Chris, at my previous company we used it. I implemented it and supported/enhanced/upgraded it over a 3.5 yr period. We had our main office in NC with satellite engineering offices in WA, CA, and GA. Our main office had about 110 users and our satellite offices each about about a dozen.
Version 8.3 (PLM) was improved significantly with regard to the “chattiness†of the client to the server. Therefore, going from 8.1 to 8.3 yielded us a big improvement. We went live with 8.1 and we really pioneered the product for PRO.CAD and Epicor. Our BOMs were about 1,500+ lines and sometimes 4 and 5 levels deep; so fairly large. Initially, when we “pushed†the BOM from PLM to Vantage (via MS BizTalk and Service Connect) it took 1.5 days. Yes, days. I think they initially tested the linkage between the two servers on a company that manufactured #2 Pencils; because I have no clue how the heck that ever passed their simulations.
Long story short, once they were aware of the issues, Epicor and PRO.CAD rewrote the BizTalk orchestrations and SC workflows. Then, the same BOM push took 15 minutes. What a difference.
Because of our geographic challenges (offices on each coast), we could not run with one central server at our main NC office. The internet latency was just too much for our users to ignore. Plus, we used PLM integrated SolidWorks and our 3D models could get in the neighborhood of 3GB in file size and vaulting that amount of data across the WAN from Seattle to Greensboro wasn’t feasible.
So, since PLM is SQL only, we implemented SQL Replication and put a replicated slave server in each of our satellite offices. They were dual purposed: not only did they perform the asynchronous transactional replication enterprise-wide, they also each served as a local document vault. So now our engineers would save their drawings locally in each office and at night all files/drawings/models would be synced up enterprise-wide.
With this configuration PLM works great. It’s really a great product and don’t be fooled, it’s almost another entire ERP system in itself. It’s a huge piece of software and very moldable to your business. But with that comes administrative and support overhead (and development, too, as you’ll be customizing). Depending on your client seats and technical aptitude of your engineering users, plan on hiring one person, at a minimum. You have another SQL server and even possibly a segregated server for BizTalk and Service Connect.
Feel free to ping me directly with any other questions.
Vic Drecchio
Director of Information Technology
Swepco Tube
One Clifton Blvd, Clifton, NJ 07011
Email: vic.drecchio@...
Mobile: (704) 530-3092
From: Marsch, Chris
Sent: Monday, December 19, 2011 3:01 PM
To: mailto:VANTAGE@... ; vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Epicor PLM and ProCAD
Is anyone using Vantage and Epicor PLM with ProCAD? What has the performance of the software been for you? Are you using it across a WAN or completely in one location?
Christopher W. Marsch
IT/Database Administrator
Mechanical Dynamics & Analysis, Ltd.
19E British American Blvd.
Latham, NY 12110
(518) 399-3616 x272
Cell: (518) 795-0200
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2012.0.1890 / Virus Database: 2109/4692 - Release Date: 12/20/11
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Version 8.3 (PLM) was improved significantly with regard to the “chattiness†of the client to the server. Therefore, going from 8.1 to 8.3 yielded us a big improvement. We went live with 8.1 and we really pioneered the product for PRO.CAD and Epicor. Our BOMs were about 1,500+ lines and sometimes 4 and 5 levels deep; so fairly large. Initially, when we “pushed†the BOM from PLM to Vantage (via MS BizTalk and Service Connect) it took 1.5 days. Yes, days. I think they initially tested the linkage between the two servers on a company that manufactured #2 Pencils; because I have no clue how the heck that ever passed their simulations.
Long story short, once they were aware of the issues, Epicor and PRO.CAD rewrote the BizTalk orchestrations and SC workflows. Then, the same BOM push took 15 minutes. What a difference.
Because of our geographic challenges (offices on each coast), we could not run with one central server at our main NC office. The internet latency was just too much for our users to ignore. Plus, we used PLM integrated SolidWorks and our 3D models could get in the neighborhood of 3GB in file size and vaulting that amount of data across the WAN from Seattle to Greensboro wasn’t feasible.
So, since PLM is SQL only, we implemented SQL Replication and put a replicated slave server in each of our satellite offices. They were dual purposed: not only did they perform the asynchronous transactional replication enterprise-wide, they also each served as a local document vault. So now our engineers would save their drawings locally in each office and at night all files/drawings/models would be synced up enterprise-wide.
With this configuration PLM works great. It’s really a great product and don’t be fooled, it’s almost another entire ERP system in itself. It’s a huge piece of software and very moldable to your business. But with that comes administrative and support overhead (and development, too, as you’ll be customizing). Depending on your client seats and technical aptitude of your engineering users, plan on hiring one person, at a minimum. You have another SQL server and even possibly a segregated server for BizTalk and Service Connect.
Feel free to ping me directly with any other questions.
Vic Drecchio
Director of Information Technology
Swepco Tube
One Clifton Blvd, Clifton, NJ 07011
Email: vic.drecchio@...
Mobile: (704) 530-3092
From: Marsch, Chris
Sent: Monday, December 19, 2011 3:01 PM
To: mailto:VANTAGE@... ; vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Epicor PLM and ProCAD
Is anyone using Vantage and Epicor PLM with ProCAD? What has the performance of the software been for you? Are you using it across a WAN or completely in one location?
Christopher W. Marsch
IT/Database Administrator
Mechanical Dynamics & Analysis, Ltd.
19E British American Blvd.
Latham, NY 12110
(518) 399-3616 x272
Cell: (518) 795-0200
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2012.0.1890 / Virus Database: 2109/4692 - Release Date: 12/20/11
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]