What does a thriving division within a leading consumer electronics conglomerate do when its data management system holds back its business operations? It goes on a mission to modernize, streamline, and consolidate its data operations. This mission led to the migration and consolidation of data from disparate sources, dispersed across geographies, into a single cloud-based PLM system, Teamcenter X. 
 

Panasonic launched the Panasonic Transformation (PX) program to achieve Digital Transformation across their organization. As a part of that initiative, Panasonic chose eQ Technologic’s industry leading data integration and analytics platform, eQube^®-DaaS (Data as a Service), to execute the world’s largest migration to Teamcenter X. The powerful low/no-code capabilities of eQube^®-MI (Migration & Integration) coupled with eQube^®-GMP (Generic Migration Process), accelerated the solution implementation resulting in what also became the world’s fastest migration to the cloud-based PLM software. This monumental move to the cloud was completed with 100% accuracy, and the integrity of each migrated data point was verified using eQube^®-BI (Business Intelligence).
 
The eQube^®-DaaS Platform was instrumental in bridging the gap between the disparate systems dispersed across geographies, enabling Panasonic to rapidly transition to a single source of truth, thereby boosting efficiency and collaboration. 

“By working with eQ, we could achieve the world’s largest cloud data migration as a company to Teamcenter X. The key is eQube’s great features and the newly invented high-speed migration system. We appreciate eQ for their strategic and technical support, responsiveness, and speed of implementation. By incorporating eQube's wide range of solutions, Panasonic's system will be transformed into a modern system.”
-  Project Manager, Panasonic.

Leaving Behind a High-Cost, Inefficient System

The objective of Panasonic was to build a common IT infrastructure in which stakeholders collaborate in a concurrent manner while checking 3D shapes and BOM information. Global CAD (Computer Aided Design) data was dispersed across locations including Japan, China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brazil, and India, which needed to be consolidated into a single, unified Teamcenter instance. The unification of design information across CAD, BOMs, and cost calculation would directly improve the efficiency of their design processes. But, to implement this, they faced three major challenges with their existing data management system:

• Siloed legacy systems: Data was managed within multiple disparate systems – the system struggled to collect and access data from multiple sources. It was riddled with inconsistent workflows and data inaccuracies that limited forecasting and planning capabilities.
   
• Limited visibility and frail reporting: Lack of actionable insights and information to drive decisions – the system had significant challenges in providing timely and accurate business intelligence, managing documents across multiple PLM environments, and reducing technical debt. 
   
• Complex multi-system migration: Data complexity, data mapping difficulties, data quality issues in the source systems, system downtime during migration, and ensuring a disruption-free transition from Teamcenter 10.1 to TcX14.1 (hosted on AWS).
   

A Clear Vision for a Single Source of Truth and Digitally Connected Future

To address these challenges, Panasonic and eQ Technologic set a clear strategy for its modernization initiative centered around upgrading from Teamcenter 10.1 to Teamcenter TcX 14.1 (hosted on AWS Cloud) for a secure, scalable, and efficient environment. As part of this initiative, they set clear requirements and business outcomes they wanted to achieve for improved workflows, maintenance, and collaboration:

• Faster migration implementation saving effort, time, and cost.
• Consolidating geographically dispersed data into a single instance.
• Ensuring no IT blackouts to maintain business and operational continuity.
• Executing with 100% migration accuracy to guarantee a seamless transition.
   

Meeting the Challenges of a Complex Migration

With 16+ million data points consisting of 2.38+ million objects, 11.83+ million relations and 1.86+ million files that totaled to 13 terabytes of data across multiple systems, Panasonic’s IT team recognized the immense complexity of the migration. Key factors included:

• Accommodating changes to the TO-BE Teamcenter data model during migration.
• Migrating data from both Teamcenter 10.1 and legacy systems with precision and minimal disruption.

Panasonic partnered with eQ Technologic , leveraging the eQube^®-DaaS Platform and its out-of-the-box connectors for a model-driven approach to data migration.

A Winning Strategy: Codeless Connectivity with eQube^®-DaaS

One of the standout capabilities the eQube^®-DaaS Platform brought to the table was its code-less last-mile connectivity. (Fig. 1) The migration strategy began with a bulk load of source system data, followed by delta migration into the Teamcenter TcX 14.1 environment.

• Out of the Box Connectors:
  This feature proved invaluable in establishing continuous connections with different systems, thanks to eQube's pre-built connectors. The upgrade tolerant and certified eQube^® Teamcenter Connector enabled seamless retrieval of source data while facilitating the migration of parts, models, CAD (Computer-Aided Design) data, EBOMs (Engineering Bill of Materials), CAD BOMs (Computer-Aided Design Bill of Materials), and documents—all with unmatched accuracy.
   
• Rapid Migration & Consolidation:
  eQube^®-MI and eQube^®-GMP, core offerings of the eQube^®-DaaS Platform, ensured orderly, migration without any disruption. They provided rapid integration of new and existing systems, as well as enabled responsible and controlled sunsetting of obsolete and legacy systems through efficient migration capabilities. 
   
• Cloud Deployment:
  eQube^® was deployed on Panasonic’s cloud which then connected to all the other applications in play across various cloud as well as on-prem environments. All the data was consolidated into a single cloud-based instance of the PLM system.
   
• Elastic Scalability:
  For achieving the project’s target velocity, eQube^®-DaaS Platform automatically scaled to meet the data volume. At its peak, 400+ threads were running concurrently on the cluster, seamlessly migrating data in the hybrid environment.
   
• Robust Error Handling:
  Data profiling and cleansing ensured the migration-maintained 100 percent data accuracy, a ‘must-have’ figure for any data-driven operation. The platform’s native error handling capabilities ensured that all migrated data points met the integrity requirements and that failures, if any, were handled through appropriate automated workflows. This approach allowed for data sanitization in flight and ensured integrity between source and destination systems.
   
• Source to destination comparison: eQube^® performs an I-ETL-V (identify, extraction, transformation, load, validate) routine to ensure success. For each data point/object that is migrated, eQube also verifies the status and success of the migration with reports provided by eQube^®-BI.

eQube^®-DaaS was the digital backbone, connecting hundreds of legacy COTS and custom systems and services including Teamcenter 10.1 to Teamcenter TcX 14.1 (hosted on AWS Cloud), to ensure operational teams had centralized access to CAD data, EBOMs, CAD BOMs, and documents in near real-time.

• Seamlessly consolidated and migrated data from multiple sources, including Teamcenter 10.1 and various document repositories.
   
• Transitioned from older systems to the new Teamcenter while accommodating changes in the migration strategy due to the evolving TO-BE Teamcenter data model.
   
• Connected data flow with code-less last-mile connectivity to multiple production systems using eQube's pre-built connectors.
   

Post-Migration Success: Unlocking New Possibilities

The migration delivered transformative results for Panasonic including:

• Instant data retrieval across the entire system, eliminating manual searches.
• Shortened operation cycles driven by improved processes.
• Holistic view of data that facilitates better decision-making and forecasting.
• Cost reductions in IT infrastructure and maintenance.
• Bottom line impact for delivering products faster.
• Enhanced collaboration among systems, people, and processes, driving faster value realization.

Siemens, the provider for TcX , also recognized this achievement in their recent blog, “Panasonic quickly migrates to Teamcenter X to achieve the value of SaaS PLM” where they applauded the project's scale, success, and speed at Panasonic.

With  eQube^®-DaaS Platform, Panasonic achieved seamless data migration and consolidation, unlocking a more connected, efficient, and future-ready business environment with significant business benefits including zero down time, 100% data transfer success rate, 30% faster delivery, and a successful migration of over 16+ million data points.