PLM Collaboration: From Old Concepts to a New Reality

July 19, 2011

I wanted to touch the topic of “collaboration” today. The term collaboration is very broad. Hit Google to search for “collaboration” and you will see Google counter jumps to ~240’000’000 results in 0.2 sec. The word “collaboration” has lots of meaning. Navigate your browser to the Wikipedia link about collaboration and you will see all of them – from arts to business and technology, including kibbutz, military, business and some historical meaning coming from a second world war. I found the following one as the most appropriate in the context of engineering and manufacturing software:

Due to the complexity of today’s business environment, collaboration in technology encompasses a broad range of tools that enable groups of people to work together including social networking, instant messaging, team spaces, web sharing, audio conferencing, video, and telephony. Broadly defined, any technology that facilitates linking of two or more humans to work together can be considered a collaborative tool. Wikipedia, Blogs, even Twitter are collaborative tools. Many large companies are developing enterprise collaboration strategies and standardizing on a collaboration platform to allow their employees, customers and partners to intelligently connect and interact.

Now, let’s move to PDM, PLM and other “sorts” of collaboration. Engineering software (including PDM/PLM) is practicing active usage of word “collaboration” for the last decade. For some reasons, marketing fellows decided that the term is selling well. So, they oversold…

These days, “collaboration” means almost nothing. Collaborative PDM (cPDM), Collaborative PLM (cPLM), Collaborative… Engineers actually hesitate to say “I’m collaborating”. One of the most strong opinions, I’ve heard about collaboration came to me in the comments to my previous blog post about collaboration:

I work as an engineer. So after seeing this social trend proposed for CAD/CAM/CAE/PLM I cannot bear anymore and have only one thing to say! This is all bullshit and we engineers do not need it! Let me explain a of course…

First of all in a typical environment the only person to whom I want to collaborate is another engineer and I will come to him ,or email, with direct problem or issue to seek advice or help. In most cases he is even sitting in the next room to me. I do not want to collaborate with all the people in the company, I do not want to collaborate with people who do not understand what is the difference between bolt and nut, and I will not :) ! And later constantly get email updates that new answer is posted, this is worse than SPAM! I do not want to collaborate with PR, Marketing, Manufacturing etc in an endless thread of useless suggestions about the fastener type, color, button, shape etc. Because all these things should be defined already in specification, if they are not and you still have to ask all that from the people mentioned above, this means that this project will lead to a disaster and will be a huge money drain. Management should act immediately if these things are happening in a company

New Social Way

Last two years, we are facing a massive influence of social networking and other internet-related technologies (i.e. Web 2.0) on what before we call collaboration. One of the most “passionate” about that - Vuuch is proposing to stop usage of word “collaboration” in the context of collaboration software. Vuuch proposes a very interesting term called “Enterprise Social System” to explain the technology to revolutionize the way engineers can collaborate (oops.. work together) based on the more efficient contextual information sharing. Navigate to 1 hour length webinar which will take you step-by-step into a new “social way” of working together. When I think, Vuuch is really innovating by trying to find a new way to solve the old problem, I found the following passage from Vuuch blog a bit provoking.

But we never use the C(ollaboration) word to describe Vuuch. In our minds, there’s a bright line between the capabilities and usage patterns in Vuuch and a legacy system like SharePoint. And we understand that until the conventional wisdom catches with Vuuch, many people need to use transitional terminology to feel comfortable.

It explains, actually, why Vuuch is using word collaboration internally in the software:

The Reality – People Just Want To Drink a Beer

I can see these days are really going to change a lot in the way people collaborate or just simply working together. The changes are coming from a complete new set of technologies and tools we have at our disposal to communicate and share information. Here is my short list – mobile, communication and data sharing. It becomes much easy these days to communicate. Think about a mobile device you keep in your hands. Your ability to contact people changed completely for the last 3-4 years. It is true not only from the standpoint of capability, but also from the cost standpoint. Communication, including broadband web access, video conferencing and tele-presence allows us to talk with people remotely almost without any problems. Finally, data sharing technologies were improved dramatically. In my post – PLM Online Data Sharing: From Spreadsheets to Databases, I discussed various products and technologies that can help you to share data. Here is a part of one comment I’ve got related to data sharing capabilities of Google Docs: The bigger advantage is total freedom of device…your laptop, an associate’s laptop, your phone or iPad… Just look at what college students are doing with cloud technology…a good barometer of what they will expect once in the workforce.

What is my conclusion? I think, collaboration is a word that will continue to live with us forever. However, technologies, product development and marketing will move towards something simpler and well understood. I think, future engineers will share screen, part, bill of materials to work together without thinking about how collaborative or social a particular software is performing. This is my view on the reality of collaborative software. What is your take?

Best, Oleg

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PLM and Cloud – Hold the Promise?

December 18, 2010

Cloud is trending. This is not a first time I’m touching the topic of cloud. During the past days, I had lots of healthy debates about different topics around PLM, Technologies and Innovation. Surprisingly, the topic of SaaS and Cloud didn’t come much into this discussion. Israel wasn’t cloudy during the day of COFES Israel event. Maybe it was a reason. Who knows? Autodesk R&D Israel and Dassault Solidworks presentations mentioned the influence of cloud, but only from the standpoint of mobility and device diversification. Originally, I wanted to spend some time speaking with PLM+ in Israel – a startup company working on a new on-demand solution for PLM. Unfortunately, a startup business and events are not always going together. I decided to spend some time and out my thoughts about PLM, Cloud, On-Demand and market demands.

PLM and Enterprise Software

What happens with enterprise software these days. Think about 2000s. The corporate life in 2010 is not much different from how it was in 2000. Multiple applications, interoperability problem, tons of Excel files and people who need to get a job done. Back in 2001, companies accepted long roadmaps. It is a different story now. Two factors become the most critical in Enterprise Software – the cost of implementation and cost of change. Another thing is a demand for simplicity. Simple is always winning. The last ten years of consumer software revolution created a huge demand for a change in enterprise software. PLM is strongly associated with two words – complex and expensive. Mindshare PLM leaders as well as smaller PLM vendors are reacting. You can see PTC Creo, Aras Open Source and some other initiatives are trying to break a perception of complex and expensive PLM software. It is also interesting to see how Autodesk is making an effort to solve PLM problems without calling themselves PLM.

PLM and Cloud Promise

People have different understanding of what cloud means. I can probably break it into three main category. 1- Software available from the cloud (i.e. Salesforce). 2- Access to data anywhere (i.e. Dropbox). 3- Elastic computational power (i.e. AWS). I can see companies are trying to embrace cloud technologies. They do it differently. Software access for the cloud is a place where companies are hold the promise (i.e. Dassault cloud offering planned in 2011) or experimenting with tools (i.e. Autodesk Lab projects, including acquisition of Israeli Visual Tao and creating AutoCAD WS). The security conversation is dominant when you are talking about data on the cloud. The advantages of data access are obvious. However, regulation and company concerns, even if it looks like a red-herring, are still dominant in these discussions.

Cloud and Cost

Will cloud solution be cheaper? This is an answer press, analysts and users are trying to get from vendors. However, there is no straightforward answer on the side of vendors. I think, one of the main reasons is a very unclear situation related to the marginal cost of cloud services. Big cloud players, such as IBM, Amazon, HP, Google and IBM are playing with buzzwords- cloud servers, private cloud, data centers. Software vendors are experimenting with all of them. I don’t see much clarity in this space.

PLM and SaaS

If you think, about PLM and SaaS (or OnDemand), you need to put your hands on the experience of Arena Solution. Re-branded bom.com, started during the late 1990s, Arena is providing PLM on demand solution for the last decade. One of their struggles was to provide an appropriate connection to design systems. As a result they focus on industries less dependent on heavy CAD experience. PTC and IBM also made some experiments in this space. I found interesting to learn about Autodesk BuzzSaw experience (even if this not presented as PLM solution, the SaaS experience is interesting). To analyze the advantages of PLM on Demand, I’d suggest to think about the potential benefits of SaaS and try to apply it into PLM space.

Anywhere access - this is an obvious benefit. Gmail is a good analogy. Is it possible to have an access to a corporate application using VPN tunnels and other channels? I think, yes. So, it will not play as a significant differentiation factor, especially for big companies.

No capital investment and cost - this is a big thing. The usage of a subscription model is a significant financial benefit. However, only if it comes to a comparable cost to a solution to be implemented on a premise. Companies will be easy to make their own calculations and decision about buy vs. rent.

Monthly payment obligation – this benefit is only true if you make a monthly contract. Many SaaS/OnDemand solutions, in fact, are signing yearly contracts. In this case, the benefit of payment is diminished within the time. In addition, data is another element that can decrease an effect of “pay-as-you-go” solution. If you decide to move, you need to keep an existing system at least until you transfer all your data between systems. SaaS/OnDeman model is also a potential data locker with a more complicated way to access the data for export/import purposes.

Faster implementation – most of SaaS solutions are very simple. Therefore, fast implementation speed is obvious. However, it is complicated in PLM. Nobody is running their manufacturing shop in the same way. The ability to provide a match to customer needs is a key. The balance of flexibility and OOTB solution is an easy, but a very complicated answer. OOTB decreases a potential list of customers. Flexibility can also increase an overal solution cost.

Scale-Up and Efficiency - this is an obvious benefit for companies that have no abilities to invest in data centers and hosted servers. The ability to raise a number of users can be a nice feature. However, the question of cost will be probably a key one to decide if it is worthwhile.

What is my conclusion? Cloud is an interesting these days. It provides a multi-dimensional opportunity for customers and business to optimize the solution. Can it solve main problems of manufacturing companies looking how to get the job done? Probably yes. However, not in a straightforward way. I can see a cloud as a very dynamic place. To be able to provide a solution fast, react on customer feedback is probably one of the key factors to success in this space. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Live Blog: No PLM, PLM, Beyond PLM…

November 6, 2010

Yesterday, I had the unique opportunity to participate in the webinar with a very intriguing name – Why Hasn’t PLM Taken Over the World? You can listen to the recorded podcast of this webinar. Navigate your browser to the following link to listen for the record and to follow Cadalyst On The Edge series. Actually, that was’t a webinar in a traditional view. It was something I called "Live Blog". Few years ago, when I started my PLM Think Tank blog, my idea was to have a forum where people can discuss PLM problems and related issues in an open way without marketing cliche and sales pitches. My impression from Cadalyst On The Edge was exactly the same. It was a live conversation between Chad Jackson, Ben Eadie, Chris Williams and myself lead by Nancy Johnson of Cadalyst.

Lots of questions were asked during the webinar. Here are few very important onces: what is PLM Technology? How manufacturing companies perceive PLM? How PLM implemented and what are the most important challenges? What was done well by PLM and what are the most critical failures? I hope you’ll find time to listen. This conversation made me think about PLM trajectories over the past decade. I decided to put them in the following perspective: No PLM, PLM, Beyond PLM.

No PLM
If I’m thinking about early beginning, I’m getting back to the time when engineering software companies worked on resolving of very critical data management challenges for design systems. The TLAs running back that time were about Engineering Data Management, Engineering Document Management, Technical Data Management and, finally, Product Data Management (PDM). All these systems were about how to manage different engineering resources, mostly drawing and documents. The main focus of these systems was about how to get document and other resources under control. The biggest challenges were about how to fit diverse requirements of manufacturing companies. The systems in "no PLM" domain moved from very not flexible rigid systems that required compilation in order to make an enhancement and ended up with flexible modeling systems running on Windows platform and lately on the Web.

PLM
I can see two main drivers standing behind the industry turn to PLM. First is the increased technological potential of data management. The experience and development of more flexible systems managing engineering data created an opportunity to have more data controlled by the systems. The second one is the success of ERP systems. ERP created the use case for successful management of business processes in the organization. The evolution of MRP, MRPII and other business systems shown the way process management can be implemented for business. Engineering and manufacturing software vendors recognized the opportunity to repeat this case for product development. Based on these two use cases, companies started to form a "PLM vision". During the last decade, vendors developed a very significant foundation for product development business processes. ERP companies also recognized the opportunity to cover this domain as well. It resulted in software development and company acquisitions.

Beyond PLM
This is a part of PLM story is under development, for the moment. PLM industry learned lots of lessons during the past decade implementing PLM systems for a very diverse set of customers. With many success stories PLM gathered for these years, PLM implementations faced significant challengers related to the complexity of implementation, usability and cost of change. The ability to replicate repeatedly business process management for product development is the biggest challenge PLM is facing. This is the main cause of complexity of enterprise PLM implementations and difficulties in taking PLM to a mainstream manufacturing road. I can see few interesting trends happening to PLM companies and PLM industry. Vertical integration and portfolio differentiation. Focus on special values such as simulation, visualization and 3D. Catching up with social technologies. This is not a complete list. However, I think, it reflects some major shifts that happen now in PLM community.

What is my conclusion? Understanding of enterprise IT trends is extremely important for today’s PLM mindshare leaders. Otherwise, they can miss the point of industry transformation. Openness, Socializing, Consumerization, Applification – this is my short list of things that need to be counted for the next 10 years. I had a chance to read the following interesting article – Microsoft Looking Like An End-Stage Company. A good wake-up call. Just my opinion.

Best, Oleg

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PLM: Lipstick on a Pig or Missed Opportunity?

September 10, 2010

I had a chance to read AESSIS blog post – Why Some People Don’t Like PLM?Graham started absolutely important discussion about mainstream adoption of PLM in the organizations. I had a chance to write about this in the past. Navigate your browser on the following link – Complexity Kills or 3 ways to improve PLM adoptions. I specially liked this passage from Graham’s post:

…I think the bottom line is that PLM requires people to change their behaviours. This is hard to do. Just look around you. People continue to do all kinds of things that are bad for themselves and others. And managing information poorly, not sharing it, not organising it etc…seems pretty benign compared with some things I could mention… and yet it costs organisations billions. People don’t want to change despite obvious benefits to the wider organisation.

The last statement is just brilliant – "people don’t want to change". However, the next conclusion got my blood boiling somewhat. Graham is proposing to think about "incentive" for people to start using PLM. This is a place where I think we have a kind of disagreement with Graham. So, I decide to put some thoughts about that below.

Enterprise Software: Love and Hate?

Have you had a chance to hear the following statement? – "Enterprise software is not fun. We came here to work and not to have fun". Let me guess what is that about? It is probably coming from some kind of enterprise software implementations. Enterprise software consistently sold to executives and IT and not to end users. Then, obvious statement came – you should not love this software, just do your job! However, I see this paradigm slowly changing over the last decade. Usability started to play a more and more important role. Users started to dump consistently buggy and not useful software, and vendors started to think about how to make their enterprise portfolios nicer.

PLM Idea vs. PLM Reality

I can see PLM as a step child of enterprise software. PLM wasn’t born as a pure "enterprise package". Predecessors of PLM – CAD and PDM, had deep roots in engineering and R&D departments. Competition brought the usability revolution to CAD software first. PLM didn’t get there… yet? The original PLM idea was good. To provide a way to manage information about products on all stages of product development. The implementation reality was different. Engineering and product development is a complex field. One size doesn’t fit all. Vendors failed to create simple and easy to implement software. Complexity of PLM environments and implementations made people dislike the changes that always coming with PLM.

Quality, Incentives and Opportunity

I’m thinking about a quality. Something wrong happens with a quality of enterprise software. PLM is just a very good example. Time ago, the quality of cars was awful. It created an opportunity and we got much better cars during the last 10-15 years. Similar things happened with consumer software and the internet. You run away from a low quality website, stop using low quality phones and other consumer software. Nobody is thinking about how to create an incentive to use a bad consumer software. Why we think it should be acceptable for PLM or enterprise software? I think, real incentive is an opportunity to create a better software.

What is my conclusion? Last then years were prime time for "consumer IT". Think about how much was done during these years in the internet, office applications, telecommunication, etc.? In my view, we are coming to the point when we need to start counting next ten years of "enterprise IT". Next ten years will put enterprise IT "on fire", so in 2020 we’ll not need to find incentives to use buggy PLM enterprise software. Will we call it PLM? I don’t know…

Best, Oleg

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iPad and Enterprise PLM

July 28, 2010


iPad sales are skyrocketing. I read “Global CIO: Top 10 Reasons Steve Jobs & Apple Are The Future Of IT”. Take a look and make your opinion. My first impression was – CIO readers are those who potentially can face the end of their carrier if future Apple’s movement into enterprise organization will be so successful. A very interesting quote, in my view:

“The iPad, very surprisingly in the first quarter, during the first 90 days we already have 50% of the Fortune [100] that are deploying or testing the iPad. This is incredible” (emphasis added). Yes indeed—that is incredible,—particularly for a company that doesn’t actively court corporate business. So folks—don’t get caught way behind the trend!

The Global CIO article made me think about how enterprise PLM can solve some of their fundamental problems by leveraging iPad trends in the enterprise. Among the list of the most important enterprise PLM challenges is to make PLM systems to be available for the broad range of the users in the enterprise. PLM generally failed to achieve that because of PLM system complexity and PLM price point. Users voted to corporate emails, Microsoft Excels and lately Microsoft SharePoint to help them to deliver PLM IP to the end users beyond an engineering department. Here are my 3 points why I think iPad may help enterprise PLM to achieve their original goals.

Coolness Factor
iPad can definitely unlock “coolness factor” and help PLM to deliver their message to end users. Business management, mobile users, manufacturing shop floor – this is my short list for the first users to adopt future iPad PLM apps. Some application restructuring is required, indeed.

Usability
PLM continuously criticized for their complexity and lack of usability. Following some Apple standard may help PLM to clean their application misbehavior in this space. Everything PLM vendors need to do is just following Apple development standards. Sounds crazy, isn’t it?

Pricing Strategies
The price becomes an issue. When complexity is kicked out, the issue of commodity can become an issue. The PLM differentiation strategies will stop work to protect PLM vendors in their high-margin software model.

What is my conclusion? I can see iPad can be bootlegged into enterprise organizations much sooner and faster than we can expect. If history repeats again, it can be done in the same way PC does it in the beginning of 1980s. Is it a potential danger for existing software outfit and specifically enterprise PLM? Certainly not. Their core business is protected by data locking strategies. However, it can finally lock down their potential growth if organizations will move fast into iPad infusion rally. Time to think fast, in my view. Watching TeamCenter iPad video, I can say some of the PLM companies recognized this potential. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Open Source PLM Factoids

June 30, 2010

I’d like to continue discussion of Openness and PLM (see my yesterday post – Closed Thoughts about PLM Openness) with the discussion about Open Source. Open Source is one of the questions that always raised last time when it comes to the discussion of Openness. I got to read an interesting article – Being acquired is the best thing for a FOSS project from Network World Blog. They presented an interesting perspective on a particular niche of Open Source. The following numbers caught my interest – Sourceforge hosts about 7,000 security projects. Daniel says, “From these 7K only 10% will survive; they seem to die quickly.”  I made me think what is the right formula for Open Source in PLM?  Yoann from Prodeos wrote in his post (in French)  PLM=PLM = BPM + ECM + PM + CMII + … (if standards == true). His idea of various component syndication seems to me interesting (I just hope my French was good enough to understand it with the help of Google Translate). All these together made me think about the following aspects of PLM and Open Source:

Open Source Openness
This one is an important. Open Source imposes openness and democracy. I think, a portion of openness will be a good addition to today’s PLM business. Open Source can provide a different flavor of PLM implementations. However, the discussion about what means Open Source and how it will go beyond just providing free licenses.

Open Source Communities
This element is a integral portion of any open source projects. This is what I call “a life indicator” for the open source. If you have a working community, an open source project will have a future. Therefore, wiliness of people to be involved is important. Multiple projects can bring even more interest into development of communities. More projects in this space can create a viral effect on the future development of Open Source options for PLM.

Founding Companies
I think, commercial companies play a significant role in the development of Open Source projects. We all know about the role of IBM, HP and others. I think, role of founding companies is important. However, Open Source needs to be a “development community” project first and only after to become part of the commercial company. Aras, as a company associated with PLM and Open Source, can play an interesting role in this space.

Open Source Enterprise
This is not a simple question. In my view, Open Source was established mostly as “development projects”. Enterprise is different from many aspects- business, support, customer orientation. If a community of people involved into the open source PLM projects will grow, I can see two potential routes for PLM Open Source to enterprises: 1/IT development project; 2/Commercialization by a particular software vendor.

What is my conclusion? Open Source and PLM are still “Terra incognita“. We can see and hear lots of opinions, numbers, prospects. The key question today is how to develop open source community projects in PLM and how to make them connected to other open source projects related to enterprise software. A potenal candidate can be, for example, Drupal. This can be an interesting path for Open Source in the enterprise. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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The Future Of PLM Walmarting

June 18, 2010

Say “PLM” to anyone, and you hear the words “complex” and “expensive”. However, thinking about trajectories of different technologies, I came to the conclusion that it always introduced as something very expensive and then going down to become cheaper and, in the end, even free. It was a story of so many technological inventions in many industries. There are many outside of PLM examples. The most valuable insider’s stories related to the evolution of CAD systems. Even in the data management domain, we can definitely see a trend to move from expensive custom-built PDM systems to windows-based mid-priced solutions. It gave a certain push in the adoption level and allowed to “non-Boeing” customers to come and taste these products and technologies.

The Parallel History of CAD/PLM and Walmart
Let’s take an unusual look on how companies and product can grow within time. Let’s take a look first on the very interesting video of WalMarts growth across United States from 1964 until 2007. I think this video is amazing and shows viral WalMart distribution. You can take a look on the interactive map following this link.

Now let’s take a look on the following framgment. “This video is a TV show made about the software Ivan Sutherland developed in his 1963 thesis at MIT’s Lincoln Labs, “Sketchpad, A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System”, described as one of the most influential computer programs ever written. This work was seminal in Human-Computer Interaction, Graphics and Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs), Computer Aided Design (CAD), and contraint/object-oriented programming“. These are definite roots of CAD and PLM.

The Future Is PLM Walmarting
In my view, there is a very interesting paradox related to PLM. I can see Product Lifecycle Management ideas as a vision and practical guidance about how to manage product from their entire life. These ideas are getting good acceptance from many people in the organizations. At the same time, as soon as discussion is going towards software and vendors, I can hear much more negative context about what PLM can and cannot do. Here is my point – to walmart PLM! It needs to be done easy, cheaper, simpler. It needs to be open and available. It needs to solve initially the subset of problems that relevant to everybody and not requires implementation time.

What is my conclusion today? I love Wal-Mart’s mission statement: “To give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same thing as rich people“. I’d like to think about a direction toward the future of PLM – To give all engineers the chance to buy and use the same software as Boeing, Toyota, Honda, Airbus… I don’t think it is about people and methodology. They will not learn how to use complicated software. This is about software…

Just my thought.
Best, Oleg

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My Trip In The PLM Time Machine 1987

May 7, 2010

You can find this post as something unusual. I decided to jump in my PLM Think Tank Time Machine in… 1987 and see what people were thinking about PLM 25 years ago. In order to accomplish this trip, I took the following book: How To Integrate CAD/CAM Systems by William D Engelke at General Motors and EDS Corporation.

Well, in 1987 Product Lifecycle Management has a different name. ICC (Integrated CAD/CAM)… I’m not sure, this is the only name used 25 years ago. However, in my view it reflected lots of the terms and ideas we are discussing today during our PLM strategy’s talks.

Databases Types
The problem of different databases (or how we call it now – data repositories or silos) are explained very clear. Geometric library /databases, Attribute Database, Released Design, Manufacturing Design. If you can see the association with today’s systems is very clear, in my view. CAD, PDM, ERP fits into this space. The biggest PLM discussion about EBOM vs. MBOM sees to me straightforward. It is just different databases. The importance of the access to multiple type of the product, engineering and manufacturing data stated very clear already on the front page:

Change Cost Implication

This problem is one of the most important we are discussing these days. The early change will cost less in production. Therefore, early availability of manufacturing BOM as well as parallel design and manufacturing work are simply ‘must do’ for the efficient process management and overall cost control.

Turnkey Systems

I found a very interesting summary related to Turnkey Systems (in my view, this is what we call today – Out-of-the-box solutions). It seems to me the position was very clear back in 1987: “Nobody runs shop quite the same way you do, and it would be unreasonable in most cases, to expect your company to change its design sequence, communication flows, design release methods, and so forth, to conform to the requirements of a turnkey system“. I found this statement very interesting, and I think, creators of Best Practices, Industry Solutions and Out-of-the box systems need to complete their homework before rushing market with a next wave of ready-to-go solutions.

What is my conclusion after the trip in PLM time machine? I found 1987 years ICC (Integrated CAD CAD) as a very decent PLM. Lots of core PLM ideas such as design to manufacturing, early cost evaluation, integration of product design and manufacturing information flow, lead time impact and analyzes are sounds like completely up to date. Marketing did a great job adding lots of bells and whistles during last years, so I found PLM Time Machine learning very interesting and remarkable.

If you don’t want to buy old book, you can take a deeper look on PLM model 1987 using Google Books. It gives you an access to almost 1/3 of the book content.

Best, Oleg

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PLM And New Types Of User Experience

May 5, 2010

User experience is important. It comes with all cool gadgets, Web 2.0 websites and iPhone apps. I think, people started to understand it even in enterprise organizations. I can hear lots of people voices asking when enterprise tools will become cooler than today. The obvious answer of PLM and other related vendors for many years was 3D. Everything looks better in 3D – visualization, animation, etc. I want to focus on few examples of trends that can potentially introduce new types of user experience.

Augmented Reality
The latest trend in 3D space is augmenting reality. It helps us to mix virtual and real 3D spaces into a single one. The nice thing about it is that it helps you to realize the potential of your product before it even comes to prototyping and manufacturing. I had chance to see many examples of augmented reality. One of the best ones is iQ Toyota. The impressive piece of this video is how you can create a virtual disassemble of the car.

3D Working Environment
This example is actually coming from the BumpTop acquisition Google made this week. BumpTop is a nice idea simulating real 3D environment on your desktop. And it is specially interesting, since the existing desktops remain unchanged the last 10-15 years, and it sounds like a potential change in this place. I can imaging it coming to the product design environment too.

Voice Collaborative Communication
In my view, this is the most unusual one. I’ve been watching Siri - assistant application since it was introduced last year on iPhone. This is a nice example of collaborative application that interact with user in a very unusual and intuitive manner. I posted about this apps few mounts ago in my article – What Are You Questions PLM Virtual Assistant? So, this company was acquired by Apple earlier this week, which means for me Apple is investing in more intuitive ways of collaboration and communication. I think, this is also something that can fit very well today’s product development environment.

So, what is my conclusion? I can definitely see something new is coming in user experience and communication. The trends in  communication and collaboration made by non-PLM software manufacturers can outrun design and engineering software vendors. PLM vendors are dealing with a huge amount of legacy code and legacy implementations. However, this is a time to think about what can bring next potential leap in collaborative manufacturing, engineering and design software.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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PLM Model: Granularity, Bottom-Up and Change

May 3, 2010

Few weeks ago, I had chance to post about PLM Data Model. I think, PLM space has a real lack of discussions about data modeling. It seems to me, PLM vendors and developers are too focused on process management, user experience and other catchy trends. At the same time, everybody forgot that data model is bread and butter of every PDM/PLM implementation. I want to open some debates about what I see missing in current PLM data models.

Granularity
I’m very happy, this word started to catch up attention of people. It came in multiple discussions I had last time with some of the colleagues in the CAD/PDM/PLM software domain. Chis mentioned in it his Vuuch (www.blog.vuuch.com) blog. Al Dean also had chance to talk about it on his Develop3D (www.develop3d.com). One of the problems in PLM is a diversity of implementation and needs. PLM tools implemented lots of functional goodies over the past decade. However, the customization becomes a mess. It looks to me, current data model organization is outdated in most of PLM systems these days.  The last revolution PDM/PLM made was about 15 years ago when the notion of “a flexible data model” was introduced. Today, the next step should be done.

Bottom-up
How to build an efficient data model for PLM implementation? How to build a model that answers to the specific customer needs. Current vendor’s proposal is to make a selection from the list of all possible “modules”. It comes in a form of “best practices”. In my view, it is really “bad” practices. Selecting of big data model chunks put too many model constraints and create compatibility problems. The idea of bottom-up data modeling relies on the capability to define very granular pieces of data and grow bottom up in building a model that reflects customer needs.

Cost of Change
What is the most killing factor in today’s PDM/PLM software. In my view, it is cost of change. PLM models become not flexible and keep lots of dependencies on PLM system implementations. The future, in my view, is building very granular functional services alongside with the bottom up data model schema. It will allow to decrease cost of change, reduce dependencies between components and in the end, reduce a cost of change.

What is my conclusion? I think, technology matters. Without thinking about technologies, PLM won’t be able to make a next leapfrog. It becomes urgent. PLM model is a natural starting point to improve PLM implementation.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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Posted by olegshilovitsky

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