Who will create first CAD or PLM App for Google Glass?

May 13, 2013

The discussion around Google Glass is heating up. Google was very transparent by rolling out Google Glasses and providing lots of information about what Google Glass experience will look like. You cannot get Google Glasses now- applications are closed now. However, you can leave your email and Google will contact you. The reviews are going from excitement like – Google Glass will definitely get someone punched in the face by this CEO to completely opposite one – Google Fights Glass Backlash Before It Even Hits The Street.

At the same time, you can see the early stages of development debates around Google Glass. Google provided a limited access to Glass development tools – Google Is Holding Closed Door Meetings With Developers To Talk About Apps For Google Glass. Few days ago, I’ve been reading another provoking article – Google Glass Bans Developers From Making Money With Apps – So Why Do Developers Bother? Here is an interesting passage:

But Google has made it quite clear that developers can’t charge for their apps, or include any advertisements. So if developers can’t make any money from the apps they create, what’s driving them to build Glassware? "We want something that is going to excite people," Michael DiGiovanni, developer of the Glass app that lets you take a picture with a wink, told Business Insider. "If you excite people, that helps in your career. Even if you can’t initially monetize it, we want to be at the forefront of new technology."

Actually, according to another article, there are tons of applications for Google Glasses. I recommend you to take a look and get inspired with your potential to develop Google Glass App. I specially liked Path Finder app. You can see sample screen here. I don’t know how real is that, but it looks promising to me.

Few weeks ago, I explored possible scenarios of Google Glass usage in engineering and manufacturing applications – The future of PLM Glassware. Accessing information in a transparent way looks like a promising and interesting opportunity.

What is my conclusion? It is early days of Google Glass technology. Probably, it is a time for vendors to explore new opportunities. I’m looking forward to see more real examples and access Google Glass to try it in a different applications. I wonder, how many CAD and PLM companies are already looking on Glass and the possibility to develop apps? Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM, Lifecycle and Google Timelapse ideas

May 10, 2013

lifecycle-plm.jpgManufacturing businesses are getting more dynamic these days. It is all about how to change and change fast. The days where manufacturing companies allowed months and even years to respond to business changes are gone. Competition is getting more aggressive. Cost pressure is getting tight. Companies need to have a way to analyze what they do in a perspective of time. This is actually one of the places where PLM technology can provide a bigger value in the future. Think about design changes and problems reported in your products with the time lapse of last 10 years. Think about quality and cost of suppliers for the last 5 years. How PLM can provide such type of insight and information?

Very often, when we speak about PLM, we want to emphasize the middle "L" of what PLM is accomplishing for our customers. It is about Lifecycle. This is where every PLM solution want to excite and provide a value. However, this part of PLM is not developed much.

I’ve been reading about Google Timelapse project earlier this week. Navigate here to read ABC news article – Google Timelapse: A Quarter Century of Earth’s Change. Working with the U.S. Geological Survey, NASA and Time magazine, search giant Google has unveiled a project that shows how planet Earth has changed over the course of a quarter century.

Another article – Time’s Timelapse story provides a bit more details about the project.

With the help of massive amounts of computer muscle, they have scrubbed away cloud cover, filled in missing pixels, digitally stitched puzzle-piece pictures together, until the growing, thriving, sometimes dying planet is revealed in all its dynamic churn. The images are striking not just because of their vast sweep of geography and time but also because of their staggering detail. Consider: a standard TV image uses about one-third of a million pixels per frame, while a high-definition image uses 2 million. The Landsat images, by contrast, weigh in at 1.8 trillion pixels per frame, the equivalent of 900,000 high-def TVs assembled into a single mosaic.

The technology is available online. You can try it by yourself. Read Google’s blog and navigate to the following link to experiment with Google Earth Engine. Here is a search for changes in Haifa district Israel I captured.

haifa-1984-2011.jpg

What is my conclusion? To think about time exploration in the context of manufacturing and engineering information is very inspiring. Data visualization can be potentially very cool and provide a lot of insight to manufacturing organization about how to improve their businesses. What is your take? Do you have an idea of engineering timelapse visualization? Speak up.

Best, Oleg

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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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PLM and importance of mobile apps

May 7, 2013

Mobile is hyping, trending, skyrocketing… You name it. Everything goes mobile these days. Many developers of enterprise apps are asking these days – what does it mean for me? PLM developers are one of them. How mobile apps are important for users of CAD, PDM, PLM and other engineering applications? In the past, I posted – Mobile PLM gold rush. Did vendor miss the point? My main point – mobile is about how to get a specific job done. It is about how to "read email", "approve task", "review change". However, it is clearly not about how to make "everything mobile" .

I was reading an interesting article few days ago. Larry Page Says Mobile Apps Won’t Hurt Search: ‘The Information Wants To Be Found’. Here is an interesting passage you may want to remember.

CEO Larry Page responded that he “always” gets asked about how the popularity of mobile apps affects Google search, but he’s “not super-concerned” about it. “We’ve been dealing with that issue for a long time,” Page said. “Fundamentally search is an amazing thing for publishers and software developers and other apps. I think, in general, the information wants to be found."

The statement resonate. PLM is first about how to make product information available for people. The right information at the right moment of time. PLM system should deliver this information regardless on type of device you are using – desktop, mobile, Google glass (:)).

What is my conclusion? The critical role of mobile apps in PLM is related to ability to deliver information and make a decision regardless on your location. Product development and manufacturing business is dynamic and distributed these days. Mobile apps need to support it. However, it is only possible by establishing core PLM services managing data and processes in a seamless way. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM Excels and Future Downfall of Manufacturing?

May 6, 2013

no-excel-plm-300x276.jpgMicrosoft Excel. What is lovely topic to finish the weekend? It was a long time, since I didn’t blog about Excel and its potential influence to product development and manufacturing. At the time my friendly blogging buddies are warning about increasing danger coming from different cloud initiatives here and there, the real danger is coming from software used by 100% of manufacturers today. So, let me get back to MS Excel.

Over the weekend, I was reading a fascinating FORTUNE article published by CNNMoney here. Authors are blaming Excel for US’s weak economy, Europe’s growth problems and zillions of other financial problems. Here is a simple reason why it happens – people don’t know how to use Excel.

“Prominent financial blogger James Kwak calls Excel “one of the greatest, most powerful, most important software applications of all time.” But perhaps we ask too much of the program, or perhaps of our ability to cut and paste. In the past few years, Excel has been implicated in some of the biggest blunders on Wall Street and in finance in general.”

Let me get back to PLM and product development. IMHO, Excel is one of the most popular PLM system in the world. Each time PLM system fails, people are coming to Excel, which is flexible, powerful and scalable. The initial cost to use Excel is zero. It is hard to find manufacturing company that not using Microsoft Excels these days. Excel report is #1 feature requested by majority of PDM/PLM customers. I wonder how many of these customers are experiencing similar Excel skills mentioned by FORTUNE article above.

What is my conclusion? Manufacturing mistakes are less visible, compared to Wall street issues. However, if you think about hidden impact of Excel on variety of engineering and manufacturing mistakes, product cost, compliance, and many other aspects of product development, your decision can be different. Maybe it is a time find an alternative to Excel? Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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GrabCAD Workbench: First Experiments

May 3, 2013

(Updated with some modification. May 3, 2013 @9:42a)

In my yesterday post, I’ve been talking about PDM software, obvious value proposition behind PDM implementation, the fact a substantial amount of manufacturing companies are afraid of implementation PDM software as well as about how cloud software startup are trying to crack the idea of PDM and may be implement it differently. I wanted to have some hands on done and experiment with new apps on the cloud. Hardi Meybaum of GrabCAD was kind to grant me an access to Beta preview of GrabCAD Workbench.

After some confusion around multiple GrabCAD accounts (actually I have two accounts now), I succeeded to login and get to the project page (below). You can see project browser and area dedicated for file viewing. Nothing special, you can see it in many engineering software – CAD, viewers, etc.

I experimented with GrabCAD viewer. The “explode” feature is nice. So far, I get an access to SolidWorks assembly Hardi shared with me and was able to play with navigation between parts and sub assemblies.

Next thing – you can collaborate by sharing files with other users (which I did by sharing with my another gmail account – as a result a new GrabCAD account was created). The new user (account) provided me access to SolidWorks assembly with all parts and not only to a specific part I shared. This is probably a hint to GrabCAD engineers to think about security model, which will be absolutely must if you want to get your software closer to PDM functions of secured collaboration.

Another collaborative feature – pins and comments. I can put a pin in the viewer, put comments, screenshot and share it with other people. Nice collaborative feature. Also, you can put comments alongside with viewer file.

The last step in my experiments was to make a change or to upload pseudo “new version” of the assembly. The original file shared by Hardi was labeled as V1. So, I downloaded the file and change its name to something different in hope to have V2. I succeeded to upload the file, but didn’t get a preview (that was my fault of file renaming – see update below). Instead of preview I’ve got a nice feature allowing me to request a preview feature for this type of file. That was true for dwg and dwf files I tried to upload.

I’ve been working on viewer problem I faced. That was actually my fault by renaming file with wrong extension. I’ve been re-do it again and… voila, GrabCAD viewer captured it with nice message about queueing file for 3D viewing preparation, which ended with absolutely correct preview after 5-8 seconds processing.

Another interesting observation was “switch to old look” button, which gave me an access to traditional GrabCAD profile page with file access, properties and comments. Project was marked as private project – good sign of thinking about security. On the other side, it means GrabCAD workbench is a natural extension to GrabCAD website with the ability to access other projects as well.

What is my conclusion? GrabCAD Workbench is focusing on providing engineers with the tool to share CAD models and collaborate around CAD design. Because of cloud/hosted nature, it is easy to start. I found user experience nice and soft. I’ve been disappointed by absences of basic security implementation between parts and assemblies. I’m looking forward to talk to GrabCAD fellows and learn more. This is just my first impression… More to come.

Best, Oleg

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PDM: re-invent the wheel or innovate?

May 2, 2013

Engineers hate PDM. It is an axiom known to all people touching engineering and manufacturing software. Nobody gets up in the morning and looking for PDM software. Most of product development people are considering PDM as an evil that they need pay taxes to get right revision and don’t overwrite changes made by his colleagues. The value proposition of PDM is obvious. Navigate your browser to the reports made by Jim Brown of Tech-Clarity here. Here is a conclusion:

The conclusion from that report was a clear indication that Product Data Management (PDM) helps companies control control and secure product-related data, improve the ability to quickly find and reuse information, and share product knowledge with other departments. The report went further to point out that the companies indicated the results of better control, search, and collaboration are increased efficiency, improved quality, reduced cost, and the ability to bring products to market much faster. So it was easy to make a conclusion from that report that PDM helps companies improve the metrics that drive product profitability.

At the same time, the same Jim Brown in his online dispute with Chad Jackson agreed that PDM is overkill for small and medium design team. I posted about it few weeks ago in my post – PDM: Rightsize, Wrongsize, Overkill? The current status quo of PDM is that majority of engineering and manufacturing companies are not using PDM. The optimistic estimation of amount of CAD seats managed by PDM software is probably 15-20%.

Recently, I saw two startup companies decided to challenge the space of collaboration and PDM using cloud solutions – GrabCAD Workbench and Sunglass PDM.

GrabCAD – company known because of a website providing online storage for CAD models and place to promote your engineering skills via different challenges. GrabCAD is coming with Workbench – an online solution that provide a secured location to share CAD design and collaborate in teams. Josh Mings smacked a review of GrabCAD workbench here. The following passage can explain what Workbench does:

Workbench provides a secure location for sharing models. Inside this environment, people can upload files (3d, 2d, docs, etc.), comment on files and further collaborate on the project files. The 3D viewing interface provides additional tools to section, measure, explode and place ‘pins’ on the 3D object itself. The idea is to replace less secure methods of collaboration like email, FTP, Dropbox or other online share sites, providing a single point interaction for the model and the people.

GrabCAD is planning to come with 3 levels of collaborative solutions – Professional, Team and Enterprise. Pricing is not available yet, but the first (Professional) is available now for limited beta. I requested a try for me and waiting it to be available soon.

Sunglass.io is come to the market as a online collaborative site with 3D viewing solution. Currently Sunglass is introducing what they call “product data management to 3D distributed cloud platform”. GraphicSpeak Randall Newton put an interesting writeup about Sunglass PDM here. The following passage is my favorite:

Nobody gets up in the morning and says, “Hurray, I get to work in our PDM software today.” Most product designers and engineers consider the data management side of using CAD for product design to be drudgery. The more product data management can be unified with design data and the processes of team workflow, the less onerous keeping the data current will seem. Only time and customer feedback will tell us if Sunglass has created a winner.

At $20 per month per user, the price of Sunglass PDM is a factor of ten less expensive than most PDM products on the market. But they offer a much richer, more nuanced approach to data management. Ease of use will be the key to early success.

Target low end PDM white space

Both Sunglass and GrabCAD are using modern web development concepts together with cool user experience. GrabCAD is leveraging the community of more than 500K engineers using GrabCAD website to upload/download CAD files. Both companies are thinking how to fill the gap current PDM packages like TeamCenter, PDMLink or SolidWorks Enterprise PDM left untapped. From the examples I’ve seen, Sunglass and GrabCAD are proposing an alternative experience to traditional PDM. At the same time, most of traditional attributes left without changes.

What is my conclusion? User experience and S3 cloud storage. Community of engineers and dashboard with CAD plug-ins. Most of these attributes were introduced by old PDM tools in the past. Will it be enough to change the mind of conservative engineers about the role of PDM systems in their working processes? Everything new is actually well-forgotten old. The history of software has many things like this. Cost is a huge factor also. Only time will show if GrabCAD or Sunglass created a winner in new PDM space. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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