Morning coffee: hockey, the economy & recalls

Happy Monday! We spent the weekend in Philadelphia, a traditional destination for history lovers and foodies. This year, Philadelphia also played host to the US college NCAA Frozen Four hockey tournament. The four best college hockey teams in the land played there hearts out and, in the end, only Union was left standing. Thousands of fans from around the country, three great hockey games, great food and a cinderella story, too. PLM what? This is a 3D capture I made of the Liberty Bell early one morning, before the place was overwhelmed with tourists. I used Autodesk’s 123d Catch iPhone app, taking something like 40 snapshots. The link above takes you to the capture site, where you can play with the capture; this is a static view of the processed image:

Pretty cool, huh? And this is what the arena looked like Saturday, after Union won its title. Also pretty cool, no? Here’s a nice, quick recap of the game and why Union is unusual in the elite ranks of college hockey.

I definitely forgot all about PLM for a few days, so let’s get back to it and our little corner of the economy. Speaking of … It’s the Economy … We’ve been getting a lot of economic data in a piecemeal way, one country at a time. Last week the World Bank started releasing a bigger picture view, one region at a time. You can read the details, but the headlines are that the global economy will rebound, growth in economies of the Middle East and North Africa will accelerate to 4.6% in 2015. Developing East Asia is to remain stable with growth again at 7% even as China slows a fraction of a percent. The World Bank also sees deceleration in the Emerging Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region, dropping from 2.1% in 2013 down to an anticipated 1.9% in 2014. Look for specific region and country reports here. Unfortunately for consumers, more cars were recalled last week, as Toyota said that over 6 million vehicles across its leading Camry, Corolla, Matrix and Highlander models and the Pontiac Vibe and Subaru Trezia needed to be inspected for problems with air bags that may not deploy and/or seats that could move in a crash. CNN reminds us  that Toyota also recalled 2.1 million cars in February “because of a software problem that could cause the cars to stop suddenly.” Toyota and GM have recalled something like 13 million vehicles so far this year, with the earliest models produced in 2004. Who made what decision with what information, and how PLM could have helped improve outcomes, will undoubtedly be fascinating — once all of the legal issues have been settled. PLMish Deals, Earnings and Other News voxeljet‘s IPO continues apace, with the company last week pricing its shares at $15 per American Depository Share* (ADS), leading to an IPO value of $45 million. voxeljet is the German maker of large format 3D printers and on-demand parts services; it will use its share of the IPO ($41 million) for research and development and to expand its sales and marketing reach. It may also look into expanding its on-demand parts network to North America and Asia. voxeljet originally went public on October 23, 2013, selling 7,475,000 ADSs at a public offering price of $13.00 apiece; today, those opened at $15.10. In last week’s Monday coffee, I wrote that ZWCAD is being sued by Autodesk and that ZWCAD said the suit had no foundation. Autodesk disagrees and says that a Dutch court actually found that “[t]he fact that many functions of AutoCAD 2008 that do not make a logical contribution for the user regarding the operation of the system or that can be classified as errors return in ZWCAD+ offers, in our provisional opinion, sufficient grounds to allow the claimed relief, no matter the explanations given by the defendants regarding these similarities.” Finally, Dassault Systèmes again extended its offer for Accelrys at $12/50 per share until midnight, New York City time, on Tuesday, April 22, 2014. Still waiting for regulatory approvals … — * An ADS is a s US dollar-denominated equity share of a foreign company that’s traded on an American stock exchange. ADSs are issued by banks in the US because the issuing company is not allowed to do it themselves.