Will COFES 2012 make Arizona cloudy this week?

April 11, 2012

I’m coming to COFES 2012 this week. COFES (The Congress on the Future of Engineering Software) is a think-tank event and one of my favorites. For the next 3 days, I’m going to put myself under the sun in Scottsdale, AZ. COFES publish the list of key participants – you can see it by navigating the following link. I was looking at COFES 2012 agenda earlier this week. The formal topic of COFES 2012 is the intersection of design and risk. Here is the quote from COFES website.

We all address risk daily, each in our own way. In design, risk is a consideration in each decision we make. But how and when we think of risk needs to change, most notably our risk horizon is much lower than our reward horizon. That is, we’ll often take a larger risk if the consequences are further away from us. Expediency is often the heart of our shortsightedness.

COFES agenda has a formal boundary and contains keynote, technology and vendors suites briefing, analyst briefing and roundtable. However, the most important thing at COFES is an opportunity to talk and have a "networking" with people there. Navigate to this link to see COFES 2012 agenda. The topics of briefings, conversations and meetings is something that you want to review first. I did my review last week and back to this today again. Below I put some of my pre-COFES observations.

Cloud… Cloud… Cloud…

I counted word "cloud" 24 times in the COFES 2012 agenda. I think it means a lot. Cloud is going to be a significant topic on the COFES discussion table. I found few interesting sessions about the cloud. Akoya, Autodesk, Intel and Microsoft are going to talk about cloud during technology briefings. Monica Schnitger is going to talk about cloud during her "The channel and the cloud" analyst brief. Jim Brown is going to present a cloud topic during his cloud and social computing session. I found the following passage from Jim’s intro interesting:

How are the Cloud and Social Computing Changing Business for the Next Generation? The Cloud and Social Computing have already begun to change the way business works and poses many new challenges. It has also opened the door to entirely new business models and opportunities. The first waves of digital natives hit the shores of businesses about 10 years ago and are rising up the corporate ladder. What happens when the next wave—cloud and social computing natives—start impacting business. How is your business likely to evolve?

Finally, the topic of one of roundtables is "Where is my data"? is also related to the cloud:

Where’s My Data? Local, distributed, private-cloud, public cloud: What belongs where? For some, does it really matter? Which aspects of data need to be under my direct control? Why? When does it matter? When it matters, where do I draw the line? Does it matter who controls the data when it’s clear who owns it? For that matter, when do I want my data to expire?

I’ve been writing a lot about the cloud on my blog recently. Navigate here to read more.

PLM and PDM divorce

Another topic that caught my attention was the topic of separation between PDM and PLM. The topic will be presented by Chad Jackson as Decoupling of PDM and Process. The topic came to my attention few time due the recent Autodesk and Aras strategies to integrate PDM and PLM offerings. Navigate to my previous blog to read more about that.

Decoupling PDM and Process. The holy grail of PLM (and BIM, for that matter) has been true integration of product data, engineering process, and downstream process. Now we’re hearing that there’s value in keeping engineering data management separate from processes. What’s going on here? Where does this decoupling of product and process make sense? Are we done with the idea of an all-encompassing homogeneous solution? Is this simply a divergence, an acknowledgement of reality, or an entirely new opportunity?

PLM and The Single Source of Truth

Another interesting topic that drove my attention was analyst briefing by Michele Boucher of Aberdeen related to so-called Single Point of Truth. This topic resonated with one of my previous blog posts – PLM and "The Whole Truth" problem.

Single Source of Truth versus Federated Models. The increasing complexity of today’s products, including the involvement of multiple engineering disciplines such as mechanical, electrical, and software, means there is a tremendous amount of data and data types to manage. What are the best ways to manage it all? Is having it all in a single database (Single Source of Truth – SSoT) the best approach? Where is SSoT a good fit? Where does it fall down and a federated model become more effective?

So, I’m sure COFES will bring more topics to discuss on the blog. I will be actively twitting from COFES. The hashtag is#COFES2012. You’re probably can be interested to following other COFES attendees on twitter. Here you can find COFES Twitter directory. I’m looking forward to keep you busy with my posts, tweets and pictures.

Best, Oleg

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PLM Think Tank – April Top 5

April 29, 2011

What do you think is the most hard thing in everything we do? This month for me was overloaded by conferences. It started from COFES 2011 in sunny Scottsdale, AZ and ended in rainy Detroit, MI. However, the one thing was common between these two events – an extremely energetic community discussing various topics related to engineering, manufacturing and Product Lifecycle Management. My blog posts this month were influenced significantly by everything I was listening and discussing with people. Nevertheless, I’d like to mention one statement – "redesign is not so much having a new idea as stopping having an old idea". When I’m thinking about what will be the next 10 years of engineering and manufacturing software, I give my vote to people and companies that thinking differently. This is the most complicated thing. Just my opinion, of course. Now, let’s move to my traditional PLM think tank "top 5".

Post COFES, Dropbox and PLM Made Simple

This post started from a very simple tweet – "Drop box is a model for PLM in the future…". Yes, people are looking for simple tools. This is what made DropBox successful. PLM is complex. PLM companies have similar functionality in their hands today. However, the simplicity wins. Security is another question. This is a matter of trust. Do you trust Google? DropBox? Dassault? PTC? Use the cloud you trust…

PDM. Pre-configured? Painless?

Another post about simplicity and thinking differently. Engineers normally dislike PDM functions. They are trying to avoid it as much as possible. Therefore, PDM systems are not as popular when it comes to implementations. It requires time, cost and affect CAD functionality. However, the industry perception is that you need to have PDM to control your data. CAD vendors are trying to embed PDM functions into CAD packages and improve vertical integration between CAD and PDM packages. Can it be completely pre-configured and painless? I’m not sure. I think, the best thing engineers can think about is the “invisible PDM”.

PLM and Comprehensive Search

Search is an important infrastructure. The demand for search in manufacturing is growing. After ten years, people finally got Google. So, they expect the same from enterprise software. To be competitive, software vendors in this space such as PLM, CAD and others are trying to bring new technology to solve old problems. This is a good sign, in my view. However, one of the biggest problems in PLM and enterprise software is the complexity of solutions. This is quite important. I think, effective search solution can make software simpler. What is your take?

Moving from PLM to PLMSocial?

"Social" is trending. Do you think we are moving from PLM to PLS(Social)? I think, it is important to differentiate “technology” and “technological buzz”. Social has a power. People like to watch their friends’ pictures on Facebook and thinking about new Color startup supposing to change the way how people sharing photos in small communities. Do you think, the same technology will change the way people work with CAD drawing and Bill of Materials? The adoption of social networking (and associated technologies) is defined primarily by “social interests” in photo sharing and people belonging to the social net. User experience is important. That’s why Salesforce’s Chatter very similar to Facebook UI. Technology is secondary here.

ECO Management: What Matters?

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.

Best, Oleg

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PLM: How to Fix Technologies and Stop Fixing People?

April 20, 2011

During the last week at COFES, I had a chance to listen to John Gage keynote -But Can It Slice a Pineapple? Gage talked about innovation, computers, changes, language and culture. One of his phrases resonated – “Technology is easy. People are hard“. It made me think about PLM concepts, technologies and implementations.

PLM and Product Development Process

In my view, product lifecycle management is about products development processes first. It originally started as PDM, it was very focused on data management. CAD models, Drawings, Revisions, Parts, Bill of Materials. It took almost 15 years to produce a reliable data management system that can handle all these things. However, the problem happened in between. Organizations became very complex. Many additional systems grew up to solve other business and development problems. Significant presence of ECAD and later software development introduce a new set of problems. So, product development process becomes more and more complicated. PLM companies eventually reflected the complexity in the taxonomies of their data and processes.

PLM Methodology

The question people often ask me – “what is the right PLM methodology?” It isn’t a new one. Since the complexity introduced in product developmnet continues to grow, PDM and PLM companies are trying to solve it by using various methods. One of them is to come with a clear methodology of work and system implementations. It started as “best practices” and then moved to the different colors and flavors of “how to” be related to PLM implementations. The biggest problem I have with this approach is that it actually requires a significant non-software influence in an organization. Which goes back to “people”.

PLM Technology

I think the question what is PLM technology is actually very confusing one. Nevertheless, I clarify it as a technology to manage data, processes and collaborate in a scope of product data development. So, what happens on this side? I don’t see any revolutionary changes since early 2000s. The massive amount acquisitions put vendors on a pathway of integrating acquisitions and converging technologies. The latest spark of PDM/PLM technologies happened in the last 1990s and early 2000s. Back that time, the concept of a flexible data model was invented. Finally, companies could create configurable applications. However, the outcome was an increased amount of service implementations and lots of methodology developments.

What is my conclusion? People are hard. I agree completely. To change them is near to impossible. By creating products that dependent on change of how people work, we are exposed to very long adoption cycle, expensive marketing and complicated implementations. Is it PLM fault? Yes, partially. People were exposed to a complicated stuff. However, fixing some technological issues can be a good idea to make products more friendly to people. I see a problem when PLM implementations are focused on how to change people’s work habits. The challenge is how to bring intelligent products that can handle the change for people. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Post COFES, Dropbox and PLM Made Simple?

April 19, 2011

As you know, I spent end of my last week, including the weekend at COFES (The Congress of the Future of Engineering Software). It was my 6th COFES. It was probably the biggest COFES ever. The social media activity was significantly stronger this year than before. I had a chance to meet people Mark Burhop, Dora Smith, Josh Mings, Deelip and many others after long time of tweeting and blogging together.

The following tweet message by @dorasmith drove my attention #cofes2011 @vuuch notes Dropbox is the model for PLM in the future, more discussion on complexity of PLM for majority of users


This tweet resonated with the following news I’ve heard the same day – DropBox hits 25 millions users and 200 million files per day. This is a really impressive number, in my view. The scope of DropBox usage is very wide. The quote from the same TechCrunch article: People use dropbox for personal storage, file syncing between machines, and group collaboration on projects. They have desktop software for the usual OSs, and mobile access, that makes things run smoothly.

What is DropBox and why I like it?

If you are not familiar with DropBox, this is your time to take a look on this. The following video is short and nice explanation about how you can share everything using dropbox folder.

Dropbox is my favorite (after Google App) tool to sync files between laptop and other devices. You may ask me why after Google App? Since Google App is already synchronized. However, not everything fits Google Apps and this is specially important if you think about your CAD files and PLM Excels..

DropBox and PLM model

So, let me take you back to the Dora Smith’s tweet. Is it a model for PLM future? I think, this is kinda of simplification. Dropbox is a good example of virtual storage. Files are on cloud – you shouldn’t worry. Wait a sec… what about security? If you feel comfortable with DropBox security, you can synchronize your CAD files between people and teams using DropBox virtual folder. Microsoft has similar ideas in SharePoint and some other tools and apps. The idea of drop box is not original. What is DropBox magic sauce?. My take on this is simple: usability and simplicity. It works and requires zero time to learn.

What is my conclusion? People are looking for simple tools. This is what made DropBox successful. PLM is complex. PLM companies have similar functionality in their hands today. However, the simplicity wins. Security is another question. This is a matter of trust. Do you trust Google? DropBox? Dassault? PTC? Use the cloud you trust… Just my opinion.

Best, Oleg

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COFES, Microsoft and Engineering Software Business Models

April 16, 2011

COFES is a think tank for engineering software. This is a place where you can drop any idea and see if it resonates. One of the COFES sessions is so called Maieutic Parataxis session. Think about pitching your idea in front of 300 people. You can see a sequence of 7-10 pitches from people compressed in a row. This is what Maieutic Parataxis is about. Last year I shared the story about Simon Floyd of Microsoft talking about PLM Excels:COFES, Maieutic Parataxies and PLM Excels. This year Simon came with a new idea of future business models for engineering software. Some of Simon’s slides and observations were resonating with my previous thoughts about PLM software business models. About a year ago, I wrote about Faltered Licenses and Future PLM Business Models. I talked about Subscriptions, Advertising and Reverse models. Take a look on Simon’s slides and make your opinion.

What is my take on this? The engineering software is changing slowly. The dynamics are different from the consumer market where the idea of market pace was realized and succeed. I can see multiple reasons why it happens. The most important reason is what I call “a good enough” principle. Traditional manufacturers are very conservative. Software is just a tool for them to produce the result. Existing software can run these companies for years. At the same time, I can see signs of changes. There are two main reasons, in my view: cost and competition. In order to compete on the market, companies need to find more efficient software to get a job done. Engineering software market place can offer a diverse set of tools that can be used. However, the compatibility of these tools, data access and many other reasons can potentially lay down this idea. Leading companies in this space are thinking about market place and application granularity. I think next 5-7 years can show the potential of the realization of this model. Just my thought…

Best, Oleg

[tag PLM, COFES, Microsoft, Business Model]

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COFES 2011 Rountable Discussions

April 13, 2011

I’m out for COFES this week. It will start tomorrow. My blog and COFES have some common roots. COFES is an annual think tank event that brings executives design, engineering, manufacturing, architecture and construction industry to think and discuss the role of engineering technology in the future of their business. My blog started as a "think tank" discussion online. If you have never been at COFES before, I encourage you to visit COFES website. You can get an access to previous COFES materials. If you ask me, COFES is about two things: Networking and Discussions. I’m always coming from COFES inspired by many ideas. Roundtable discussions are one of the most interesting parts. Navigate your browser to the following link to see the list of discussions planned this week.

Here are few of them that resonate to me the most.

BWFC (Big White Fluffy Clouds) In 1994, Intergraph made a bold decision to move its customers to Microsoft Windows NT, forsaking all other operating systems in the process. With few exceptions, most other engineering-software vendors eventually followed suit and reaped the benefits of designing for a “single” platform. With the advent of the cloud, mobile platforms, the resurgence of the Mac (in engineering), and new GPU and APU platforms, that long era of vendors focusing on a “single” platform is ending. There’s a new, rapidly evolving landscape out there, and none of the platform targets are moving in a way that makes them easy to predict. What’s a vendor to do? Better yet, how can we prepare for a sure-to-come, but unknowable, emerging game changer?

I was blogging about cloud many times. Here are few of my thoughts about the cloud: PLM Vendors, IT and Cloud Strategies, CAD, PLM and End of Microsoft Dominance.

Innovation in the Face of Complexity. Joy’s Law tells us that we should look outside the firm for innovation. Why? Startups and small, nimble firms are less constrained by legacy issues; nor are they constrained by complexity. When an outside firm has an innovation, it can choose where to let the innovation run, unconstrained by our handcuffs. When we have an internal innovation, it is limited by our priorities and funding. Pioneering (innovation that opens new markets) receives distressingly low funding in mature firms, precisely because mature firms are designed to maximize revenue from current intellectual property. In other words, it is in the nature of mature firms to focus on things other than pioneering. But pioneering is not the only face of innovation. As firms mature and grow, complexity becomes a main constraint. What is the domain of innovation in this context? How can firms foster such innovation within the constraints of complexity? What opportunities are we missing?

After many years in this industry, I found PLM as something really complicated. Here are some of my thoughts about that -PLM Complexity: What Does The Future Hold?, PLM and the Collapse of Complex Societies.

“De-Siloing” PLM. Business assets are often generated within business silos, and often those business silos handle data in a way that is convenient for them, but not so convenient for the rest of the enterprise. What will it take to “de-silo” product/project data? Today’s PLM systems address some of this. What problems will need to be addressed by next-generation PLM?

In my view, problem of product data and silos is a critical one. How to make product data retrieval convenient to people in the manufacturing organization? How to help them to make the decision using "right data"? These are very interesting questions that closed to my heart. My new company, Inforbix is trying to solve this problem by developing Product Data Applications.

The Evolution of Social Media into Design and Engineering Practice. Many have considered the role of social media in PLM and BIM. Some have even tried to build a business around it. None have hit the mark, and the mark is rapidly moving. The expectations of those graduating from high school today (with their brains wired for continuous, multichannel, multitasked collaboration) are different than those of just a few years ago, and perhaps even beyond the comprehension of most in management. If we can’t provide them with the tools they consider as basic as water, we will lose them. At the same time, most of them haven’t a clue about the difference between the ideal and the reality of manufacturing. Social media is a must, but it will change the way WE engage, as it evolves into tools that meet the demands of future generations. How do we get there?

"Social" is trending and, in my eyes is going to change a lot in a way manufacturing and engineering companies are managing businesses. However, how it will happen? Will somebody develop "Facebook for Manufacturing"? Some of my blogs about that as well: PLM and Social Technologies Dating, PLM and Social Detours.

What’s on YOUR Critical Path? Richard Riff, Ford’s thought leader for the design and engineering process, has made the bold statement that “CAD is no longer on the critical path” at Ford. It’s not that CAD isn’t important, or strategic; it’s just that it’s gotten good enough that problems in other areas are more significant. Do you know what’s on your critical path? More importantly, what’s on your customers’ critical paths? What are you doing to release their bottlenecks? And once those get released, what’s next?

Also interesting, there is a special "bloggers-roundtable". Here is the short definition of this roundtable – A gathering of active bloggers (including business-tweeters) to discuss successful ways to improve what they’re doing: for themselves, for their firms, and most importantly, for their audience.

So, it is going to be a very busy week. I will be attending some of these roundtables and hope to bring these discussions to you in my blog.

Best, Oleg

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PLM and COFES Israel: People Just Want to Drink a Beer!

December 18, 2010

Last three days I spent my time with COFES Israel. Navigate your browser to the following link to see agenda and people attended the event. The main topic of the event was about Software for Engineering and Innovation. Videos and presentations from the event will be available later. Two days before early COFES attendees from outside of Israel had a chance to visit Israeli companies and office of some foreign companies located in Israel such as Microsoft Israeli R&D Center in Herzlia,IBM Israel Lab in Haifa.

I visited Israeli company OptiTex providing CAD and manufacturing solutions for textile and fashion industry. Spend some time on their website with such a great set of examples of their technological innovation. I specially liked the red dancing dress by OptiTex.

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Andreas Vlahinos of Advanced Engineering Solutions presented some interesting statistics and visualization showing income per person comparison and growth between Israel and USA for the last seventy years.

Fielder Hiss of Dassault SolidWorks spoke about platform shifts, predictive computing and sustainability. The following slide definitely shows you the inside preparation of SolidWorks to run their product on any device.

I gave my top rank to the slide from the presentation of Brian Shepher of PTC. The complexity is one of the biggest problems of PLM. However, like Brian said – people just want to drink a beer. In my translation – people just want to get a job done.

PTC has some ideas about how to change the status quo. Their new Creo products supposed to solve this problem in the future. Navigate to the following link to read my thoughts about PTC Creo.

I’m going to give some additional thoughts later today about PLM innovation inspiring talks I had during this week in Israel. Best, Oleg

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Open Cloud, PLM Backbone and Vendor Lock-In

November 30, 2010

Picture-41-300x199.pngVendor Lock-In is painful. I think, customers in the space of CAD/PLM even more sensitive to this issue. Proprietary CAD formats used by vendors many years, which allowed them to charge premium fees. Recently, we learned that Data Backbone lock-in can be even more dangerous. Customers are spending millions in their data management infrastructures and proprietary platforms. It helps them later to navigate customers like Daimler to right decisions.

I just learned about IBM VISION Cloud initiative. More about IBM VISION Cloud in IBM press release. Navigate your browser to the following link and read the interview from Dr, Yaron Wolfsthal, IBM’s senior manager responsible for VISION Cloud.

The EU-funded VISION Cloud initiative, led by IBM, has been launched and is focused on creating a metadata format that will enable users’ data to be interoperable among Cloud service providers. This is potentially a huge development for all business, but especially small businesses, which run the risk of vendor lock-in and general unhappiness when they find that it’s not cost-effective to switch Cloud vendors should they encounter problems.

As far as I understand, IBM is investigating how to develop a cloud storage that can be used for future internet data services. Here is a very interesting quote from Dr. Wolfsthal interview:

In principle we are targeting an open specification, open APIs etc. The participation of the SNIA.Europe (this is the European chapter of the Storage Networking Industry Association) will help us promote the open Specifications and standards developed/extended by the project beyond the boundaries of the project.

In 10 days, I will be attending first COFES-Israel forum. COFES is a unique event where Engineering, Manufacturing and Construction Software industry executives can share their view and discuss innovative ideas. Part of the extended forum agenda is visiting Israeli companies and local branches and development offices of international companies located in Israel. We will be visiting IBM Haifa Lab and I hope to learn more.

Open Cloud
We need to come to the idea of Open Cloud. Focus on open standards that can facilitate data exchange and data openness can be an important factor in customer’s decision to move to cloud solutions. The potential winners will be companies investing in open platforms and not lock-in their customers in proprietary PLM backbones. Will PLM on the cloud initiative is the next mouse-trap for customers similar to what CAD format was last 20 years? Time will show.

What is my conclusion? In my view, the question of openness on the cloud is an unread chapter. Cloud lock-in can be even more dangerous than file format or data backbone lock-in. Important.

Best, Oleg

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How To Fix PLM Industry Dissatisfaction?

March 26, 2010

COFES 2010 is just around the corner, and I had chance to discuss with Brad Holtz of Cyon Research the potential topics to think and discuss towards the event. We touched the issue of the top PLM industry problems and how it comes to the discussion on Daily PLM Think Tank. So, this morning, I made my first BLOG “Better listening on Google” research and shout “PLM dissatisfaction” search. The article with a complete match to my criteria came in the beginning – “Why is Industry Dissatisfied with PLM?” by Frank Lillehagen, and I decided to make a deep dive into this article and to compare it to my thoughts related to the current PLM industry problems.

The main introductory made by Frank is that PLM actually was too late to the “enterprise app dinner” and was built on top of either CAD, CRM, ERP or even PDM. It was interesting to me, since I have never seen PLM system built on top of CRM. However, I think the main point was clear – in the family of the enterprise engineering apps, PLM appears to be a guilty child who needs to explain his rights to exist and prove all the time his organizational and technological ROI. Later in the article divided into sections: 1- What is missed?, 2- PLM capabilities needed, 3- Towards Product Knowledge Architecture, 4- Where do we go from here? Each section presented from 10 to 20 bullets with lists of issues that need to be done or missed. Actually, in my view those are expected to be a single list of issues, but they were presented in different ways.  I made some write up based on the topics that got my special attention:

A PLM architecture should create visual collaborative scenes for proactive behavior and learning-by-doing, enhancing human capabilities and creativity, creating the real-time enterprise, and transforming industrial computing to practical services and work processes.

We need to combine the complementary strengths of computers and humans, in handling and managing data categories, object classes and product families, to provide methods for life-cycle management and reuse.

Huh… It is complex. I must admit, I personally failed to come to the conclusion about the topic after reading this article multiple times. I tried to analyze the list of 20 PLM requirements needs presented by author. However, issue presented there were either completely broad like “Transform IT systems development and industrial computing” or “Support holistic enterprise design of projects, products and work environments” or absolutely theoretical like “Redefine design theory to exploit role-oriented knowledge architectures and product families“.

I almost gave up, nevertheless, the topic of industry dissatisfaction kept me in the focus. Actually, I felt my complete dissatisfaction by my inability to write the conclusion and decided to put my top 3 priority list that can improve the level of PLM Industry Satisfaction. Here we go:

Clean the PLM Language from buzzwords and broad statements. In my view, lack of clarity is absolutely needed as a first step. Customers and industry audience needs to get feeling of simplicity and clarity in definition and implementation.

Open Data Foundation. The main issue here is that currently I observe a huge amount of disruptive data trends in different PLM implementations. Combined with a large amount of legacy data, apps and home grown implementations it created the situation where a significant effort need to move PLM data implementation forward. The potential idea for this foundation is open source data foundation alliance supported by all PLM vendors.

Flexible Integration Capabilities. The integration topic in PLM is currently in the very bad shape. In my view, vendors gave up in their effort to invest into integration. Customers are mostly solving these problems by themselves or by 3rd party products.

An additional issue is social. PLM as an industry needs to come to the level of maturity in their ability to organize PLM events with involvement of multiple mindshare PLM vendors and related to PLM providers and supporters. The understanding of such need is very important. There are an absolute absence of PLM events these days with some small exclusion. The healthy industry needs to be able to consolidate around strong industry leaders and additional technological, vertical, service and other commercial companies.

Just my thoughts… I will continue my “thinking research” and hope to come with some conclusions towards COFES 2010.

Best, Oleg

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