Teamcenter Goes Mobile

Are you in the growing majority of mobile workers? The latest mobile research from Forrester notes 57% of all employees in 2010 are mobile and that number will increase to more than 90% by 2015.

To address the growing needs of mobile PLM workers, today we announced Teamcenter Mobility. It’s a new app now available on the Apple iPad and other mobile devices in the near future.






This mobile move extends the decision-making ability we’ve emphasized with HD-PLM vision to the mobile professional. It helps our customers make better decisions anytime and anywhere. From our customers who beta tested the app, use cases span automotive, industrial equipment and consumer goods industries, such as:

• A large automotive OEM accessing a vehicle’s engineering information in plants and in service bays at a car dealership.


• A heavy equipment manufacturer servicing large equipment right on the machine with an iPad in tow to diagnose problems.


• A consumer product manufacturer servicing machines in and around the manufacturing equipment.

One highlight of the app several beta customers found useful is the ability to quickly load a JT file for viewing on the go.

Top Ten

Here are the top 10 highlights of the app you might find useful:

1. Use the app in any of 13 different languages (same as in Teamcenter).


2. Work equally well in online (connected to Teamcenter) and off-line modes.


3. View JT models from Teamcenter or anywhere on the Internet.


4. Search and navigate Teamcenter with effective filtering and sorting.


5. Perform multi-signoff in a single action for similar tasks.


6. View custom attributes based on roles or job specifications.


7. Use interactive pie charts for Tasks and Change items.


8. Send in-context e-mail about any item or opened attachment.


9. Synchronize favorites set on the mobile device with your Teamcenter server.


10. View tasks and workflow using Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) viewer with embedded comments.

Mobile Commentary

Chad Jackson noted recently in a post on paperless manufacturing, that “internal networks have gone wireless” and “multi-touch tablets have dramatically lowered the ease-of-use barrier for shop floor operators.” He added “we need more PLM client apps on tablets specifically to enable participation in workflows and electronic signoffs.”



Outside of the plants and field work examples above, mobile executives impact the product development process. They can help accelerate or hold up the process depending on their schedules and access to the right information at the right time. One of our customers requested rich, thin and mobile Teamcenter clients because “a lot of my emails are Teamcenter related, some of them notification messages with the hyperlink to the rich client and web client versions.”

PLM blogger Oleg Shilovitsky has seen the role of mobile applications in PLM to include process monitoring, reports, manufacturing shop floor situations, marketing and sales. He notes: “the key point of a mobile option is about ‘deviceless’. We need to disconnect our applications from the particular devices and make it ubiquitous.”

That’s why you’re seeing not only us but our partners develop apps to make product lifecycle data more ubiquitous. Just last year, we blogged about our partner BCT’s iPDM.

Get the Download

So if you’re a designer or engineer who needs to take a design to a design review, a travelling manager who needs to approve changes, a production worker who needs instant access to up-to-date work instructions, or a field service technician who needs repair instructions wherever you are, check out our new Teamcenter mobile app. You can try out our mobile PLM app for free. When you’re ready to connect it to your data, download the full Teamcenter Mobility app ($19.99 USD).

Let us know what you think. For those of you on Twitter, let’s start a #mobileplm discussion.

– Dora