Codebeamer: Next-generation ALM product, driving digital innovation in the manufacturing industry

The Internet of Everything, cloud computing, and intelligent products are the major trends in the development of the industrial software industry. Among them, application lifecycle management (ALM) covers the closed-loop process from demand to software management to testing and verification, and is a very important link in the development of intelligent products by enterprises.

In April this year, PTC announced the acquisition of Intland Software, which means that Codebeamer has also been incorporated into PTC's banner, bringing a perfect complement to PTC's product development solution portfolio. It can be said that by combining PTC's original Windchill and Arena PLM products, PTC will be able to truly achieve complete traceability and closed loop from front-end requirements to products to final verification, and more conveniently achieve connection, collaboration and changes between various professions and departments.

Codebeamer: The next generation of ALM products

At the Codebeamer product launch conference held recently, PTC China CTO Dr. Shi Zhanbei gave a detailed introduction to Codebeamer. First of all, based on demand management, Codebeamer uses various industry security and compliance standards as project templates for rapid reuse to ensure product quality and compliance. At the same time, risk management is very critical to software development. In the early stages of project development, risks must be estimated and recorded in advance. Continuous tracking and monitoring during the development process is very helpful for product quality control. In addition, Codebeamer also has strong software development and DevOps capabilities to ensure rapid iteration.

The software itself needs to be tested in combination with hardware, which requires a lot of hardware testing. In addition, the software version changes very quickly and iterates very quickly, so software status configuration and release management are very critical. Different version releases correspond to different requirements, so the number of versions of many software is very large, and each different version will have a closed-loop optimization of continuous integration of software and hardware.

Dr. Shi Zhanbei, CTO of PTC China

In the traceability closed loop of the entire demand process, Codebeamer provides many intuitive statistical analysis functions, which can very intuitively see the development progress, closed loop progress, implementation status, etc. from different dimensions.

Industrial manufacturing industry development trends

Speaking of the development trend of the industrial manufacturing industry. Shi Zhanbei said that first, with the increase in users and demands, the complexity of industrial products is getting higher and higher, especially heavy equipment products. Second, the degree of intelligence of products is also getting higher and higher, which means that there are many new capabilities that need to be realized through software and algorithms. Third, the sales market is becoming more and more segmented, and user needs are receiving more and more attention. This requires personalized product customization for specific application scenarios and specific users, and the ability to respond quickly to meet user needs. Finally, safety and compliance. The industrial field has very detailed and clear safety and compliance standards. Adhering to this concept, BMW chose Codebeamer as the in-vehicle software development solution for the entire group.

Integrate agile R&D model into the development process of in-vehicle software

BMW currently has more than 4,000 software development engineers. As the concept of software-managed cars continues to gain popularity, the number of software R&D personnel at OEMs will continue to rise, and Codebeamer's future application scope will be even larger.

Shi Zhanbei said that BMW chose Codebeamer for many reasons, including that its product design is very flexible and it has good support for agile management. Codebeamer's workflow is also very flexible, supporting open standards and supporting the integration of rich, pre-integrated external systems. The modern, easy-to-use editing interface for requirements documents provided by Codebeamer in terms of requirements management is also an important reason why BMW chose Codebeamer.

Codebeamer's flexible workflow allows BMW to introduce a new system into the entire group without changing its existing, complex business processes. This process does not require changing the entire system to accommodate the limitations of some tools, nor does it require changing a series of inherent corporate rules, so that users' usage habits remain consistent.

For BMW, there are many ALM systems and various other systems in its internal processing. By taking advantage of the openness of Codebeamer, many existing systems can be connected through API to form a platform like a digital main line.

It can be seen that the reason why BMW chose Codebeamer is exactly the challenge that many car companies are facing today, that is, how to better integrate the agile development model into the development process of in-vehicle software. Of course, an important reason for PTC to acquire Codebeamer is also Codebeamer's ability in agile development.

Liu Qiang, senior vice president of PTC and president of Greater China, said that digitalization is inseparable from the ability and speed of product innovation and the improvement of enterprise operation efficiency. Among them, the iteration speed of product innovation is the most core goal. As we all know, software defines everything, and PLM manages the entire core of an enterprise's products. When products are developing in the direction of intelligence, software will become the most important core and the core of the product's competitive advantage.

Liu Qiang, PTC Global Senior Vice President and President of Greater China

“For PTC’s overall Digital Thread strategy, CAD and Windchill will become the two core products in the development of the entire industry,” said Liu Qiang.