My new post on 3D Perspectives:
Best, Oleg
3D Perspectives: Social Intelligence And Analytics
December 4, 2009
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3DPerspectives, Social Media and Tools | Tagged: Analytics, Intelligence, Social | 
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Posted by olegshilovitsky
Product and Process Models in PLM – What Should Come First?
December 3, 2009
Common definition of the process – “a set of activities leading to the desired outcome”. Despite on such simple and straightforward definition, implementation of processes in PLM delayed and very often lead to a significant complexity in implementation. I’d like to analyze and discover why it happens and what other factors can influence process implementation in the organization.
Process Model.
It depends on tools, technologies and environment customer has, processes in the organization can be modeled and implemented differently. Normally, there are more than one enterprise systems in the organization that is able to handle process modeling. Starting from middleware and specialized BPM software, following by enterprise systems such as ERP and PLM and ending with various Enterprise 2.0 collaboration tools. Process model, these days, can be developed by multiple tools. For the last few years, BPMN becomes somewhat similar to the standard process definition tools. What is the main problem? Data. Various products and corporate data needed to be injected into process implementation to make it work.
Product Model.
Originally started from CAD models, product model developed as an extended set of information describing various aspects and dimension of product – model, bill of material, requirements, items, information about customer requests etc. As we learned from process model definition, this specific product model information is needed to make process definition. Processes actually need to access data to trigger tasks and events to handle processes.
So, what should come first? Product or Process? My conclusion is that lack of the rational product model can drive to a very high level complexity of process definition and implementation. Product Model is the foundation of product lifecycle. Without a well defined product model that can cover enterprise product definition scope and related disciplines, development of a process oriented PLM environment becomes a complex and not achievable task. Organization implementing PLM as a process environment needs to invest first in implementation or adoption of the product model that will be used as a process foundation.
What is your opinion? What was your experience in similar tasks and efforts?
Best, Oleg
21 Comments | Business Process Management, Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM and organization, PLM Implementation | Tagged: Model, PLM, Process, Product | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky
PLM: How Much Do We Have and to Whom it Belongs?
December 2, 2009
Extensive development of social trends and connection between social trend and product lifecycle management got me to think more about intellectual property of PLM and related product information, business process etc. How we handle it today and how we will handle it in the future? I can see three parallel trends – all of them brought me to the same question of how much PLM worth and how organizations and individuals will be able to manage it in a corporate and social ecosystem we have.
Trend 1: PLM IP in the organization.
PLM vendors and services providers are using the term PLM IP very often. Which means companies are developing products and business processes in the organization that accumulates product and organization IP. This is the way I’m taking PLM IP. The lifecycle of products is much longer than the lifecycle of products and technologies. So, the question how organizations will preserve IP around PLM implementations.
Trend 2: 3D/CAD Online Content
I can see growing effort to develop online content. It comes in different ways – online portals with 3D models (I had chance to write about it last week in the post “3D Warehouse Parade“) and content web sites like cadooku (thanks Gabi Jack blog post for reference) that thinking how to trade 3D models between people. Growing amount of online content with future involvement of OEM and suppliers will raise a question how to preserve and manage this content and IP.
Trend 3: CAD Publishing Effort
My assumption is that CAD vendors took an idea of publishing as an efficient way to answer on the old question about CAD formats and interoperability. I can hear voices saying – format is not relevant anymore, we can publish content. So, efforts like PTC Arbotext, DS 3DVIA Composer, Autodesk Inventor Publisher (presented yesterday on AU2009, thanks Al Dean for his post and video) becomes very popular.
So, what is my conclusion? As a customer, I want to be able to own my PLM IP. Product models, designs, manufacturing instructions, Bill of Materials, ECO processes, Supplier’s models. How can I do it? I think this is a question we’ll need to answer in the near future.
Just my thought. What is your opinion?
Best, Oleg
4 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM and organization, PLM and Social Environment | Tagged: CAD, Intellectual Property, IP, PLM | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky
PLM Open Source: Business or Social Need?
December 1, 2009The following NYT article drove my attention yesterday – Open Source as a Model for Business is Elusive. I already had chance to discuss open source and PLM on plmtwine. If you just came to my blog, you can review the following posts:
SaaS and Open Source: PLM Future Rides
Open Source: Is the Game Changing for PLM?
What will be PLM Open Source secret sauce?
Discussing various aspects of MySQL acquisition as part of Sun by Oracle, NYT dropped a very interesting argument related to the social aspects of open source.
“European regulators view MySQL as sort of a database of the people, a low-cost alternative to Oracle’s costly proprietary products. The regulators worry that Oracle may stop improving MySQL in favor of protecting its core traditional products, and customers will lose an important option in the database market.”
Another interesting point was related to the development of open source projects. Actually, and this is not a top secret is that companies like Google and IBM are heavily sponsoring development of Open Source products.
“Many of the top open-source developers are anything but volunteers tinkering in their spare time. Companies like I.B.M., Google, Oracle and Intel pay these developers top salaries to work on open-source projects and further the companies’ strategic objectives.”
Let’s get back to our CAD and PLM space. I could see few projects that are trying to develop open source CAD products. The most visible is ITC developing IntelliCAD platform. The concepts of IntelliCAD are complex and related to the history of DWGDirect and ODA, but it is very close to the open source concepts. IntelliCAD positioned as a cheap and no-cost alternative to Autodesk/AutoCAD product lines. Another player in PLM Open space is Aras made long road from licensed PLM software and now also positioned as an alternative to very costly products licensed by top PLM providers.
So, the conclusion I can make is very close to the assumption done in NYT- there is strong demand for open source as a cheap alternative for heavy priced licenses. At the same time, open source successes are limited, even if they are very visible (Linux, MySQL, Mozilla). To make a success for the future of PLM open source the following two questions need to be answered, in my view:
1. Who will play a role of major driving force in adoption of open source PLM products? In other words, who will play the role of Internet (like it was in cases of Mozilla and MySQL) to develop large open source PLM community. The potential candidates are very large Autodesk related customer community in case of ICT. In case of Aras, it can be Microsoft and related SharePoint business community.
2. What companies will be interested to sponsor top PLM developers and evangelists to work on the open source PLM products to bring them on the level of excellence and mass adoption? Will Autodesk be interested in development of ICT community? Maybe Microsoft will will be interested to sponsor Aras and put few bucks to support the development PLM for SharePoint?
Just my opinion. I’m looking forward to your thoughts and opinions.
Best, Oleg
21 Comments | CAD, Daily PLM Think Tank, Open Source | Tagged: CAD, Open Source, PLM | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky
