Closed Thoughts About PLM Openness

June 29, 2010

My post Open vs. Closed PLM Debates last week and related Fortune CNN Money Blog article by Jon Fortt – Chrysler’s Engineering Software Shift created some very interesting experience for me. The level of interest, especially the amount of comments, is one of the things that drive my analyzes after actually post published. The special experience I’ve got with this blog post was that I got most of the comments by email and not on the blog website. It made me think, may be about additional issues related to the “openness and PLM” that I didn’t discover before. So, I decided to pull some of my thoughts about PLM and Openness here and see if we all can generate a reasonable discussion about that.

Are We Open?
I think, CAD/PLM lives in the world of competition on openness. The question “Are We Open?” sounds as a wrong question to me. In my view, there is no Black & White in openness. The issue of openness needs to be related to the specific characteristics of software that can be measured. The examples of such characteristics are – Open API, support for existing standards, availability of software for customization and extension, ability to publish or exchange information about data models and file formats, etc. I think, we can collectively come and find more characteristics. A special characteristic of openness is the open source, and it needs to be analyzed separately, in my view.  So, in order to get an answer on the question “Are We Open?”, we need to come and analyze various aspects of software.

PLM and Integrated Software
I’d like to emphasize the topic of “integrated software” in the context of discussion about openness. It is a tricky one. Enterprise Software, in general, as well as CAD and PLM software specifically is growing and the question of integrating different pieces of software becomes more and more important. Customer demands are to have a better integrated software and software vendors (especially a big ones) are focusing on the questions how to make it happen. Sometimes it comes to the point where pieces of software that before had a weak connection becomes tightly integrated and dependent. Is it a good thing? I think, it depends… The latest debates about DS V6 platforms and tight connection between CATIA and ENOVIA are actually coming to this point, in my view. I think, the intent of DS is to provide “best integrated software”. Does one size fit all? I think, DS engineering wizards definitely had in their mind a question how to create a next level of CAD and Data Management functions in a single box. I can see similar trends also coming from other CAD/PLM vendors.  The best non-PLM association I’d like to come with is Apple platform. When it comes to the unique experience customers are having with Apple product, you can make a compromise on openness of the platform. Will it continue for the long run, I don’t know? However, I see these strategies work for Apple these days.

PLM Openness and Customers
I think, this is a real measure of your openness. Whatever you do is for customers and not for competitors. Customers need to have an ability to define what are their openness needs. The reality I see on a customer side is that nobody is using CAD and PLM software coming from a singe vendor. The maturity of industry will be measured by the ability of vendors to come to the compromise of how to serve customers with the best performing software. How vendors can achieve it? It is a very good question… However, it shows the overall maturity of the industry.

What is my conclusion? I think, openness is ready hard. To play this game right, you need to see both worlds at the same time – customers and competitors. And this is the exact order how to see it. My bet is that openness wins for the long run. I think, we will see more software that will be measured by how it performs for customers. One of the performance characteristics will be how information managed by the software can be open and available for Pull (I’m going to post more about the “Pull” in the future) . It will be the end of “openness competition”. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM and The Power Of Pull

June 23, 2010

I had chance to have a talk with David Siegel, entrepreneur, speaker and the author of a new book “Pull“. We met during the Semantic Technology Conference in San-Francisco yesterday. The sub title of this book state – The Power Of Semantic Web To Transform Your Business. You can take a look on David’s web site – The Power Of Pull. My first question to David was about the idea of name “Pull”. His answer was very interesting. The working name of the book was Business 3.0. However, people didn’t get this name. So, he tried to get to the bottom line of what his ideas are about and came to the definition of “Pull”. In the nutshell of Pull, we are going to move to the world where information will be available at the time we need it. I found it interesting, since it solves, in my view, one of the most important problems we have today with enterprise software in general and PLM specifically- how to make systems more intuitive?

Pull Concept: Product Lifecycle Management

Here is my simple explanation about how to shift to Pull in PLM. On the very basic level PLM is about how to track Products and Information related to products from the early beginning (actually interaction with potential customer about what product they want) through all phases of product design, engineering, manufacturing and disposal. The interesting thing – I can see this chain does exist today. However, when we want to touch it, get information about it, analyze it, we need to push a lot of stuff around us. It related to all aspects of a product life cycle. We need to work on so many sources of information to get actually what we need. Existing systems are trying to organize everything around products. The so called “single point of truth”. So, it puts “the product” is in the middle. The shift to Pull may happen when we will put people in the middle of the circle. Then all information about a product will become findable and available for pull.

How to Pull Product Lifecycle Data

Product Lifecycle is represented by data. There are lots of data around us representing ideas, information about potential customers, requirements, product design, manufacturing, supply chain, retail, physical products. The most interesting question for me is how we can make this data available and retrievable at the time we need it? The naive answer – just search across all web sites, intranet and enterprise software products to find all what I need. However, here is the problem – I don’t know what I need to get. I’d prefer somebody will take care to organize information around me. This is “aha moment” to think about “pull” as a different concept. Product Lifecycle Data need to have an ability to be organized to become available. I can see initial shifts into this direction across multiple spaces. One of them is personalization of search and organizing of social and real-time information. I think, we will see more products going into this direction.

PLM, Pull  and Openness

Openness will play a significant role in PLM shift to Pull. Today, PLM is the kingdom of proprietary information. Software vendors take a significant care about how to make data created in their software products available only in their own products. There is a simple and obvious explanation to that- business. They are making money by selling their software products. Just think about, what if tomorrow they will make money from making data created using their software product available? This is a major shift to “Pull” concept. It will shift industry from a closed and proprietary world we live today into the open world of tomorrow.

What is my short take on this? Important. Take your time to read this book. It contains lots of ideas in diverse set of business fields. Find your problems. Focus on low hanging fruits. Get it done.

Best, Oleg

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The Future Of PLM Walmarting

June 18, 2010

Say “PLM” to anyone, and you hear the words “complex” and “expensive”. However, thinking about trajectories of different technologies, I came to the conclusion that it always introduced as something very expensive and then going down to become cheaper and, in the end, even free. It was a story of so many technological inventions in many industries. There are many outside of PLM examples. The most valuable insider’s stories related to the evolution of CAD systems. Even in the data management domain, we can definitely see a trend to move from expensive custom-built PDM systems to windows-based mid-priced solutions. It gave a certain push in the adoption level and allowed to “non-Boeing” customers to come and taste these products and technologies.

The Parallel History of CAD/PLM and Walmart
Let’s take an unusual look on how companies and product can grow within time. Let’s take a look first on the very interesting video of WalMarts growth across United States from 1964 until 2007. I think this video is amazing and shows viral WalMart distribution. You can take a look on the interactive map following this link.

Now let’s take a look on the following framgment. “This video is a TV show made about the software Ivan Sutherland developed in his 1963 thesis at MIT’s Lincoln Labs, “Sketchpad, A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System”, described as one of the most influential computer programs ever written. This work was seminal in Human-Computer Interaction, Graphics and Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs), Computer Aided Design (CAD), and contraint/object-oriented programming“. These are definite roots of CAD and PLM.

The Future Is PLM Walmarting
In my view, there is a very interesting paradox related to PLM. I can see Product Lifecycle Management ideas as a vision and practical guidance about how to manage product from their entire life. These ideas are getting good acceptance from many people in the organizations. At the same time, as soon as discussion is going towards software and vendors, I can hear much more negative context about what PLM can and cannot do. Here is my point – to walmart PLM! It needs to be done easy, cheaper, simpler. It needs to be open and available. It needs to solve initially the subset of problems that relevant to everybody and not requires implementation time.

What is my conclusion today? I love Wal-Mart’s mission statement: “To give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same thing as rich people“. I’d like to think about a direction toward the future of PLM – To give all engineers the chance to buy and use the same software as Boeing, Toyota, Honda, Airbus… I don’t think it is about people and methodology. They will not learn how to use complicated software. This is about software…

Just my thought.
Best, Oleg

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How to Manage ECO without paying $1’500 per seat?

June 17, 2010

I had chance to read Buzz message thread about ECO management, initiated by Josh Mings. I found it worth reading. One of the questions stick in my memory, and I decided to put it in the title of my blog post today. How to manage ECO without paying $1’500 per seat? I think the point was made in a very clear way. Changes is a real life of engineering and manufacturing company. However, cost/value seems to be problematic for solutions we have available today.

Microshare
Please, take a look on Microshare definition in Wikipedia.

To microshare is to offer access to a select piece or set of digital content by a specific group of invited or otherwise privileged guests in a controlled and secure manner. In contrast to public sharing of content, microsharing enables a more private or intimate level of making content accessible by others. Microsharing access can be secured via uniquely encoded urls or by password protection.

Let me take an example from Josh’s stream and translate it in microshare-like ECO-message-burst.

–>ECR#123 is submitted from customer services @servicecounter;
–>@servicecounter Looking on this ECR#123… Seems like a problem. Hold shipments;
–>Moved ECR#123 to engineering @engineeringhero;
–>@engineeringhero ECR#123 requires analyzes by #allengineeringgeeks;
–>@topgeek solution for ECR#123 is to disable radio switch off function;
–>@servicecounter hold shipments until ECR#123 fixed by @engineeringhero;

I hope you should get my hint now. In the end, I see collaboration as a message sharing in the organization. In before-computers-era, papers functioned as a message transferring mechanism. Then we invented databases, PDM, PLM…

PLM View on ECO Management
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When all you have is a database and SQL, you just need to translate all your problems in database and SQL forms. This is the way we have been working for the last 15-20 years. If we got a problem, we need to create a model, keep data in a database, retrieve it, save it, manipulate and, in the end, yikes! – we have a solution. What is the problem here? This is a long way that creates lots of complexities – manage a database, agree about model, implement, agree about how maintain changes, create a user interface, teach everybody how to use it and, finally also to fix bugs. This is a way we are doing PDM/PLM today.

Should Be A Simpler Way?
What if? What if we invented enough technologies that can help us to the same job in a much simpler way? If all we are interesting is related to a particular ECO#123, I can keep reference to these messages without inventing SQL Table Grandiose? I can just record it and want to be alerted, when something happens to this particular ECO. If you are doing something related to this ECO, you can put a message into microshare storage about that. Somebody, who is responsible for shipment need to see if there are any of messages or info that prevents shipment. You can subscribe to messages via something like RSS and get a single channel of messages coming to your mobile device. I know it sounds crazy to any straightforward database and/or IT guy. But, in my view it may work and simplify the life of many engineers in the organization. The infrastructure for microshare and RSS is much cheaper, compared to the development of data models, tables, UIs etc.

What is my conclusion? I think, we came to the point where everybody in the organization is looking how to work differently. It is not only about how much to spend on the particular software package. It is about how to organize work better and simpler. I’m taking “microshare” as an option. Yesterday, on Enterprise 2.0 conference, one of the presenters asked a question – How many user guides did you read in the last year? The answer was ZERO. This is a time to think about a simpler way. I want to credit Evan Yares blog for the picture, I put in this blog post. I think it is very valid these days.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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PLM and Enterprise 2.0: No Fight… Yet.

June 16, 2010

Yesterday, I spent my day on Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. It wasn’t overcrowded, although Expo pass registration that included Keynote presentation was almost free. It was also very interesting to see a landscape of vendors participating in the event. All enterprise kings were well represented- IBM, Microsoft, SAP. The only one king was out of the room – Oracle. It was surprising not to see Oracle, specially after their massive representation Oracle had in 2008. From the new players, I’d mention Cisco with their announcement about their social enterprise collaboration platform – Cisco Quad.

Lately, walking in the exhibition hall, I thought about all social collaboration platforms presented there and what is the potential impact of these platforms on Product Lifecycle Management.

Enterprise 2.0 Redefines Collaboration
Let me start from the history. What is the top collaborative tool we  have today? Email. Yes, email continue to be the most useful and widely adopted tools to collaborate. It is platform independent, it is reliable, it is free, it is asynchronous and, what is also very important, it is accepted by the majority of people. This is de-facto communication standard. Why we need to change it? I think the efficiency of the email collaboration is going down. Started from IM, and going down to forums and social networks, we can see a new way to share data and communicate. If you are newbie in so called E 2.0 space, you can take a fast ride and read a book by Andrew McAffee – “Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools…” Started in the beginning as set of different tools – wiki, blog, instant messaging, communities, etc. the Enterprise 2.0 absorbed all these tools and introduced the new way to communicate for people. We are adopting new practices outside of the organization boundaries, and they are coming inside of the organizational space. All together new tools allow to work much more efficiently in comparison to what we did before.

PLM Options In Enterprise 2.0
One of the strongest points of PDM and lately PLM was to provide set of tools to establish an efficient environment to collaborate in the engineering and manufacturing organization. It started as an ability to organize data in folders and databases, establish flow of documents, driving approvals and decisions. It was all about efficiency in communication and data sharing. What was the uniqueness of PDM/PLM that not allowed just to use plain set of collaborative tools? The engineering (CAD, PDM, PLM) context is the primary reason why the usage of mainstream collaborative tools were limited until now. To share Bill of Material or CAD model is not as simple as Word document. It requires better synchronization and more sophisticated level of data dependency management. As a result, it created higher level of complexity in everything – implementation, user interface, customization. At the same time, people are continuously inspired by the capabilities of mainstream internet and other collaboration tools. The initial steps were taken already. We had chance to see PTC’s and Dassault’s investments into community-oriented tools.

In addition to what established vendors are doing, I can see the potential for new companies like Vuuch entering this space too.

As I wrote in one of my previous blog post about the future of PLM collaboration  – 2010s are going to put Enterprise IT on fire.  PLM has two options today: (1) to develop vertical tools to support a new way to communicate and collaborate; (2) to adopt new Enterprise 2.0 platforms and tools and integrate PLM context into these platforms.

What is my conclusion? Enterprise 2.0 is overcrowded with different tools, platforms and initiatives. The initial cost of the solution development in this space is relatively low. Big vendors and small startups are trying the “enterprise 2.0 water” by introducing different solutions and checking people’s and organization’s reactions. I can see apathy on the other side. Too many dishes… People are looking for differentiations. It seems to me the fight is going between “vendor trust” and “cool and usable product”. Most of the vendors are not thinking about how to make their products vertical. Their efforts are focused on how “to own” organizations. Coming down to manufacturing organizations they can find that “one size doesn’t fit all” and special tools or collaboration practices are needed to work with engineering and manufacturing context. This is going to be a big day for vendors in PLM space. The question how they will come prepared to this day. This is also an opportunity for small companies to propose special solutions that redefine a way to collaborate for engineering and manufacturing organizations. Who is up to this opportunity?

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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PLM, IT Transformation and Self-Organization

June 14, 2010

I was reading HBR Blog post by Andrew McAfee “IT’s Three Key Organizational Transformations“. The issue of IT spending made me think about the amount of software packages and IT services, a typical organization absorbed during the last 10-15 years for product development, engineering and manufacturing. The question, I wanted to ask and discuss, is what will be the future of these systems?

Disparate Systems and Product Development
The IT landscape in a typical manufacturing or engineering company is a blend of many systems. Each system is responsible for a particular business or engineering function. In many situations engineers are using different applications (in some cases, number is really big). As I had chance to discuss in “PLM and Heterogeneous Product Development, multiple systems is the reality and won’t be changed in a visible future.

Single System Myth And Transformation
I can see some of the business application vendors are still following “a single system” approach. Such big single systems are very complicated in setup, implementation, maintenance and, the most important, in change management. Vendors are still working on these systems will be actively looking how to transform these systems into a slim, agile set of the components (or services). In my view, we’ll see more and more smaller application.

PLM and Self-Organization
The idea of Self-Organization in PLM is interesting. Let me think what how possible it can be done? The value of existing systems is significant from the standpoint of data and processes they support. Since changes in such systems are very complicated, potentially, they can be self-organized into islands of information that will become available via set of services. Within the time, the value of information will become more critical. At the same time, process-oriented pieces of these apps will be transformed into a more agile set of services.

What is my conclusion today? Organizations are overloaded with software products – coming as OTS products and various forms of service deliveries. In addition to that, manufacturing organization created a huge number of customized software that applies to their specific processes. The biggest organizational problem, in my view, is how to move forward? There is a cost of maintaining all these systems (most of them, by the way, are in the active operation). At the same time, the cost of migration to a new system (or systems) is very high. And, there is an urgency to solve real business problems today. So, organization will struggle to find a pathway to self-organization product development and manufacturing systems. What will be technology and/or method to solve this problem? I think, we will have to discover it in the next decade.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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PLM Life-like Search Injection

June 10, 2010

An interesting turn in PLM trajectory of Dassault Systems – the acquisition of French based Exalead. With this acquisition, we can expect new life-like energy injected into PLM life-blood. In some announcements, Exalead was mentioned as French Google. Exalead indeed shares some Google DNA coming from early days Alta Vista and DEC search experiments. DS-Exalead deal made me think again about an enterprise search trajectory in Product Lifecycle Management. Actually, I already touched this topic at least two times in my blog before: PLM and Enterprise Search: Can We Leverage It In Downstream Applications and What Is The Role Of Search In Enterprise Systems and PLM?

So, PLM+Search=? What can be hidden behind this question mark? First of all, I wanted to put some historical perspectives in the relationships of PLM and search vendors. This is actually not the first time, PLM is catching a search wave. In 2006, Autonomy and Agile Software PLM created a partnership to provide a solution together . In 2007, Dassault made the announcement about a future use of Autonomy as a technology for search in DS and ENOVIA solutions. Endecca, another enterprise search vendor signed an agreement with Kalypso PLM solution provider. The same Edecca signed an agreement with PTC, one of the major DS completitiors. The same PTC by their significant move to SharePoint over the past 2 years, have an access to Microsoft SharePoint search solution. The same Autonomy, one of the leaders in Enterprise Search solutions is providing full stack of connectors that allow them to handle PLM related information too by their IDOL platform.

So, I wanted to put some thoughts towards possible mix of PLM and Search solutions. What can be advantages of PLM and Search merger and what need to be done to analyze previous solutions?

Usability
This is the first thing, in my view. PLM will try to fix the usability problem with application of some search techniques. All PLM applications today are surviving from user adoption rate in the organization due to the complexity in user experience. To have a search solution in this space is an interesting approach. However, what is good for web search not always can work in the same way inside of the organization. This will be an interesting to challenge for search solutions .

Content Processing
Search solutions have a different perspective on how to work with data. It is really not the same as to do it for enterprise application and business process management. How it will fit? What web search is doing by manage data is not really the same as enterprise data processing. Lots of interesting questions are coming here. I assume, we’ll have chance to see soon in the  in DS-Exalead story.

Integration
Crawling data from multiple sources, enterprise search has a potential to become a federated access point for PLM apps. This is the most interesting turn, in my view. However, to execute this route, a significant shift in PLM openness needs to be done.

What is my conclusion today? DS acquisition proved again, that PLM space is alive and will continuously provide innovative solutions for enterprises. As one of the leaders in PLM and 3D, Dassault just confirmed it yesterday. The next important step will be technological convergence and new solutions coming from Dassault.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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Ozone and Big Unsolved Problems in PLM

June 9, 2010

I had chance to read Solidsmack’s post about PTC new vision coming to us very soon- PTC Project Lightning. PTC Strikes a Plan for the Future of MCAD. We don’t know yet what is PTC Project Lightning. This is what Josh wrote – “We’re out at PTC/USER 2010 in Orlando, Florida and we’ve found out as much as possible about the gameplan PTC has for product development. Could it be a new product? A new platform? Or perhaps their position on that Cloud mess and how to deliver apps to the user? Hmmm. Here’s what we know and what we think it might be.”. I recommend you to take a look on Josh’s blog to get some additional information related to PTC Project Lightning presentation and slides.

I think, PTC is taking a very interesting time to go with new vision, platform, technology, products… For the last five years, we had chance to see major transformations in enterprises and PLM platforms. Just to mention the most important such as Oracle Fusion, TeamCenter Unified, ENOVIA V6. PTC will have a chance to come last to the game, but to learn from mistakes that were done by all predecessors.

PTC slides posted by Josh made me think about big unsolved problems that manufacturing organizations are experiencing these days. In my view, there are three major domains where PLM software is troubled today- Data, Openness, Heterogeneous Environment and Change Management. I will to put some thoughts and analyze it.

Data
The majority of PLM software these days is focusing on accumulating of data. Data produced by MCAD, ECAD and various data management and collaboration applications. The absolute amount of data is growing in all manufacturing organizations and resulted in very complex data and content processing challenges. Modern product development and manufacturing put a high demand on how data need to be processed and transferred between people, departments and organizations. This is my view on what I call – data problem. Two major PLM vendors (Siemens PLM and Dassault Systems introduced new strategies focused on how to manage product IP. When I see PTC’s slide presenting multiple apps fitting different stages of the product lifecycle, my first question is how application will transfer data between them. It seems to me, PTC’s is going to rely on Microsoft SharePoint platform capabilities.

Openness
When I think about data, the next question that comes to my mind is what application is producing this data. Manufacturing today are using a large amount of disparate software coming from different PLM vendors. In many situations, a decision about usage of a particular tool dependent on how these tools can exchange data. The situation is this space is far away from ideal. Openness is a complicated and unsolved problem for customers.

Heterogeneous Environment
Manufacturing companies are accumulated a large stack of software – legacy systems, database, design system, engineering software for different needs. Multiple attempts were made by vendors to migrate to organize legacy – trying to integrate, to federate and, in the end, to replace all legacy systems with migration of existing data to a new system. I don’t think we found a silver bullet. My take is that we need to take “heterogeneous” as a problem and something given at the same time.

Change Management
This is the last, but not least problem. Change Management represents a significant problem for organizational lifecycle. Change in the software and implementations is hard and very expensive. Solving such problems can provide a significant pain relief for IT organization.

What is my conclusion today? It is definitely time to produce some ozone in PLM atmosphere. Manufacturers are going to operate in the new reality. It will be very hard to come into this reality with the existing unsolved problems in the PLM software space. I don’t think problems are purely technological. I see them as a blend of problems coming from business models of PLM vendors, application delivery mechanisms and technology. Some of them cannot be resolved by a single vendor and dependent on PLM industry health and the ability to communicate. However, to understand problems and to have an industry agreement is a first step towards the better future. These are just my thoughts…  I’m very interesting to hear your opinion and thoughts on that as well as to have an option to discuss.

Best, Oleg

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PLM, RFID, RuBee, Virtual and Real

June 4, 2010

I was thinking about RFID technology and how it can impact the development of future PLM software. One of the problems I can see in design and manufacturing is a missing link and information about product’s life after they leave manufacturing shop. There is almost no reliable way to monitor products in a real life. Try to answer on the following questions that can sound crazy today: How your product was transported? What was an air temperature in a storage facility? What condition car or plan or whatever else experienced before it was broken? You can think about many interesting questions. Is it real to answer on them?

RFID and RuBee

From Wikipedia: Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is the use of an object (typically referred to as an RFID tag) applied to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for identification and tracking using radio waves. Some tags can be read from several meters away and beyond the line of sight of the reader.

This is a new way to identify everything, by adding a tag (physical device) to everything. Such tags can be very small and provide a way to track them using special screening devices. The RFID type of the devices was designed with a passive behavior. The new promising technology called RuBee ( coming to change RFID devices and make them active). RuBee device will be able to transmit actively information using special radio frequency protocol.

From Wikipedia: RuBee IEEE 1902.1 (IEEE P1902.1) is a two way, active wireless protocol that uses Long Wave (LW) magnetic signals to send and receive short (128 byte) data packets in a local regional network. The protocol is similar to the IEEE 802 protocols which are also known as WiFi (IEEE 802.11), WPAN (IEEE 802.15.4) and Bluetooth (IEEE 802.15.1), in that RuBee is networked by using on-demand, peer-to-peer, active radiating transceivers.

Gathering Physical Information

By implying various tracking technologies such as RFID and RuBee, we can think about the ability to gather an amount information about products we design and manufacturing. It will be giving us a significant advantage in different aspects of product development – optimizing manufacturing and supply chain, usage experience, warranties and many others. I can think about many use cases where manufacturers, suppliers and retailers will be able to communicate in a much easier way in a chain of designer-manufacture-retail-consumer in both directions.

What is my conclusion today? I think RFID, and RuBee technologies can make a shift in communication in the engineering and manufacturing world. Is it practical today? I think we can see some examples of RFID usage in a supply chain and retail these days. The biggest problem is cost of tag and reliability of tracking devices. However, I expect cost (and size) of a device to be smaller. In addition, tracking devices will be improved as much, we’ll push forward various WiFi technologies.

Best, Oleg

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The ABC of PLM Facebooking

May 31, 2010

I was reading ‘Why does Facebook fail for Product Development? (and how to fix it)” article by Jim Brown. Jim made me think more about multiple associations between core Facebook principles and way PDM/PLM systems are organized and implemented today. Jim is saying, Facebook’s concepts are compelling, so let’s apply them to PLM. I have to agree. However, what is important is to make a right application. So, I want to try to discover what are key Facebook’s principles and how they can be applied to PLM to make a shift in PLM implementation in comparison to what we are doing today.

Life Before Facebook

Before social sites like MySpace and Facebook were born, our life was mostly concentrated around an email and instant messenger. This is the mainstream communication pathway. So, if I want to communicate with dozens of my friends, I’ll need to send/read emails. When I will be interesting to share something (i.e. picture), I will send an email with attachment or link. IM is pretty similar. It reminds me how we communicate in our workplaces now.

Facebook Experience

What is the major shift Facebook made for me in terms of my communication? As soon as I could find and connect with my friends on Facebook by importing my email contact list, my life moved from Outlook Inbox to my Facebook wall. My communication becomes much easier for situations when I want to share something with my friends. Instead of going and opening multiple emails with pictures, video links and notes, I can see them nicely syndicated on my wall. There are two main components of this shift -  connections and content syndication.

Connections

It is all about who are the people I want to stay connected. Facebook allows me to connect and figured out who are other people I’m interested to stay in connection. So, life becomes easy in terms of finding people who have similar interests to me. Comparing it to manufacturing organizations, I can compare initial contacts import as an organization hierarchy acquisition. Rest of connection can be discovered, by multiple ways- common projects, customers, task forces, specialization and knowledge. To help people to connect in a easier way is the first important Facebookconcept.

Content Syndication

In my view, Facebook made a significant shift in the way content can be organized by syndication of multiple content streams coming from different people and embedding various types of rich elements (pictures, videos, commentary, messages, reaction) into a singe syndicated content stream. The I/O (Information Overload) is a huge distraction that we experience everywhere. If we can focus on a single information stream (my Facebook wall), we can improve people’s performance. This is why you like to see Facbook Wall instead of scrolling down multiple emails and IMs. That’s why people can improve their communication in the organization by starting to use content syndication forms.

Activities

Facebook embeds people’s activities into the single syndicated content stream. This is a very important function. You should not be distracted by another “Inbox” message or multiple sources of incoming requests. Everything can be concentrated in a single place. Multiple messages on the same topic can be syndicated into threads and co-located with the content they belong to.

What is my conclusion? The core idea of Facebook is a new type of content syndication coming from my social connections. The way Facebook automatically syndicate content and allows me to make my activity related to this content is a key advantage for me to come every morning to Facebook and see what’s up with all my peers. My PLM system can do all these things today. You can manage Files, Parts, BOMs, ECOs, organize processes, make approvals, etc.. However, data organization in PLM is heavy and not comfortable. PLM is not thinking about data syndication. In my view, this is the ABC of PLM Facebooking. This what can empower PLM and make it more intuitive and easy to use. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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13 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, Future Trends, Social | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

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