Chuck Grindstaff on how Siemens gets the core of PLM right

In this episode of Battle of the Visions, Verdi Ogewell talks to Siemens PLM President Chuck Grindstaff about the future for Siemen’s Teamcenter, NX and Solid Edge. He also includes commentary from analysts Mark Halpern of Gartner and Joe Barkai from IDC.

This video on Siemens is the fourth in a series of interviews on the future of PLM. Others include:

· Jim Hepplemann, CEO of PTC about their vision to bring Service Lifecycle Management and Application Lifecycle Management to users

· Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk on PLM in the Cloud

· Bernard Charles, CEO of Dassault Systemes about the future direction for CATIA, Solidworks and how the rest of the Dassault PLM suite will enable unique 3D experiences.

One of the things that really comes home in this interview is how Siemens PLM is focused on integrating the data across multiple systems, from design to simulation to manufacturing, to create a truly virtual product development environment. Verdi gets Chuck to concede that Siemens hasn’t always been first with breakthrough features. In return, Chuck points out that the real value for customers is in getting all of the various software components to work together so well, and that is where Siemens has focused.

Chuck points to a recent win at Daimler Mercedes as an example of how the entire product solution, including business processes, drives customer decisions. He says that none of the leading solutions have anything that stands head-and-shoulders above their competitors, but rather that customers have a long list of requirements and seek to make the best choice that balances those needs.

The video explores the role of Siemens software in developing NASA’s Curiosity Rover. NASA had to virtually simulate all the behaviors of this complex machine, because the first prototype had to actually land on Mars.

Watch the video to see how Chuck responds to Verdi on the direction of Siemens PLM and some very direct questions about the vision of competitors like Dassault.

This interview demonstrates a dramatic difference between the companies and CEOs that Verdi talked to earlier in this series. While Dassault Systemes’ Bernard Charles and Autodesk’s Carl Bass talk about the mobile revolution, the cloud, and social product development, PTC’s Heppelmann directed his gaze at the customer and the existing market needs, and Grindstaff focuses on getting all the details of integration exactly right.