Will ERP Take a Lead in PLM Redefinition?

September 14, 2010

I had a chance to read an article by Michael Fauscette “Workday takes the Gloves Off?“. I’m tracking Workday for last 3-4 years. The trajectory is very interesting. For those of you who don’t know, Workday is the outfit created with a significant influence of ex-PeopleSoft people lead by Dave Duffield, the founder of PeopleSoft. Take the time and have a look on Michael’s article as well as interview with Dave Duffield about why he founded Workday. My favorite passage is the following:

Q: What’s missing in the marketplace?
Dave: Before the software-as-a-service model started gaining momentum, I felt like the industry had lost a passion for innovation and a focus on the customer. We’re focusing on both to help breathe new life into this business.

Similar message is coming from Michael write-up:

Workday’s vision is to redefine ERP software not only from a business / delivery model prospective (SaaS / cloud) but also from the focus on usability and modern design. Business is becoming people-centric (people as the platform) and workday is approaching its software from that basic design premise, a very powerful concept. Software and technology, in particular ERP have gone through a few phases; the mainframe, then the shift to client server, the emergence of the Internet and the subsequent advance of the social web, the rise of mobile computing and global hyper-connectivity. Many of the enterprise systems in use today are still based on designs and technology from a previous phase, and the user experience is quite dated. Workday claims to be the only modern ERP system in the last decade, and while it’s a little more marketing than actual fact, it does make one think.

Another interesting information came out of the following slide presenting ERP technological evolution. Take a look on the picture below. You can see a clear simplification on the side of the system stack. A “business logic” and separate RDBMS storage for years were a strong part in every enterprise architecture diagram. Now it replaced by data+logic and persistent storage.

It made me think about some interesting parallels with PLM world:

User Interface Simplification

Complexity of user interface is one of the most problematic points in PDM/PLM software. Over the past few years I’ve seen some movements towards new concepts of UI experience. PLM vendors are trying to move to 3D-like visual interfaces and create a simple UI paradigm. Another option is definitely presented by software like SharePoint and it drives another user interface simplification. It still not clear what will be the winning combination for PLM

Internet Architecture Allignment

The overall influence of internet software architecture becomes significant. In my view, we are going to see more examples of usage different elements of internet architecture in enterprise applications. Such things like noSQL and other will drive future innovation in this space.

Openness

Enterprise software will have to make a significant shift towards openness. Usage of open standards, open source, meta-data driven development will shift systems to become more open and will reduce a barrier of system integrations.

What is my conclusion? It is interesting to see how ERP becomes a pace where innovation happens again. ERP was often used by PLM vendors as a reference for a very complex place. It seems to me ERP learning the lesson. PLM vendors need to learn it too. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg
Freebie. Workday didn’t pay me to write this post.

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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 vs. ERP: Weird or Different?

February 1, 2010

Discussion started last week with Jim Brown got me think more about ERP and PLM. I have to say, this is not a new topic, but thinking about it, I’m always finding new angles to see differences between ERP and PLM viewpoints. I want to make some breakdown on how things different in both systems, but before, I’d like to suggest you to watch the following video from TED.

Identification: Documents, Parts, Item Masters

When you think about identification systems, you can clearly see that PLM and ERP starts from different foundations. PLM (especially systems that got founded around CAD) think first about Documents and related Parts. Even for systems that taking Item centric approach, definition of Item is pretty much similar to Document. On the opposite side, ERP is all about Item Master, Bill of Materials and Dates (!). Everything starts and ends with “The Date”. Without the assumption about what date you are talking about, you won’t be able to get anything done in ERP.

Versions vs. Effectivitiy

The main identification mechanism in PLM systems is a version. Documents, Parts have versions on it. This is how work-in-progress environment works. Whatever you change, you put version on it. On the opposite side, everything is effectivity oriented. You have a date on everything you are going to change. This date will show when it is effective. It is pretty complicated to combine these two opposite sides to work together.

Changes

This is last in top three core different fundamentals of PLM and ERP, but for sure not least. When you think about changes in CAD and PLM, you can be pretty flexible. You can always get new version of almost everything you are doing. World of PLM structured information comply with your will to change, and you are getting to the next level. The previous one easy becomes obsolete. The life is absolutely different on ERP side of the world – everything you want to change – think dates. Your manufacturing system is up-to-date to manufacturing life. All your change may and will impact manufacturing production systems. All processes are formal, requires ECN/ECOs, signatures, confirmation, etc.

So, Where we can go from here?

These bits and bytes are, in my view, fundamentals of differences between two worlds of PLM and ERP. On the upper levels, buzzwords of execution and innovation are flying, but here inside Bill of Materials, Parts and Items are struggling to live together and magically represents the same product company is doing business on. I think it is very logical that everything PLM people like to see as normal, seems different (or weird) on ERP side. Opposite is also true. Now, my question is how to balance this system? There are few possible ways, and I will try to analyze them.

Data Exchange

This is the old and straightforward way to do PLM/ERP business. If you’re familiar with “drop over the wall” approach – here you go. Just drop Bill of Material from PLM to ERP and forget. But, I’m not sure this is the most efficient one.

Process Orchestration

The most complicated. You don’t care about data first – you think the process wise. This is the right way to do business in the organization. However, compare to the construction industry, if you build you house on the badly prepared foundation (enterprise data) you are in the high accident zone.

Mashups

This is the potential alternative. This option is not developed much these days. Instead of fighting about how to own data, let’s try to focus on how to consume data in the way that users will be less worry where information resides and more focused on decision making. However, this option is still requiring a lot of investigation and research.

What is my conclusion today? It is hard to say “where PLM stops and ERP begin”. Things are getting connected, weird and unbreakable if you want to insure your organizational processes are running smooth. And this is probably less about PLM, ERP and even other systems. This is about how your organization work. And connecting it to the video you had chance to see before, think about your product and not about how it represented in different siloed systems.

So, how do you see? Does it make sense? What are your experience and view on how things need to be connected?

Best, Oleg

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Innovation On The PLM-ERP Edge

January 30, 2010

This post was born as a consequence of on-going conversation with Jim Brown of TechClarity. Jim and I have a long history of discussions on different topics offline, and we are in agreement on many of them. However, in spirit of what Jim called “healthy debates”, I’d like to open our conversation online. I’m sure it will be beneficial for us, and I hope you will find it interesting and practical in the context of thinking about strategy for PLM and ERP implementation planning.

If you haven’t seen our previous posts, I’d recommend you to go and read them first in order to have a taste of context:

PLM vs. ERP – Don’t Manage Innovation!

Mythbusting PLM/ERP Integration

PDM/PLM and ERP are two topics and domains that continue to magnetize huge amount of the attention. In my view, it was true for the last 20 years, and it continues to be true these days too. In the spirit of getting away from three letter acronyms (TLA), I’d like to put below one of the best references on the way to present discrete (or manufacturing) concurrent engineering positioning from the David Ullman’s book: The Mechanical Design Process.

What I like in this process is that it clearly presents the level of the connections in manufacturing enterprise, including logical dependencies between three major domains – Design, Production and Business.

ERP and PLM Domain
In my view, PLM was born in the middle of the Design domain, in the beginning as a system to manage Product Form (CAD) and lately by systems and modules to manage materials (BOMs), functions and facilitate connection with outside domains. The best example I can bring here is the ability of PM to connect market requirements with business needs. If you will ever have a chance to see a successful integration between business/market models (i.e. Sales Configrator) and PLM, you can see how it can be beneficial. So, within the time PLM outgrows Design domain and spread out into some functions related to production and business. In parallel ERP, was “an accounting child”, born to calculate, forecast and provide clear answers on how health your business can operate. Started from Sales, Finance, Prices, Costs and Risk, followed by successful development of MRP and MRP-II topics and, finally, becomes ERP as we know it today.

Roles of PLM and ERP
As every healthy business systems, both ERP and PLM are trying to grow and Production Domain is an obvious common target for both PLM and ERP. Since PLM came from managing the form and materials in product design, the ability to manage product and work-in-process data are much better compared to ERP. At the same time, ERP holds very strong on the ability to mange operational environment. In the very competitive business environment, both domains failed to collaborate successfully and, instead of taking route to manage openness and process transparency moved to the “marketing excellence” by starting to invent slogans like innovation and execution. But, unfortunately, devil is in details and after agreeing about “roles” and “focuses”, you will get back to bits and bytes of design data, EBOMs, MBOMs and processes that span across the organization.

ERP Business in PLM
With the clear competition state of mind, ERP vendors are trying to push technical limits of ERP foundation to manage product design and work-in-progress design information. As much as they come to the business having fewer design roots design roots, the chances to successfully stretch ERP data models and infrastructures are more successful. When you almost cannot see automotive OEM or supplier that decides to manage design product configuration in SAP PLM, you probably will be more lucky to see high tech and telecom companies managing product engineering and manufacturing BOM in ERP. Also, companies tried to reduce the cost of “process management” by concentrating it inside ERP process infrastructure.

Border Between PLM and ERP
I think, to define the right border between PLM and ERP is a very complicated task. I’m almost sure, the results will be very different for various companies even in the same domain. There are lots of factors such as existing systems, implementation, history, legacy stuff, new projects. You can find companies pushing towards implementing CAD/PDM bundles and move process oriented environment towards ERP. You may see companies that put PLM as a global product development environment worldwide, while ERP is local and specific for business in the specific countries. So, I’m sure there are some patterns we can discover. However, try to establish this boarder will be heavily overused by marketing and competitive efforts and in the end will be disruptive for industry. I think PLM and ERP need to establish some common infrastructure and maybe be even open initiatives that can simplify the exchange of the information and process flowing between systems in the organization.

What is my conclusion today? PLM and ERP are a very complicated topic. There are multiple levels of influence starting from completely technical, moving to IT-related  and ending up with very emotional aspects. I hope Jim and I helped you to navigate and find your path in your future PLM/ERP projects.

Getting back to Jim’s post, there is one topic left- innovation. I want to touch it in separate discussion. I will call it my “Golden Eggs Innovation Strategy”. Stay tuned :) …

Best, Oleg

PS.

It was good to see the same day Joe Barkai (twitter @joebarkai) from IDC Insight joined our discussion with Jim on twitter and IDC blog: ERP vs. PLM: Debating The Wrong Question?

…So now we are debating PLM vs. ERP.  Some of these discussions have a very strong, and, in my opinion, incorrect undertone of IT architecture debate: who owns what data repository, where are the boundaries, what are the integration points, and so forth.  One blog discussion attempts to separate ERP as the “execution engine” from PLM, which is “innovation focused.”…

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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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Back to basics: PLM and ERP Integration

December 16, 2009

I want to finish my ‘back to basics’ set of posts with the topic of PLM and ERP integration. Staying in CAD/PDM/PLM related market for while, I have to say that this topic always was one heavily discussed during PLM implementation. First, I want to distance from discussion about benefits of PLM vs. ERP and how can ERP do PLM or opposite. Let assume we do have both PLM and ERP systems in place. What are options to integrate these systems we have and what is the efficiency of the proposed option.

1. No integration. Manual. People do it. This is a very simple option. Full stop. You think PLM+ERP is too complex or too expensive. You think people are cheap, and they can move data between two systems by hands. Not a bad one, until your designers are waiting for new Part Number from ERP for a couple of days or your manufacturing planning people getting EBOM once in a while.

2. Batch integration. This is in my view the most widely used type of integration. You understand that type information twice (or even more) in all systems is beyond of what you are ready to do in 21st century. So, your decision is to push information between both systems. It may happen in both directions, but for the most cases, I’ve seen a push BOM from PDM/PLM to ERP is the option company implement the most.

3. Direct integration. Next stop after “Batch integration”. Sometimes it comes after your experience with batch processes. You discovered that some business logic around batch processes is a good idea. Sometimes you need to make some validation or prompt user for a question. This is a time when you hire programmers or service company to develop this integration between “your PLM” and “your ERP”. Some PLM vendors offer “pre-packaged” integration. Despite claims of pre-packaged and out-of-the-box, these integrations never work without tuning, configuration and some additional customization. For many of the customers, this option is a compromise between “no integration” or “batch integration” and something they perceive as a more expensive option. For short term, this type of solution can be pretty good, and if you successfully manage complexity of integration, this will be, probably, your “final stop”. However, I see this type of solution as a problem with timer. In the end of the day, cost of this solution adjustment to your “next problem” will be too high.

4. Middleware based integration. Very popular option for end of 90s and beginning of 2000s. Why do you need to implement n-complete number of integration for your enterprise? You can just implement integration of your PLM (and other systems) to something called “middleware” (various TLA used and continue used for this – EAI, ESB…) and you are done. Integration middleware (such as BizTalk, WebSphere or others) can help you to map data and provide tools for business logic development. In addition to generic middleware/EAI/ESB, there are some vendors in the market that tuned their integration solution for PLM and ERP. In my view, these companies are getting premium price for their experience with PLM and ERP packages. You can consider it as a valid option too. My conclusion is that you need to go to various types of middleware and more complicated integration solution only if you understand what value your organization will get due to this significant investment. This option is robust, however, be prepared to pay the cost of middleware as well as keep experienced people or consulting company to deal with this complicated animal.  Don’t believe in magic and out-of-the-box solutions and your integration will be just fine.

5. Mashups and other Web-like technologies. This is not widely used option. Speaking precisely, this is even not “integration” in our traditional understanding. Mashup automatically will not provide you support for transferring of data between both systems. However, with growing amount of Web -related development, mashups become an interesting example of lean approach in data integration. Most of the mashups are web-client application that extracts data from a different web-sites (in our case it can be the web interface of your PLM and ERP systems) and present combined view on data. Originally developed for internet space, this option is getting some initial traction in enterprise too, but this is a topic for separate post. If you feel very innovative and your staff is experienced in Web technologies, you can try to experiment with mashups in your organization. Be prepared to be misunderstood by customers and management…

Note. I have to say that efficient PLM integration with ERP can affect your company decision with regards to deployment of PLM-related functions and in the end of the day, PLM system at all. So, choosing the right option to integrate you PLM with ERP can improve your decision with regards to PLM and sometime even with ERP implementation roadmap.

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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PLM Prompt: Integrated PLM and ERP – Killer Ideas or Controlled Innovation?

September 28, 2009

Picture 1Short prompt in the beginning of the week. I was reading post from BSW “Killer Ideas And Controlled Innovation: Why you need to integrate PLM and ERP?”. First of all, an idea of integrating PLM (back 15 years it was PDM) seems old. I remember myself in the early beginning of my data management activities around AutoCAD back in 1993, an idea of communication between design data management system and manufacturing systems was highly important. But, I think, this problem is still not resolved.

So, is it a killer idea? Or may be the successful approach in integrating PLM and ERP can bring real innovative future?

Just my thoughts.

Best, Oleg

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PLM vs. ERP: Demand for Business Process

September 2, 2009

Picture 1I want to start today with twitter quote “PLM vs ERP – ERP a transactional system, not suited to manage development of product, integration of all info such as ingredients”. Well, PLM/PDM vs. ERP discussion is old, and I remember it for the last 10-15 years or even more… However, I’d expect some changes in this non-stop confrontation.

The original capabilities of PLM and ERP came respectfully out of their business roots – CAD Design/Data Management for PLM and manufacturing transaction from MRP/MRPII/ERP. However, both domains had demands to grow and make an expansion in organizations. PLM is looking for attractive domains such as requirements, manufacturing, supply chain. ERP is interested to expand toward product development. Both system domains (PLM and ERP) are looking how to establish connected space for enterprise organization business. So, how to achieve it?

I think, very interesting is that both classes of systems are very in favor of business processes. Even if PLM and ERP have a different notion of business processes, I’d say Business Processes can provide good synergy between both systems. PLM traditionally focused on very high level of people involvement in processes. Human based and hybrid processes is something that PLM requires. On the opposite side, ERP is focusing on automation and streamline of processes in organizations.

I think vendors on both (PLM and ERP) sides need to look very pro-actively how adopt Business Process Management technologies. This will be the key to success in organizations. From a technological standpoint, maturity of standards like BPMN and BPEL can provide a solid technological foundation for this work. But, at the same time, both PLM and ERP need to worry about growing capabilities of dedicated BPM vendors. They can take an attractive $$$ from aged PLM and ERP providers and establish strong BPM leadership in organization. I wrote about this in my previous PLM prompt.

So, what is my conclusion today? Business process have strong demand from both sides- PLM and ERP. The road toward successful BPM implementation can be very bumpy for PLM and ERP. Need to watch it out. Multiple vendors can still business and establish success business in front of enterprise behemoths.

What do you think about it? What are your practices with regards to process management in organization?

Best, Oleg

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Who wants to manage Product Data?

June 23, 2009

One of the ambitious goals PLM puts in front of strategists, implementors and developers is to manage a product lifecycle from early on (requirements, initial product designs) and until the end of product lifecycle towards manufacturing, supply chain and disposal processes. At first glance, it sounds like a great idea, as it looks like PLM is on a fundamentally unique track of providing this solution to a customer…. but, here is the problem. I think that PLM is not really unique when it comes to the company’s landscape, and there are many different systems in organization claim to manage product data.

So, I decided to cluster a few tools from different areas to outline who are these “PLM” competitors to data in an organization. So far, I found five fundamental product domains.

  1. Content Management. This is company document storage. Most of the companies in this area are working primarily on documents, the ability to put them on the shelf, manage their access and lifecycles.  Since most of product lifecycle information in the end becomes a “document”  I’d put this companies on ‘Red Alert J…
  2. ERP /MRP. This is a traditional neighbor and competitor. PLM and ERP/MRP have been “competing” against each other for many years. I discussed this issue many times on blog. I don’t predict a “system expansion”. Many ERP vendors have a solution with a specific PLM flavor. We can see them and what they offer on the market.  These systems can evolve and claim to manage even more product data in the future.
  3. Business Process Management. This is a newly emerged trend. In my view, the BPM market is relatively small in manufacturing, and therefore BPM tools will feel they need to work out their potential in  PLM cases as well.
  4. MDM – Master Data Management has a relatively good adoption rate by big enterprise customers. In my view, as MDM cannot scale down, I’d provide limited importance to being able to compete with PLM. Indeed, we need to pay specific attention when we plan for enterprise PLM.
  5. Collaboration Tools and Applications. Hot topic. People are looking how to collaborate better. Various collaboration tools are looking at how to improve data management solutions too. With the introduction of Google Wave and the expanded future offering of MS SharePoint 2010, collaboration tools definitely can expand their offering to a more specific PLM space. There is a potential danger from the low end.

So, how will PLM be able to compete with these systems successfully?  This is a big question – which is why I’m asking for your advice and feedback here, as well as find out what else you have in mind.

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