Comments on: Why do I Need to Change My “Out-of-the-Box PLM”? http://plmtwine.com/2009/06/04/why-do-i-need-to-change-my-out-of-the-box-plm/ Product Lifecycle Management by Oleg Shilovitsky Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:57:22 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: PDM. Pre-configured? Painless? « Daily PLM Think Tank Blog http://plmtwine.com/2009/06/04/why-do-i-need-to-change-my-out-of-the-box-plm/#comment-11747 Sat, 09 Apr 2011 01:03:46 +0000 http://olegshilo.wordpress.com/?p=1634#comment-11747 [...] Out-of-the-box: Misleading of Focusing? Why do I need to change my Out-of-the-box PLM? [...]

]]> By: PDM. Pre-configured? Painless? http://plmtwine.com/2009/06/04/why-do-i-need-to-change-my-out-of-the-box-plm/#comment-11743 Sat, 09 Apr 2011 01:02:19 +0000 http://olegshilo.wordpress.com/?p=1634#comment-11743 [...] Out-of-the-box: Misleading of Focusing? Why do I need to change my Out-of-the-box PLM? [...]

]]> By: Jez Cunningham http://plmtwine.com/2009/06/04/why-do-i-need-to-change-my-out-of-the-box-plm/#comment-1175 Fri, 05 Jun 2009 06:56:07 +0000 http://olegshilo.wordpress.com/?p=1634#comment-1175 I can’t disagree with the principles you state and in my company we are (finally) on the home straight of an Enovia v6 implementation trying to do as much as possible out of the box. But I fully agree with Mark that the vendors have to pull their fingers out and deliver ootb stuff that works.

]]> By: olegshilovitsky http://plmtwine.com/2009/06/04/why-do-i-need-to-change-my-out-of-the-box-plm/#comment-1171 Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:54:37 +0000 http://olegshilo.wordpress.com/?p=1634#comment-1171 Hello Alan, welcome to plmtwine! I agree, to have simple and flexible enough systems is silver bullet, but this is not alway simple to achieve. Always keep in mind the next person to change this system won’t be you. -Best! Oleg/

]]> By: Alan Belniak http://plmtwine.com/2009/06/04/why-do-i-need-to-change-my-out-of-the-box-plm/#comment-1170 Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:48:22 +0000 http://olegshilo.wordpress.com/?p=1634#comment-1170 This is always the danger when one solution does not fit all. But I think you’ve captured it well. The ideal is to have systems that are flexible enough to make (relatively) simple changes, as well as having enough ‘intelligence’ to be a bit emergent and recognize when something new is introduced. If code is used to write patches or integrations, then it needs to be easy enough to understand, and something that can live beyond the employment span of the programmer!

They are indeed basic principles. And they are easy to understand. But I don’t think they are easy to implement.

]]> By: olegshilovitsky http://plmtwine.com/2009/06/04/why-do-i-need-to-change-my-out-of-the-box-plm/#comment-1169 Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:34:58 +0000 http://olegshilo.wordpress.com/?p=1634#comment-1169 Hello Mark,
Thanks for your observation! I definitely agree with what you are saying with regards to SaaS/Cloud. Most of the implementation have no allowance for customization. But this is also disadvantage and adoption challenge. What works well for mail, won’t work for product lifecycle. I think Force.com have some unique experience in trying to do both and SaaS.
On the second point, I probably see customers are struggling between need to customize and understanding of attached cost for implementation and future upgarde. But I think, bottom line, everybody are doing customization/configuration (whatever you call it).

Regards,Oleg.

]]> By: Mark Holman http://plmtwine.com/2009/06/04/why-do-i-need-to-change-my-out-of-the-box-plm/#comment-1168 Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:08:16 +0000 http://olegshilo.wordpress.com/?p=1634#comment-1168 I have two comments on your paradigm:
1) “Out of the box” has no meaning in SaaS/cloud delivered applications (the software doesn’t come in a box anymore). More importantly, most of these applications don’t really allow for customization, there is a single, common code base
2) I think most customers want to have easy configuration, and no customer wants customization. They don’t want to break the custom code with every upgrade, they don’t want to pay a VAR or SI to write unique code, and in fact they often want the opportunity to leverage “industry best practices” where they can without having to design their own.

I think the real challenge is on the part of the vendors. It’s hard to write code that is configurable to meet customers need to adapt the PLM system to their world and “best practices”. Also, in reality most vendors don’t have great in-house knowledge on industry best practices to offer it to their customers.

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