BigLever Launches Enterprise Product Line Engineering Solution, Extends PLE to Advance Digitalization

BigLever Software, Product Line Engineering (PLE) provider, announces its next generation Gears solution – Enterprise Gears. The new solution delivers a web-based interface that makes Gears fully accessible for all users, and a server API that enables the seamless integration of PLE with other tools, processes and enterprise systems. With Enterprise Gears an organization can advance and accelerate its digitalization efforts by implementing a leading-edge Feature-based PLE approach throughout the enterprise and across product lines.

"Organizations face enormous challenges in managing the complexity of product variation across the interconnected engineering and operations lifecycle,” says Dr. Charles Krueger, CEO of BigLever Software. “This complexity continues to grow with the Internet of Things (IoT) and other emerging digital technologies. Digitalization is vitally important for companies to remain competitive, yet these efforts can be greatly impeded when a unified, enterprise-wide variant management solution is missing. Enterprise Gears allows organizations to leverage the full power of Feature-based PLE to fill this gap. Now, digitalization initiatives can be expanded and accelerated by using PLE to manage product diversity, not only across the engineering lifecycle, but also throughout the full enterprise lifecycle from portfolio planning and engineering to supply chain, manufacturing, sales and service.”

BigLever’s Enterprise Gears PLE solution offers an out-of-the-box Feature Content Management (FCM) system, which allows companies to easily capture, share and manage product features across the product line, as well as across tools, processes and organizational functions. With the FCM system provided by Gears, companies can establish a "single source of feature truth” for an entire product family—eliminating the need for multiple feature management techniques across the enterprise. This breaks down organizational silos; improves communication; and reduces time, effort and errors.

New Features

The key new features delivered by Enterprise Gears include:

A web-based interface that provides all users with browser-based, role-specific access to the appropriate view of Gears they need . This makes Gears fully accessible and easy to use for everyone—enabling PLE to be more quickly adopted and implemented across organizational functions.

The Gears Server API, which easily connects Enterprise Gears with other existing enterprise systems or custom interfaces, for sharing feature content information and generating new views. The API integrates with other sources and digital initiatives, allowing organizations to capture FCM data that can be used, analyzed or manipulated in other applications such as portfolio management, ERP and sales configurator apps.

Supporting Digitalization Initiatives

Enterprise Gears supports IoT and digitalization by automating and simplifying the creation and management of digital twins. A manufacturer uses digital twins—virtual representations of a physical product or object—to remain connected to its products after they leave the factory. When these digital twins have been produced using a feature-based PLE approach, the manufacturer can track, maintain and evolve each product based on the specific features that the product contains. 

In addition to Enterprise Gears, BigLever will continue to offer the current Gears version for those who need or want the full desktop Gears experience.

Sources: Press materials received from the company.

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