PLM Simplification. First drop PLM word…

January 18, 2012

Simplification is a significant trend. I’ve been watching it a lot in consumer space. People got really obsessed by simplification after Apple. And these are all good things. However, I want to come back to something I call "simple PLM". Well, you can tell me it is a joke… maybe. First time I put a word about simplification was in 2008 (Simple PLM Technology). It was more like a question rather than post how to simplify data representation. My second take on "Simple PLM" was last year (Post COFES, Dropbox and PLM Made Simple) – I was talking about how to simplify data sharing. Not sure whether Dropbox will provide a concept for a future PLM, but two keywords out of that conversation were – "usability and simplicity".

First simplify, then automate

I remember one of the conversations that happened to me during the sales meeting with customers. It was about 7-8 years ago. I will not mention names, of course. I was "impressed" by a try of a sales person to convince a potential buyer by saying "Don’t underestimate the complexity of things we can manage". I found it very remarkable, and it took me long time to drive my conclusion about PLM sales. The predominant assumption of PLM sales is that manufacturing world is very complicated. So, we need a really complex system to manage this manufacturing world. Nowadays, I think, this is a mistake.

I found a very interesting quote from the following book: Product lifecycle management: 21st century paradigm for product realisation – First simplify, then automate. In my view, we need to think more how to simplify organizational processes. It will help us a lot to simplify PLM too.

Back to basics – back to BOM?

Here is another interesting observation. It came from Arena Solution. There are two things I like about Arena these days. First – Arena’s blog became one of my favorites. The second is about how Arena is trying to simplify what they do. Historical record – Arena started about a decade ago as a company called bom.com. You can still navigate to Arena vai this url. However, what I wanted to mention is how Arena Solutions changed the definition of what they do. Arena came from "PLM" back to "BOM". Can I call it "back to basics". I think, it will be a valid statement.

What is my conclusion? Few days ago, I wrote about process simplification. We will see more signs of simplification in the world of software for product lifecycle management, manufacturing and engineering. It all starts from the interest of people to simplify the world around them. Drop complicated acronyms and go beyond PLM with simple words – BOM, Change, Part, etc. When this goal is achieved, we will more a clearer picture of what new PLM software need to do. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

* freebie. nobody paid me to write this post.

** picture is courtesy of Arena Solutions blog

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My First Take on PLM Cloud Maturity Model

January 4, 2012

The beginning of the year is a good time to think aboutBHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals). Cloud was one of the dominant topics for the past two years of blogging on PLM Think Tank. So I decided to make a step up and think beyond one-page blog article. Two publications inspired me to do so -Tech-Clairty publication A maturity model for Product Data Accessibility and Oracle whitepaper - Cloud Computing Maturity Model. It made me think about how to summarize the current state of PLM industry and the development of cloud solution into something that will make a practical sense for manufacturing companies and help them to decide about their PLM cloud strategies.

Actually, I found interesting the fact cloud PLM was around for the last decade. Arena Solutions was pioneering PLM on the cloud since early 2000s. Recently, I figured out that Arena Solutions (original name – BOM.COM) passed multiple transformations on their way to position their product and strategy. In the following video, Eric Larkin (Arena’s co-founder) explains how Arena passed from the original idea of BOM.COM via PLM on Demand to the cloud BOM and change management on the cloud

I found very interesting to listen and compare Larkin’s talk to Steve Bodnar’s intereview explaining Autodesk Cloud PLM approach. In my view, Autodesk is clearly playing a role of “fast-second” by trying to learn from mistakes of PLM industry and advantages of cloud technologies.

Crowd-sourcing and Maturity Model development?

Here is my challenge. I want to apply the idea of a crowd-sourcing via blogging to the development of PLM cloud maturity model. I will be publishing PLM cloud maturity model in the end of each month and learn from comments and feedback with a hope to come something meaningful at the end of the year.

What is my conclusion? A short conclusion is mostly related to two videos I shared with you. It is interesting to compare Cloud PLM as it perceived by Arena Solutions – company pioneered cloud PLM solutions for the past decade and dominant CAD vendor taking advantages of the resources and learning from the experiences and mistakes of last 10 years of development. I’m looking forward to hearing back from you about what do you think about cloud adoption and PLM cloud maturity model. I hope it will be an interesting journey… Just my thoughts.

Best, Oleg

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PLM Vendors and “Cloud Marketing” Hype

October 19, 2011

From time to time, I’m experimenting with Google Trends. These results, obviously, cannot be counted as a serious research. At the same time, they can provide some insight on what happens. This morning, I was playing around “cloud” and “database” terms. I wonder if possible to find any evidence of changes in the balance between these two trends from the marketing standpoint. So, you can take a look on results:

Looking on the picture above, you can see the trend is clear. However, in order to neutralize the influence of “ash clouds” :) , I also made a comparison between “database software” and “cloud software”.

PLM Marketing

CAD/PLM companies demonstrated a significant amount of focus introducing cloud oriented solutions. Earlier, I was talking about Autodesk and Dassault investments into cloud solutions. However, I found some interesting thing about Arena Solutions too. Arena is definitely not a newcomer if we speak about what we call cloud. Arena roots are going back into dot.com era 1990s when the company was started as bom.com. I tracked some funny marketing transformations that happened to Arena very recently.

Take a look on former definition of what Arena is doing (I took it from the old press release almost 4 years ago).

Arena Solutions is the leading provider of on–demand (SaaS) product lifecycle management solutions for manufacturing companies of all sizes. As the only true on–demand, secure Internet–based PLM service, Arena PLM provides a superior alternative to complicated, lengthy and expensive traditional PLM software deployments.

Fast forward into 2011. Pay attention on how Arena Solution presented now – Bill of Material (BOM) and change management solution in the cloud. It is also interesting to see a fresh look and feel of Arena solution website saying: Put your product data where it belongs. In the cloud. Interesting marketing transformation. Kind of “back to roots”.

What is my conclusion? I think, changes are really happen now. Even less than a year ago, people exposed lots of fear when talking about business solutions in the cloud. Not any more. I can see strong trends among the companies trying to evaluate possible advantages of cloud technologies. At the same time, when lots of things happen around in consumer technologies, marketing hype around the cloud becomes very strong, so enterprise software companies are trying to catch the wave. Just my thoughts..

Best, Oleg

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ECO Management: What Matters?

March 30, 2011

Engineering Change is probably one of the most important and complicated disciplines. I had a chance to meet people that told me – all what you are doing is about ECO management. You can see many examples of ECO management solutions. Almost every software vendor in the field of engineering and enterprise software will propose you kind of the solution. Here is the definition, I grab from Wikipedia aboutEngineering Change Order:

In a typical system development cycle, the specification or the implementation is likely to change during engineeringdevelopment or during integration of the system elements. These last-minute design changes are commonly referred to as engineering change orders (ECOs) and affect the functionality of a design after it has been wholly or partially completed. ECOs can compensate for design errors found during debug or changes that are made to the design specification to compensate for design problems in other areas of the system design.

However, product development process is very diversified when it comes to real manufacturing companies. To find a system that can answer on the user’s requirements for ECO is not a simple task. In addition to that, the diversity of available solutions raises multiple questions about what is the most appropriate system for every case.

Engineering Change: Do It Yourself (DIY)?

Last year I posted – How to Manage ECO without paying $1’500 per seat? The point I wanted to make was about how reuse some of the modern technologies to simplify the overall ECO management in the organization. My conclusion was that different organizations can manage ECO differently depends on specific characteristics of product, company environment and organization, which can make DIY approach quite complicated. It made me think and analyze different packages implementing ECO solutions.

Arena Change Management

Take a look on this following video from Arena Solution. I found it very educational. The power of Arena on demand was clear to me in this example. The ability to have seamless access via cloud-based services (or how Arena called it in the beginning “on demand”) can keep all participants in sync regardless on location and time.

Aras Workflow Management

What happens if your company has a high level of change processes complexity? The following video fragment is presenting Aras Innovator Workflow solution. It enables you to realize a comprehensive change process as a workflow. The workflow can be adapted to a specific customer needs. The openness and adaptability is an ultimate advantage of this system.

Kubotek ECO Manager

Few weeks ago, I learned about the new tool released by Kubotek. The interesting aspect I discovered in this tool is how it focuses on geometrical aspects of product and changes. It is clear not something you need in every industry. However, for the type of manufacturers in automotive, aerospace, industrial equipment and many other industries requiring 3D and geometry, Kubotec ECO manager can provide a significant value in the way to handle changes.

What is my conclusion? ECO is a an important, but very complicated process. It involves many people from organizational departments to work on this and following ECO related activities from inside and outside organization. To have an appropriate tool is important. When you choose a tool, take into the consideration what are specific characteristics of your organization from the standpoint of mobility, complexity, need for visual and 3D before you make a right choice. In parallel, the simplicity of a tool is another important thing. To have a simpler can be a much bigger problem for manufacturers in coming years.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

Freebie.

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PLM, BOM, Excel – How To Make It Right?

July 30, 2010

The following blog article caught my attention last week – “Four recommendations for better Excel BOMs” in Arena Solutions blog by Jennifer Bomze. I found it interesting. Arena Solution is a PLM outfit that started about ten years ago as a company named bom.com. After few years, bom.com was re-branded and expanded to provide PLM on demand solution. I remember I was impressed by what Arena was doing with their web-based Bill Of Material product. I was following Arena activities over the past few years. They grew up in their functional PLM scope. However, my hunch is that the main competition is going between PLM offering and plain Microsoft Excel product.

PLM vs. Excel: Apple-to-Apple?
I had chance to write about PLM and Excel multiple times in the past. You can track my previous articles on my blog. Few of them are here:
Do we need chief excel officer to manage BOM?
Why Do I like my PLM Excel Spreadsheet?
PLM Excel Spreadsheet: From odes to woes.

Of course, Excel cannot be compared to PLM. Nevertheless, I guess, MS Excel is successfully outperforming PLM systems from the simplicity, implementation cost and data openness. So, even if you will never see PLM vendors comparing their product portfolios with Excel, they are struggling with Excel competition.

How To Make Excel In a Right Way?
Despite the fact Excel cannot replace broad set of PLM system functionality, I can see PLM companies are thinking more and more into “Excel-friendship” direction. To confirm this you can see multiple expanded MS Office and Microsoft SharePoint offerings coming from TeamCenter and Windchill. However, current proposal by Arena make it even more interesting. You can take a look on the full article here. In short, what Arena proposes – 4 recommendations how to use Excel if you decided NOT to purchase PLM system, for the moment:

  1. Be consistent. Use the same columns in the same order in every Excel bill of materials. Use a standard format for part numbers, manufacturer names, file titles and other types of data.
  2. Use standard templates. Get in the habit of hiding (not deleting) columns that aren’t needed in a particular BOM and creating separate spreadsheets for doing analyses that require additional columns. Give each column a single purpose, and label every piece of data in your Excel BOM spreadsheet.
  3. Have part numbering and part naming conventions – and a single location to store them. Develop and document a standard way to number and name ALL parts, and then manage those part numbers and names in a single location, like an item master or master parts list.
  4. Minimize repeated data. Include only as much data as is needed for each BOM to perform its core function of capturing the relationships between parts and assemblies. Store additional part data in the item master instead of multiple Excel BOMs, so updates only need to be made in one place.

In addition to that, Arena proposed free Excel templates to manage Bill of Materials.

PLM Excel Trojan Horse?
I can see where Excel PLM templates may be going in the future. By helping customers to optimize their Excels, PLM creates the foundation of a future PLM expansion. Of course, there is a danger in helping customer to keep going with Excel. However, there is a chance for being able to connect Excel data to Arena PLM and to import excel-based data into Arena PLM. It seems to me a step in the right direction.

What is my conclusion today? I think, MS Excel is a big deal for PLM companies. Customers are voting for Excels. PLM vendors may understand that their previous “Export To Excel” strategy was wrong, and they need to change it now. The competition with Excel will be growing as much as PLM vendors will be trying to expand their solutions to be used by more people in companies. So, give away some Excel templates can be a very good idea.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

PS. Freebie. Arena Solution didn’t pay me to write this post.

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