Who should be the first PLM user in a company?

May 9, 2013

Enterprise software implementations are usually not a simple task. Compared to selection of your next mobile device and RSS reader, it is an organizational effort. Enterprise software gets really complicated when it comes to the point implementation requires involvement of people. Product lifecycle management (PLM) is one of these systems. Implementation of PLM is deeply connected to product development and manufacturing processes. Success or failure of PLM implementation is directly impacted by how people are involved in PLM system adoption and use.

Companies are taking different approaches in implementing PLM. However, fundamentally, I can see two different ways in implementation. First is holistic approach usually called "business transformation". It implies significant process changes as a result of PLM system implementation. Companies are analyzing their existing processes, optimize and restructuring the way they do business. Second approach is focusing on a specific process or problem solving. It is usually come as an improvement of a specific activity and/or process.

There are lots of debates about PLM implementations these days. The value of PLM system implementations becomes clear to organizations on different levels. At the same time, it is obviously not easy to people to understand how to start using a PLM system that will have such a significant impact of everything they do.

I was reading an Minerva blog post – Should we pull PLM deployment? A new lean deployment strategy by Yoann Maingon. In this article Yoann shares his view on different approaches to implement PLM. The idea of lean and "pulling data" resonated. Here is an interesting passage:

The lean concept is highly based on a pull flow. Most of the arguments I’ve had were about the fact that the main data is created in Engineering so we should start deployment in engineering. Well, what if you should provide a system to the first person who enter the system. The one who will pull the flow, the customer? the marketing? assistance & support?

It made me think about how to maximize the value of PLM implementation withing short period of time. Here is the idea. Every company is manufacturing products for customers in some ways. The biggest process loop in every manufacturing company starts from requirements and ends with "release" of product to customer. To control the loop between requirements and results can be an interesting problem to handle first.

The idea of "pull" will be related to pulling of product requirements and documents representing released products and combined them together in a single system. In my view, it can provide an interesting insight on company operation. It is also very useful information source that every company can "re-use" for different purposes – new projects, customer support, etc.

What is the conclusion? It all starts from ROI. How to make it faster… This is a challenge most of PLM implementations are facing these days. For most of the implementations the process of getting to results can be slow. To provide system that can capture requirements to release control can be an interesting option. Lots of valuable information is hidden in this relationships of requirements-result. It also can drive management attention and focus in a company. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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The future of PLM Glassware?

April 19, 2013

Technological predictions are tough and nobody wants to make them. Back in 2010, I came with the following post - Who Can Generate 3D/PLM Content For Apple iPad? Back that time, the value of iPad was questioned by many people. Speaking about manufacturing companies, people were very skeptical by the ability of iPad to bring meaningful functionality.

Fast forward in 2013. I’m sure you’ve heard that Google Glasses are coming. If you don’t know what is that about, navigate your browser here. The initial leaks of Google Glass experience are starting to leak the blogosphere. Navigate your browser to the following article - Google Glass is finally here: Tech specs released, first units shipped. The article put some snippets of Glass specification such as display resolution (similar to 25″ monitor), 16 GB flash storage, 5M camera with option to create 720p videos and sync to 12GB of Google cloud storage.

Google is paying a lot of attention to developers community. Navigate to the following article - Google publishes Glass’ Mirror API preview for developers. It contains a link to Google Glass Mirror API you might find useful.

Here is another article that caught my attention - 10 things about Google Glass: Could this be Google’s iPad? Many of Glasses usages are clearly individually oriented. At the same time, author is raising some initial questions and thoughts about business usages of Glasses and how Glasses can be connected to corporate accounts. Here is an interesting passage:

Consumer Google accounts can be connected to Google Glass. No corporate connections yet. The real interesting connection for enterprises would be service-oriented businesses and Google Glass. For now, Google Glass is all about individual accounts. Google Apps access will certainly follow at some point. The business implications for Google Glass will appear later. Google Glass could become a productivity tool. Presentations, location data, sales information and real-time information on the go could be handy. You could also picture a person on an oil rig giving a real-time, real-world view of a product to a manager in Dubai.

Few years ago, Microsoft and BMW released a video – Manufacturing Future Vision. Watch it below. You will find funny, but many of concepts related to tablet computing world are actually reality now.

However, I want you to pay attention to few examples below very similar to what we can see in a futuristic videos of Google Glass interface.

What is my conclusion? The analogy of Glasses with iPad is very strong. Only few years ago, iPad was introduced a complete new experience. Now, we can see tablet computing experience in our everyday life everywhere. Business usage of tablet computer is skyrocketing. I can see Glass experience can change some of businesses as well. We are going to see many Glasware use-cases that will change company processes. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM and Engineering Task (Process) Management

December 13, 2012

PLM is all about process management. This statement comes to the play when people explain the value of PLM in the organization. Usually, when you think about process management, your mind is switching to some kind of "workflow thinking" mode, which assumes you need to follow the process from state to state by accomplishing tasks and activities. In every PLM implementation, this is a moment of time, people ask – how do we manage engineering processes? What toolset we need to have to make it happen?

I can see, engineering people, are bad organized. In many situations to run processes among engineers is similar to herding cats. To manage process in an engineering organization is a challenge. This is a place where PLM vendors usually fails to provide a reliable and simple solution. Engineers are asking for additional flexibility and vendors have a tendencies to provide a complicated solutions. Many PLM tools are providing sort of Workflow designer to create a process model. Later on, you can discover that engineers tend to abandon these processes. Main reason – these processes are not reflecting the reality. I wanted to come with some ideas how to fix that. I came up with the three definitions – tasks, engagement and information context. Take a look on the picture below.

The overall engineering process is described as list of tasks (above). This is the simplest way to present what needs to be done. It easy to digest and follow up. At the same time, the activity around this task list is not linear. In order to accomplish the task, an engineer needs to engage with additional people. This a typical situation when a person who leads the process needs to communicate with other people and comes with the result. Often, it is ad-hoc communication that cannot be formalized resides in people’s mind. Another situation happens when an engineer needs to bring an additional set of information to accomplish the task or make a decision. To combine these activities together is not a simple thing. Workflow is a wrong tool to solve this problem. To support a simplified task management tools with the ability to manage external engagement and connect to information context can be a potential solution to the problem.

What is my conclusion? The simplification is a key word to summarize my thoughts. In many situations, engineers will prefer a simple task list to get things done. However, tools need to provide a collaborative capabilities to connect the engineer’s activity to other people and additional sources of information. Just my thoughts. I’m interesting to learn how you manage engineering tasks in your organizations.

Best, Oleg

[categories Daily PLM Think Tank]

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PLM Innovation: Who will provide PLM to Boeing in 2015?

October 25, 2012

I’m in Atlanta these days attending PLM Innovation Americas conference. Today is the first day, and I’m still expecting many things to come. Nevertheless, here is the thing that made me to blog. I’ve been attending first keynote made by Kevin Fowler or Boeing Commercial Airplanes . The name of the presentation – The sky’s the limit? Reaching for the value of PLM at Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The presentation provided a very interesting retrospective on how PLM developed at BCA (Boeing Commercial Airplanes) for the last 20 years. In my view, Boeing is one of the companies that stands at the root of PLM development back 25 years. Boeing fundamentally influenced the way PLM tools were developed by vendors like Dassault Systems and Metaphase (now Siemens PLM).

Growth of PLM system was driven by the need to support development and manufacturing processes. The ultimate request was to provide additional features to product development processes. Boeing moved from spatial integration (777) to build integration (737-next-gen) and functional integration (787). It means more and more features. The following slides show a very interesting trend related to Boeing PLM Value.

As you can see, functionality is growing. However, total cost of ownership is growing too, which is not very good sign. The most disappointing factor is related to usability of PLM systems. The usability of PLM tools is going down, which confirms the fact PLM is struggling from complexity and user experience. The level of information complexity at Boeing is impressing – 1B (Billion) parts to manage during the release of aircraft, Boeing has 12000 aircrafts in service and operation, Boeing employees are sending 63M (Million) emails during the month. Boeing engineers need to use multiple tools during their working day.

However, the most important message I captured from Boeing presentation was related the future evolution of PLM system. According to the Boeing, all PLM systems Boeing is currently running are approaching their end of life. Take a look on the following slide presenting four generations of Boeing PLM systems. Actually, it represents only three generations. Boeing put a question mark on the generation of PLM tools that need to come in 2015.

What is my conclusion? It is very interesting to see how large companies are turning towards usability of PLM tools. In the past, usability wasn’t a big deal for enterprise companies. Nowadays, end users cannot tolerate bad user experience. According to Boeing, their users are opening about 19 user interfaces to get data. Future PLM systems need to come with a different level of usability and user experience. The expectation level will be set by iPhone, Google, Facebook and other consumer tools. PLM vendors need to make a note. Important. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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New PLM definition from Jim Brown and old PLM complexity issues

October 23, 2012

next-plm-definition.jpg

People are collecting things. Beer bottles, matchboxes, car models, etc. As you probably know, I’m collecting PLM definitions. One of the first articles in my collection was this – How to define PLM? with amazing performance of Al Dean. Since that time, I had a chance to pick up more articles for my collection. Earlier this week, the following Tech-Clarity writeup caught my attention - Should we define PLM as an Engineering Decision-making Framework? The next PLM definition is coming from Jim Brown of Tech-Clarity. Jim is not afraid of tough problems. You can see him in the picture (on the left) exploring to complexity of integrated PLM systems using wassabi toothbrushing method. Jim Brown is taking “decision process” aspect to define what PLM means. It relies on the following research Jim did – Improving Engineering Decision management with PLM. Navigate to the following link and have a read. Here is the passage I liked:

Given the important role of engineering decision-making in product development, manufacturers should treat it as a core competency. Manufacturers must enable decision-makers to make better, more confident decisions. They should also enable engineers to make decisions efficiently and get them right the first time to optimize product development time, reduce time-consuming design rework, and improve time to market. Optimizing engineering decisions is ultimately about driving greater success and profitability of products.

Improving decision-making is even more important today as engineers face unprecedented complexity in product development. At the same time, competition is much more global and competitive advantages are easier to copy. What was a “good enough” decision ten or fifteen years ago will not suffice today. The bar has been raised. Companies are targeting “right the first time” decision-making to make more optimal, confident decisions based on better information. The engineering decision-making processes and tools of over a decade ago will not suffice either – they must evolve to enable data-driven decisions to optimize product designs.

Decision framework: Input information and decision records

Net-net, the PLM definition Jim proposed will sounds like as following- PLM is a decision framework for engineers. It made me think about two important elements of such type of framework – information collection and decision tracking. The first element of the framework is a capability to collect the information needed to make a decision. It is a complicated process; information is siloed in different systems and organizations among people. Sometimes information is in the database, sometimes information is in the email and sometimes information is in people’s mind. This is a challenge PLM framework need to solve. Second part of the framework is the ability of the system keep records of decisions. Sometimes it comes as ECO management system, and sometimes it can come as more generic process management systems.

What is my conclusion? Engineers are making decisions everyday. To support them in this process is important. However, to make it efficient is even more important. The problem PLM can face is to create too complicated “decision supporting framework”. So complicated, engineers won’t use it. It doesn’t mean they won’t make any decisions. So, decision will happen. It just won’t happen here… in PLM system. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

[categoty Daily PLM Think Tank]

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What is the future of PLM research?

October 4, 2012

I’m in Moscow these days to attend the first Autodesk University Russia (AU.Ru). Even so, I feel like attending multiple conferences at the same time. During the last two days, I was following the twitter discussion about CIMdata PLM Roadmap 2012 in Michigan, USA as well as reading about Bricsys conference in Amsterdam. The amount of information online stroke me to think about how easy industry information became available and how simple to maintain a conversation with your peers – bloggers, analysts and vendors on multiple continents in different time zones. This made me think about significant changes that happens in industry research community because of internet, social media and blogs. Just to clarify, I’m not speaking about dueling analysts Jim Brown and Chad Jakson trying to win the write to brush the teeth with wasabi paste. My point is that the role of industry research is getting different.

One of the articles I read few days ago, came to my mind. Navigate to the following link to read the article – Will Market Research Still Exist in 20 years? by Ben Leet. The topic is interesting. I found the following passage notable to present key changes that happen in market and industry research:

I argue therefore, that market research simply for capturing quantitative data will be long dead 20 years from now, since there will be no need for this technique when the data will already exist in cheaper and more accessible forms. I even question the future role of data analytics, as predictive algorithms will become so advanced that human intervention will rarely be needed, because data confidence levels will be well within acceptability.

Remember 10-15 years ago, market research was mostly about having an access to the data. Now it is different. Today, everybody can have an access to the data. The question now is more about what outcome you can drive from the data. It is also interesting to see how it changes the landscape of larger and smaller analytical and market research firms.

What is my conclusion? We don’t need industry and market research firms to help us to get access to the information. Now data is available. So, to have access nowadays is not a privilege of marketing research companies. Google and other social software changed our ability to communicate. Research is moving from information access to information analysis and building predictive models of the future based on social data. It requires new skills and new people. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Image courtesy of Greenbookblog.

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SharePoint got infected with PLM disease

September 19, 2012

I was long time I didn’t write anything about SharePoint. I’ve been tracking SharePoint for the last 5-7 years very closely. These days I can hear lots of talks about coming SharePoint 2013. Many of the customers I know are using SharePoint. Back in 2006-2007, the success of SharePoint comes from the ability to provide an easy starting solution to collaborate on files in folders. The technology was easy, came together with Windows server and was free as soon as you have paid Windows server license. It was easy to start and put you hands-on something that gives you value immediately.

Fast-forward to 2012. The situation is different in my view. SharePoint has an established ecosystem of developers, system integrators and support. At the same time, I’m learning that SharePoint became much more complicated. It is not easy to start using SharePoint and it certainly requires time and effort to install and configure SharePoint-based solution.

The following article came to my attention few days ago – Why SharePoint 2013 Isn’t for You. Have a read and make an opinion. I found the following passage important:

SharePoint is not an app that gets upgraded every month as part of an update cycle. It is a development platform for providing business solutions. Large clients who rolled out SharePoint 2010 in the past two years are going to find it hard to justify moving on to 2013 in the near future, unless they can find a business justification for spending the time and money it will take to make the transition.

With this state of mind, SharePoint finally can be qualified with PLM disease you’re familiar. It is hard to install, it requires business strategy and money to configure and support. Bottom line – it is a perfect vehicle to get service organization to earn money. However, the question is how many users will continue to use it and what will happen with SharePoint ecosystem as we move forward.

What is my conclusion? The demand of customers today is how to simplify things. It is certainly true for consumer-oriented software, it comes fast to enterprise as well. I can see many examples here of companies in ERP, CRM and other fields. So, I can see how enterprise software companies are moving towards making things easy. I’d be concerned if the software I use gets complicated and requires more effort to install and configure. PLM was and still there. Most of traditional PLM products are struggling of PLM disease of complicated installation, long implementation cycle and need for support and maintenance on site. Just my thoughts.. Are you using SharePoint and PLM today? What is your take?

Best, Oleg

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Sunblock Cream and PLM Acceptance Problem

August 5, 2012

plm-sun-block-spf-70-300x278.jpgI’m spending this weekend on Cape Cod with my family. When hiding from active afternoon sun, I stumble on blog post by Jos Voskuil (aka virtualdutchman) – Our brain blocks PLM acceptance. I recommend you this read. I found it fascinating. Jos is getting into detail analyses of PLM flaws led to the fact PLM is still not as popular as iPhone, Google, Facebook and, for the worst-case, ERP software. The following flaw was my favorite:

Flaw 4: Anchoring. Anchoring can be dangerous—particularly when it is a question of becoming anchored to the past. PLM has been anchored with being complex and expensive. Autodesk (Autodesk PLM 360) is trying to change the anchoring. Other PLM-like companies stop talking about PLM due to the anchoring and name what they do different: 3DExperience, Business Process Automation…

Living engineering software world for the last 15-20 years, I was enjoying Jos getting into variety of reasons why PLM is not approaching the level of acceptance PLM marketing people and some of PLM vendors want. "Anchoring to the past"idea is actually one, I think, PLM vendors need to be specifically focused on. The behavior of some PLM implementers and vendors sometime reminded the following formular – "When Plan A doesn’t work, go to Plan A”.

What is my conclusion? When trying to hide from unusually active Cape Cod sun, I was looking for sunblock cream – simple combination of pain-value. In my view, this is how PLM vendors need to start to behave nowadays. To have a solution that can help to engineers and other people in a company to get a job done. Easy. Well, actually not. The simplicity is hard. Just my thoughts..

Best, Oleg

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Dassault V6, 3D Experience and “After PLM” Party

February 29, 2012

You are probably familiar with the following statements “beavers do what beavers do“. I’ve got the confirmation of that last month whenvisited PTC HQ in Waltham, MA. It was amazing to see how PTC is focused on moving PLM story to the higher level of maturity. At the same time, one of the PTC main competitors- Dassault Systems is actually preparing to the world after PLM. Yes… after PLM – you’ve heard this right!

Earlier this month during SolidWorks World 2012, Bernard Charles, President and CEO of Dassault Systems presented his vision of 3D Experience. Bernard, again, made it very clear – Dassault is a “vision” type company. In my view, Dassault is following Apple’s and Henry Ford’s paradigm not to ask customers what they actually need, but invent it in their new products. Dassault is coming to the world “after PLM”. What does it mean? Josh Mings of SolidSmack made his usual sharp catch – Dassault launches strange new 3D experience platform. Navigate to this link to read more.

Dassault new 3D Experience vision

Dassault put a new website providing more information about 3D Experience platform. Here are some updated explanations about what 3D experience means for Dassault:

DS considers ?3D Experience? as the ?after-PLM? stage. The more complex the underlying software is, the simpler the user experience should be. It’s all about optimizing products and designs in the virtual, 3D world to enable better product delivery. Some DS brands make the 3D, some enrich the experience. The image is meant as a description of the key components of 3D Experience as DS sees it: 3D modeling, content and simulation, search, social innovation, real time 3D experience.

You can get an information about Dassault’s vision by watching the following video.

But, this video was contained too much marketing and I was looking for some additional information about DS future plans. I found some interesting writeups available on UpFrontezine by Ralph Grabowski. Navigate to the following link to read more – Bernard Charles talks strategy. I found it very interesting. You can see important keywords used to explain where Dassault is going – 3D, Digital Mockup, Data reuse, Open Architecture and Affordable. This is pretty cool set of buzzwords. However, the last passage in Ralph’s post is my favorite:

“The reason why high tech is adopting V6 is because they never leave the data alone. They can ask the suppliers to connect to the system and go and access to the data where they are without moving them.”

What is my conclusion? The story of 3D Experience is inspiring. I think, Bernard got inspired by Apple story. Experience is what getting more importance these days. I’m sure you know Apple example. But anyway… MP3 players were around quite few years, but only iPod/iTunes experience turned it into what we see now. It was about “music”, and Steve Jobs created closed eco-system of “music experience”. So, Bernard Charles is probably thinking about “future design experience eco-system”. It is cool! However, here is the problem I can see. The consumer audience is different from business one. When it comes to business of the companies, IP assets, IT and many other things, companies are getting concerned about “closed eco-systems”. The last passage about V6 and data got me concerned about future Dassault openness strategy too. In the past, V6 was criticized because it locked CATIA and Enovia behaviors. Dassault “after PLM” party seems to me as a story how to create an ecosystem supporting full cycle of innovation. Very visionary… Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Autodesk, Aras and Integrated PDM / PLM story

December 7, 2011

Back to the beginning of this year, I came with the post – Integrating PLM and PDM. Wrong question? My initial thoughts about integrating PDM and PLM was driven by growing interest to integrate existing software assets in the companies. However, thinking more I can see some additional aspects of PDM / PLM integration in a longer-term perspective. Few weeks ago, I postedFrom PDM to PLM: Unify vs. Integrate. I can see some examples of "integrate trend" happens now. I wanted to discuss two examples. Both Aras and Autodesk, in my view, are trying to integrate existing PDM systems with agile and flexible PLM environments.

Aras Enterprise PLM

If you haven’t had a chance to review it, Aras EPLM is a new packaged offering coming from Aras and expanding SolidWorks Enterprise PDM horizons by providing additional process oriented applications in Aras PLM. I recommend you to take a look on Aras EPLM on-demand webcast. Based on the information I found on the website, the functional scope of Aras EPLM related to Item and BOM Management, Product costing, Supply Chain processes, Project management and Change Management.

The clear strategy of Aras is to provide a complementary solution to SolidWorks and EPDM. I believe SolidWorks customers are looking for this solution as the opportunity to keep SolidWorks EPDM, to have an additional functionality and eliminate probably more expensive and unclear migration towards future Enovia V6 solutions DS is planning to deliver in the future.

Autodesk Nexus PLM

Another interesting example that just came last week – Autodesk made the announcement of Nexus PLM. Thre is little information and hands-on experience available about Autodesk PLM. You can navigate to my earlier posts aboutAutodesk Nexus PLM and Autodesk PLM strategies. At the same time, from the top slide presented by Steve Bodnar, Autodesk VP of PLM, we can learn that Autodesk is building their PLM strategy as a combination of two products – on-premise PDM (Autodesk Vault) and cloud based future product (Nexus PLM).

Looking on the scope of solutions Autodesk is promising to deliver as part of Nexus PLM, you can see some similarity with Aras EPLM Solution.

PDM / PLM Integration: pros and cons

If I think about possible advantages of combined solutions PDM+PLM, the one that stands clear to me is the interest to leverage existing software assets and re-use implementations cost already made by customers. When I think about the way Aras and Autodesk articulate what they do, I can see lots of similarities.

In that context, the cost of integration between PDM and PLM becomes one of the most important elements. Mindshare PLM vendors like Siemens PLM and Dassault are driving customers towards unified solution. They are trying to convince customers that unification will reduce the total cost of ownership and optimize the implementation. At the same time, if cost of integration is low, the type of solution proposed by Autodesk and Aras can have some grounds.

What is my conclusion? PDM / PLM integration looks like an interesting trend. We are going to see to see more examples, in my view. What is the fundamental reason behind it? I think many companies are having trouble to drive their IT infrastructure towards unification. It requires longer projects and expanded budgets. If PLM companies find an efficient way to integrate and access data between systems, it can definitely provide a competitive advantage on the market. Last one cannot be guaranteed, but it sounds as an interesting opportunity. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Image: dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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