Exec Talk: aPriori and the Map of Product Development Technologies

What Do Manufacturing Executives Say Behind Closed Doors?

In today’s climate of increasing competition and decreasing time to hit an ever-shrinking target, the obsession of every executive must be: How can technology help me? How can the latest smart software and solutions help my company do more with less, reduce errors, and get more value from our data?

Here on the Manufacturing Insights Podcast, we thought this would be a great time for a series of high-level discussions about these market-shaping questions and how executives today are thinking about them.

For this series, we’re bringing in a special guest host: Chris Jeznach is the Senior Director of Product Marketing at aPriori, and a strategic thinker about the ways that market dynamics in the software solutions and technology space really impact the productivity and ultimately the success of product manufacturers.

In this first interview of the Exec Talk series, Chris Jeznach talks to Fielder Hiss, aPriori’s Chief Product Officer, and an expert in the ways that the solutions manufacturers use to design, produce, and service their products work together to unlock value across the product lifecycle.

Exec Talk on the Product Development Landscape

Chris Jeznach: Today we’re kicking off a new series called aPriori Exec Talks, where we are interviewing executives at aPriori, with our customers, and with our partners to help leading manufacturers find new ways to drive business value. I’m Chris Jeznach, Senior Director of Product Marketing at aPriori, and I’m joined today by Fielder Hiss, aPriori’s Chief Product Officer. Welcome Fielder.

Fielder Hiss: Thank you for having me.

Chris Jeznach: We’re really kicking off the series with you Fielder, with a conversation about the larger landscape and where we fit today in the future vision. To start off, could explain a little bit more about your role as Chief Product Officer and what you have been most focused on?

Fielder Hiss: As Chief Product Officer, the thing that has been most exciting is what we’ve done to expand our business to solve new problems. The first was introducing sustainability or CO2 insights. This was a natural extension of the aPriori platform to not only look at cost and manufacturability and now carbon.

Additionally, one of the things we’ve been really focused on is shifting left so that the designer can have information at the ready to make decisions to design cost out as they’re going, to design carbon out, and to identify and erase manufacturability issues before they get to manufacturing.

Chris Jeznach: When you talk about shifting left, can you put that in perspetive in terms of product development technologies? How is aPriori complimenting CAD and what value is that translating to for businesses in terms of what design engineers are doing?

How does aPriori Complement CAD?

Fielder Hiss: What aPriori has done from day one has been based and center around leveraging CAD. I like to call it leveraging the 3D model. Nowadays the industry talks a lot about leveraging the digital twin to create a digital thread. aPriori is the creation of that digital thread. We’re one of the most unique enablers of that digital thread because we take that CAD model through over 400 manufacturing processes to look at how you’d make it, the steps required to make it, the time to make it, cost to make it, how to make it better, how to make it cheaper. And so CAD is at the center of everything that we do and that extension of the digital thread is the promise that we’re delivering on.

We’ve always done that in the expert use case with our professional product. Now with shifting left we’re moving those insights to the authors, the designers, the CAD users. So what we’re really trying to do is be highly complimentary during the design process. Not get in the way of the design, but provide insights as they go.

How aPriori Fits into a CAD Workflow

1. aPriori plugins to the CAD system allow designers to easily upload parts and assemblies and perform analysis.
   1. “Very simple, very easy.”
   2. The designer can get feedback, make design changes, run it again, andcompare those scenarios.
2. Automation into the customer’s process so that when there’s a state change or a scheduling is set up in a PLM system, aPriori automates the analysis of an entire product overnight and presents that information back to the designers.
   1. Not only proactively perform analyses, but reactively get information to see the areas of highest concern, and make those changes.
   2. If designers are in CAD for six hours, they only have two hours left. aPriori is going to fit into the process to help them with those points of decision and let them make a better product at the end of the day.

Leaps Forward in Simulation Provide a Model for Product Development Technologies

Chris Jeznach: As you’re talking, I hear a lot of synergies between current innovations in product development technologies and with what happened in the simulation space. If you go back 10 or 15 years ago with what happened in engineering simulation, you see this shift left mentality. Design engineers were so used to working with simulation experts — whether it was for thermal analysis or for structural analysis — and then simulation technology became so good and easy to use that designers could perform those analyses themselves.  Today it’s a similar situation with cost — experts for cost are working collaboratively with design engineers — but technology like aPriori is changing the map.

Fielder Hiss: It’s a perfect analogy. It was roughly 15, or maybe even 20 years ago where to use FEA, CFD, or whatever the type of simulation it was, required a master’s degree engineer. You had to be a specialist, and highly paid. The designer would hand off the 3D design to those simulation experts, they would perform their analysis — take whatever the time took in order to perform that — and then bring iterations and changes back to the designer. That’s expensive. That takes time. It can be error-prone. And it really limits innovation. What happened about 15 years ago is companies like SolidWorks, PTC, and Dassault Systèmes really began to look at a way to put the simulation tools and insights into the hands of the designer.

In no way, shape, or form was it to replace the work that the analyst did. If you’re signing off on landing gear for an aircraft, you’re going to need a PhD level analyst to work on that. But you can make it better, faster, stronger, and lighter if you have those insights as a designer in an iterative loop before it gets there.

The same thing is happening today with the map of product development technologies. The market is greatly accelerated by putting the tools into the designers’ hands. That’s what we’re doing with manufacturing insights. That’s what we’re doing with cost. That’s what we’re doing with designing carbon out, making trade-offs between cost and carbon.

It’s expensive to make changes later. In some industries, the paperwork alone — the regulatory approval — makes it prohibitive to make some changes. But if you can make them early and often in the design process like has happened with simulation software, then you can really innovate, do things more rapidly, and ultimately get a better product for whatever the metrics that are key to your company are.

How Does aPriori Fit into PLM?

Chris Jeznach: We’re talking a lot about early design engineering. But if we think about the product development cycle there’s much more than design. We move to the program management planning phase, to sourcing and procurement, we get into operations manufacturing, and then we enter a period where maybe this product is going to be sustained for a period of time. Often what companies use to manage that lifecycle is PLM, Product Lifecycle Management. And a lot of companies have done some great work investing in PLM and getting it used across their broader teams. Can you talk a little bit more about how aPriori is enhancing all the great work companies have already done with PLM, and how do we start to unlock additional business value for these leading manufacturers?

Fielder Hiss: PLM is a backbone to many manufacturers. It’s their system of record in a lot of different ways. ERP is often the financial system of record, but for lifecycle management and everything else, it’s all about PLM. What we’re able to do by integrating with PLM, leveraging the data that’s there, and feeding data back into the PLM system, we’re able to unlock even more value and centralize more knowledge into that system. We put more value and more information into PLM to help different personas make business decisions from the data in those systems. And we make it seamless for our customers.

Chris Jeznach: What sort of data are you talking about when you say push and pull information into PLM and back and forth?

Fielder Hiss: What we as aPriori take out from a PLM system is that 3D model. That digital twin will take with it material information and volume information that is key for us to perform our simulation. When we perform a simulation, we can then write back things to the PLM, like Should Cost. We identify what things should cost, not necessarily what you’re paying but what you probably should be paying. We can identify carbon estimates and put that back into the PLM system so there’s a record of the carbon impact of that product. So we’re able to really take valuable data, build on it, and then add more value into the PLM system.

How Does aPriori Fit into ERP?

Chris Jeznach: You talked about should cost and what you’re actually paying is maybe a different thing. What companies often use to manage that is an ERP system. I’m curious of your thoughts here of how aPriori interacts with ERP. What do you see companies doing there?

Fielder Hiss: I think we highly value added to these systems, because if we just focus on cost and procurement, what we give the procurement person using ERP is the should cost and also the drivers or the buildup of that should cost. For example, how much is tooling? How much is this process versus end finishing? We give them these insights and present that into their system so that they can change how they work with their suppliers. There’s a joke we say internally: a lot of companies are doing 3 Bids and a Buy. When we engage with procurement and sourcing folks, we really work with them to do what we call fact-based negotiation. And by giving them not just a target cost, but the buildup — the things that will drive that cost, the various inputs, the steps — it allows them to have a really intelligent conversation with the supplier. They can say: actually we think maybe instead of a five axis machine, we should use a two and a half axis machine and here’s why. It creates an intelligent back and forth that allows them to really save their company money that goes directly to the bottom line.

Chris Jeznach: One thing I’m hearing often is that these procurement and sourcing teams are looking to getting information from their suppliers. Not only just cost breakdown, but also the carbon footprint of products. The tool out there that companies are often using is Life Cycle Assessment or LCA. What is LCA, how does aPriori differ or compared to LCA tools, and what are you seeing in terms of big trends in measuring carbon footprint?

Fielder Hiss: I liken life cycle assessment to the rear view mirror in your car: You can only see what’s behind you, what’s already happened. Life cycle assessment in many places is really about reporting. If LCA is the rear view mirror, we are the GPS. We’re telling you where you’re going to go. We’re performing an assessment in real time while it’s designed — before it’s ever been made. We are looking at stock material, material waste, the time used to actually make something, if it’s machined, how long is it machined or if it’s injection molding the energy used to make it, and the generation mix of that energy. We bring all that together to let you say, this is what it’s going to be, not this is what it is. And then we can let you look at things to reduce that. With aPriori as a GPS, you aren’t stuck looking back — you can decide to make it a different way.

Chris Jeznach: Last question: being the Chief Product Officer at aPriori, what does the future hold? What’s coming next?

Fielder Hiss: We have such a treasure trove of deep insights. We are going to put a unique data platform into play that’s going to sit in and around the actual applications to allow customers to apply large language models to ask questions about the results, ask questions about how we got there, and unlock even further value. And I think that will expand the solution beyond the largest manufacturers in the world to begin to be able to serve all manufacturers in the world.

Chris Jeznach: I’m looking forward to seeing that vision come through. Fielder, thanks so much for kicking off our Exec Talk series here.

Fielder Hiss: It was a pleasure, Chris. Thanks.