Methodology, and built on Method Park’s world-class Stages Process Management solution, the Feature-based PLE Process Framework enables organizations to establish a PLE ConOps, based on an incremental adoption approach. The framework allows each group within an enterprise – and across the engineering lifecycle – to follow the proven processes that adhere to the new PLE ISO standards currently being developed.
