Powering Innovation and Navigating Battery Product Development
Full Transcript Below:
Michael Krieger
Hello, everyone, and welcome to today’s webinar hosted by Battery Technology and sponsored by Arena, a PTC company. We’re here to talk about a critical shift in the battery industry, and that’s EU battery regulations and the introduction of digital product passports or DPPs. As demand accelerates in this fast-changing sector, manufacturers are under pressure to innovate quickly, stay compliant, and maintain high standards of quality. The way product information is managed has never been more important.
I’m Michael Krieger. I’ll be your moderator today. We have just a few announcements before we begin. This webinar is designed to be interactive. The dock of which is at the bottom of your screen. It will allow you to learn about our speakers, download resources, share the webinar, and, most importantly, participate in the Q&A session that will take place at the end of our presentation.
We will also have a poll question at the end of our presentation, and I urge you to respond to that poll when it pops up. If you are experiencing any technical problems, just click to Help, which is found at the bottom of your screen, or type your issue into the Q&A area and we’ll be glad to offer one-on-one assistance.
Now, onto the discussion. Joining me today is Ulf Asklund, the CEO of QCM, specialist in information and configuration management, and Dave Barry, Senior Solution Architect at Arena by PTC, the leading cloud-native PLM platform built for battery manufacturers. To learn more about our speakers, just click on the speaker’s widget. With that, we’ll kick things off hearing a bit from Ulf. Ulf?
Ulf Asklund
Hello, my name is Ulf Asklund and I live in Malmo, which is the southern part of Sweden. I actually spent my entire life, which is now over 30 years, working with configuration management, which I think is structuring and managing information to support business needs.
As I said, CM is like a foundation, having these rules, how to manage information, not just reporting them, but to actually enable business and system models. For me, this started already at the PhD studies, what was actually within computer science, helping group of developers working with the same product even though they were geographically distributed, and that turned out to actually be the CM system, having that kind of information, giving awareness, and sharing information.
So, that is where it started. Nowadays, it’s more PLM in general, systems not only software, but parts and mechanics and stuff involving in both small and big products. My experience here is that, even though it’s very often a big IT part in these products, it’s very much to align people, get common understanding of terminology and concepts, and to educate and understand the main reasons behind why and how we’re doing this.
Actually, when I was deployed at Sony Ericsson many years ago, I got the role to create what we called, at that point, the CM standard—configuration management standard—defining and documenting this and packaging into trainings and create an organization to keep that governance of all this, and I think that worked very well.
So, that was actually one of the ideas in why I created the consultancy firm QCM now, to keep doing this, but for other companies, not just Sony. So, that is what we do, helping companies in the preliminaries and often including creating and establishing this CM standard. Historically, customers, the trigger why they come to us is because, of course, common reasons: more efficient, more effective work with product information moving from document-centric to more structured and digital product information.
But what we can see now is that, now, there is also trigger based on this new regulations and, that, we will talk about today, DPP and so on. Now, when they see that this is coming, they need to keep better control of their product information, then they take the opportunity to actually look into the entire process of PLM.
Yeah, that’s me.
Michael Krieger
Dave, a little bit about you.
Dave Barry
Hi. Hi, everybody. Yeah, I’m Dave Barry. I work for our Arena PTC. I’m based in the UK. My background originally was in electronics. I’ve over 30 years of experience in manufacturing.
Initially, I worked in the telecom sector for a company developing high-frequency components, which are used by mobile phone networks. I may have come across Ulf before whilst he was at Sony Ericsson, without knowing it, of course. But during that time, I spent quite a bit of time working with business systems, PLM, QMS systems, ERP systems, MES systems, and that’s where I grew my interest in PLM. I first came across Arena PLM, that was about 15 years ago, and I was still working for this company.
I was a customer of Arena. My first implementation was as a customer, so I went through this process with them. But since then, I’ve helped many customers go through an Arena PLM implementation.
Of course, every customer that we come across tends to be unique. They have their own specific set of requirements. But really, my role is to look at those requirements and advise and help and guide them on the best way that we can configure and implement Arena PLM to meet their unique requirements.
And that’s me.
Michael Krieger
Thanks. Thanks both, for joining me today. Let’s dig into today’s discussion. To begin, let’s look at the battery industry from the perspective of innovation. The battery industry, as I said, is evolving rapidly and none more so than the introduction of the EU battery regulation and digital product passports, which are still relatively new to many manufacturers. Can you explain what a DPP is in simple terms and why it’s becoming so important in the battery industry?
Ulf Asklund
Yeah. DPP is the digital product passport that is… It’s called a passport. It is really a tool to support European sustainability and circular economy goals. What it is in practice is really a QR code that you place on each product to link to digital record with the key details about that product. So, it really supports transparency, ensures transparency for this, and it will keep information like materials about the manufacturer, environmental impacts, and so on. Having that transparency, it will also then enable to put conditions on these things, which is then called eco-design requirements, and that is, for example, to improve durability, reusability, recyclability, repairability of a product, supporting the entire ecosystems of circular economy—also to make products more energy and resource-efficient, for example, address presence of substance that might inhabit circularity, and rules for carbon footprint, and so on.
All these things then are measured and are visible . The overall goal for EU is to become the first climate neutral region in the world called EU Green Deal. So, that is the main focus of all this. Of course, to do this, to create this DPP, you need both the QR code and all that infrastructure and the database containing all that information.
What maybe we’ll talk about today is, “How do you get the correct information into that database? Where is that created and bought?” So, that is a main thing, not just setting up the digital structure. In the current momentum, why it’s important now is that it’s coming close now. In 2027, the DPP will be mandatory for battery industry, for electric vehicle batteries, industrial batteries, and rechargeable SLE batteries, and others. In 2027—it’s not that far away. The regulations are already in place for some things, but they are added on all the time. Being in that business, now you need to prepare for these things. And then, there will be similar regulations for other areas like textiles and so on with other time zones.
Michael Krieger
Thinking about that, here’s a two-part follow-up for you. Many manufacturers are going to feel pressure around the EU battery regulations and DPPs. Why shouldn’t companies panic about that seeing it’s just two years off, and what’s the most important thing manufacturers need to understand about DPPs at this stage and how they’re currently handling compliance?
Ulf Asklund
Of course, it’s easy to panic, but being in panic mode is not a good state. Then, there is a big risk to do quick and ill-considered decisions, and you just buy a new system without actually knowing exactly how to use it. What we think is, if you already have control of your data, product data, you have this structure where you have maybe, already cope with regulatory requirements, then we believe you should spend some time to actually investigate what you have today, see what information… see what you need to extend in your current data models and in the current systems to support that instead of just adding on a new silo because it’s still important to keep things together, to keep them in the systems and processes where you operate in the daily basis.
I think not going into panic and just extend what you have… Of course, there might be some stress justified here. It’s quite close. And if you don’t have control of these things, then maybe you should really start now and take the opportunity to be more in keeping track of your product information in a better way, not only to cope with this, but actually improving in general.
Michael Krieger
So, Dave, let me ask you, what are the risks for companies that delay preparing for regulations like DPP requirements? Is this common across other regulated industries?
Dave Barry
Well, I guess the main risks of delaying will be that it will slow down your product launch. You’re developing a new product. If you delay on gathering this data, delay on even setting up a system that you’re able to monitor and collate this data, that can slow down that whole product development lifecycle.
I guess the other risk is, if you rush that at the end of your product lifecycle, maybe there’s something you’re missing and you may even fall foul of the regulation and, therefore, have to pay some consequences because of that. Working out how to manage that data, as Ulf said, I think, is the key, making sure that you prepare yourself for that ahead of time, consider what your requirements are under the DPP regulations, what you need to get together, and have a system.
As Ulf again says, have a system in place that is fit for purpose for gathering that data, which will allow you to easily find that data, allow you to easily monitor if you are missing any of that data, and remembering that data will evolve over time. So, it is part of your product lifecycle. A PLM system is a great candidate for monitoring this system. The data that you are generating is likely to go through multiple revisions, so you want a system that’s able to capture those multiple revisions, but also you want that ability to have electronic sign-off and proper rigorous approval of that data to validate and check that the data is absolutely correct.
Essentially, I think what we’re saying here, these regulations are introducing a new set of requirements upon customers. If you’re using requirements management, you want to make sure that these requirements are included and that you’ve got a proper process in place that you can validate that your product meets those requirements, and that’s part of your NPI process.
Michael Krieger
Let’s shift into a discussion around starting early in the production lifecycle. Ulf, why is it important to consider DPP from the very start of product development, and why is it important to have structured, accessible data?
Ulf Asklund
The DPP is like the end result of the product. You have the QR code, you have the information, when you’re ordered to produce the product, but most of this information is actually created during the development phase of the product. You select materials, you design for repairability, spare parts, you select your suppliers also that will have different carbon footprints and so on.
Making all that kind of decisions out on, we then generate the DPP in the end. Having that flow then, creating this information, keeping it in a structured way, then you will also be able to generate the DPP passport and the information in a more automatic way and avoid manual work and bad data quality in the end, and also having accurate and up-to-date information in the DPP and not having default values and so on.
And also, European sustainability product policy, they estimated that more than 80% of the product-related environmental impact is actually decided during the design phase. When you do this design, you should not be blind of the consequences from a DPP perspective. So, if you can get that kind of information, “Okay, if I select this supply, what will happen? If I use these materials, what will happen?” if you can see that already when you design, that will of course result in a better design, hopefully, being able to both design and manufacture sustainable products. I think it’s really important to do that early on.
Michael Krieger
So, Dave, how does structuring data early help manufacturers avoid last-minute compliance challenges and help them better prepare for audits?
Dave Barry
I think this really falls down to a company’s NPI process, that they would need a well-structured NPI process. An NPI process really is typically a number of phases and, at the end of each phase, you’re going to go through gates and reviews. So, you’re indicating in your NPI process what information should have been developed and should be in place at that particular gate at that process.
You’re not leaving this to the very end of the development process. You’re building up this set of data as you move through that NPI process and, at each gate, there’s a review. You are checking to see if you’ve got that information together and also checking… It gives you that opportunity to look and validate to see if you’ve got any missing data. I think that’s an important thing. Often, you look at the data that you’ve got and have you approved it. Is it all valid? And then, all of a sudden, you realize, “Hang on a minute, we’ve missed out.” “We’ve forgotten to do something. We’ve forgotten to get this piece of information.” So, it’s as much, as important about making sure not only validating the information you have gathered, make sure that you’re not missing any data. I think a good NPI process will help you do that as you move through.
So that, by the time you get to that point that they’re reaching the product launch and you’re needing to apply for your regulatory approval, you should have all of that information available and what’s more important is that that information, it should be easy to extract from your system. It’s not, as Ulf said earlier, kept in lots of different silos, different locations in your file system or whatever. Having a view, the objective is to make sure that you can pull that data efficiently, quickly, and not waste time and extra time pulling that, searching for data as that product.
Product lifecycles can take months. Some of this data you may have prepared earlier, you don’t want to lose that. You want to keep it, where it is. A well-structured system will help you find that data.
Michael Krieger
Next, let’s shift our discussion to the role of a single traceable system, Dave. Why should companies aim to arrange their data in a system, in that single system, rather than using multiple tools?
How does having data that is traceable through the entire product record simplify compliance, not just with DPPs, but also future directives down the line?
Dave Barry
Having all of your data controlled within a single system, in my opinion, that helps you reduce any ambiguities about the data. The danger of having data in multiple systems is that you can have conflicts. One system says this, another system says that. Which one is the up-to-date version? It’s that type of information… That’s what I mean by the ambiguity of your data. Having this data in a single system, we call that… this becomes the single source of truth.
In other words, everybody within the organization knows where to go to find the latest, effective, approved piece of information, and there’s no ambiguity. In other words, it’s explicit. You want to make sure that everything in there has been explicitly defined. Remember, with the product, your product, it might be an electromechanical product, so it is made up of all sorts of… You’ve got the electrical components, you’ve got the mechanical components, but you’ve also got labeling, you’ve got packaging.
For the DPP, labeling is a very key part of what you’re having to control and manage. Managing labeling, at first you might think, “Oh, that’s a simple, straightforward thing,” but my own personal experience, I know labelings really can be quite challenging to make sure that that is correct, and a simple error on a label can have a real consequence.
So, if you ship product with it, which has a simple… even a typo on the error, we’re talking about having QR codes, this all has to be checked and verified and validated and make sure it works. So, you need a system that’s able to properly put that through the proper validation test and sign-off before it’s ready to be released into production. Having all of that data though, all within one system, means you’ve got that one single source of truth where everybody in your organization knows, and it’s not just people in your own organization because you may be sharing this out with suppliers as well.
So, everybody involved in the manufacturing, building of your product have got a single place to go and look at this information. And then, this information also can be pushed downstream, so it might be pushing downstream into your ERP systems or your PIM system or whatever else you’re using.
Michael Krieger
So, what does regulatory traceability look like within a PLM system? How granular does it get, and why does that matter?
Dave Barry
It’s a tricky question, I think, a little bit to answer. In my mind, when we talk about granularity, a lot of the requirements for the DPPs, we’re talking about requirements in terms of critical materials. So, you’re looking at… In your full bill of material of your product, you’ve got different components in there which will use different raw materials, and you’re needing to gather and have information against those different raw materials.
The granularity is almost going down to the item level of your product. On top of that, these regulations are also requiring you to produce some additional reports, environmental reports, usage instructions, instructions on how to recycle, how to dispose of the product. These weren’t necessary in place before.
So, you now have a requirement to make sure these are properly developed, these become publicly available. This is publicly available information, so it needs to be properly reviewed. All of this information would need to be properly reviewed and properly signed off. The regulations apply in different ways right across the product development, but this is all part of developing a product that has to meet a set of regulations. At Arena, we have quite a lot of customers that develop medical devices and they’ve used PLM to help them meet the FDA’s regulatory requirement on their product.
What we see at Arena is taking what we’ve already done and already proven works fine for a medical device environment using those same techniques, those same processes, to help companies meet the requirements for DPP.
Michael Krieger
Makes sense, so…
Ulf Asklund
And then, they’re going to…
Michael Krieger
Yeah, I was going to say, Ulf, from an auditing or advisory standpoint, what’s the value of the structured traceability?
Ulf Asklund
Yeah. Of course, for audits, it’s very much to show that you have control, you can find things, where they are, but it’s also about traceability. It is also to see when and how did you comply with these new requirements when these updates are actually implemented. To keep all this traceability is really important. Of course, it also gives internal confidence. You know what you’re doing, and everything is more efficient. When we do assist studies in companies to see where they are in order to prepare for a change and then keep knowing the status and how they’ve managed traceability and control the data is really a big part of such an assist in study.
Michael Krieger
So, let’s switch now and look at connected development and how to manage change, quality, and scale. Dave, for companies that are managing constant change, why is PLM so critical in aligning product data with regulatory compliance?
Dave Barry
Well, I think both do go hand in hand. A company managing constant change, they will need a robust system. Often, that change is forced upon them by factors outside their control. They need to be reactive and sometimes need to be reactive quickly. What they need in place is a well-developed and robust system. So, when they’re under the cosh and they have to implement change quickly, they have a system they know they can rely on.
It doesn’t hinder them. It actually assists them to move through that process quickly. The core of a PLM system will help you manage that, go through a change management process so that change can be made, it can be reviewed, change requests can be created, they can be assessed, evaluated, that will move forward through to a change order process to approve changes and release new versions of the documentation.
So, that documentation will be possibly releasing information for the regulatory requirements. If you are using requirements management as well, when you’re making changes, it would be a good process to use requirements traceability matrix. So, you’re always checking, “Is this change I’m proposing to make? Maybe it’s forced upon me because of a supply chain issue, but is it the change I’m making? Do I still meet the regulatory requirements that we have specified for this product?”
There’s so many different moving parts that you really do need a system to help you manage that, and it needs to be designed for this process. The danger is to try and manage that with, as we’ve mentioned before, siloed systems, maybe file systems and so forth. No matter how organized you feel you are, it won’t be as efficient as using a PLM proper system too, in my opinion, to manage that.
Michael Krieger
So, how does PLM support secure collaboration across engineering, quality , and external suppliers, especially in fast-moving sectors like this?
Dave Barry
Yeah. We mentioned earlier that, with Arena, we have the ability to open up a company’s workspace so that their suppliers can also log in and see that single source of the truth. This, I think, is a very powerful feature so that your contract manufacturers, your suppliers can also see that single source of the truth.
But not only can they see that, the system can notify them when change happens. If something is changing, they will get notification of that change and also they can feedback into the system to say that they’ve read, they’ve understood that change. So, you get a positive feedback giving you, as the manufacturer, the confidence that your contract manufacturers understood what the change is, they know when they’re going to implement that change. This collaboration between your suppliers and within your own team… a lot of companies, as we’ll remember, may have teams around different geographical locations. So, having a cloud-native PLM solution really helps with this. There is just one solution, basically one database at the back end, which doesn’t really matter where you are. As long as you’ve got an internet connection and you’ve got the security credentials, you will be able to get in and be able to see that data.
Michael Krieger
Excellent. So, Ulf, let me ask you, does this level of collaboration make your job easier when advising or preparing regulatory submissions? How does this affect the business relationship with their suppliers and OEMs?
Ulf Asklund
Yeah, definitely. Now, Dave has said it is really important that the suppliers can read and find data and all this collaboration, but it’s also in the other direction. Now, we need this information, from the detailed information, from the suppliers, what was the material they actually used in this batch, and so on, and that kind of information we should also get into our system in a nice way.
That kind of collaboration is also important so we get up-to-date information from all suppliers also into the systems. But also, about collaboration, as I said from the beginning, my start in CM was to support geographically distributed developers. We found out that the same system with all these notifications, awareness of what was happening within the product, was really a good help. This kind of system really helps in collaboration and then bringing people together, working with the same data at the same time.
So, I think that is really, really important. Also, the collaboration with suppliers of them and OEM partners is really important. But I also think, as the owner of the product, you should really make sure that you have control of your data yourself. So even though you collaborate and, of course, enforce that they have control and using good systems, it is still important that you can see the compliance. Maybe even if the relationship ends with that partner, you should be able to do new compliance reports and so on, continue with the product because that might still be on the market.
It’s also an important thing to take that ownership, I think, and to understand that this is important.
Michael Krieger
Then, let me ask you this, Ulf, do you see a correlation between companies that manage product data well and those that pass audits or market checks more smoothly?
Ulf Asklund
I don’t have any statistics on that. It’s really hard. Most companies, they pass their audits eventually. It’s not black and white. It’s more how much effort they need to spend in this. When these regulations are getting tighter, more products, maybe you need to have different variants of the product on different markets, then of course to reduce that effort and to make it simple and a good quality is really important.
Otherwise, even though you pass the audits, maybe you can’t provide all the variants or all the markets you want to because you don’t have the time. Yeah, so that is actually the reason, I think.
Michael Krieger
Okay. So Dave, how does Arena help make that kind of audit-ready state the default state?
Dave Barry
Yeah, I think it partly comes down to that careful configuration of the system. Now, when you are configuring a system, that’s one of the things you will have in mind. You are going to need to go through certain audits, and so you’re sort of preparing a system to ensure that you’ll be able to go into those audits with confidence that you’ve got the evidence.
Audits tend to be evidence-based, and what you’re needing to do is to demonstrate to the auditor that you’ve properly gathered all of this information and that it’s properly approved and you’ve got proper control of that data. I have, in my past, experienced audits where companies have gone into almost a panic before the audit happens because it takes so long and so much effort to make sure that they’ve got the latest information available and so forth.
Or if information is missing, they’re trying to scrabble around in the last minute to pull that information together. Having a system like Arena in place, in my opinion, will actually help you. I sometimes say to our customer, our Arena customers, that it helps, keeps you honest.
There are certain things within Arena that you can’t fudge. If you are signing off on a document, the system will log the date and time that that signature was signed off. You can’t edit that date. You can’t change that date. So, this is what I mean. Once you have the system in place, as long as people are using that system properly, they’re following your standard operating procedures, essentially it’s preparing you not only for your product launch, but for any audits that you’re going to need to go through.
This is the sort of consequence of having a well-organized system in place, and it will significantly reduce the amount of time before an audit to try and… You should have the confidence that, “We have all of the evidence. We know where that evidence is.” So, when the auditor arrives and wants to sort of look at particular evidence, you’ll know exactly where to find it. You’ll be able to pull that up and also show, “Here’s all of the audit trail of that to show when that evidence was created, generated, whatever it is, how it was approved and so forth.” Having that depth of detail and knowledge around that data, I think, is absolutely invaluable, but it then should make audits really straightforward.
Michael Krieger
So, Ulf, let me ask you this. How does managing DPPs within PLM ensure better accuracy, efficiency, and traceability compared to alternative approaches?
Ulf Asklund
Yeah. Managing the DPP itself, this QR code thing and maybe a separate database that it connects to, that might be one thing. But with the actual data, the content that we should provide, I really think that should be from the systems where people are actually working with. I think the owners of the information, the people changing things in that system, they work. That should be the basic and the source for this information. If you add on new systems, then normally it’s not a good user experience and people don’t use it, and then the quality drops, and then it goes back.
So, I think it’s good to keep it in the source. And also, the PLM system, this is structured information, it is traceability and all the things we mentioned. PLM systems are built to support that. That is the capability they have. If you build a new separate system for this, it might be good, but I’ve also seen that these systems looks good from the beginning, but they don’t really have these basic configuration management support and capabilities.
They don’t have unique IDs. Maybe they don’t support versioning. They don’t have ISO like the States. They don’t provide this traceability. There is this backbone that is basics for the PLM system, but it’s really, really important, as we said earlier, to provide. I think it’s good to use these systems that you already have and that are good at this also to generate the information going into the DPP.
Michael Krieger
Dave, let me ask you a follow-up on that. How can growing companies prepare for that shift before it becomes painful?
Dave Barry
A good question. Really, at Arena, we have quite a few smaller startup customers who come to Arena. They’re developing some great, innovative products, they’re often fairly small teams, and these successful startups are often growing very rapidly. They will often need to quickly get a system in place. Their expertise is often more in the technology than what do they need to do in terms of managing data and so forth.
We found that, with Arena, this is a solution that allows them to get up and running very quickly. Using an out-of-the-box configuration with Arena, it will allow them to get their system up, set up really quickly, and have the system in place and delivering benefit for them in a matter of weeks.
Of course, the best time to implement a PLM system, I would say, is to do that just at the point before you need it. If you’ve passed that point, then probably the best time is to do it as soon as possible. Ideally, a PLM system really, because it’s designed for this job, it should help and smooth and speed up processes within the company, reduce errors.
In other words, eventually, rather than costing money for a company, it will be providing a return on their investment and will actually, should save them money and helps that company become more competitive. They have a better controlled product, they know where their data is, and it is a stronger solution for them to go to market with.
Michael Krieger
Looking ahead now, let’s talk about how to prepare for DPPs. Ulf, what are the key data points battery manufacturers will need to collect and share as part of the digital product passport rollout?
Ulf Asklund
There are a lot of different attributes and a lot of details. I will not put all this in… You can find this in the DIN standard. But just to give some examples, it’s both static data like general information, ID, battery category, manufacturing info like country or region, data production, and so on. It’s also specifications, materials used in battery chemistry, substances, critical raw materials, and stuff, all these things need to be added, and then, environmental data, like carbon footprint. All these things are static.
When you put the product on the market, that will be the same information for that point unless you repair and change the product in any way. But then, there is also dynamic data that should be provided, state of health, number of short cycles, software updates, maintenance and repair history. That will be information for each individual to keep track of. When we worked with the battery company here, they quite soon started looking to this dynamic data and the purpose was to really understand how the batteries were used by their customers, and so they can help them with education and show how they should recharge and also do preventive maintenance.
They could see that when sales were going down and so on. So, they really built up a circular economy and new services and really changed their business model here, not just selling a battery and then, “We are off.” Getting that kind of dynamic information is also important and also part of the DPP.
Michael Krieger
So, Dave, how can PLM platforms be used to manage and surface that efficiently?
Dave Barry
All right. At the end of the day, the PLM platform, remember it effectively is a database of all your product data and it’s essential that you have a way to efficiently search that database and generate reports from that database, and that’s really what you’re doing.
Again, this comes back down to the configuration, I think, of the system. So, you want to plan ahead and say, “Okay. What are the reports that we will need to generate? What’s the information that we’ll need to be able to see and make sure that the system is able to pull that data and that you’ll have that data within your system so that you can do this?”
As I was saying earlier, I think it’s just as important to be able to have a view of your data so that you can do a gap analysis, so you can sort of see if you are missing any data, so you can easily identify, “Okay. For this product, we’re still missing this information. We still need to get this information together so that we are fully compliant with the regulations.”
Michael Krieger
So, Ulf, regulations are going to continue to evolve. How can manufacturers ensure their systems and processes remain adaptable to future requirements?
Ulf Asklund
I think this is really important and I think this is exactly what we try to help the customers with. When I present myself, I talked about the CM standard that’s on here. It’s on building up this information of how things works and relationships and terminology and stuff. I think it’s really important to get that understanding within the business and to put governance on that. So, if you want to change anything… For example, if you want to extend the model now supporting the new DPP regulations, then you should go into that governance forum, say, “We want to add these attributes. How will that work? What will the impact be?”
And then, you take the decisions. And then, you implement it in the processes and where you’re working and in the supporting systems for this. Because if you do that, then you will be able to continuously improve all the time. You will go through the same process, you will not lose control, what you’re doing, because now we have so many processes. Normally, in different organizations, you have many IT systems maybe working with this. If you start a patch in different places, both organization-wise and processes, but also in different systems, then you lose that control and then it will be hard to change and adopt the new regulations, for example.
I think that governance and that piece of information of how things work, I think is really important.
Michael Krieger
So, Dave, what data is needed within a PLM environment to help businesses make compliance easier, and how does this work?
Dave Barry
Yeah. There is a set of static data I think that you have… There’s two types of data is all I’m saying, so static data and dynamic or serialized data as well. The static data is that product data that you’re going to use to prove compliance. As the regulations may be changed, you would need to have a system that you can feel in control, that you can make some modifications to your systems to meet new requirements that come along.
These are very new regulations that the requirements for the regulations are still changing. They’re not static yet. So, you have to have a system that you can feel confident to be able to make modifications, to use configuration of the system, so you can introduce, as Ulf was saying, potentially new attributes to make sure that you are capturing that data properly.
I would say that the rule of thumb for a system, for your PLM system, would be to include all the static data that is required to prove compliance. That’s where it should be, so everything is within the same system, and this is a way, again, moving away from having that information in separate silos around the place. That, I believe, is the way you’d be able to keep the data under control, but also be confident, as the regulations evolve and change, that you’re in control and you can change your system and evolve your system with those changes to make sure that you’re keeping up to speed with all of those changes in those regulations.
Michael Krieger
All right, gentlemen, that concludes the roundtable discussion component of our conversation. Now, we’d like to open the floor to our audience starting with a poll question. You should see a pop-up on your screen. We ask that you please choose the response directly in that window, and then click submit.
Our question is this, “As you prepare for DPP compliance and related regulations, is there a designated individual responsible for overseeing the management of these requirements within your organization?”
“Yes, no? Is it something you really need?” Let us know. Those are the three choices to choose between. As you take the time to weigh in that poll question, I did also want to mention our webinar survey, which is available right next to the presentation window. If you close the survey, you can reopen the widget by clicking the icon along the bottom of your screen. Again, thanks in advance for filling out the feedback form. Your participation in this survey allows us to better serve you. Now, onto the question-and-answer portion of our event.
As a reminder, to participate in Q&A, just type your question into the text box located next to the presentation window or click the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen. If we’re not able to answer all submitted questions during the webinar, we’ll be sure to share them with our speakers who can reply to you offline.
With that, let’s take one of your questions before we review the poll results. Here’s a question from Charles who asks, “If you could give one piece of advice to battery manufacturers about getting ready for DPP, what would it be?”
How do we start?
Dave Barry
Who’s going to go first?
Ulf Asklund
If I start, David.
Dave Barry
You go.
Ulf Asklund
I think it’s important to, of course, first look at what are the new regulations. You need to have some kind of control on what it is, but then you should also look into what you have so you can find some kind of gap and then start to see how you can extend. This panic mode I talked about, avoid that and do a more structured way of seeing what you need to do.
Dave Barry
Yeah. My advice I think would also be similar to Ulf. Review your existing systems, check that they are fit for purpose, take a holistic view of your data that you want to manage, and make sure that that’s not spread across multiple silos. Try and look and rationalize that data if you can into a single system. A single source of truth, I think, is always going to be better, helping you control that data, helping you prepare for audits.
After doing that review, if you need to make some changes, don’t delay. There can always be an excuse not to move forward. Here, at Arena, we’re used to working with businesses who have got other priorities as well.
Of course, they’re trying to run a business and so forth. We would tend to work in a very pragmatic way, looking at ways that we can phase the implementation of the new system, make sure that the new system delivers benefit at each phase of the implementation, and, at the end, hopefully that will be saving that organization money.
Michael Krieger
I think the dog had something to say about that as well! Let’s take a look at the results of our poll, 55% said they do have that designated, a third say, “Nope, still working on it,” and 11% want to know if it’s something they really need. What do you think about that?
Ulf Asklund
It’s 50% is half. But if you look at the figures I’ve seen before, this has actually increased since I saw these things. Maybe there’s battery people here that feel the pressure arrow and I’ve actually point to these persons. So, I think it’s good that it’s increasing even though it’s still 50%.
Michael Krieger
I understand. Let’s go with a question from Lloyd who says, “DPP isn’t the last regulation manufacturers are going to face. How can preparing for DPP and other regulations set companies up for future compliance success?”
Ulf Asklund
You go, Dave.
Dave Barry
Yeah. Again, I’m, like probably many of the people listening in today, also learning about DPP as time goes on. It’s a new set of regulations. My understanding, that it’s enforced for battery technologies, but it will be used in other sectors as well.
Electronics, plastics, textiles, even toys will have this requirement. These regulations, they’re going to come, they’re going to be here, they’re going to be used certainly within the European Union. It is also probably these regulations are going to get even more stringent over time, so you do need to make sure you’ve got a system that you’ve got in place that can adapt to these changes in these regulations.
So, I think that’s very important. When you’re taking that holistic view of your existing systems, not only think what regulations you need to meet today, I think looking at the future requirements of where these regulations are moving is also important.
Michael Krieger
Okay.
Ulf Asklund
And also, a comment here is that now we have talked about batteries and we know the timeline, there are other areas as well with other… like textile and so on, we don’t know exactly the dates maybe. But when these are ready, then there is said that it should be 18 months delay until you need to cope with the regulations. Of course, 18 months is not very much, so it’s good to prepare and look at this ahead even though the details are not set.
Michael Krieger
We have time for one or two more questions. Keep your questions coming. We will get to as many as we can and, the ones we don’t have time for, we will share with our panelists. Here’s a question from Danielle who asks, “What are the risks for companies that treat DPP as a one-off project instead of a long-term strategy for managing product data?”
Ulf Asklund
It depends what one-off product means. But if it means to provide us a narrow solution to create the DPP for a specific product, then you’re not prepared to do it for next product and the changes we talked about and it will not enable that collaboration that we also talked about, involving and taking good decisions early on in the product. If that is a one-off just to create that single database for that product, then you miss a lot of opportunities, I think.
Michael Krieger
With that, that’s all the time we have for audience questions today. I want to thank you. We appreciate your time and attention on today’s topic. Thanks to our sponsor, Arena, a PTC company, as well as to everyone in the audience, we appreciate your attention and participation. Within the next 24 hours, you’ll receive a personalized follow-up email with details and a link to today’s presentation on demand. Please, feel free to invite your colleagues and peers who may not have been able to attend the live event.
On behalf of our guests, Dave Barry and Ulf Asklund, I’m Michael Krieger, thanks for your time and have a great day.
Ulf Asklund
Thank you very much.
Dave Barry
Thank you.