PLM: Lipstick on a Pig or Missed Opportunity?

September 10, 2010

I had a chance to read AESSIS blog post – Why Some People Don’t Like PLM?Graham started absolutely important discussion about mainstream adoption of PLM in the organizations. I had a chance to write about this in the past. Navigate your browser on the following link – Complexity Kills or 3 ways to improve PLM adoptions. I specially liked this passage from Graham’s post:

…I think the bottom line is that PLM requires people to change their behaviours. This is hard to do. Just look around you. People continue to do all kinds of things that are bad for themselves and others. And managing information poorly, not sharing it, not organising it etc…seems pretty benign compared with some things I could mention… and yet it costs organisations billions. People don’t want to change despite obvious benefits to the wider organisation.

The last statement is just brilliant – "people don’t want to change". However, the next conclusion got my blood boiling somewhat. Graham is proposing to think about "incentive" for people to start using PLM. This is a place where I think we have a kind of disagreement with Graham. So, I decide to put some thoughts about that below.

Enterprise Software: Love and Hate?

Have you had a chance to hear the following statement? – "Enterprise software is not fun. We came here to work and not to have fun". Let me guess what is that about? It is probably coming from some kind of enterprise software implementations. Enterprise software consistently sold to executives and IT and not to end users. Then, obvious statement came – you should not love this software, just do your job! However, I see this paradigm slowly changing over the last decade. Usability started to play a more and more important role. Users started to dump consistently buggy and not useful software, and vendors started to think about how to make their enterprise portfolios nicer.

PLM Idea vs. PLM Reality

I can see PLM as a step child of enterprise software. PLM wasn’t born as a pure "enterprise package". Predecessors of PLM – CAD and PDM, had deep roots in engineering and R&D departments. Competition brought the usability revolution to CAD software first. PLM didn’t get there… yet? The original PLM idea was good. To provide a way to manage information about products on all stages of product development. The implementation reality was different. Engineering and product development is a complex field. One size doesn’t fit all. Vendors failed to create simple and easy to implement software. Complexity of PLM environments and implementations made people dislike the changes that always coming with PLM.

Quality, Incentives and Opportunity

I’m thinking about a quality. Something wrong happens with a quality of enterprise software. PLM is just a very good example. Time ago, the quality of cars was awful. It created an opportunity and we got much better cars during the last 10-15 years. Similar things happened with consumer software and the internet. You run away from a low quality website, stop using low quality phones and other consumer software. Nobody is thinking about how to create an incentive to use a bad consumer software. Why we think it should be acceptable for PLM or enterprise software? I think, real incentive is an opportunity to create a better software.

What is my conclusion? Last then years were prime time for "consumer IT". Think about how much was done during these years in the internet, office applications, telecommunication, etc.? In my view, we are coming to the point when we need to start counting next ten years of "enterprise IT". Next ten years will put enterprise IT "on fire", so in 2020 we’ll not need to find incentives to use buggy PLM enterprise software. Will we call it PLM? I don’t know…

Best, Oleg

Leave a Comment » | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

PLM Interest to Enterprise Search

September 9, 2010

I can see a growing interest of PLM providers to explore the story of enterprise search. This morning I’ve seen a mutual press release of Aras Corp. and NorthRidge Software. I liked this passage in the press-release:

PLM solutions encompass a wide range of complex data and files in a variety of formats, including CAD files, quality data, regulatory specifications, requirements, BOMs and more. With the NorthRidge Search Solution, Aras Innovator users can locate drawings, documents and other information by searching on keyword terms, phrases in the content or metadata values.

What is specially interesting in this information is that Aras is trying to follow their Open Source strategies and adopting Lucene and Solr a well known Open Source enterprise search solution and search libraries. If you want to learn more about Lucene you still can register to Lucene Revolution, which will happen in Boston in the beginning of October.

Just to remind you the previous events in PLM fast ride towards enterprise search technologies. Earlier this year, PTCconfirmed their OEM relationships with Endecca. Almost In parallel to that, Dassault Systems spent 135M Euros to acquire Exalead – a provider of web and enterprise search solution.

So, what means this enterprise search gold rush for PLM companies. I can see 3 main reasons why PLM solution providers can be interested in making their search and enterprise search arsenals stronger.

PLM Systems Complexity

This is probably the top interest. At the time that PLM concepts getting acceptance in the enterprise, complexity of the tools and implementation becomes one of the most critical showstoppers preventing PLM software vendors from going mainstream in organizations. Search as a paradigm seems to be an option to resolve this complexity.

Enterprise Software Competition

The competition among software vendors is growing. Mindshare PLM providers face a strong competition from other enterprise software vendors such as providers of ERP, Supply Chain, Manufacturing Execution and other software. Each of these enterprise application classes represents a silo of information inside of organization. Enterprise search can be a technology to find information in multiple silos.

Influence of Consumer Software

This is last, but very important. I can see a significant influence on enterprise software in general and on PLM specifically from everything that exists in the consumer software space and on the internet. Search is hugely popular because of the success of Google. It provides a significant impact on decisions of PLM vendors to follow these streams.

What is my conclusion? Enterprise Software and PLM are struggling with a “complexity disease”. On the other side, enterprise search software is struggling with the need to provide additional differentiation to their “boring” search stories. It seems to me as a perfect match between them. What is your opinion?

Best, Oleg

Leave a Comment » | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

PLM Collaboration and “New Socials”

September 8, 2010

How to make people to work more efficiently? I think this is an important question. This is a challenge for every product development organization. You have a team of people working on a specific project (or projects). How you can get things done in this team?

Collaborative Software

For a long period of time, the ultimate answer on this question was – you need a collaborative software. What is that? In my view, collaborative software is the most vague terms that possible can be applied to a computer system. Just as an exercise, I tried to find an answer about what is collaborative software in Wikipedia. The root article – Collaborative Software, provides lots of information about possible collaborative software, collaborative management tools, collaborative project management, etc. In addition, it points on three separate categories: collaborative working environment, collaborative working systemsand computer supported cooperative work. I don’t know how about you, but I found myself lost in these definitions. My best definition of collaborative software is following – a computer system that helps to people working together.

Web 2.0 and “New Socials”

Last decade of internet software created a new hype of “new social” tools. Also known as Web 2.0, these tools provide a better way to work together in the internet. Messengers, Wiki, Blogs, Chats, Forums, and lately social networks created a new conglomerate of applications widely adopted by Digital Natives (Gen-Y) and proliferating fast into groups of “digital emigrants”.

Social Aided Product Development

I had a chance to read a blog article – Social Media Aided CAD by SolidWorks Legion. One of the topics, Matthew Lorono is discussing related to a newest Social Product Development tool coming out of PTC. The following video represents a promotional video showing how various “social features” used during the design process. Some of them seems to me interesting – the concept of wiki page for CAD model, “facebook-like” pages and collaborative workspaces for task management. PTC is leveraging Microsoft SharePoint infrastructure platform to develop this functionality. Broad adoption of SharePoint as well as marketing power of Microsoft can create a momentum for wide adoption of social product development tools from PTC. Take a look on the following video below and make your opinion.

]

Another company that, in my view, belongs to “new socials” is Vuuch. Chris Williams explained me how you can “vuuch different things” – CAD models, products, Bill of Materials and other things in your product development environment to help people working together. In my view, the good translation of Vuuch is “stitching together”. Some of the ideas presented by Vuuch seems to me very powerful – ability to link people with their deliveries, contextual activity presentations. I see these small things as important differentiation factors in your decision to use this tool. In the following video, you can see how Vuuch can be used in design together with SolidWorks.

So, what is my conclusion? Engineers are not a simplest category of people. To create tools for engineers is a very tough job. To make them happy is a challenging task. “New socials” is new kind of tools that use power of “social connections” to help people working together. In my view, PTC is more focusing on leveraging SharePoint platform. At the same time, Vuuch is more dedicated to a new concept of “social links” and precise feature’s definitions. Both companies are trying to make engineers more productive during a design time. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Freebie. PTC and Vuuch didn’t pay me to write this post. However, I paid for my salad during the talk with Chris Williams.

Leave a Comment » | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

How To Choose PLM? (Visual guide)

September 6, 2010

I decided to make an unusual post today. Because of holiday (Labor Day in USA), I spent most of the day working on emails, RSS, twits and blog comments. iPad is a primary tool in such a type of work. I had a chance to read blog article by Jos Voskuil – Which PLM (to choose)? Inspired by Jos’ arguments I created a simplified visual guide for people who want to think about what PLM to choose during the long weekend. Jot Free was my tool to create it, so this post went live without touching my laptop.

I hope you’ll find it interesting. This is just my opinion. I’m apologizing by not mentioning all companies and difficulties to put URL to company websites using Jot Free.

Best, Oleg

Leave a Comment » | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Product Design and Collaboration in Multiple Languages

September 3, 2010

Manufacturers are going global these days. Nobody is surprised to have design, manufacturing and support are going across the globe. However, when it comes to collaboration of people working on multiple continents, it can get very complicated. I read an article – RSS Feed Translation for Bloggers and Social Networking firms. It made me think about a possible role of standards protocols like RSS and translation capabilities to provide a multilingual support in PLM and other enterprise systems.

Information Distribution

Product development system can separate information into multiple channels depending on the need. The major differentiation can be between systems that need to operate in a real time (i.e. designers are working together on the same issue) and asynchronous systems. In my view, the second group is much bigger than we are expecting. Most of the cross-continent communication is going asynchronously anyway because of natural time difference. Asynchronous information cane delivered with involvement of mechanisms similar to RSS that will make translation services easy to implement.

On-demand Translation Service

The first time I’ve been thinking about such a translation service was a year ago when I experimented with Google Wave translations. Take a look on the demo of translation work presented by Google Wave.

]

So, there is a potential of the translation robot that can do work on-demand. However, the idea of YYZ Translation is interesting since it assumes mixed translation models with partial people involvement.

What is my conclusion? Mutli-language is a big problem. In my view, global companies are spending money to make it work. It is probably a time to make translation more natural and allow to people to consume information in the language, they can do it the best. I’d be interested to learn more how your company working in a multilingual product development and manufacturing environment. Don’t tell me everybody speaks English, please :) .

Best, Oleg

Leave a Comment » | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Not-Linear BOM Perspectives

September 2, 2010

Summer is finally over. This is a good reason to stop talking about fancy social software and cool Apple’s features. Let’s move back to the core of design, engineering and manufacturing. Yes, I’d like to talk about Bill of Materials. The following blog article drove my attention earlier this week – BOM: An ENOVIA V6 Perspective. Vik Paranjpe of Razorleaf is discussing details about V6 BOM specifics. I found his initial passage very interesting:

By now companies have accepted the reality that product creation is not a linear task going from Design department to manufacturing and beyond. All the departments (including Design, Development, Quality, and Manufacturing) provide input to the product development process, e.g. Quality might have an opinion on the types of components to be used which in turn will impact the design being produced. This increases the need for a centralized BOM management solution that provides a single source of truth for the bill of materials with different “views” of the BOM for each department.

What I specially like is a definition of product creation as “not linear task“. It fits my perspective on the need to consolidate Bill of Material management effort. My last take on this was about a year ago in my post – Seven Rules Towards Single Bill of Materials. Since then, I had a chance to discuss a concept of Bill of Material consolidation with customers and experts. I think, companies need to make an effort in consolidating their Bill of Materials related tasks. However, the software available today on the market contains multiple gaps that can make implementation very complicated.

Single BOM vs. Multiple BOMs
This is one of the key questions people is asking when trying to analyze the capability of BOM Tools. In my view, this question is very misleading. The real question should be related to the ability of software to handle the complexity of tasks related to product structure modeling for all users in the organization. Designers, Engineers, Manufacturing planners and all other relevant people need to have an ability to access the product structure and BOM Information.

Automatic vs. Manual
I can see a “not-linear” product creation as the ability of Bill of Material tools to handle multiple synchronization and change steps related to performing various tasks in design, engineering and manufacturing planning. BOM provides you with the ability to consolidate it. One of the usual mistakes is trying to provide a fully automated process of Bill Material synchronization rules. The appropriated balance of automatic and manual tasks is absolutely important to make BOM tool fit the needs.

BOM Tools – Devil in Details
In order to perform BOM-related tasks successfully, BOM software needs to provide a diverse set of tools. The granularity of these tools is a key, in my view. You need to be able to perform a variety of BOM slice&dice, changes and reviews. The usability and availability of rich set of functions is the key.

What is my conclusion? Despite a long history, Bill of Material management is a still very challenging task. PDM/PLM vendors are working for decades to provide improved software modules to satisfy user demands. Each time, we see new modules and approaches in Bill of Material management. Lately, I can see a trend to provide better vertical integration in PLM tools. BOM management is a central part of this vertical integration. However, implementation of complex PLM suites is an expensive task. A good question could be what is the potential alternative of vertical integration?

Best, Oleg

Leave a Comment » | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

PLM Collaboration, Social Trend and Lotus Notes Memories

September 1, 2010

There are few terms in enterprise software and specifically in engineering software that was completely overused. In my view, collaboration is one of them. Collaborative design, collaborative PDM, collaborative engineering… what else? Vuuch blog about collaboration made me think about some lessons related to the development of systems that aimed to help people to work together. In addition, I found some interesting patterns in the way term "social" used these days.

Collaboration

When I hear people talking about collaboration, I am always asking them to replace the word "collaboration" to "working together". In my view, it helps them to understand the main reasons and needs. So, you decided to work together? You need to communicate (making phone call, emails, exchange instant messages), share data (documents, 3D models, Bill of materials) and keep track of all these activities (see history of your communications). I can definitely how multiple tools can be used to help me to collaborate… Oops – working together with my colleagues, people in other departments, business partners, etc.

Manufacturing and Collaboration

People in manufacturing organization need to work together… Oops – to collaborate. However, product data and everything related is not as simple as files. CAD, PDM and lately PLM vendors tried to get data under control and manage it in the way that can help people to work together. Engineering and Manufacturing systems never been simple and complication becomes one of the most critical topic in implementation of PDM, PLM and enterprise systems in general.

LotusNotes and SharePoint

I found some interesting parallels in the development of these tools. The focus of both tools is to share data between people and help them to communicate. With some extreme, I can see Lotus as a very good proof of concept used to develop latest versions of SharePoint. What is clear to me is that both products realized the basic need to share data. People need to share data in order to collaborate more efficiently. User interface (or how it now called UX – user experience) became much better in SharePoint 2007. Microsoft’s wizards learned something from Lotus’ past and earlier SharePoint baby steps. PLM companies are trying to repeat the success of SharePoint by adopting SharePoint practices. I can see some potential in this work. But world is moving faster. Web 2.0 is coming…

Drinking The Social Software Kool-Aid?

The next trend is coming – social software. It comes to us out of last 10 years of internet development. Also known as Web 2.0, social software is a cool combination of technologies, web sites and tools that helps people to communicate (they don’t need to work) together.

Blogs, wikis, social networks generated a significant interest of people in enterprise software – can we make PDM, PLM, PxM software as cool as Web 2.0 web sites?

What is my conclusion? Manufacturing enterprise companies are facing an urgent need to work more efficiently. How to work together (to collaborate) becomes one of the most important questions. This is a though one. Companies are run by emails, shared folders and lots of software pieces stitched together. It cost lots of money to companies to keep going. To crack-down a new way to work together by re-using internet technologies and web 2.0 website practices can be kinda cool. Is it possible? Web 2.0 is about pictures, videos, messages. How to make these techniques to work for 3D CAD, Products, Bill of Materials, Suppliers and still keep the same level of coolness? A very interesting question…

Best, Oleg

Leave a Comment » | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Migrations and PLM World

August 31, 2010

Microsoft announce SQL Server migration assistant for MySQL. It seems to me, Microsoft is thinking about how to expand their SQL tool’s market share. As a step towards this direction Microsoft is thinking how to provide an easy and smooth way to migrate from one data management system to another. I’m not an expert in database migrations. However, reading about Microsoft migration tools made me think about migration between different PLM and PDM systems in manufacturing world.

Reasons to Migrate

What if.. you want to migrate from one PLM system to another one? Such a situation is not completely rare and companies are moving between tools and product suites due to different things happens in PLM eco-system. Such a situation may happen as a consequence of M&A when companies are merging their IT stacks and PLM systems used by companies before or after acquisition. In addition, customers are deciding to move into a better tool – another "good" reason for migration. At the same time, there are multiple situations when customers need to migrate between PLM tools because vendors going out of business, software companies acquisitions and other reasons. What happens if you are migrating between systems, and you don’t have an appropriated tool? I decided to put few options that can give you some values in product migrations.

Migrate vs. Legacy

However, to migrate between systems is not a simple task. It takes time and requires a complex set of tasks to move data, change working processes and tools. In some situations, companies prefer to keep existing systems and use data inside as a legacy data. This cannot be considered as an excellent choice. However, in a business world, it can be a very reasonable compromise. Some PLM companies are providing federation systems that can help to maintain such situations.

Mashups

Another option to resolve the situation with outdated PLM/PDM system. You can decide to develop mashup applications. This is a very popular practice in the Web world. You can develop mashup applications to consume a data located in outdated or legacy PLM/PDM systems. The consumer (user) layer will be new and fancy. Behind the scene, the legacy system will be kept up and running.

ETL and Other Integration Tools

This is another way to handle a transition of data between your old PDM/PLM and a new one. ETL (extract-transform-load) tools can allow you to retrieve data in a variety of formats from databases and proprietary data sources, transform it and transmit into a target system.

What is my conclusion? I think, PLM migration topic is a very complicated one. Changes in multiple systems, different versions, customization and implementations made this space a bit messy. To put some lights into this space can be benficial for users and vendors.

Best, Oleg

2 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

PDM vs. PLM: An Integration Perspective

August 30, 2010

I’m continuing discussions about PDM vs. PLM differences. I’d encourage you to take a look on my previous two posts related to this topic: PDM vs. PLM: A Data Perspective and PDM vs. PLM: A Process Perspective. My next PDM vs. PLM comparison perspective is related to integration of PDM or PLM systems with other systems and processes in the organization.

Data Integration

For PDM, data integration is the ability to facilitate an exchange between product data records, other enterprise systems and extended value chain. The most important and very important is PDM – ERP integration. This integration provides an ability to exchange design, engineering and manufacturing data. For PLM data integration becomes more complex and needs to include an expanded set of application and data sources. Some of advanced data integration PDM projects are including federation of data between multiple systems.

Process Integration

When it comes to business and product development processes, both PDM and PLM systems can provide a significant influence on how these processes can be integrated. However, PDM system process scope is normally very limited and stay focused on engineering documents and data lifecycle. PLM process integration is focused on the ability of PLM system to have a tight connection with other processes. Most of them are ERP-based. These days it becomes more and more important to have a good support for integrated product development processes.

Social Integration

This is a relatively new aspect of integration and related to the ability of PLM system to be integration with social tools. Tools like Yammer and others represent a new class of tools helping people to collaborate in the organization. Both PDM and PLM systems provide a context for social tools. It can come as data about product, documents, changes processes and everything that helps to identify social relations. For example, by analyzing your product data, you can find a knowledge expert in a particular filed in the organization, etc.

What is my conclusion? Both PDM and PLM systems have very strong dependencies on their ability to be integrated within an organization. PDM integrations are oriented on data access, transfer and interoperability between a PDM and other systems in the enterprise. Data is the main focus of PDM integrations. It may include a different type of data integrations – manual, automatic, one or bi-directional data integrations. However, when it comes to Product Lifecycle Management, the scope of integration can be increased dramatically. It may include integration of processes, people and social context. The ability of PDM and PLM system to integrate what other systems and people in the organization are critical for successful implementations. This of the reasons why PDM and PLM implementations often fail in the organization.

Update: When I finished this post, I found a new post coming from Kurt Chen of Technology Evaluation Center. Kurt posted PDM vs. PLM A Matrix View. What I liked in Kurt’s post is the focus on the PDM/PLM need to be integrated with people and system in the manufacturing organization. This is a key in my view.

Best, Oleg

Leave a Comment » | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Oracle, Google and Aras’ 226% Growth

August 30, 2010

I read the following article “Oracle v Google: Why?“. I found it as a very deep analysis of the latest Oracle’s bold move against Google. It is hard to predict how this clash will be resolved and who will be a winner and loser or may be both. Read this article and make your opinion. My hunch is that there is a portion of the game related to Open Source. FOSS became stronger over the last years and drove multiple interest from vendors and user communities. Oracle (but not only) kingdom can be definitely impacted by a variety of Open Source initiatives growing in enterprise organizations these days.

In this context, I found a very interesting news came out of Open Source provider Aras:  Aras Momentum Accelerates Driving 226% Sales Growth in First Half 2010. Here is the quote from Aras’s PR: Aras’s strong performance is driven by the continued growth in worldwide adoption of the Aras Innovator suite, and demonstrates mainstream acceptance of the Aras enterprise open source model and advanced PLM technology by Fortune 500 / Forbes Global 2000 companies.

What is my take? Open Source is definitely a long term target in Oracle lawsuit against Google. This is a beginning of the fight against the Open Source. Google is an easy, but intermediate target. My conclusion – important.

Best, Oleg
Freebie. Aras didn’t pay me for this post.

2 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, Open Source | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

« Previous Entries