Short request for discussion. Faceted search is something widely accepted as user experience in many web based environements.
I think ability to discover information in this way will be very beneficial for PLM system. What is your opinion?
Some examples:
1. Good set of web examples of faceted search
faceted search wine example - wine.com
2. Systems like SharePoint have MOSS Faceted Search web part.
Example of Faceted Search in MOSS
1 Comment | 
Microsoft, PLM Prompt, PLM User Experience | Tagged: Faceted Search, PLM, User Experience | 
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Posted by olegshilovitsky
Web 2.0 and following 2.0 technologies came to us a few years ago (around 2003 and 2004) and changed the way people interact with the Web. Web 2.0 created a massive wave of 2.0 and social technologies (including Enterprise 2.0) and changed the way people work in many areas in our lives. Back in 2008, PLM companies such as DS and PTC introduced new offerings (PLM 2.0 and Social Product Development) based on concepts of Web 2.0 and social development. I’d like to discuss the various aspects where future PLM 2.0 technologies can impact what we are doing today in and around PLM.
One of the important characteristics of the future PLM 2.0 is the potential cost saving factor for enterprises. Usage of Web 2.0 has changed the way enterprises work. Here are my potential cost saving factors for companies implementing future PLM 2.0 technologies:
1. Optimize communication, reduce email, streamline processes
Social tools and the internet can simplify communication. People are more connected and easily communicating. Open social communication reduces the need for email and simplifies processes. Collaboration will be easy. You will easily be able to find relevant people to communicate to inside and outside the organization. Companies will reduce online storages (i.e. for mails) and will move gradually to cloud-based services.
2. Improve information transparency
Product data and related information will become more available. You will be able to easy share information outside of the engineering organization, collaborating with people downstream – in manufacturing and sales – as well as with people in the value chain. Social tools such as wikis, blogs and others will establish a more transparent layer of information sharing.
3. Reduce IT costs
There are two main sources of IT cost reduction. First of all, PLM 2.0 rely more on internet and other social resources that have a much lower cost compared to dedicated corporate IT expenses. Secondly, the ability to share resources (corporate and public clouds) will bring additional IT savings.
4. Reduce integration costs
Usage of Internet technologies will lower the cost of integration. The use of open Web-based technologies will streamline the ability to integrate data and systems across the enterprise and value chain. You can use Mashup and other Web tools to manipulate, mix, and share data among people and applications.
5. Reduce printing services
Development of various connectivity and information share options will decrease the need for printing services. This will happen in organizations as a result of the wider availability of information outside of an organization – in the sales and supply chains. Wide usage of internet and mobile devices will reduce the need for paper materials.
6. Change trend in software cost
Last, but not least. The leverage of Internet, Web 2.0 and other 2.0 technologies brings a stream of new providers to the PLM eco-system. These providers are less dependent on legacy, on-premise product offering and maintenance revenue streams. These companies will be more dynamic and will drive the software cost trend down. Many companies will be leveraging this new trend.
I think that the future of PLM 2.0 is good, but still very challenging. We have seen dramatic changes in Web 2.0 and changes that the following technologies made in our life and on social communication. I’m sure that PLM 2.0 has a great potential and am looking forward to your opinions and discussions.
Leave a Comment » | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM User Experience | Tagged: Dasssault, PLM 2.0, PLM Cost, PTC, Web 2.0 | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky
In one of my previous posts, I discussed the topic “Should PLM develop its own process tools? “. In this post, I discussed the various PLM approaches related to process technologies. Two main options I had in my mind at that time was to reuse existing process tools/platforms or to develop your\our own PLM tools. Each approach has benefits and disadvantages.
Today, I’d like to talk about something I term “unstructured process management”. In my view, people in general have the tendency to like processes. They see processes as self-organizing tools. Especially when it comes to business and organizational usage, there is a strong belief that process implementation can solve most of your problems. Is this really true? Yes, probably. But, in my view there is a“catch22” situation with process implementation nowadays. To prepare an implementation processes takes time. As our life becomes more and more dynamic, people and businesses need to react to what is going on outside and inside of an organization.
So, how we can identify a problem? I see many PLM processes that belong to the area of knowledge workers and represent tasks and tacit activities among people, along with, sometimes, an unpredictable slew of events. In addition, a workload can change its priority in an organization and shift people to work from one area to another. Such situations are normally killers for the traditional approach in process management. In many cases, this requires the involvement of administrators on different levels to resolve conflicts or move tasks/processes forward.
So, what can be potential solutions for this problem? There are two approaches that in my view can be beneficial for such case:
1. Focus on People Tasks
First of all, we need to have a system that allows people to manage their tasks, but have a process management base. People need to be less involved in the “process view” and more involved in “task” oriented work. This is also a simple experience to build an easy to understand view on what is going on. People need to have the ability to delegate tasks as a natural part of their process. The last one is very important.
2. Visualization
Don’t invent a special User Interface for a process. This is yet another UI people need to learn. It’s better to integrate these process/task-oriented tools in their natural environment. Or you can come with up with Mashup ideas on how to do this.
3. Process Rule Management
This means being able to define rules as a natural foundation for processes. Process flows need to be controlled by rules. In most of today’s process management infrastructure, this is not a problem. But we need to generalize it to the level of providing full rule-based controls on processes.
I’m sure you have ideas and issues to cover for such a vast topic. I’ll wait for your comments and thoughts.
11 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM User Experience, Technology | Tagged: Business Rules Management, PLM, Process Management, Process Visualization | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky
There is no doubt a search changed the way we work today on the Internet. Remember how looked for information in the pre-Internet and pre-Google age? It wasn’t so simple as today.
So, the change of the user’s behavior regarding ‘search’ has created a lot of opportunities on the Internet surface. I’ve tried to look at how PLM and search intersects and perhaps find new ways to improve PLM system behaviors today. I touched on this before in my posts about Enterprise Search and PLM. So, I’ll do a deeper discovery into this space.
What is available today? :
1. Enterprise Search.
This term is used to describe the application of search technologies inside of organization. This term is opposite two other searches – web search and desktop search – it is probably the most relevant to what PLM does inside an organization. The ability to find the right information about product, documentation, changes etc. is extremely important. I think that this area will grow in the near future.
Microsoft Futuristic View on Enterprise Search
2. 3D Space search.
This is a very specific area in search applications that allows you to specify your search criteria based on certain geometric characteristics of a product. Even if such capabilities already exist inside of many PLM applications, this search is interesting since it can connect to an enterprise search. Actually, it’s important to integrate 3D Space search into enterprise search and other applications.
Dassault Systems 3DLive User Experience (UX)
3. Visual Search / 3D search
If 3D Space search mostly uses 3D as a criteria for search (WHERE), Visual search (or 3D search, as I call it) is mostly about being able to provide a search with information about WHAT to search for. This can be interesting for the decision making and design process areas – because it allows you to find all information visually. Sometimes, however, it’s misleading as it can be hidden by wrong meta-information and additional data.
Innovative solution from 3DPartBrowser
The above are my top three perspectives for Search in the PLM domain. I’m going to discover search topic in context of PLM during these days on Infonortics Search Meeting in Boston. During this meeting, I had some casual talk with Steven Arnold and got some interesting perspectives on his Beyond Search Blog. I’m looking forward to speak more about this topic in the future…
3 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM User Experience, Technology | Tagged: 3D Search, Enterprise Search, PLM, Search | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky
I’d like to get back to Excel discussion. I think that Excel is a really good application. And I don’t believe that somebody will argue with me… I’ll go even further and say – Excel is too good! Excel is used everywhere. Manufacturing enterprises heavily rely on Excel in order to manage literally everything. I wrote in one of my previous posts “How PLM can beat Excel…” and got responses like – Nobody can beat Excel.
I see that many companies are trying to take Excel to a different level. In most of the cases companies are taking the Excel User Experience and building storage models on the server. In some cases, companies allow you to share Excel files for multi-user access or, as alternative, load information from Excel files into a database. The common denominator for all these activities is that a useful and successful Excel user experience tries to get into the collaborative space where people share data and information, and manage enterprise processes. There are only a few companies in this space like Expresso and SmartSheets, but there are much more that are trying to say “Don’t call us Excel online”. Actually Microsoft themselves have entered the race of trying to overtake Excel upstream. Therefore MS Excel Services provides capabilities to render information in an Excel-like way on an internet browser.
Now, there are a few questions I’d like to address Is this a real deal for enterprises? Just to move data in an Excel-like way? In this case, perhaps PLM companies need to refocus from management of processes in the enterprises and shift to management of Excel in the enterprises? This is a type of dream – we will be able to talk to zillions of Excel (sheets?) engineering users created in their organization and just moving them into the cloud space 
? Done deal! Solved problem! No need for mails, no need to create anything more complicated! Everybody can access information, collaborate etc. Huh?… Something is wrong. In the past, we said that this applies to multiple newcomers in the technology world – VMS, DB2, Oracle, Access, Java, XML, UML… I can continue this list. The problem is not technical – the problem is not a technical solution. Probably there is NO technical solution to the problem! In my view, this problem is an engineering problem. We need to engineer our product data (actually Product IP) in a similar way that we engineer our product itself (plane, car, telephone etc.),
Moving to Excel on the cloud, online, or in any centralized storage in the enterprise will not solve the engineering problems of your enterprise data management. You still need to decide how to manage information in your enterprise. You still need to decide how to manage Product IP. And this is a fundamental need and role that belongs to a PLM system. Excel will not solve your problem in my view – it can only provide you with an easy to view user experience to handle data for the user.
I will be glad to hear you feedback for this discussion.
8 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM User Experience, Productivity, Technology | Tagged: Enterprise Data Management, MS Excel, PLM, User Experience | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky
I want to ask a straightforward question – how is user experience important for building a successful enterprise application (such as enterprise PLM)? I think I hear your voices – yes, yes, yes… So, I think we need to go and shop for some good technologies that will help us to improve the user experience of the systems we develop. I see that the time of boring web UIs and multiple screens with data, trees and grids are over. So, I have come to RIA (Rich Internet Application) technologies that allow us to develop cool user experience for our enterprise data management mustangs.
I was inspired to read Flashy GUIs versus Longterm Business Benefits blog article discussing how RIA may or may not be important for enterprise applications. So, my question was – are we ready to pay a premium price for user experience that will remind us of iPhone, Xbox, PlayStations and RIA enabled websites? My conclusion is yes. I believe that today’s business PLM definitely needs something that allows us to get a higher acceptance of end users in the enterprise.
So, if you are ready, here are some choices on your way to enhance the user experience of products.
Adobe AIR platform provides a framework to develop a rich user experience. The important thing is that you can build an AIR-based application based on PDF templates and without affecting your current product. Microsoft Silver Light sounds like a visible new competitor in this space. There are some other technologies and products, but in general, my feeling is that – yes, RIA is moving forward and PLM needs to get aboard this train.
Below you can find some more examples of RIA apps:
Adobe showcase for branded rich Internet applications (RIAs)- NASDAQ and eBay.
4 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM User Experience, Technology | Tagged: PLM, RIA, User Experience, User Interface | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky
Everybody wants to have “live access”, right?! I think that the marketing world has finally found the right word to explain our expectations from today’s systems. We want them “live” – that means being available all the time (24×7) from any device. I checked this out on Google Trends and discovered support for my hunch – the “live” trend is growing
http://www.google.com/trends?q=Live
How does this apply to CAD, PLM, AEC, BIM, GIS and other product development systems? Here I found some similarities in the latest development of leading companies:
Dassault Systèmes presented their strategy last year for V6 and PLM 2.0. DS focused on live access to Product IP. DS 3D Live product was introduced the year before and presented a new user experience in 3D. This can be used virtually everywhere to present (Live) information about product.
And this is practically very beneficial – you can go (3D)Live and see what you mean with regards to current design, manufacturing and other aspects of product development. It’s also possible to have what DS terms “Lifelike experience” – the ability to virtually experience the product before it has actually been manufactured – drive your virtual car, fly your virtual plane etc.
So, it was more about the so-called PLM world. What happens on the other side – AEC, BIM, GIS? I actually found very similar picture. What I actually discovered was many activities focused on the creation of live or virtual cities. This is very interesting since it actually echoes the same concepts of Live Access to building and construction data.
So, I asked myself – is Live Experience going to provide a common trend between multiple products in product development, manufacturing, construction and building spaces? Will people be interested in having 3D access to product models, city landscapes and building information? What I see as most promising is the ability to share PLM and AEC, BIM spaces together, since all products, buildings and cities exists in the same virtual world that we will build.
Leave a Comment » | Daily PLM Think Tank, Future Trends, PLM User Experience | Tagged: AEC, BIM, CAD, GIS, Lifelike Experience, Live, PLM | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky
I’m sure you will agree that one of the definite goals of PLM is to organize product related information. Finally, I can find all my product models, relevant drawings, BOMs, customer requirements, manufacturing plans and suppliers bids. Unfortunately, when I look at the existing PLM systems, I see that this is not always simple. Companies utilize multiple software tools to design and manufacture products. Sometimes companies need to develop special software tools to follow specific information related to their catalogs of standard, existing and future developed products etc.
I started to think about the approach we can take for a PLM system to make it significantly simpler compared to what we have today. Actually a few analogies helped me come up with this idea. My MS Outlook contains lots of mails. A while ago, I tried to categorized mails and put them in relevant folders. But this proved to be very painful, as it had been in the past. I started to develop taxonomy for my mails at first, but after a few month or trials, I decided that I will keep all mails in a single folder. But then I had trouble finding what I needed, so I decided to mark my mail with categories. So, today these tags (categories) lets me find relevant mails in seconds.
Another example is my home computer system with photographs. I can sort them according to multiple criteria. In the end, I finally understood that this is mission is an impossible task, so I put the photos in a calendar-based order and started to mark the photos with tags. Actually, I found that there are many available tagging systems you can use today.
Now, how can I use this experience to help me to build a more efficient user experience for PLM/PDM systems? My proposal is as following – TAG EVERYTHING– products, models, projects, users, documents, ECOs (Engineering Change Orders), BOM etc. With this total tagging approach, we will be able to build an environment that is tuned for a specific company. What is more important is that it will also be customized for a specific user’s need. Users will be able to build tagging systems within time and justify needs and tags usages. Lately, we can eliminate unused or obsolete tags (even if they were created by a specific user).
There are a few systems I evaluated that allow you to tag everything on your computer and are simple to integrate with your PLM system. I’m sure to build these tagging capabilities is relatively simple for existing PLM systems.
Here are some examples:
And, in the end, I found this approach in the core of Apple Mac. So, this is an open call. What do you think about this approach for PLM? May be you know systems that have already implemented this? Please share your experience.
14 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM User Experience | Tagged: Classification, Folksonomies, PLM, Tag | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky
Everything in our life is seems to be a project. It can start from a very simple set of tasks that a designer needs to follow up and end with complex product development that needs to plan the work of hundreds of developers, suppliers, manufacturers etc. So, in today’s product landscape I can see two orthogonal trends – the development of specialized project management tools deeply integrated with PLM (or even becoming part of PLM portfolio) on one side and general purpose project management tools on the other side. And when the time comes to make a decision – how can companies and end users can decide what is the right choice? What are the benefits of each approach? Will they get married or divorced? Although the difference between these two approaches is obvious, is a clash already inevitable? Let me summarize short how I see both of these tools.
General purpose project management tools are providing best practices of project management and their main focus is on product productivity, simplicity and general acceptance by customers. So, in their view, a product should be simple, with a sufficient set of features and excellent user experience. Product landscape in this category is heavily impacted by Microsoft Project. On top of the general purpose PM tools, there are a number of more specialized project management tools following specific industry and other best practices (i.e. project methodologies, regulation and other specific industry practices).
PLM project and program management. By recognizing project development needs during product development, more dedicated Project Management tools were developed by PLM providers (i.e. DS ENOVIA MatrixOne Program Central, TeamCenter Portfolio Program Project Management). The main point of these tools was to merge Product Lifecycle Management capabilities with product development. By doing that users have a much more dedicated environment focused on the specific needs and characteristics such as product information, automated tasks etc.
Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages, in my view. General Project Management tools are targeting a wider customer audience, and can provide higher feature level, usability and lower prices. On contrary, these tools are sometimes too generic, disconnected from ability to work together with PLM tools and inside of PLM environment. PLM PPM (Program and Project Management) is heavily focused on specific tasks related to product development, better connected to rest of PLM design and engineering tools. At the same time, these tools are more complex and sometime lack behind of modern user experience, look and feel compare to mainstream general purpose tools. These special tools normally have higher price tag and higher value for end users.
In addition, I’d like to point at two more segments – Microsoft Tools and on demand (SaaS) project management tools. Microsoft offers Microsoft Project as well as promotes the active usage of Microsoft SharePoint for project management together with MS Project. With a very high market share, Microsoft provides a premium tool in terms of feature and functions and, of course, is an attractive offering. On-Demand tools as an opposite, offers a simplified set of tools, focusing on extremely fast learning curve of users and a fast adoption rate.
So, where is the silver bullet for manufacturing companies? When specialized PPM tools can definitely provide value, given the current economical situation, my prediction is that customers will try to follow a less expensive offering and will try to integrate general purpose project management tools within the product development environment. This trend will be clearer for smaller manufacturers compared to SMB companies. With this landscape, I think that PLM vendors need to focus on content integration between general purpose project management tools and PLM content. This combination will allow vendors to reduce the cost of PPM (Program Project Management) tools and improve the integration between enterprise systems in the companies.
29 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM and organization, PLM User Experience | Tagged: PLM, Project Management | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky
Microsoft Future Data Visualization, 3D Lifelike Experience and more… A picture is worth 1000 words. We all know this… if we can visualize, we can easy find something we weren’t able to see before. I was looking at some amazing futuristic videos from Microsoft about future data visualization. Look on this – I’m sure you will find it cool.
Think about the products we design and manufacture without tools. Can we experience product usage that will allow us to have all data and information about these products in our hands? Here we come to the idea of Lifelike Experience from DS. This is really cool and I’m sure you will enjoy future videos too.
Now I’d like to come to some practical ideas we may have tomorrow. When you experience a product, and try out the product design, features, configuration, and materials, you need to connect them to real life. Think about a product that you will modify that will have the ability to let you see data about all the problems your customers have with this particular product. Or think about simple information – how many users use this cell phone when you try to change its design. Finally, think about how many complaint people wrote on the blog about the specific product you design… More practical usage are products like 3DVIA composer.
3DVIA Composer. This is information you can share and experience today in manufacturing and with consumers. I think , in the future we will more examples of how to visualize data and product information.
Leave a Comment » | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM User Experience | Tagged: 3D, Data visualization, PLM | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky
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