Beyond PLM – Looking forward to 2012.

December 31, 2011

Time is running fast, and 2011 is behind us. It is a moment to take a look in the past, make conclusions and draw plans for 2012. I wanted to share some information about Beyond PLM and PLM Think Tanks from 2011, made my conclusions and share some ideas about my plans for 2012.

Beyond PLM 2011 in Numbers.

Here is the short net-net of Beyond PLM and PLM Think Tank overall performance in 2011. I posted 337 blog articles. I’ve got a total of about 240,000 page views, which came to an average of 640 page view daily.

2011 New Year Resolution: Planned vs. Actual

I published my New Year resolution in the beginning of 2011. I never did it before. Frankly, I almost forgot about that. That’s why it was very interesting to me to Google my historical post and share with you what I think about the performance. Navigate to the following link to see the old post from January 2011 .

1. Keep a controversial informative discussion about Engineering and Manufacturing software. I hope I did well with that by feeding you with topics to discuss. However, I’m really interested to hear your opinion. So, speak up and tell me what do you think.

2. Discover new trends and opportunities related to Product Lifecycle Management. If you ask me about trendy words in 2011, I’d clearly say it was about the cloud and mobile. A year ago, I posted – PLM Reset 2011. The topics I wrote about were – cloud, mobile, social and end of Microsoft’s dominance. Autodesk made a final accord in 2011 by introducing “cloud PLM” and I think the overall you’d agree that these 4 trends had a significant role in what we did in 2011.

3. Publish Beyond PLM think tank posts daily. I posted 337 posts during 2011, which can be calculated as an average of 6.48 posts per week. My usual commitment was to publish every working day, so I’m doing well with the number.

4. Develop 140-char message oriented discussion on Beyond PLM. I wanted to learn more how to use Twitter to improve conversation related to PLM Think Tank. I hope, I was doing well, especially during conferences. In general, I’m satisfied with my twitter performance. Sometimes it was hard to keep up with the speed. I hope to make it better next year.

5. Get at least 5 hours sleep regularly (this is probably won’t happen). Well, it was a complete failure. Beyond PLM as well as my new baby Inforbix asked for my special attention.

Beyond PLM in 2012

I wanted to share some of my plans for 2012. My vision is to continue providing you with the best place to discuss various topics about engineering and manufacturing software with a most focus on Product Lifecycle Management. At the same time, I’m looking forward to expanding range of topics from mostly technological to some special topics related to configuration management, product development processes and standards. Here are three projects I’m thinking about in 2012.

PLM Think Tank e-book. The number of posts and content is growing. It is hard even for me to remember the list of topics, discussions and materials. I’ll be publishing PLM Think Tank annual e-book. It will be available soon for free download on the blog website. Stay tuned.

Guest blogging. I want to expand blogging expertize and invite guest bloggers to Beyond PLM. I will be making blog design adjustment and hope to allow guest blogging in February-March 2012. Contact me if you have special interests – I want to discuss it more.

Website unification. I want finally to unify my blogging platforms. For the moment, I’m sharing content via my oldwebsite. If somebody had an experience in unification and merging of websites, I appreciate if you share it with me.

Advertising. I’m getting a significant amount of requests to allow advertizing on Beyond PLM. I didn’t make my final conclusion about that. My vision of Beyond PLM and PLM Think Tank was always to keep an absolutely vendor-neutral position, and I hope you acknowledge that. So, advertizing is an open ticket for me. I will decide later this year.

What is my conclusion? No conclusion. 2:30am in Boston. Time to think about tomorrow’s New Year party. I’m sure, some of my friends in Europe and Far East already making very close preparation to celebrate coming 2012. However, I still can catch some sleep. I wish you to enjoy the rest of your Holidays Break! I’m looking forward to talking to you about various topics beyond PLM in coming 2012.

Happy New Year!
Oleg

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PLM Think Tank – May Top 5

May 27, 2011

What do you think about standards and PLM? For the long time, I thought about standards as toothbrushes. Everybody needs one, but nobody wants to use somebody else standard. My observation – standards in PLM are not very popular so far. STEP is one of the standards that materialized and widely used by many companies – vendors and customers. Early this week, attending Eurostep 2011 event, I was learning how standards can play a role of a cost saving factors for commercial software. To delivery some standard compliance in fundamental PLM functions such as data modeling can play a positive role in the development of future PLM solutions. Navigate to the following link to see my Eurostep 2011 presentation. Now, let’s turn to May Top 5.

Aras PLM lines up against Windchill, Enovia, and TeamCenter

Aras is definitely moving towards crossing paths with PLM like Windchill, Enovia, TeamCenter. Is it possible to displace large PLM system with Aras today? My answer – it depends. The PLM implementation scope is varied, and every implementation can be different. Therefore, I specially liked the community oriented approach of development. This is something that can make a difference. On the side of platforms and integrations – time will show if Aras will find a balance between throwing resources and effective delivery. This is a big challenge.

PLM, SharePoint and ProductPoint Lessons

Combining PLM and SharePoint raises many questions. Initially proposed as a successful combination to attract small manufacturing companies, it was discontinued by PTC. Here are my initial 5 lesson learned: (1) SharePoint is a technological platform that requires implementation and services. To use it for small manufacturing companies can be dangerous and depends on deployment configuration can be problematic. (2) Microsoft business interest is to deploy SharePoint to bigger companies, and it can be asymmetric with the interest of PLM companies to solve PLM SMB problem using SharePoint. (3) There are alternative ways to solve PLM usability problems rather than re-use SharePoint UI patterns. PTC just released new version of Windchill (10.0), which probably delivers better user experience. (4) Maintenance of multiple PLM products is probably way too complicated. (5) PLM for SMB is probably not only about better user experience and subset of functionality

Should we “pack” PLM data into 3D PDF?

To find a reliable way to make the information available downstream is critical for many organizations. 3D PDF seems to be as an option. The file-orientation paradigm helps current users to achieve their goal in an easy way. However, the “packing” a whole system into set of files seems to me problematic. The synchronization, run for updated information can become a nightmare.

Autodesk, Dassault and Free CAD Options?

I think we can see a very interesting dynamic. Both Autodesk and Dassault are playing with the power of free options on the competitor’s side. Known as a strong provider of 3D CAD (both CATIA and SolidWorks), Dassault released 2D CAD for DWG files for free to attract AutoCAD users. On the other side, the introduction of 3D CAD free downloadable 3D design tool, by Autodesk – a king of 2D draft package (AutoCAD) is another interesting step, which is probably has an intent to disrupt 3D CAD business on the low end. I hope to learn more about 123dabc as well as about future Free CAD products in 2d and 3d.

Top 3 “PLM Cloud” Killers

Cloud has a potential. However, as every new technology (and not only technology) it can be over-hyped and diminished by wrong implementations. It is important for companies experimenting with the cloud technologies not to be trapped into using “the cloud” as a marketing term as well as to apply “old software projects” under a new sauce.

Have a good weekend!

Best, Oleg

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PLM Think Tank In Numbers

July 20, 2010

Note: My new website and blog is BeyondPLM.

I’m proud to share some numbers about live discussions that happen in PLM Think Tank:

Think Tank Topics: 500.

Total Page Views: 250’000.

Number of comments: 3800.

You can see the full list of topics here. Thank you all for helping me to make this real!

Best, Oleg

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PLM for Individuals – Integrate or Die?

January 26, 2010

I had chance to read CIMData paper figured out interesting facts related to the future trajectory of Autodesk as a PLM provider. You can read the paper on this link (Note, you need to be registered on CIMData site, but registration is free). In this paper, CIMData explains their vision on how they see Autodesk is going to transform from the vendor providing mostly tools used in many departments into an organization into something that allows to CIMData to include Autodesk into line of what they called “PLM mind share leaders”. So, I decided to share some of my thoughts on this topic as well as dreams about possible future trajectories of something I called – PLM for Individuals.

Autodesk and PLM
My pre-assumption for many years was that Autodesk is distant from association of their products with PLM acronym. At the same time, many of their tools used to build PLM strategy for many customers in the world. During all that time, I think, the question of Autodesk association with PLM was just about marketing. Autodesk successfully positioned themselves as a provider of tools and even put it as a differentiations of their strategy. You can take a look on the famous Carl Bass anti-PLM rap.  So, what is going on now? Some undergoing processes are convincing Autodesk to change their state of mind as a provider of tools towards something different. So, what happened?

Facebook, Connected World and File-based collaboration.
For many years, the ultimate mechanism to connect people was… “the file”. In the past, people in the organizations were able to exchange files for different purposes of design, planning, manufacturing. Availability of email with growing capacity of attachments just pushed forward need for more advanced collaborative solutions. So, Autodesk, successfully continue to run file-oriented-tool-focused business. There is no worry at all. However, change came from the outside. Huge adoption of internet in consumer space and, finally, social networks ended up successful ‘file-based” collaboration story. The same individuals in the organization that were perfectly happy with communication using files said – why life is so good in Facebook and bad on my working desk? Why should I stack with Outlook sending big attachments or uploading to the ftp site, when I can share on Facebook and/or other places?

PLM Alternative?
Personally, I don’t see Autodesk is jumping in the existing PLM runaway. On the bright side of PLM, today, is understanding of problem and companies’ need to build a framework or platforms that allow them to run product development, manufacturing. PLM supposed to connect all product-related dots in the enterprise. Autodesk is not there and, at the time that PLM buzz is moving to PLM 2.0, there is no need to join PLM club…

PLM for Individuals and Integrated World
So, what is the alternative? In the world that moving into the direction of social connection, I’d expect Autodesk to use “social integration” as a primary driver for integration of their tools inside and outside of the organizations. Connections between people can be much stronger than the “single data model” promoted by mind-share PLM vendors. Autodesk definitely can take their chance to outperform social innovation and social product development proposed by PLM vendors because of their agility.

Integrate or Die?
In my view, internet finally shifted minds of many people in an organization that change is going to happen. People will move their consumer’s habits into organizational work spaces and look how they can use better tools and experience for their work. There is no way for Autodesk to go with files for the next decade. I think, this is a major observation that stroke CIMData analysts to think about possible Autodesk movement to PLM.

What is my conclusion today? I’d not run fast to think that moving to PLM road is the only one possibility for Autodesk. My bet is on social networks, communication and internet technologies that will position Autodesk in PLM 2.0 (or whatever, we call it). I think, it will be very interesting run and challenge.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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PLM vs. ERP – Don’t Manage Innovation!

January 21, 2010

I was reading Tech Clarity insight “Evolving Role of ERP and PLM“. The topic of PLM and ERP is not new. However, I was always looking for detailed analyzes of PLM and ERP functions and roles in the organization, especially taking into account latest technological and social trends. You can find the report on this link. It provides 15 pages of analyzes, and, I think, this is the biggest publication from last time I had chance to see about PLM and ERP together.

Below my notes, emphasizing points of agreements and disagreements with Jim’s report:

Distinct roles of ERP and PLM
The roles of PLM and ERP are blurred in the organization. For the last years ERP companies successfully acquired and developed their PLM portfolio. So, their presentation of PLM as “Yet another app in ERP portfolio” was quite successful. PLM fights ERP heavily on their ability of manage product and engineering data. Unfortunately, instead of becomes an ultimate product and engineering data shop, PLM is running upstream by trying to establish themselves as “Innovation Management”… This is something that made me feel bad. Don’t try to manage innovation! You just cannot…

Design and product data management
The need for design and product data management one is clear for me.This is undervalued zone. What exist today as a mainstream PDM is only top of the big iceberg. I think PLM needs to get back to the roots and fix PDM topic. Otherwise future crash is the only question of time. PLM needs to define themselves as “product data unbreakable”. Not what happens today, in my view.

Cross functional processes.
There are no PLM or ERP processes. There are “organizational processes”. Therefore, the process’s problem cannot be resolved in PLM or ERP separately. The step toward BPMN can be good for PLM. It will set up openness to the right level and will establish a spot for process improvement in the organization.

PLM and ERP integrations
This is a hugely disappointing topic. The PLM/ERP integration reminds me ball in the air when both players are trying to keep him flying and not landing.  Demand for data integration is huge. I’d expect here some technological thinking and not process-organization. Until now, this is in complete ownership of services and smaller partners developing specific integration application.

Where does PLM stop and ERP begins?
Don’t even try to put this border. To establish this border is the same like to establish gatekeeper on the firewall between engineering and manufacturing. In my view, this is a huge mistake. We need to work toward removal of this wall by using appropriated technologies, methodology, collaboration and social application.

What is my conclusion after all? I can identify two PLM trends. (1) Cross organizational processes. By ability to connect and interplay different organizational process, PLM can be in unique role in the organization representing a product-oriented activities. (2) Future design excellence, 3D tools, consumer-oriented experience.

PLM and ERP need to stop fighting in the organization. As a first step, PLM needs to take the next level in the organization and embrace a cross-functional processes and organizational needs that cannot be served by any of existing systems.

Just my thoughts.
Best, Oleg

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What Will Be The Role of Mobile Applications in PLM?

January 20, 2010

Mobile is growing. For the last few years we had chance to see massive introduction of mobile user experience. In the place where before we’ve seen only mobile mails and messages, new mobile devices (especially iPhones) are leading to the complete experience and capabilities. I decided to share my thought about why, I think, new mobile experience will give a new opportunity to PLM?

What is the most problematic side of PLM? I think, this is mainstream user adoption in the organization. PLM perceived as a complex, not usable and mostly required for engineering organization. However, there are many opportunities that can be discovered by PLM if the decision will be to move it to be mobile.

Process Monitoring
Most of the process monitoring is going via email or alternative process management applications. In this context, the information that needs to be presented and/or reviewed is relatively simple and list oriented sets of data (list of the approval, dependencies, open ECOs, issues, etc.). To have an ability to monitor these activities via the mobile device can speed up processing and operation of engineering and manufacturing organization.

Reports
This is hugely undervalued activity by PLM applications, in my view. To have an ability to report, BOMs, ECOs, Drawings and other information are highly valuable. To have it handy on your mobile device, in my view, will be a great benefit.

3D
This is a growing opportunity in my view. I’m sure you had chance to see 3DVIA Mobile. I think it opens an opportunity for new user experience that can be realized in both enterprise and consumer space. I already can image how digital imaging can be used to resolve some manufacturing shop floor situations as well as consumer experience with new products buying, customer support and some others.

Marketing and Sales
Last, but definitely not least. Mobile applications can provide an opportunity to present product features, promote some interesting product usages, provide guidance and troubleshooting.

What is my conclusion? The main point for tomorrow organization – it will become dynamic and mobile. You shouldn’t be on  your desk to need information and make a decision. So, PLM needs to think how to embrace mobile and improve PLM acceptance in the organization on this way.

Best, Oleg

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Mobile Version of Daily PLM Think Tank is available!

January 14, 2010

I’m happy to inform you that mobile version of Daily PLM Think Tank on iPhone is available now. Search for “PLM Think Tank” on App Store or install it using the following link in iTunes.

Using this version you can extend you experience in joining PLM discussion from your favorite iPhone or iPod Touch, join my twitter stream, share posts on Facebook and more. Let me know if you like it and what additional features you are interested to see in the future.

Best, Oleg

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Happy 1st Birthday Daily PLM Think Tank!

November 30, 2009

Dear Friends,

One year ago I started Daily PLM Think Tank with this post! Thank you all for support and your voices. Without you it was absolutely impossible to make it. So far, some numbers:

369 posts,

1’949 comments,

131’345 page views.

Here are the top 20 stories on Daily PLM Think Tank for this year:

6 reasons Why Google Wave will Change PLM Collaboration
 PLM and Internet of Things
PLM Prompt: Microsoft Kills Mashups and focus on SharePoint
Top Five Disappointing PLM Technologies
SharePoint PLM Paradox?
PLM Prompt: Google Fusion Tables – PLM on Steroids?
PLM Prompt: BPM & PLM Cloud Meeting?
PLM Prompt: What will be PLM Open Source Secret Souce
PLM Prompt: SharePoint FAST Social Move
Should I keep secrets from my PLM system
PLM Architecture: Get Off My Cloud?
Do we need to fix PLM basics?
Seven Rules Towards Single Bill of Material
MS SharePoint 2010 – Is it good for PLM?
PLM Transformation: Easy, No; Costly, Yes
PLM Action Plan for Dummies
PDM vs. PLM – Is this about Process?
MS SharePoint 2010 – Is it good for PLM?
Why Do I Like My PLM Excel Spreadsheet?
Top annoying things about PLM software.

So, I’m looking forward to next year… What would YOU like next?

Best, Oleg

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Google Wave PLM Use Cases

November 25, 2009

The Google Wave invites pushed to the community for the last 1-2 months are starting to bring some fruitful results. The number of pilots, prototype, demos and other activities related to Google Wave started to growth. I already posted on very interesting, in my view, business process building collaboration tool from SAP. In addition, you can see few more examples of Google Wave in “almost real life” here.

Looking on all these examples I wanted to figure out few possible PLM related scenarios that in my view can get real benefits from using Google Wave.

1. ECO Collaboration. It will be great to have an ability to mix formal process and not formal collaboration around planned or requested change. Most of the today systems implement a formal process that allows to run change approval. The level of flexibility can vary to depend on the system you have, but in my view, none of them can provide an ability to merge of a free mail collaboration and at the same time host formal control on ECO process definition and status. I think, potential of Google Wave robots can unlock and provide such capability to engineering and manufacturing teams.

2. Collaborative Documentation Release. To have high level quality of your product is very important these days. However, to organize efficient collaboration between engineering, manufacturing and documentation team is a not simple effort. They usually have different tools and communicate in a very weak manner. Google Wave can be a collaborative tool that bridge them and allow to have a documentation effort started very early in the process of product development. 3D and non-3D documentation can be embedded into Waves and provide up-to-date information to document writes. This information can be updated and documentation writes can collaborate with people they need in other organizations.

3. Design Discussion and Brainstorming. Design activities can be hardly formalized. Many people in the organization can be involved into this activity almost on demand. At the same time, conferencing and other collaboration tools are not allowing to engineers do it in the asynchronous way. Google Wave can help. Mixing discussion threads and 3D information in Waves we’ll be able to support designers and engineers.

I think, Google Wave will have a huge potential in the future of collaboration. Email and other collaboration tools will be affected and will require to make their transformation to survive. It will be interesting in ride in my view. In my today’s examples, I was looking mostly on use cases when an email is heavily involved today. However, I’m sure, other examples will come as well.

Best, Oleg

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PLM and ERP: Why it doesn’t fit?

November 24, 2009

Reading Jim Brown’s blog post “Choosing an ERP to Fit PLM?”, I started to ask myself why these systems fit or don’t fit. For many organizations, I had chance to see in my professional life, PLM and ERP integration was always on the level of “love and hate” relationships. People wanted this integration to happen and on the other side discovered a lot of conflicting topics that prevented them from the ability to organize smooth fit and integration between PLM and ERP.

I’d like to figure out the list of issues that in my view prevent these systems from good fit and, actually these issues make systems from being competitive rather than work together.

1. Control of product master record. The constant question of “who owns what” is the first and most important. Both systems compete in the organization on the ability to manage product master record. This competition pattern is different in the different organization, but you can discover a presence of this “control war”.

2. Cross organizational process handling. Organizations are driven by processes. It can be the engineering change, configuration or any other processes. However, in most of the cases, these processes are rarely belonged to a single system in the enterprise. Processes are spanning across various organizational boundaries. PLM and ERP are competing on the ability to plan, build and manage these processes.

3. Enterprise Backbone. This is related to my previous post. How many enterprise backbones we need? PLM and ERP are both interested to keep the role of enterprise backbone. So, they can be very competitive in this role. If IT and engineering organization are not making right arrangement, overall organization can overspend on this a lot of internal dollars.

There is set of additional specific characteristics that we need to keep in mind from my standpoint. PLM and ERP fit is very dependent on the organization. Personal topic plays a very significant role. There are too many systems in existing enterprises. This enterprise system’s zoo, brings us to the point where integration is physically impossible or very costly.

So, what is the solution for PLM and ERP fit? Is it the next place for PLM (or may be ERP) innovation? What is the role of professional service and partner’s organization in the processes of making PLM to fit ERP or vice versa?

Best, Oleg

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