What Is The Future Of CAD and PLM Standards?

June 3, 2010

I had chance to read the following publication on Develop3D – A New Common Data Standard. The author is discussing how life of CAD can be impacted and potentially improved by developing of a single CAD standard. In addition, I figure out that I used word “standard” many times commenting on last posts on my blog. It made me think about standards again. Standards are rising so many questions. It always sounds as beneficial. However, standard related activities create too many political and organizational issues. I decided to make a try and figure out if standards are our future in PLM.

Standards and Users
Companies and Individuals can belong to a group that potential may have huge benefits from standards. Your systems expected to work more smoothly, you can move between applications, you can benefits data sharing, etc .. However, at the same time, standards can stand on the way of innovation. Some of them may really prevent people from innovation.

Standards and Industries
I know many examples of industry oriented standards. In general, industry standards may indicate an industry health. The more standards industry develops- the more additional businesses and solutions can be created on top of that. In general, standards can bring industry on the next level.  In most cases, standards that emerged from industries are very stable.

Standards and Vendors
Do you think vendors need standards? The right answer – it depends, in my view… If it brings economical benefits, it can be really beneficial for a specific vendor. However, it is not clear and in most of the case to support a standard vendor need to put an additional effort. So it means additional expenses. In some cases (i.e. Supply chain), vendors can be interested in standards in order of work simplification between users in a supply chain.

What is my conclusion today? Standards are fascinating. However, standard activity is a very expensive. An additional work need to be done by vendors to support standards. So, behind standards, we can see a very simple economical use case. On the other side, users can have benefits from standards. Maybe we need to think about different business models, that less impacted by lock-in customers on their data? Thinking about pros and cons, I’d like to re-phrase my question as following now- Who Will Pay for future CAD/ PLM standards?

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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6 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, Interoperability, PLM and organization, PLM Implementation | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

PLM and ALM: How To Blend Disparate Systems?

June 2, 2010

I had chance to read an article in SD time – Organization works to blend application, product life-cycle management. Author discussing the need to integrate two separate domain – development of hardware and mechanical components and software. I think, the message is very timely made. There are lots of software in modern products. Author brings an example of OnStar in vehicle communication. However, it is possible to bring more examples, of course.

Integration between disparate application having completely different set of data, rules and behavior is always a very challenging use case. In this case, author discussing the future of common standard creation that will help to integration PLM components and components managing software lifecycle (i.e. Rational tools). This discussion made me think about potential pitfalls and opportunities on this way.

Heterogeneous Application Environment
In the real world, many applications used during the design, engineering and manufacturing process. Mechanical, Electrical and Software teams are normally separate and relation between them quite limited from the software sides. This is the reality. In my view, when it comes to software, the disconnection comes to the top level. What can be a system that controls software build level need to be placed in the particular vehicle or other mechanical product?

Does One Standard Fit All?
The author is discussing OLSC (Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration). I found the following video funny. The idea of community is going very much aligned with modern social approaches.

There are three key fundamental principles – URL, Minimal Schema and REST services proposed to make this solution work. I’m thinking how much time people will spend before they will agree about minimal schema that fit all. At in the end, as film states everybody wants to be a little different.

Don’t Integrate, Just Connect Dots
Here is my point. We don’t need to invent a minimal schema. It is enough to agree about to interlink different product representation- mechanical, electrical, software. Think about URL only. In my view, it will be enough to get job done. Global data identification similar to what we have in the internet can move us in the right direction. One of the examples of such technologies can be PURL. “A persistent uniform resource locator (PURL) is a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) (i.e. location-based Uniform Resource Identifier or URI) that does not directly describe the location of the resource to be retrieved but instead describes an intermediate (more persistent) location which, when retrieved, results in redirection (e.g. via a 302 HTTP status code) to the current location of the final resource.”

What is my conclusion? The landscape of application involved in this product development is very large. The number of applications is growing. The ability to absorb the requirements of all applications into one minimal single standards schema seems impossible. The new and more efficient way to interlink data need to be proposed. We don’t need to bring software build and engineering bill of materials to a single representation. However, we need to be able to interlink data related to different applications to maintain data integrity.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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Top Five Concerns About PLM Systems

June 1, 2010

I already had chance to mention Geoffrey Moore presentation during Google’s Atmosphere 2010 event. One of the things he mentioned that in the coming decade, our focus will be on how to make a significant shift in Enterprise IT. He used “put Enterprise IT on-fire” statement. By saying that he made me think about fundamental concerns people are experiencing when thinking about Product Lifecycle Management. I wanted to give my view on this and outline some potential ways to resolve.

PLM Doesn’t Deliver Business Requirements

PLM is hugely oversell. This is a result of competition as well as the outcome of complexity. If you cannot present a solution in real, you will oversell. There are three major forces in a company involved into the process of PLM decision making: Exec management, IT and Engineering/R&D management. Unfortunately, in many cases, these tree forces are not working as a team to figure out what they need. Management is focusing on presentations, IT is focusing on simplicity and operational headaches reduce and engineering management is focusing on how to control and manage people in short term. Such disposition as well as long time competition with ERP domain created a situation when PLM is usually oversell and don’t deliver on business requirements.

Upgrades to New Versions

This is dumb simple. To move to the new version is a complicated process. Customer’s concerns are that vendors are leaving this problem on the customer’s table. What can be done? A simple change will be to move this problem on a vendor’s side. These are very hard things to do, mostly because customers tailors and customize solutions. Another “not simple” conclusion is the right answer – technology needs to worry about that. Challenge vendors and IT with this problem.

Integration and Support For Cross Functional Processes

PLM cannot live in a vacuum. Product development needs to be tightly connected to the rest of the systems in a company. So, integration function is crucial. However, customer’s concern is that to implement it requires a huge effort and this effort is not limited to cost and labor. Integration becomes a complicated logical task and requires involvement and effort by end-users, business personal and IT. Many customers are not forcing their PLM program because of this concern. An efficient IT can be very helpful. Unfortunately, in most of the cases IT is not involved into this process and for the best case, leave this problem on the table of development organization.

Expensive Change Management

Flexibility in the implementation of enterprise processes is very important. When it comes to product development and manufacturing, flexibility plays a very significant role in the ability of companies to support changing business requirements. This is something that requires customer to react very fast. Most of PLM systems requires a significant portion of services to make a change. The way to resolve it is to move this function to end-users. It will give them ways to configure a system and make appropriated changes. In addition it will eliminate additional waste of IT.  Is it another IT on-fire message?

High Total Cost Of Ownership

Customers is concerning about PLM Total Cost of Ownership. This is not unique in PLM. In my view, this is a typical concern about enterprise software, in general. Two alternative business models can make a shift in this space- SaaS / On Demand and Open Source strategies. Another issue, worth mentioning in this regards is about the new role of enterprise IT in the organization. Enterprise IT becomes a factor to increase cost of ownership. For many companies, PLM delivered by outside IT organization or OnDemand service can be much more efficient. Sounds like IT on fire?

What is my conclusion today? PLM needs to think about how to make an industry transformation to get out of concerns. The right way to do it is to learn and apply multiple practices from consumer software space. This is hard. I’m not sure all companies will be able to do so. In the past, we had chance to see companies like IBM could rebuild themselves. Will PLM companies do so? Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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5 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM and organization | Tagged: , , | Permalink
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