PDM vs. PLM: A Data Perspective

July 24, 2010

I want to talk about what I consider as one of the most controversial topics in the industry – PDM vs. PLM. How many times, you had a chance to hear the following question: What is the difference between PDM and PLM? I guess, the only one question can practically compete with this – question about what is PLM? So, I decided to step into this winding road to give you my perspective on that. I will try to get rid of multiple high-level pitches and TLA-oriented presentations.

The Status quo
My first shot to get the status quo is to see what Google can show me on this topic. So, the followingsearch, brings some interesting set of links. Here is what I found.

The oldest material I found is the article by Martin Day in CAD Digest – Is PLM the new PDM? . He is giving a deep perspective of PLM definition based on his conversation with Pascal Daloz, back that time VP R&D strategy in Dassault Systems. You can see their opinion about PDM to PLM race as well as the definition of how PLM is expanding PDM.

The later materials about PLM and PDM comparison are related to Solidworks white paper PLM vs. PDM: It All Starts From PDM. You can find this whitepaper on the following link. Their PDM is a subset of the overall solution called PLM. The explanations of SolidWorks PDM people are very simple and straightforward. However, they are giving you too much marketing flavor – buy PDM first and later think about your PLM.

A very interesting perspective on PDM vs. PLM topic provided by Mark J. Silvestri, CEO at Lifecycle Solutions in his video. I found it as a pretty balanced view presenting a very practical historical perspective about expansion of product data management into management a diversity set of moving pieces related to information about products.

Arena Solutions put their sponsored link with “PDM vs. PLM” label pointing on their white paper. You to register, so I did and then discover seven pages long white paper about advantages of PLM solution from Arena. There are few more links. However, they are giving you pointers to the websites of multiple PLM solution providers explaining advantages of PLM software.

PLM Confusion
In my view, the most notable confusion around PLM is related to a very different view on this from two opposite sides – vendors and customers. For the last few years, I can hear more and more customers are talking about PLM strategies, concepts and industry adoption. However, in many cases it becomes very controversial when the discussion is moving to the vendor/product side. Most of the vendors pushing “a complete PLM solution” actually missing the point that this solution probably cannot be delivered by a single vendor and customer considering it more as a strategy rather than a product. At the same time, you can see PDM movement into the “commodity space” where PDM is considered as a software to manage CAD data that, in most of the cases, need to be purchased from CAD vendor to prevent version compatibility hassles.

PLM Data Perspective
Here is my short take on the PDM vs. PLM from the data perspective. Both TLAs were born to provide a name to a solution that helps engineering and manufacturing companies to manage product data. In the early beginning, it was mostly about vaulting CAD data. However, within the time, companies in that space understood that broader strategy needs to be developed to compete with ERP behemouths that started to capture market in a very aggressive way by consolidating enterprise application around MRP and finance domains. That was the time the idea of managing broader scope of data was born. Solutions started to expand their offering to manage data about requirements, engineering and manufacturing BOMs, supply chain data. However, to sell pure data management is not an easy job. C-level people are not driven by data. They are driven by processes. So, broader data management solution for engineering and manufacturing came to the idea of “Lifecycle”. Finally, PLM was born. In my view, it stands for a broader data management solution that includes the orientation on processes that influence changes of this data as well decision management in a context of this data.

What is my conclusion? The ugly truth of enterprise software – it is all about data and the control over the data. It appears in every solution. It is all about what data you manage, how do you keep your customers accessing and processing this data?. PLM is the attempt to manage data in the much broader scope than PDM. It creates lots of benefits from the standpoint of data completeness and, at the same time, created many overlaps in data management solutions in enterprise organizations.

Just my thoughts. I’m open and looking forward to having a discussion on this topic.
Best, Oleg

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PLM Data Warehouse: Dream Or Nightmare?

July 12, 2010

My new website and blog is BeyondPLM. The original post is here.

PLM is certainly dealing with lots of data about products: design, engineering, lifecycle data, manufacturing, processes. When/If you speak to PLM software providers and some big customers you can hear term “Data Warehouse”. DW term is not coming originally from PLM domain and related more to the general purpose databases and data management field.

This is a very commonly used definition of Data Warehouse from Wikipedia:

A data warehouse is a repository of an organization’s electronically stored data, designed to facilitate reporting and analysis [1]. This definition of the data warehouse focuses on data storage. However, the means to retrieve and analyze data, to extract, transform and load data, and to manage thedata dictionary are also considered essential components of a data warehousing system. Many references to data warehousing use this broader context. Thus, an expanded definition for data warehousing includes business intelligence tools, tools to extract, transform and load data into the repository, and tools to manage and retrieve metadata.

Data Warehouse Technologies

The technologies for data warehouse most commonly are coming from database and data vendors related domains. There are multiple methodologies and techniques to organize data and make available. The most known in this field are bottom up and top down design for data warehouse. Most of the data warehouse methodologies are focusing on fast data retrieval opposite to transactional databases. With all bright insight made around the data warehouse, their implementations are very expensive and, in my view,  data warehousing technologies are under significant pressure to drop cost and improve the agility of implementations. You can often find multiple data-related implementations that may correspond to data warehousing , such as Business Intelligence, Data Integrations, etc. The newest trends in Business Intelligence are stating that Data Warehousing is ruined and the future BI technologies will bring better solutions in this space. Recently, I had a chance to read a very interesting write up made by TEC – Are Data Warehouses as Dead as the Dodo?, which is exploring a promising future of new BI technologies to replace data warehousing need.

PLM and Data Warehouse

I think, PLM is often using “Data Warehouse” term to underline the power of PLM technologies to manage big amounts of product data. In my view, PLM platforms never took serious steps in the implementation of actual data warehousing. Nevertheless, large PLM implementations done for big aero- and auto- OEMs contain a significant amount of product data that need to be available across the multiple departments and synchronized with multiple applications. You can find an interesting story about Boeing and Airbus PLM data warehousing implementation can be found on TechniGraphics web site. At the time of writing this blog, I could download this paper from the following link. Some interesting numbers from this document- the Boeing Dreamliner data warehouse contains about 16TB of data. PLM needs to deal with large amounts of data. To handle it efficiently seems to be a very interesting problem.

What is my conclusion today? Large PLM implementations need to handle a significant amount of data. Today, DMU implementations are requiring to bring multiple elements of design data to handle analysis and validation of complex products. There are many other product-data related problems that often remained unsolved because of technological complexity. What is the technology available to solve this problem? Is it future HD PLM from Siemens? Or maybe Project Lightning from PTC? Time will show…

Best, Oleg

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How Big Is Product Lifecycle Data?

July 6, 2010

Product-related data is one of the most important aspects of any PLM implementation. When you talk about PLM implementation, the topic of product-related data (or IP) is very often becomes a center of the conversation.  There are multiple sources of this type of data in the organization. In my view, one of the PLM goals is to have a control of this data and provide tools to manage the overall lifecycle. One of the PLM implementation challenges is to provide wide support for product-related data. The topic I want to discuss is related the ability of PLM product to handle full scope of this product lifecycle data.

I read the article Oracle, SAP working on Exadata support. The core of this conversation is about how to scale up and provide extensive support for big data handling in the organization. Have a read of this article and make you opinion. Mine is simple – both Oracle and SAP understood the size of the potential problem (data size). They are working in multiple directions to find a solution for data sizing in transactional enterprise application. Should PLM care? This is a very good question in my view…

PLM and Product Lifecycle Data Problem
One of the challenges PLM is having for many years is getting control of product-related data. My observation shows that product-related data is not completely controlled by PLM systems in the majority of PLM implementations. Even with a very successful PLM implementation, data is scattered between multiple data sources and PLM is only one of them. In addition to that, product-related data can be located in the diverse set of applications used for product development.

Product Data, Size and PLM value
The full value of Product Lifecycle Management is directly dependent on how what scope of product-related data is covered by PLM. The wider scope can maximize PLM value for organizations. With all current developments, PLM is looking on starting from design to manufacturing strategies and development of social-oriented application, sizing can easily become one of the potential bottlenecks related to the ability to support large scope of data.

What is my conclusion? I think, to understand sizing of product lifecycle data is important in order to build right operational and strategic plans related to data management. Data is growing fast. Future PLM implementation can suffer from problems related to data sizing. How to scale up PLM implementation in terms of size can be one of the most important questions in the future. Just my thought…

Best, Oleg

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PLM and Real Time Data

June 15, 2010

I had chance to read “SAP, Oracle and ‘Real’ Real-Time Apps“. I think it is an interesting read. SAP and Oracle are two large players in the PLM space, even their PLM agenda seems different from the agenda of PLM mindshare leaders such as PTC, Dassault and Siemens PLM. The conversation about data and real time made me think about what is the possible value of real-time application in PLM domain.

Real Time Data Foundation
Data Warehouse for the long period of time was the ultimate option proposed by large middleware and ERP vendors to consolidate enterprise information. However, it is considered as a complicated option and most of the companies were not moving fast to explore this solution  from all possible aspect options. I wonder if the data warehouse can move forward and propose some better options to consolidate informational streams. The following quote is interesting:

In-memory and column-oriented technologies have been around for years, and vendors like Sybase and Vertica have been talking about 10X to 100X data compression for nearly as long. Did it really take an application vendor to think outside the box of the database market as we know it? Has it really been beyond outfits as talented and well-funded as IBM and Teradata to tackle these problems? Or have the database vendors been protecting the status quo and certain revenue streams? It seems even Oracle’s OLTP- and OLAP-capable Exadata doesn’t aspire to replace the data warehouse layer as we know it.

My guess is that we probably are going to have some changes in this space soon. These two vendors will try to deliver a platform to enable data syndication in the real time. It can come as part of Oracle Fusion or SAP new development following Sybase acquisition. In parallel, I’d expect some additional experiments in this space coming from multiple smaller vendors in providers. What are PLM options and opportunities in this space?

PLM Real Time Options
In my view, PLM is watching very carefully to everything that is going in enterprise data space. PLM vendors are in the continues fight with their biggest rivals (SAP and Oracle) about the data ownership in the organization. What are PLM options in this real-time game? I see two potential aspects in the real time space for PLM: 1/Real time communication; 2/Real time information. Real time communication is all about the ability to collaboration – connect, share, modify, co-develop. In my view, this is a strong side of PLM in real time. I see PLM companies introduced new products helping to designers to collaboration. The second option (Real Time Information) is actually creating much less excitement in my eyes. Real time information in manufacturing organization is all about how to get all synchronized up to date information available. PLM vendors talked a lot about federation and integration in the past. However, it never came to real-time information availability.

What is my conclusion today?  I can see two main sides of real-time in PLM: Real Time Communication and Real Time Information. It seems to me PLM won the first round in their ability to lead collaborative work by allowing people to communication online on their design. But, the second problem (Real Time Information) can be a place where middleware and ERP vendors may have an advantage by syndication of information into Real Time Data Warehouse of the future. I think, some PLM vendors will think about how to provide information in this space too.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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PLM Data, Identification and Part Numbers

April 9, 2010

I’d like to follow my yesterday post about PLM data modeling and talk about one of the issues that in my view are very important in PLM systems and implementations. The issue of identification or how it sometimes called “numbering system” is fundamental when you start thinking how to organize you product data. This is not a new problem, in my view. It comes all the time in the beginning of each implementation, when you start thinking about how to identify literally everything in your system. It normally starts from Part Numbers but spread out later.

The identification is a very complex problem. In the beginning, you can easy underestimate the size of this issue. However, as much you will be going forward you can easy come to the conclusion that this is one of the most important issues to decide before doing any implementation. I’d like to put few of the challenges that I think important to mention when you think about identification.

Multiple Systems
In the situation when you run many systems, you need to synchronize numbering and identification schema between them. This can be a not simple task and require significant effort and time.

Global Design and Manufacturing
Product development is going global these days. You want to design, build and support your system on a global scale. Product design and manufacturing are often happening in different countries and locations. In many cases, your local manufacturing facilities will be using local ERP system with local numbering and identification schema. At the same time, global product design will be interested to rely on the single identification worldwide.

Manufacturing and Supply Chain
The product development activity can be split between different parties – OEM’s and suppliers. OEM and suppliers are using separate and often different systems. To synchronize or coordinate numbering systems between them is another challenge on a global scale.

Company Mergers and Acquisitions
This is another type of the activities when you will face identification problems. Mergers and acquisitions happen and, in this case, you need to make an effort to create a single common identification schema from two or more separate systems.

This is not a full list, but figure out the most critical aspects that need to be taken into account. Recently, I came across a very interesting write-up about Part Numbering on the ZeroWait State blog. I think you can get some ideas about possible Part Numbering options such as – intelligent, semi-intelligent, automatic.

What is my conclusion today? I think the problem of the identification will become more urgent very soon. Most of the systems in product development and manufacturing were designed 15-20 years ago and considered problem of the identification as a number in a local database. Growing exchange in design and manufacturing information on a global scale will introduce new types of identification problems. In my view, enterprise systems in general, but PLM specifically will need to learn some lessons from internet systems development to find a right solution to this problem.

I’m interested to hear about your practice and experience with implementation of identification systems in your organization and during the implementation you made.

Best, Oleg

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AUGI, CAD/PLM Data And The Future Of Cloud

April 6, 2010

I found an invitation to AUGI Drops service from AUGI in my email this morning. You can see more information in the AUGI press release. For me, it was a final confirmation that race for online data has begun.

AUGI announces its newest offering to members—a Web-based private file sharing and collaboration tool. AUGI, in collaboration with drop.io, now provides its members with a place to share files, drawings, models, photos, video, audio and more.

As an AUGI-member, you can create unlimited 100mb drops to share files with full SSL security.

• Each drop has a phone number and extension. Call the drop, talk all you want – it is converted to an MP3 and left right in the drop on the fly. Listen to it on the drop, or send it out via email, RSS, MMS, or basically anything else you want.

• Every drop has its own free conference call number automatically assigned to it. The drop’s conference call number stays the same, so consider it for long term use as your drop is active.

• Each drop has its own e-mail address. Send a notes or attachments to the drop from a computer, Blackberry, or any e-mail or MMS enabled phone. If you send a file, the text of the e-mail will be posted as a comment on the file. If you send just text, it will be added to the drop as a note.

It made me think about the future of cloud data for CAD and PLM again. At the same way in the early time of Web 2.0, web sites tried to get users subscribed for their services (btw which is still true), the “new cloud” is interested to get customer data. In this case this is design, engineering and other related data. I had chance to write about cloud and CAD files before – Where is the PLM shortcut to the cloud?. So, this is a confirmed start to develop “future Peter Norton’s Application” to store CAD files.

What is my conclusion today? Does it mean we are going to replace “Save As File” command to “Save To Cloud” button? This might be a first try. Vendors will be trying to understand how many users will be interested to give up on their local storage and move to the virtual storage. Since “security” considered as one of the main concern points of cloud solution, development of free cloud data services will be a right indicator if companies and individuals are ready for that.

Best, Oleg

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The Ugly Truth About PLM-ERP Monkey Volleyball

March 5, 2010

I had the chance to read Jim Brown’s post about SAP achievements in PLM. As usual, when PLM and ERP words come to the interplay, a very good discussion can be generated. And this is what I’ve seen this morning. I enjoyed discussion and very interesting comments. Take a look, first and read that. The discussion became hot and separate post was done by Vuuch Voice this morning -PLM Is The Monkey In The Middle.

These posts made me think about what is the fundamental nature of the discussion about PLM and ERP. I see this discussion as a natural part of the overall system development in the organization. Since early beginning of MRP and MRP-II, systems started to accumulate product data in the electronic form. So, data moved from spreadsheets to databases and Excel  spreadsheets. In parallel, design data started to move from paper to CAD and other design systems. Since then, all engineering and manufacturing systems are managing the very interesting interplay on where is data located and how you move this data from one place to another. Now what means this movement? This is something everybody present as a ‘ business process’. Yes, processes are the blood movement in the organizational body. However, the blood cells are actually pieces of data that processes moves around.

The ugly truth is that everybody wants to own the piece of cheesy product data! ERP, PLM, PDM, CAD… Everybody pretends on the part of the product data, but mostly interested how to control it. Everybody in this volleyball game is trying to catch the ball and steer it to their side. ERP is saying Item Master belongs to me! Every time you want to do something, ask me. CAD and CAD-based PLM pretends to be the best in managing product design, configuration and revisions. ERP vendors are trying to steer Bill of Materials by managing overall ECO process. Social software is trying to steer the ball, by saying let’s organize Facebook of design files. Before that time PDM was trying to organize dashboards of data. In parallel, social product development is trying to put data inside of SharePoint… There is an endless number of examples I can bring…

So, what is my conclusion today? There is nothing new in this enterprise data life, but attempt to control data and accumulate data-tolls from enterprise processes’ toll-road. If you are good in organizing this toll-road, the ride won’t be bumpy and data arrives easy and customers will love it. Some of the tolls are mandatory. Try not to pay for CAD system or accounting, for example… It seems to me PLM road is a bit more bumpy in comparison to the ERP one.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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PLM Platforms: Retirement Or noSQL Knock-Out?

March 1, 2010

I found interesting that nobody speaks much about PLM platforms these days. It seems to me PLM vendors and service providers are focused on the more important issues, such as industry orientation, out-of-the-box functionality, SaaS and OnDemand or even by Open Source business models. However, what happens in the PLM-platform-department? Does everything is fine and well adjusted to the weather outside? Do we have enough power to move forward with all data we have these days on PLM platforms? Can we scale up in capacity? Can we support agile system development by customers? These and many other issues came to my head. However, I wanted to focus on two specific trends: Needs to manage data for the long term and noSQL trends in data management.

Long Term Product Data
This is not a very big secret. We produce more and more data on the daily basis. Product development and manufacturing companies are not exclusion from that. Bigger companies like aero-OEMs recognized this problem time ago. Their working procedures require the need to keep data for 50+ years as well as track information about each aircraft according to the serial number. Smaller manufacturers are just coming to this place. Additional weight of the regulations moves them even faster to the point where the amount of data will come to the not controlled level. There are two aspects of long term data retention in PLM – 1/3D and geometrical data; 2/non-geometrical and process-related information. I found the most interesting project in this area is prostep’s LOTAR. So, I’m looking on the progress of this activity. However, the timeline of LOTAR is seven years, which is probably okay, when we talk about 50-year data retention.

noSQL Trends
This is a not top secret. The really big guys are not running SQL these days – Google, Amazon, Facebook… All these companies developed their own data management facilities. However, despite coolness effect, the reason behind these initiatives is simple. The ugly truth is that our good friend uncle-SQL is coming to the middle-age. And even if you cannot hear voices about SQL retirement, the question about how our life can look like “after SQL” is very much acceptable. If you are not familiar with noSQL term, I’d recommend to take a look on this wikipedia article. Also, I found the following article – The noSQL movement, written by Mark Kellog on his blog as a very interesting research in this area.

PLM Platforms Data Foundation
All PDM/PLM platforms that available on the market today are relying on SQL database technology. There is no surprise – SQL is the mainstream technology in the enterprise. I can see two potential problems related to that: change management and data capacity. The first one, change management, seems as a very critical one. Customers are struggling with the level of flexibility PDM/PLM systems can provide. Solutions built on top of SQL data is sensitive to upgrades and data model changes. PLM vendors developed sophisticated systems how to manage it. However, the problem is still in place. The second one is data capacity. This problem is not uncovered in the full scope. I believe, with the future PLM implementations, there is a real chance to discover a scale-related problems.

What is my conclusion today? I think technology matters. Big boys developed alternative non-SQL data storage options. At the time when SQL-based relational database are power our PLM platforms, vendors need to think about what next. Some initial signs to think how to manage all company product lifecycle data for 50+ years are in place. There are visible interesting alternatives. However, they required future investigation by vendors.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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Data Quality and PLM

December 4, 2009

Short question – what do you think about the quality of data in your PLM solution? I think the data quality topic is important, but very often comes too late in your PLM implementation. When most of PLM implementation are driven by engineering departments, the result is very much the same as a engineering table. Drawings, models, bills of material, manufacturing instructions, ECOs…

Do you think PLM is doing good job to improve the quality of the data in your organization? How many data duplications you have? How many times your organization is using wrong data and as a result losing money? Who is in charge of data quality in your organization?

These are my initial questions. I want to have your comments, and I’m going to think about blog about this topic in coming days/weeks.

Best, Oleg

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Cloud of Data – can it work for PLM?

October 15, 2009

data-cloudI’m continuing to explore a world of cloud for PLM. Today, I want to take and discuss a direction which looks for me very promising as advanced collaboration capabilities. Yes, we are very aware about a concern many companies have with regards to placement of their IP on cloud/ internet. However, on the other side, there is lots of product information that disclosed and becomes public anyway. When a company releases their products to the market, it stops becoming a secret. Also, companies are very often disclosing data for purposes of collaboration with external partners and customers.

So, why we cannot be use cloud platform for these purposes? Yes, I think, we can. I had chance to see videos of Factual- company focuses on the creation repository of open data. Pretty cool, it reminds our lovely Microsoft Excels, but on cloud. I see these are potential services for engineers, marketers and sales people in the company to collaborate and share data they need.

factualHow To Create a Table With Factual on Howcast

I have to say, Factual is not the only company trying to do so.I can point on Freemix project by Zepheira, Freebase and some others.

What is my conclusion today? I think cloud storage of data will continue to growth. It‘s up to PLM vendors to explore potential opportunity and way to use it for customer benefits.

Best, Oleg

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