Should PLM take Excel to the Cloud?

April 15, 2009

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: , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Serious Joke – Why CAD needs to Tweet?

April 7, 2009

Well, finally it happened :) (April 1 SpaceClaim Twitter AddIn Prank) – the first CAD system to present integration with Twitter. So, is it April-1 joke or something positive happens?

socialmedia

I’d try to analyze the following product capabilities –  DS 3DLive support for IM, Vuuch Design Discussion, SpaceClaim with Twitter…  My conclusion – CADs are learning social language.

 

3dlive-im

 

 

But let’s try to analyze it…

 DS 3DLive introduced enablement for IM (Instant messaging and online video collaboration). This is a powerful capability, in my view, to allow designers and engineers working in a 3D environment where they need to communicate with peers and get in touch with experts. The capabilities of 3DLive allow full 3D collaboration including video, snapshots and synchronous redlining. These basically can eliminate the need of designers and engineers to use mails and other mainstream collaboration tools to transfer 3D models and drawings back and forth. Combined with MS OCS or IBM Lotus, 3DLive is a collaboration tool. But where is the social network?  This is not straightforward– collaboration tools like MS OCS /SharePoint of IBM Lotus actually supporting social networking, can connect designers and engineers to their peers inside of the companies and outside.

 From the preview of Vuuch.com which I got the chance to see at SolidWorks World 2009 this year, my impression was that Vuuch is trying to focus on the productivity of designers and engineers by eliminating having to use email for collaboration. The Vuuch collaboration server (hope this is the right name J) allows users to manage all discussions thread and connect them to design models, drawings in the CAD environment, and in the regular portal user experience.

Although it’s not clear what SpaceClaim users will do with tweets, this is an opportunity to have a shortcut to Twitter based communities  in their working environment. This is a step in productivity improvements.

 So, I want to ask why CADs need to tweet? What are benefits? I can see a main trend in the willingness of designers and engineers to improve collaborative capabilities they have in CAD environment as well as stay connected to their social peers. These social peers can be co-workers, potential customers, suppliers and other people that can help them in their daily work. I think is too early to say if this is the future of Web 2.0 and CAD in creating something together, another flavor of PLM 2.0, or something else, but something is definitely happening there… 

 

 

14 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM and organization, Productivity | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Does PLM Behave like Deep Web?

March 20, 2009

I’m sure you have heard about Deep Web. For those who are not aware of this term,  Deep Web, (also known as Invisible Web)  is part of the Web which is not accessible by search engines. Even if Google has reported passing 1 trillion indexed pages, this is still only a small fraction of information available on the internet.

 I see that this story is very similar to what is happening in the backyard of PLM. PLM is trying to manage information about products from the initial idea of the product through to its disposal. Although there are lots of design models, engineering bill of materials, manufacturing plans, sales plans, and support reports, it looks like PLM is still catching only a small fraction of Product Lifecycle Data available in the organization.

 So, what is the main problem? I think that, content is the biggest PLM problem. This content – designs, different kinds of bill of materials as well as supplier’s bids and support claims etc. –  are hidden from most of the organization and is therefore unmanaged by PLM systems. How can we improve it? In my view, the ultimate goal should be to make PLM-related content available in an open format. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not talking about “another 3D format every CAD system can read/write”. I’m talking about an open format that allows us to expose PLM-related information in a way that it will be accessible in the manufacturing organization and beyond.

 This time I don’t have a recipe for how to cook up the next steps. I think that PLM and related industries have taken many steps in standardizing CAD/CAM/CAE data by inventing  multiple formats. However,  most of them, as well as initiatives around their creation, have been rather unsuccessful. IGES and STEP have been used widely. I think PDF is mostly used as a stable format for long term storage, but this is far from providing the ability to manage content.

 I will be glad to hear about your experience in this field as well as about developments I may not have discovered  (As I’ve mentioned, Google cannot yet dive into all the data available in the Deep Web Water :) ).

3 Comments | Collaboration, Daily PLM Think Tank, Design, Productivity, Technology | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Search for the right BOM – I’m feeling lucky?

March 20, 2009

 I’d like to start  a wide topic for discussion – BOM. Yes, Bill of Material. This may seem like an old topic, I think, since most of the work that manufacturers do, starts from a Bill of Material (requirements) and ends with a Bill of Material (built/support/disposal). Therefore, my first question in the Bill of Material discussion is how to find right the Bill of Material in an organization? You, of course, know about the “I’m feeling lucky” button on Google start page. So, how many times have you felt lucky and found the right Bill Of Material with single click?

 My initial thought was to discover multiple types of Bill of Materials organizations manage today.

 1.     Concepts /Ideas –I’m not sure that there is a formal BOM here. But probably there is some relevance to existing BOMs in the organization.

2.     Design – CAD systems and other design systems are increasing their potential of showing and managing Bill of Materials.  

3.     Engineering – PDM/PLM and other TLA (Three Letter Acronyms) systems are used here. But, I think, from a market share standpoint, MS Excel is the leader.

4.     Manufacturing – ERP is heavily presented in this space. Sometimes PLM supports the Manufacturing BOM. If ERP is not setup in the organization, manufacturing is supported by various homegrown systems and… by MS Excel.

5.     Supply chain – depends on the type of communication and various collaboration tools, CAD/Design/PDM/files and again…. MS Excel.

6.     Support and others – various systems for asset management, industry-oriented tools for product having long lifecycle, etc.

7.     Regulation – recently, there is a growing trend for support for various regulations. This leads to the question of how to manage a regulation Bill of Materials.

 While looking at this list, which I’m sure is not complete, I started to think about how I can find the right BOM for what I’m doing now for my role in organization. I don’t have an answer today, but I think, there is  some room for innovation.

 As I consider PLM Think Tank as a discussion place, I will be very glad to hear your voices as I will be continuing discussion on this topic in my upcoming posts.

11 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM and organization, Productivity | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Improve organizational performance by the management of multiple Bill Of Materials

February 10, 2009

Organizations today are looking for ways to improve their performance. I think that the right tools (or right technologies) can help them. One of them is the technology to manage multiple Bill of Materials. Why do I think this is important? I tried to analyze how people in organizations work and discovered that their work is very sequential: design-engineering-manufacturing planning, etc. Each step depends on the previous one. On the other side, it is rare that using single steps from design to manufacturing can create final results as designers and engineers need to work in cycles. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen many tools that can allow to these engineers and designers to work on the same content together. For each step, they need to release information early and move onto the next step and be able to co-edit – this is the only way to improve productivity. It also helps if you don’t lose time on communication and data translation.

 Management of multiple Bill of Materials can resolve the bottleneck typical in product development. What can we do practically? We need technologies that allow us to manage multiple structure of information – design, engineering, manufacturing –at the same time. If we can do this, users will be able to co-edit this data without waiting in line until each person in this design-to-manufacturing game finishes his or her work. Today, a lot of time is wasted while waiting for somebody else to finish his or her work.. The second part of this technology will be to eliminate the need for second and third manual data entry. The third and most important part will be the ability to work in cycles where changes are synchronized between multiple structures.

 One possible way (this is just to make our discussion more practical) is to create a model for multiple BOMs, will be a 3D matrix of data with the following dimensions:

 (1) Bill of Material (actual data structure);

(2) Bill of Material Type or Role (engineering, manufacturing etc.);

(3) Changes (represents level of maturity);

 These 3-dimensional data structure will allow you to link relevant information between design, engineering and other domains of data and manage changes simultaneously.multibom

 Efficient management of multiple BOMs will resolve bottlenecks and improve organizational performance. I think, the ability to manage these multiple Bill-Of-Materials will be a key capability of the next PLM systems. Although today there are systems that let you work with Bill of Materials, their main disadvantages is that they need people to invest their time into transforming one data structure into another. 

11 Comments | Collaboration, Daily PLM Think Tank, Productivity, Technology | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

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