PLM and Enterprise Search: can we leverage it in downstream applications?

December 15, 2008

The benefits of search solution are obvious. It helps you to find what do you need. Over the past decade Enterprise Search emerged to the level succeeded to provide a solution for indexing documents and additional information, mostly in databases, vaults, content management systems and ERP. PLM system provides a solution to search product information, since this information is well organized and indexed inside of PLM databases and vaults. Unfortunately, this product related information and documents is not available outside of PLM world. However, this information highly demanded by many people in the organization.

Enterprise Search solutions represented by two main groups of providers – traditional providers of enterprise search (Autonomy, Exaled and others) and general search vendors (lead by Google’s GSA) trying to get into the enterprise market. Microsoft, after FAST acquisition, provide an enterprise search solution as well as SharePoint and Express Search Server solution.

Gartner positioned top companies provided enterprise search solutions in their 2008 magic quadrant (bellow).

I think Enterprise Search can be connected to PLM system. By doing that Enterprise Search will  index product data, documents and will make it available outside of engineering department for all people in the organization.

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

PLM Glue Technologies for organization – recipe #2 – Business Rules

December 14, 2008

 

 

I want to continue my first PLM Glue Technologies topic (#1 was about data). Sunday is good time to think about something big – such as Business Rules. Business Rules are often used to emphasize connection between organizational goals and operations. Since PLM in view expected 360 Degrees view on Product Lifecycle to have connection to organizational goals sounds very important.

 Area of Business Rules technologies created by something called BRMS (Business Rules Management Systems),  software allowed to define, deploy, execute, monitor and maintain wide set of business logic in organization. Over past few years significant consolidation on the market of business rules engines happened and several big enterprise software vendors  as well as platform providers acquired or developed Business Rules offering. Finally companies consolidated into BRMS platforms (or part of bigger Application platforms) and Rules Engines Toolkits – some of them open sources.

 I think usage of Business Rules Systems together with PLM systems can bring more openness and clarity in the way product data managed in context with  decision management. Such rules defined in external manner will allow to tailor PLM system behavior without too deep involvement into PLM implementation. But in order to do it PLM systems need to support level of openness for data to be used for rules. Possible areas to use BRE in PLM can be implementation of product compliance and regulation, Knowledge Based Engineering, product configuration and decision making.

 

 Any comments? Does anybody have experience in bridging Business Rules Engines and PLM? 

2 Comments | Business, Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM and organization, Technology | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

How to implement Social Networking for PLM?

December 13, 2008

Term social networking comes to us from Web. Web sites like MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn, I think, well known. I’d like to differentiate between two big groups – private and public networks. Public network can be divided into working network and organizational network. Private network is network of your friends and knowledge networks. 

My question is – do you see something special in social networks for PLM and how possible to get there? My proposal is to use annotation in PLM tools that will connect product data (assemblies, parts, line in BOM etc) to people in social networks. Most of these social platforms today provide API. This API can be used to get content of your social communication such as – topics, contacts etc. On the other side, in PLM systems, annotations can be used to mark relevant CAD/CAM/CAE/PLM topics and objects for your social contacts. Usage of lightweight formats and web access can allow you to collaborate on particular content with your colleagues, suppliers and knowledge experts. Emerging usage of global IDs will simplify your identification in the system.

 Bellow you can see some nice videos showing futuristic examples of social network visualization.


 And in order to make this discussion a little bit practical please see global supply chain social network visualization.

 Now, let’s stop Saturday evening dreams and talk to your IT department about social networks on Monday :) :):).  Have a good weekend!

 

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Posted by olegshilovitsky

How to reinforce PLM by additional technologies – round #2 – Tagging

December 12, 2008

 

In one of my previous posts (Structured vs. Unstructured) I wrote about ability of PLM to bring additional advantages to users by leveraging technologies emerged in consumer market and web applications. In particular I talked about ability to manage flat view on product data. We are so regular to see all data structured and sometime to manage flat look on what we are doing brings excellent results. 

Topic I’d like to bring today to discussion is tagging. In context of data management – metadata tagging is most relevant in my view. Tag is non-hierarchical keyword associated with particular piece of information. In my view tagging can simplify way users can reach PLM-related information. You can tag things across regular information structures (Projects, Assemblies, Documents, EBOMs etc.). By using tags you can bring flat list of TODO actions for today pointing on different Item Masters, BOMs, Assemblies. 

Tagging is very popular in web 2.0 applications and used widely in blogs, web sites and wikis. Del.icio.us is probably most known service to tag web links. So, I think it will be good idea to bring tagging to PLM applications.

What is your opinion on this? 

PS. I almost finished to write this post and worked on links when I’ve seen last product came out of SolidWorks Labs – Tagger. I liked way you can tag part of SolidWorks assmeblies. So, if you are SolidWorks user you can try to experiment with this and hope it will come in other applications too.


7 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM User Experience | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

PLM Glue Technologies for organization – recipe #1.

December 11, 2008

Organizational expectation from PLM implementation is to organize entire lifecycle process of product in organization. With this expectation PLM positioned in organization as set of products and initiatives aimed to play interlock role between other organizational systems – ERP, SCM, CRM, SDLC. My proposal is to see what specific technologies need to be developed for PLM to successfully provide solution for this interlock role – I called it “PLM Glue Technologies”.

I’d like to start from PLM data modeling. Data Modeling for PLM need to provide way to manage complexity of product data in organization. On the surface this is technology need to represent all aspects of product data – design, engineering, manufacturing and supply chain models. One of the key capabilities of this model is to reflect product semantics of manufacturing organization that can be different for different industries, organizations of different sizes as well as ability to be integrated across organizational value chain. Second important characteristic of this PLM data model is ability to be changed within time. In modern organization cost of change is significant and PLM as mission critical system need to be flexible to serve this needs. Third capability is to be connected to models of other organizational systems.

What technology and methodology can help us to successfully implement PLM data model for organization? RDBMS is the most mature technology today to support storage and organization of data. As part of advanced data technologies, models for data warehousing and master data management models provide significant addition to build complete product data model. Together with these established models, new emerging semantic data modeling technologies comes to the space from semantic web, XML and other places. Methodology for data modeling starts from more traditional entity-relation modeling and advanced models for enterprise architecture in organization.

 So far PLM Glue Technologies recipe #1 is PLM data model with following capabilities:

1.     Model product semantics of manufacturing organization

2.     Adaptive for change to reflect organizational changes

3.     Integrated into organizational enterprise landscape.

In today’s world robust and scalable PLM data model is still need to be developed to reflect all needs of modern manufacturing organization.  This PLM data model can serve as consolidation factor for PLM industry, Software vendors and Service organizations.


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Posted by olegshilovitsky

What PLM can do with MS Excel and SaaS/Cloud Services?

December 10, 2008

 

Microsoft Excel is extremely popular. In many cases people are very comfortable working with product data in Excel files. But Excel files need to be managed and this is unpleasant side of Excel story. What we can do with this? – We can take all intelligence of product data and inject Excel to behave in similar way. This is sounds like something we are almost doing today. But by using this we create multiple dozens/hundreds Excel files spread out in your organization. How possible to unify excel story?

 One of the possible option I see is to introduce Excel Services combined with Web Access. It will allow to provide users with familiar with Excel user experience to continue with their excel experience. On the other side data will not be part of Excel file anymore and can be located in your PLM system or other Enterprise systems and vaults in organization. You can also combine data from PLM system (such as Bill of Material) with information coming from external databases (i.e. compliance data or any other). By moving data on cloud or consuming SaaS application services you can discover additional options to transfer Excel into composite application with user experience adopted by many users in your organization.

 Any comments on such approach? Do you see it possible in your organization?

5 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM User Experience, Technology | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Is there place for PLM Mashup technologies?

December 9, 2008

Mashup technologies started first as web applications that combined data from multiple sources into single integrated tool. In many cases product lifecycle management is about how to present integrated view of product data created by design (CAD) and engineering tools (CAE) as well as information comes from other system in organization (ERP, SCM, CRM…) combined with organization business processes. With latest development and support of SOA and increased support of SOA by many enterprise application and Application Platforms, idea of PLM Mashup can become reality. 

There are big amount tools coming to this place provided by big software vendors (IBM business mashups, Microsoft Popfly), Online service providers (Yahoo! Pipes, Google Mashup Editor), Enterprise Software Vendors as well as growing number of multiple providers of mashup toolkits and application. 

Key requirement that need to be accepted by PLM application is ability to share and combine data in enterprise organization which, in my view, provide huge benefits to all users in manufacturing organization and extended value chain.

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Posted by olegshilovitsky

Top down PLM approach … from SolidWorks Labs?

December 9, 2008

SolidWorks Labs just released new product Treehouse.

My first thought on this application was – this is just great for people that see processes in organization going top down. Going from concept, building initial product topology can be used efficiently in many scenarios: 

1.     To produce CAD design based on Sales Configuration model

2.     To generate initial design from product requirements

3.     To create several design alternatives based on initial design concept

 It’s nice UI and I’d like to have this product as extension of SolidWorks and ability to be connected to Bill of Material Management tools in PLM modules.

For more examples of PLM oriented scenarios you take a look on ENOVIA SmarTeam Engineering Express Solution. 

Few very nice reviews of SolidWorks Treehouse: 

New SolidWorks Labs Application – TreeHouse, 

 SolidWorks Tip: 5 Ways to Use Treehouse to Speed Assembly Design

3 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM User Experience | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Who will play role of Google Maps in PLM?

December 8, 2008

Sunday observation – Who will play role of Google Maps in PLM? 

Google Maps plays significant role in development of online business applications by providing universal location oriented user experience. This user experience can be leveraged multiple times by different location-based applications and services (Location-based Service). I was trying to analyze PLM and enterprise domain in order to find similar application that can provide universal PLM user experience.

 There are some classes of applications that I wanted to mentioned anyway with regards to this domain:

 1.     Enterprise Mashups (application area emerged from ability to mix data coming from different sources and present it to user.

2.     Microsoft Excel Services (high acceptance of Excel user interface make it usable everywhere)

3.     Dassault Systemes 3DLive (very promising lifelike user experience comes last year in new DS products).

 None of the mentioned above application didn’t emerged on the level of Google Maps user acceptance. So – “Google Maps PLM” still need to developed.

5 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM User Experience | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

How to improve PLM processes before PLM system using BPMN.

December 6, 2008

 

How to improve PLM processes before PLM system using BPMN.

In many situations when I talked with customers they raised issue of process improvement. In context of PLM it sounds very reasonable and significant portion of PLM is about how to improve process related to product development in organization. There are several startegies that can be used to do so – use current PLM or PDM software you have in organization, steping into IT project and intoroduce Business Process Management Suite, check available IT assets to see if existing system ERP (in the case of big ERPs) or IT platform can do process job, look after Workflow Management System and finally check some open source or even modern SaaS offerings.

 But looking after many customers and use cases idea I want to discuss is about to introduce BPMN in organization before actually decision to use any of systems I mentioned above. BPMN (Business Process Management Notation) is initiative that emerged as very popular graphical notation to process modeling. Ability of BPMN to express organization aspect is very powerful and not required intoduction of complex IT systems. There are many tools supports BPMN notation – BPMN Stencil for MS Visio (you can download free BPMN stencil from Orbussoftware) or use Altova products that supports BPMN. You can take a look on brief introduction of BPMN usage with Altova. 

Now when you have free tool, create team of people that will analyse most significant and important processes in your organizations. If we talk about PLM related processes it can be custom product order to shipment or engineering change process. You can set organizational priorities and clearly present objective to management with diagrams explaining processes, problems and bottlenecks. 

Bellow you can see sample BPMN based diagram created in Altova –

 Now, after you have successfully intorudced BPMN and have your organizational process mapped and you even discovered some organizational obstacles, you can come with realistic questions to your vedors (PLM, ERP, BPM or any other) with question how their system can support processes in your organization.

 Finally you can check www.bpmn.org to see what vendors supports BPMN notation today. I see BPMN support trend is growing and you can find multiple vendors supporting BPMN in their product offerings.

13 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM and organization, Technology | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

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