Sure, wikis and wiki-like capabilities, (whether delivered through SharePoint or other technologies) can be useful to document product ideas and changes. Re: association, I think the system need flexibility to enable auto-association, but to also allow for manual association between design data and sharepoint objects to meet unique customer needs.

Yes, simple sharepoint functions like searching, combined with higher level functions like visualization form a great means by which to access and reuse data for free form processes.

Tom

1. SharePoint (or not only SharePoint) wiki can contain potential idea description or even change definition – look back on my posts (http://plmtwine.com/2008/12/05/virtual-ccb-idea-can-we-use-wiki-for-plm/; http://plmtwine.com/2009/02/25/use-wiki-for-plm-change-management-–-revised/). What is big question for me is how association (or what Robin called publishing) mechanism work for customer. So, any thought about this?

2. From ProductPoint video, I learned that CAD model is basically exploded into SharePoint modeling elements (workspaces, documents, lists, folders). Do you see it as a way to make design data available for free form processes?

Thanks for your comments and discussion!
Best, Oleg.

Yes, we are actively investigating the use cases of these loosely coupled processes such as idea generation and are monitoring available technologies. And yes, SharePoint (and by extension, Windchill ProductPoint) enables many of these types of communication. For example, wikis can be created and associated to CAD models. The wiki contents are indexed so that searches can be performed. Also, there are accommodations for this more freeform environment of Windchill ProductPoint to connect to and publish its product information to a more managed environment like Windchill PDMLink when it’s time to do so.

Processes that are more loosely defined like idea generation can easily evolve content with a variety of inputs from people and other sources of content in a community space, whether that community is limited to people inside your organization or not. Through this evolution, some of these ideas will naturally rise to the top and others will be discarded, while others might be put on hold for consideration in the future. Those product ideas or solutions to problems that seem the most promising typically need further thinking, evolution, and informal concepting, which can happen in this sandbox environment. But at some point, the idea needs to become more fully developed; requirements established and detailed design created. These are more well –defined and formal processes that are the purview of PLM. Once ideas in the sandbox are deemed mature enough, they would be promoted/published to the PLM environment, where they would be governed by more formal processes. Similarly, PLM-managed content needs to be able to be published back to the community space/sandbox for occasions when problems have been identified in released product but no solution is obvious. Or when new product ideas are born from existing products. Iterating on ideas in the community space as described above and in my blog is ideal. Hope that answers your Q.

Robin

Robin