Ensuring Engineering Teams Are Productive Post-Pandemic

In the face of the COVID-19 crisis, companies are re-evaluating the needed commercial engineering and R&D tools. Many teams are returning back to the office, but the future is still unclear.

Teams do know they now need to move even quicker in their decision making processes to survive. The working environments are becoming increasingly fluid with staggered works shifts (with social distancing mandates) and quickly changing priorities.

  • Is your organization prepared for these changes?
  • Do the engineers receive value from their tools they are using?
  • Can they do their day-to-day jobs successfully?
  • Do you have the needed tools in place to be able to oversee how the engineering teams are using expensive engineering assets?

Productivity of the engineering teams is becoming increasingly critical. Often times under Shadow IT, teams may be using engineering software differently in different teams, countries, and business units.

While some teams try to develop and run ad hoc, custom internal scripts to monitor licenses, our solution has been used by many companies large and small over the last decade. We have customized our tool to ensure our customers are successful with managing their engineering assets and utilization rates. Using an engineering license monitoring helps companies improve productivity without slowing down innovation.

Here are a few suggestions:

  • Don’t over-complicate reports. Using a well-developed license monitoring tool will help you more efficiently manage resource without pulling away from other essential tasks.
  • Make it easy for users and managers to look at reports and receive alerts.
  • By monitoring usage and asset management, leadership can make better educated decisions.

Using license monitoring tools can also spark conversations to help determine trends, look at heat maps among other factors. Don’t simply assume that you know what your team needs better than they do. Be open to conversations.

In these challenging times, there is a need to consolidate and renegotiate engineering software contracts and agreements. License monitoring solutions can help engineers engage in collaborative conversations with internal teams, vendors and partners helping to develop smart, strategic and cost-effective agreements.

IT can also help engineering departments make decisions when they may have more or less staff. Many managers are currently having conversations about the expense of technology and if there is a better way to save resources.

Companies will need to better anticipate and adapt to the needs of the engineering teams. An agile organization must remain flexible while controlling risk. The past few months have tested us like never before. With collaboration and having the helpful information, companies can move forward. Contact our experts today for a free 30-day trial to assess your engineering licenses.

Hiring Talent? Look at Existing Engineering Software Inventory

Look at Existing Engineering Licenses Before Buying more – Don’t buy more licenses than you need.

This past week, there have been a number of defense companies announcing major hiring events. Managers need to understand current usage trends and inventory levels to make educated decisions.

How can companies save on existing licenses?

One of the easiest ways is consider implement staggered staffing or shift usage time. Consider having your team start at different times, so that everyone can use tools. This will help with ensuring better utilization. Look at the current capacity levels.

Avoid wasting expensive company resources. Just because your organization might be bringing more talent, don’t assume you automatically need to purchase expensive engineering licenses. In fact, you may not need to. You may already have enough licenses. Historically, we have been able to save companies about 20% on their current engineering licenses.

When looking at the current inventory, consider looking at usage by job function. For example, if you are hiring more talent on the electrical engineering team, look at the electrical engineering tools (EDA Programs: Cadence, Synopsys, Mentor Graphics and others) or if you are bringing people in other groups, look at those related tools i.e. mechanical ones (CAD) or analysis (FEA & CFD).

Managing Applications Throughout the Engineering Product Life-cycle

Consumer electronics often involve a variety of engineering products throughout the life cycle. Let’s take a printer for example:

  • There are CFD apps to design flow of ink from cartridge to paper
  • EDA for any PCB, chip, processor on board printer, and
  • PLM to manage the whole product life cycle

The products your engineering team is designing is probably going through a similar life cycle. What is the best way to manage all of the engineering tools – both from asset monitoring (knowing all the software assets that are being used) as well as usage monitoring (how your engineering team is using these tools).

Our tool can help you manage your product throughout its journey from beginning to end. What tools are used throughout the process? Consider all the different disciplines involved.

Is there a way to optimize all of the engineering licenses? Ask our experts to learn more.

See the Full Picture About Your Engineering Licenses

As growth resumes, engineering managers need to be agile and well-prepared with reporting and information available to them. How can you best respond to the constantly changing times? Having information and statistics about your engineering licenses will be helpful.

Engineering teams know they need to spend money on expensive engineering software, but many tools start at several thousand per license. When you have a team of 25, 100, or more engineers, this expense quickly adds up. So, what can company leaders and managers do? Use a reporting system that monitors licenses for these expensive engineering licenses.

Using a tool like LAMUM can help you with active monitoring. Make sure you are spending your expensive engineering resources wisely.

We understand that it can be difficult to forecast future engineering needs as companies adjust to current economic challenges. One way that would help is to look at current usage rates and see who is currently using engineering software, at what times and which tools.

Many departments are being asked to streamline their efforts:

  • Reduction in operational overhead
  • Reducing costs
  • Improve and demonstrate overall operational efficiency
  • Reducing and keeping costs at a minimum

How can engineering departments reduce operating costs and improve efficiency? With optimization, there is increased efficiency and sustainability. The challenge is to reduce costs and streamline in such a way that this does not sacrifice engineering capabilities.

Based off this data, you can be better prepared and assess budget needs and constraints and figure out finances further. Here are a few tips:

  1. Make sure you right-size your engineering software.
  2. Look for usage trends – by tool / person / time.
  3. Set up alerts to make sure your team is using expensive engineering tools to the fullest.
  4. Make better educated decisions by knowing what you own.

It’s hard to make decisions if you don’t have enough information. Our tool helps you see the full and better picture.

Updates in NX Sketch Software Tool

Siemens Delivers Artificial Intelligence-powered CAD Sketching in NX

Siemens Digital Industries Software has recently announced in their press release that their new NX Sketch software tool can be used for capturing concepts in 2D. Here are a few highlights:

  • Users can sketch without pre-defining parameters, design intent and relationships
  • Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) with AI solver
    • Automatically finds relationships between design elements
    • Create concept designs within NX software
    • Significant flexibility
    • Easier to work with imported data
    • Rapid design iteration
    • Thousands of curves within a single sketch

We are proud to help companies monitor their NX licenses and optimize their engineering spend. Contact our team to learn more.

Considerations for Right-Sizing Engineering Software

You may be wondering how many licenses do I need? What are some of the considerations for right-sizing engineering software – Solidworks, Autodesk, NX or any other? How is the engineer productivity impacted by availability or lack of engineering licenses?

Current Inventory

The first step is knowing what you have. Take a look at the current inventory. What is the tool cost per seat? Are there restriction of use by Tool (WAN, LAN, Node-locked)? Who is responsible for what Licenses at your company?

# of Vendors and Renewal dates

How many vendors do you currently have – one or several? What are the renewal dates? Keeping track of this information is very important. Is there related Vendor PO information and do I have access to it?

Budgets

Budgets are also important to look at and understand. You need to look at past spend as well as moving forward. What are the located budgets for projects? What are the expected future trends?

# of Engineers

The number of engineers can vary by locations. What are the current, previous and future staffing trends? What are the tools needed by engineer? If your company is growing or slowing may significantly impact the number of engineers and engineering licenses. Who are the engineers – electrical or mechanical and what tools do they need?

License Servers

What about the license servers – how many are there and where are these located? Who are the System Admins? You need to know the local contacts at each location. Are there Daemons on each (this could present for consolidation opportunities).

Usage by Tool / Feature name

Another opportunity is to look at usage by tool / feature name. Are there peak concurrent demand? Take a look at Checkout Patterns (Heatmap), average checkout time, above average checkouts, denials (True vs False), acceptable “probability of Denial.” In some teams, there is an issue of license hoarding – Identify who is hoarding. Consider looking at long checkout Alerts.

How is the engineer productivity impacted if they are waiting for licenses? Zero-use Report could be huge. Do you have Power Users of expensive WAN-Global licenses?

You can learn more about this in our White Paper “Guide to Right-Sizing Engineering Software”.

Innovating While Monitoring Engineering Applications

Many companies are challenged with the question of “How do you innovate?” In our recent blog, we talked about innovation.

Today’s world is becoming increasingly dynamic with a wide variety of tools. How can you keep up with ever-evolving and changing environment? The digital industrial revolution is here.

How can you stay competitive while reducing costs? This is where an engineering focused license management tool can help. The engineering team needs their software (CAD, CAX, EDA, PLM, Simulation, Analysis and others) to be able to do their job successfully. However, that is also where the company’s biggest expense is next to staffing costs.

Would you like to see if the engineers are actually utilizing the tools that companies are spending resources on? Would you like to make sure that your engineering team has access to the engineering tools to be able to continue innovating, reduce bottlenecks in utilization and make the most of engineering tools.

You are using a mix of tools throughout the whole process from design, testing, measuring and maintaining. Would you like to see more visibility/transparency of how much engineers are spending time on each stage?

Our LAMUM software, that has been developed and improved over the last 16 years, helps companies look at utilization and sends various alerts to engineers and managers. Our license monitoring tool also helps companies look at the best way to adapt to changes. Read more about right-sizing your engineering software.

Our tool can also help you stay agile and make modifications as needed. The reporting and data can help you make better educated decisions.

You want to focus on your customers and accelerating innovation and not on the administrative challenges of making sure there are enough engineering licenses for your team.

Adapting with Changing Times

Has the pandemic affected your organization? Are there changes in staffing, priorities and geographies? Make sure you have an up-to-date, accurate software inventory.

Did you know that there is an easy solution to monitor and manage all of your engineering software licenses and usage reports that go along?

A tool like LAMUM can help you:

  • Make better purchasing decisions
  • Save money

Engineering IT asset management reporting tools are helpful in evaluating the following and making better decisions:

  1. Do your current engineering software licenses align with your business objectives?
  2. Where are there cost savings?
  3. What are the expectations for future usage?

You can learn more by browsing through our White Papers or viewing our Webinar on the subject.

Right-Sizing Engineering Software During Staffing Changes

Did you know that you can save close to ~$50,000 on CAD / CAE / EDA / PLM tools?

COVID-19 has forced many engineering organizations to downsize. With downsizing, your need for CAD / CAE / EDA / PLM tools will decrease. But by how much?

In order to properly size your engineering license inventory, you need visibility into what you have now and “usage” based on upcoming staffing levels and what you will need in the future. LAMUM will show you past and current demand for Licenses, as well as trends going forward based on usage per engineer. From this, you can determine your needs now, 6 months and a year from now.

LAMUM will show you:

  • If engineers are hoarding licenses
  • Average checkout time
  • Average number of concurrent Users over any specified time period.

With this information, you can more accurately determine your inventory needs, and potential savings by eliminating unnecessary licenses. Most Vendors are allowing “rightsizing” even before renewal date, but if not, at least you will be well prepared for right-sizing at renewal time. With LAMUM, you can monitor denials and tighten up inventory. LAMUM’s “Available License Alert” will improve engineer productivity.

Generally 3-4 months of data is needed. So if you renewal date is Jan. 1, you should start collecting data Sept. 1. The LAMUM tool will help you better prepare to negotiate with your Vendor, and get the best possible deal.

In this time of uncertainty, you need to look at all options for saving money. Cutting expensive CAD / CAE / EDA / PLM licenses could be significant savings, but you need a tool to help you. Yes you will have to spend a little money on LAMUM but it can save you significant money.

LAMUM saves 15-25% per year in good times, 20% on average.

Today, the savings will be even greater. The cost for LAMUM is dependent on your number of engineers. If you have 100 engineers, you are probably spending about $250,000 per year on CAD / CAE / EDA tools. LAMUM for 100 engineers is $4,000. Spend $5,000 to save $50,000+, is a really great ROI.

TeamEDA is available for consulting on this issue, or please contact TeamEDA and take a look at the LAMUM tool. You will be glad you did!

Innovation in Engineering Software License Management

We have recently had many discussions at TeamEDA about the need for innovation and that companies must adapt and think about the best ways to innovate to survive and flourish in this challenging time. How can engineering teams innovate and optimize their processes?

“Innovation is a good thing, but requires change – change in thinking, change in process,” expressed Guy Haas, President, TeamEDA in a recent conversation. “Change sometimes is hard, but the end result is: company wins, innovator wins. The results of innovation (ROI) is that the new state is superior to the old state – lower costs, improved efficiency, happier employees, and happier customers.”

This has been our goal over the last 15 years of building LAMUM to offer companies a solution to think strategically by using our tool. How can companies save resources (especially when times get hard)? Is there a better way to look at efficiency (i.e. usage monitoring)? Would employees be happier if they have access to all the resources they need to be successful at their jobs? And of course, customer orientation is a priority for most companies.

“It’s been said that evolution of technology leads to innovations in everyday life. So as ideas become products through innovative engineering design, simulation, and modeling, TeamEDA’s License Asset Manager with Usage Monitoring is the gatekeeper to ensure engineering software licenses are managed effectively and optimized efficiently for availability to drive innovation,” explained Paul Riviere, Worldwide Channel Program Manager.

Management teams are often challenged with coming up with innovative ideas, thoughts, techniques and methods. How can previous methods be adapted to better meet new requirements and needs?