KI-Shell to LCM Migration
Scenario:
One of our customers integrated a workflow engine called KI-Shell with Teamcenter Enterprise in its earlier Metaphase PDM system (Teamcenter Enterprise now). While it may make sense to use a third party workflow engine when LCM was not mature, it is not the case any more when LCM also can do what KI-Shell can do and even better in many ways. The integration and maintenance cost for KI-Shell was very significant. Worse than the unnecessary maintenance cost for many years, the KI-Shell vendor was out of business in 2001. For several years, our customer had no vendor's support and was stuck on KI-SHELL that also tied to the old versions of Solaris OS and Oracle database which could not be upgraded due to the compatibility issue. It was extremely urgent to find a solution for our customer.
Approach:
Our customer accepted our advice after we did feasibility study to migrate KI-Shell workflow to LCM. We have worked for the customer's PDM system for several years and understood our customer's system and needs. The customer handed this turn-key project to us and we took the conservative approach considering our customer’s cost effective altitude.
We designed and customized a new LCM workflow that is capable of handling the configuration management changes in the exact same way as the legacy KI-Shell workflow system provided so the end users can experience the same process they were accustomed to. The KI-Shell workflow data were migrated into LCM format and users can view the legacy data through LCM process histories. We consciously keep the web interface intact to give the end users almost the same looking-feel web interface.
Results:
Our customerwas thrilled after this project was completed successfully and felt relief greatly. The old Solaris OS and Oracle database finally went to the history book along with its KI-Shell software. The performance was improved significantly to the credit of Teamcenter Enterprise in some degrees.The cost of the workflow migration was the fraction of the original estimate.