The Role of Business Intelligence in PLM

October 5, 2011

Business Intelligence (BI) is a fascinating combination of words. Each time I hear about BI, I’m confused a bit. The formal definition of BI is very complex. Here is the extract from Wikipedia and, in my view, it is too long to be explained to a human. You can navigate to the following Wikipedia link to read more.

Business intelligence (BI) mainly refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting,[clarification needed] and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by associated costs and incomes.[1]. BI technologies provide historical, current and predictive views of business operations. Common functions of business intelligence technologies are reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, data mining, process mining, complex event processing, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining and predictivepan> analytics. Business intelligence aims to support better business decision-making. Thus a BI system can be called a decision support system (DSS).[2]

For many years, I thought about BI as a reporting mechanism or set of tools. The number of vendors in this space decreased significantly after mega acquisitions that were made in this space by Oracle (Hyperion), SAP (Business Objects) and IBM (Cognos). Few more acquisitions in this space were made, but today I don’t see a dominant pure-BI player that competes with large three I mentioned above.

Is there a role BI can play in PLM? CIMdata recently published a white paper "The strategic value of Business Intelligence in PLM". The paper sponsored by eQ BI Technology – an interesting outfit playing with BI technologies in the domain of product development. The whitepaper is available for free and you can download it from CIMData website. Navigate to the following link (note- you have to be a registered user of CIMData. It is free, but I found CIMData website user experience a bit complicated). What I can learn from CIMData pages, in a nutshell, can be summarized as following.

1. To analyze information in manufacturing company is important, and it is not a simple task.
2. Decision makers need to have various types of information reports
3. Many of the available solutions in this space are complicated and not easy to deploy and use.
4. The value of a potential solution that can bring a decision-oriented information can be significant.

Here is an interesting passage from CIMData paper:

Personnel at all levels need concise, timely information tailored to their task needs, regardless of whether they are a designer, a project management or a senior executive. To address the torrent of data that is being created by multiple business systems, companies are using business intelligence and analytics solutions that provide users the right information, in the context, for their needs. This is especially important for product development and PLM. BI solutions gather, aggregate, analyze and disseminate information with historical, current and predictive views of that information to facilitate decision making.

CIMData wasn’t the only analytic company in PLM space researching Business Intelligence topic. Jim Brown ofTechClarity discussed the value of BI in PLM in his whitepaper – Business Intelligence Extending PLM value. This paper was published back in 2009, but I found it quite relevant today. Jim is talking about multiple options of BI applications that can provide a return – connecting engineering and services, improving project timeline, identify cost saving opportunities and many others. Here is a passage from Jim’s conclusion about BI:

PLM implementations have matured to a scope and state that offer significant potential value from mining the underlying data. Accessing this information can help identify exceptions, manage and improve processes, and identify strategic trends that may uncover significant insight and value.

What is my conclusion? BI is clearly addressing the right problem. However, it seems to me, the approach of BI is a bit outdated. My hunch there is a segment of BI market that will pay big money to analyze their business data. The two companies CIMData brings in their whitepaper – Lockheed Martin and ATK Space are probably these types of companies. However, for many companies’ BI – means an expensive addition to existing ERP systems (result of Oracle, SAP and IBM acquisitions). If I will try to think about BI in simple language, I’d be still using word "reporting". eQ BI (company mentioned by CIMData) is providing reporting solution for TeamCenter. To extend reporting solutions of existing PLM tools can be a reasonable next step for BI in PLM. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

4 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

What Is The Role of Business Intelligence in PLM?

December 10, 2009

Some thoughts about Business Intelligence (BI). I found it somewhat under-invested in Product Lifecycle Management field. BI considered as a more analytic domain with the ability to slice and dice data from the past. However, I believe, one of the capabilities PLM can offer to users (designers, engineers, manufactures…) is to improve decision based on past, current and future analysis.

Looking on the ERP and software/platform vendors, I figure out, each of them – SAP, Oracle, IBM and Microsoft are heavy invested in BI capabilities. Business Objects, Hyperion, Cognos, OfficeWriter and others – all products were acquired by major vendors to improve BI capabilities.

So, what options I see for PLM software and implementation in the context of BI:

1. To establish integration with available BI tools in ERP domain.
2. To partner with a platform oriented providers like Microsoft and IBM and use their BI tools and technologies.
3. To invest into development and/or acquisition of BI capabilities as part of PLM applications and portfolios.

So, do you see Business Intelligence as important for Product Lifecycle Management? How do you see it connected to everything PLM doing today?

I’m looking forward to your comments and thoughts.
Best, Oleg

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

PLM Prompt: BI on Cloud. Should PLM follow?

July 31, 2009

Coming question from Business Intelligence space. There are already several companies dealing with cloud BI - Pentaho, Good Data Corp. and some others. At the same time, as it appeared in Computerworld, Microsoft is postponing their plans for BI on a cloud until 2013. It initially announced as Windows Azure Services, now will be postponed until a next version of Office.

MS BI on cloud

Just end of week thoughts.. PLM is about a single version of truth. How do you think BI fits this space? Alternatively, how PLM fits BI space?

Best, Oleg

2 Comments | Business Intelligence, Cloud Application, PLM Prompt | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Bing, Bong, BI… where is my PLM decision?

June 24, 2009

I watched many videos and demos related to Microsoft Bing during the last few weeks. Actually, I liked the idea of a “decision engine” behind a search. So, after experimenting with different types of searches, I finally came to the conclusion that the concept of Decision Management is very close to the discussions on Business Intelligence that we had before. If you haven’t had the chance to read them, here are a few of  the previous PLMtwine previous posts.

So, here is my idea – Business Intelligence for PLM. Enterprise PLM databases are absorbing a large amount of information about how products are designed, manufactured, built, used and disposed. PLM databases can be integrated with many other sources of information systems such as ERP, Supply Chain,  and Manufacturing Execution. Having all this information already in a Product Lifecycle Management system can be a good foundation for Business Intelligence systems. Today, BI can be implemented using various database technologies. If you are running on a SQL Server, you have a full stack of MS BI services. If you are on Oracle, you can use Oracle BI.  If you are on IBM, you can use IBM BI. There are also other, more specialized vendors.

So the question is – where is Bing? Here is my point. Bing is a decision user-oriented experience that lets you get this data. In the same way Bing presents you with travel price trends, Bing can let you get your PLM Business Intelligence data and provide it to your end users…

So, to review the main points:

  1. Enterprise PLM Database is integrating Product IP information
  2. You can get Business Intelligence by indexing PLM data and extracting specific KPI and data characteristics
  3. Access PLM BI data with Bing-like user experience

Wait a minute… Where is Bong? You need to get all product information under PLM roof. A lot of data is available, but PLM systems still provide very fragmented outlook on product information.

So, what is your opinion?

Leave a Comment » | Business Intelligence, Daily PLM Think Tank, Technology | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 73 other followers