PLM and Seamless Multi-lingual Collaboration

February 10, 2011

Global environment is the reality of today’s business. Engineering and manufacturing organizations are located in multiple places worldwide. To help people to collaborate despite lanugage barriers is a very important goal. In the past, multi-language support in software was limited to providing versions of software working in different languages. However, in case of product development and manufacturing the language support cannot be limited only to language localization. These days focus shifts towards something I call “language transparency”.

Language Transparency Tools

Almost a year ago, I posted about some of my ideas related to seamless translation ideas. Navigate to the following link to read this historical blog post and associated comments. In my view, Google Wave, which I used as a primer of possible technology, can provide a kind of language transparency infrastructure. On Demand Translation tools will play an important role in streamlining collaboration in product development and manufacturing organization.

Another example is mobile. Navigate your browser to QuestVisual to learn more. This augmented reality like application enables you to provide seamless translations of fragments of texts around you. I found it pretty cool.

Multi-lungual PLM: Who Cares?

Few days ago, I’ve seen the announcement coming from Dassault Systems – Dassault Systemes Chooses SDL Translation Management Systems to Provide a Unified Translation Platform. SDL is the outfit focusing on localization and translation. I wonder if DS is planning some cool multi-lingual features to be supported in V6. Collaborative tools like V6 have a potential to work across multiple organizations, divisions and departments. The competition becomes stronger in PLM world. If you follow announcements you can see few of them such as Daimler decides for NX, Austin Martin decides for NX and BMW decides for V6. All of them shows a very strong competition going between mindshare PLM vendors.

What is my conclusion? Business is going global. To break language barriers becomes an important objective for manysoftware providers. Having technologies that can provide a seamless integration level is extremely powerful, in my view. It can provide a good differentiation feature for global deployment. What is more important is that such type of tools is very people-oriented and can increase a perceived customer value. I’d be interested to learn more about how various PLM tools support multi-lingual collaboration. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Freebie. No vendor paid me to write this blog.

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PLM Wave In a Box?

November 29, 2010

Google Wave Dead. Long live Wave In a Box (WIAB). Navigate your browser to the following link and you will learn that despite terrible things that happened to Google Wave and the Google’s team in charge of this product, it is still alive and even have some interesting turns ahead.

Google Wave and Apache Incubator

According to publications, a new Apache-incubator proposal would see an open source version of Google Wave technology. Initially, community expects to rely on the support of vendors like Novel, SAP and some others. If you read the following article in PCWorld, you can learn Wave has many supporters, such as US Navy and some others. Take a look on a Wiki page of Apache Incubator Proposal.

"Apache Wave is the project where wave technology is developed at Apache. Wave in a Box (WIAB) is the name of the main product at the moment, which is a server that hosts and federates waves, supports extensive APIs, and provides a rich web client. This project also includes an implementation of the Wave Federation protocol, to enable federated collaboration systems (such as multiple interoperable Wave In a Box instances)."

Catch PLM Waves?

I can see a good chance PLM companies can rely on WIAB to improve their collaborative capabilities. The technology is there and hopefully will be developed by a community. This can be an interesting turn, especially for companies with Open Source mindset. Almost year and half ago, I wrote 6 reasons why Google Wave can change PLM Collaboration. I think, the need is still here. If I’m thinking about companies like Vuuch innovating around new forms of collaboration or Aras Enterprise Open Source model, I can see some benefits for them to leverage Wave technology. It can be an interesting to compare a possibility of Vuuch/Wave vs. PTC/SharePoint from the standpoint of functionality and cost.

What is my conclusion? Open Source projects are trending nowadays. Here and there, I can see examples of Open Source innovation. In my view, Google Wave can be a good platform to boost collaboration. Time will show if companies in PLM domain will recognize the opportunity behind WIAB. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

2 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, Google | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
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PLM Wave Or “Good Enough” Collaboration

August 5, 2010

Six months ago, I posted “Collaboration Trends or Why I Stopped Using Google Wave?“. After Google’s announcement about Google Wave termination yesterday, I read it again. Actually, I found it very consistent to my feeling back in January 2010. Here is my top 4 list of Google Wave problems:  (1) Isolation. (2) Another application to run. (3) Documents and other Google App integration. (4) Inbox management.

In all streams of information related to Google’s decision about the wave, the following tweet got my top score. If you remember, Google Wave supposed to re-invent email. During all of my experiments with Google Wave, I wanted to bring it back to my email. Does it mean email is so good?

Email and “Good Enough” Principle

How many times when you asked a developer about a particular feature, you’ve heard the following answer – “but, this is cool…”? I agree, coolness is a definitely important factor. However, when it comes to some zones in our life, coolness is not what we expect. There is something I call – mainstream communication. Email is part of this. You want to have a predictable result from sending email. Email works in a seamless way. Email is the one, I need. Yes, it is 20 years old with almost no change. But sometimes, it is simply “good enough”.

“False Start” and Collaboration Demands

I’m sure you are familiar with the term – “false start“. I think we have a sort of false start in many efforts related to collaboration. When it comes to phone calls, chat, video, screen sharing it seems to me reasonable. However, sometime, we need to take a breath and… think. Not to collaborate, but think. Therefore, one of the Google Wave features, such as, “typing together” – a cool Google Wave feature, can be considered as a ‘false start’. And this is not the only one…

PLM Collaboration

Some of  my initial thoughts about PLM collaboration in the context of what happened with Google Wave. I see lots of them are ‘false starts’. It is related to multiple situations when “collaborate” is a goal in products we are making. However, don’t forget – collaboration is just a tool to get results. So, to have it email like, maybe not a bad idea at all.

What is my conclusion? One of Google’s principles of “good enough” solution worked against Google with Wave. Email is good enough. There is no need for Wave. Despite the face, people hate email, I think, most of the people are feeling very comfortable with an email solution and new “sparkling” Google Wave innovation was only a new toy to play with. Users voted for proven old fashioned email to stay in their comfort zone. I think, there are some lessons learned to all PLM innovators in the “social collaboration” space. I will come with some of my thoughts about that later.

Best, Oleg

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PLM Collaboration and Technological Splashes

May 18, 2010

Technology and products are not always going together. What is the most fascinating to me is to see how technological splashes create future in products. Last year I had chance to discuss Google Wave. It was a completely technological vision with some fuzzy product examples. In my post, last year, I outlined 6 reasons why Google Wave will change PLM collaboration . For me, it was a completely technological opportunity.

In the end of 2009, I found a very interesting development made by SAP. The project code name 12sprints was presented as a SAP’s Web 2.0 future. The focus of this product is interesting. It stated to provide a collaborative decision making tool. “It’s not just a place where things get discussed. It’s where things get done. Invite the right people. Bring in the pertinent data. And choose the most informed course of action with the help of pre-defined, interactive decision-making tools. It’s all built in. Everything you need to get everyone on the same page — finally under one roof.”

SAP transformed 12sprints product into the tool called SAP StreamWork (TM). I found the web site of this product interesting and containing some videos you can consider as worth looking. You can find videos on the following link. In addition, you can see SAP StreamWork is trying to integrate with Google Wave to improve collaborative capabilities. Another interesting aspect is to see who are the StreamWork’s partners – EverNote, Scribd and Box.net, which, in my view, shows very modern technological connections.

The SAP StreamWork story made me think about technological splashes and PLM again. The nature of PLM is very collaborative. Engineers and designers need to collaborate all the time and to bring new technologies into this process is a very important. I wound like to outline few options and capabilities PLM tools can consider to improve their collaborative capabilities.

Online Documents
To be able to share documents is very important for collaboration. There are few separate products in this space coming from different engineering and manufacturing software vendors. Most of them are focusing on CAD and Drawing viewing. Just to name few of them – Autodesk Freewheel, 3DVIA composer, Actify. I’d think about the potential to expand it to additional product in the space of online engineering content in the future.

Tasks Management
Very often, people don’t need to manage complex processes. However, they need to be able to share some collaborative action management environment. The ability to easy create, share and follow up tasks can be a powerful addition to a set of decision making tools

Contextual Decision Tools
I liked some tools introduced by StreamWork, such as Pro/Con table and others. I call them simple decision tools. In my view, this work was inspired by Google Wave Gadgets. I think, we will see more such tools in the future.

What is my conclusion? I think, we will see more and more an enterprise related product splashes following technological invention and vision of products outside of enterprise space. What I liked in the following video is a powerful connection between consumer oriented decision and business association. Consumer and Internet software will continue to disrupt enterprise software and people will be interested how to bring new product waves and ideas to this space. Watch it!

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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Vuuch, Social PLM and Google Wave Evaluation…

January 5, 2010

Last year I had chance to talk about social aspects of PLM with Chris Williams from Vuuch.com. Moving enterprise software into the “social” direction is a very interesting aspect. The main change I see in this approach is that element of people communication becomes a main driver force for system to be used. This is an important element of the system adoption. I had chance to see many enterprise systems, implementing complex models, optimized processes, dashboards, etc .. However, all these systems were abused by users next day after implementation and introduction in the production environment.

The idea of social PLM is to build system on top of people’s communication models. I see a very interesting element of Vuuch is an attempt to build system on top of the most popular communication model – email. I don’t know about you, but I love and hate mail at the same time. Mail is dumb, simple and messy together. However, in the end, it is simple, available and works. Vuuch is trying to introduce the system that helps designers to communicate and collaborate by improving existing mail collaboration models. It brings specific product connections (i.e SolidWorks, Office tools) to the mail communication model and by doing so, it makes your collaboration more intelligent. This is a very interesting approach, and I want to see what will be people adoption for such a communication model in the future.

But, you can ask me how Google Wave is related to this conversation? Google Wave was a significant event last year and Google’s attempt to re-define email communication. You can refer to my posts last year to get more details (i.e. 6 Reasons Why Google Wave Will Change PLM Collaboration). I got my long awaited Google Wave invitation last year and started my Google Wave journey. I have to say that my reaction after 1-2 month of work was “love and hate”. I love it, since it introduced some interesting models merging IM (instant messenger) and mail together. The technological foundation and ability to collaborate at the same time are fascinating. However, on the practical side, I’m getting back to my mail for the moment. The most significant advantage for Outlook users is the message threading, but you can have this feature in gmail as well as in other mail systems (like Apple and some others). Other capabilities of Google Wave are still in very premature state and need to be developed to connect Google Wave as a collaboration foundation to the end-user tasks. This is a point of time I thought about Vuuch – combination of collaboration foundation with connection to the specific end user systems and function can be the key to the social PLM adoption.

What is my conclusion today? Social elements in enterprise software will continue to materialize and grow in my view. The examples will come from both sides – bottom up from vendors like Google and Microsoft in their try to redefine infrastructure and horizontal systems and top-down, from small companies like Vuuch trying to present specific social collaborative cases in vertical application domains.

Best, Oleg

PS. I will be watching this space. I’m going to see Vuuch demo next week on the Mass Innovation Nights event.

8 Comments | Collaboration, Daily PLM Think Tank, Google, Social Media and Tools | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
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Google Wave in Design and Process Collaboration

November 9, 2009

Picture 40In the past, I had chance to write about Google Wave (GW). Lots of interest coming around everything related to Google Wave. You can read some of my previous posts about Google Wave to get up to speed with my way to think about Google Wave.

Google Wave – Is it the Next Collaborative Process Engine for PLM?
6 reasons Why Google Wave will Change PLM Collaboration

So, the following interesting project from SAP drove my attention during the weekend, so I decided to share my thoughts about SAP Gravity project. However, before, take a look on video produced by SAP.

From the earlier beginning of Google Wave, it was clear that we could expect an impact of Google Wave on the enterprise software world. Despite the fact enterprises are using a big amount of unique and valuable enterprise systems, all of them are heavily relying on email to collaborate. Therefore, GW offering updated email collaboration paradigm will become an attractive guest in enterprise eco-system.

You can read more about Google Wave SAP Web 2.0 Blog.

So, what are my thoughts about Google Wave in the context of SAP demo project? I have to say that I’m experimenting with Google Wave too and my thoughts, of course, affected by my own experience with Google Wave.

Pros:
1. Collaboration between the unstructured communication world and structured business process definition is notable
2. Google Wave integration capabilities
3. Very powerful history representation
3. There is a huge potential for additional developments – Gadgets and Robots

Cons:
1. Keep of track of all your Waves is as complicated as emails- no big surprise in this space.
2. The way Google Wave will manage store of integrated information is not clear (i.e. BPMN for SAP Gravity, but future thinking about 3D models etc.)
3. Wave to Wave merges and communication can create additional complexity.

What is the future perspective for Google Wave in PLM space in my view? The most perspective direction is collaboration around 3D and other design-related situational collaboration. This is space that today occupied by mail. This is not an empty space – innovative products like 3DLive as well as other CAD / Viewers -related products are also targeting this space. However, I see a potential to embed live 3D model or drawing into Wave and provide an ability to participants to collaborate, similar to how BPMN process was created by SAP Gravity.

I would be interested to hear your opinion and thoughts.
Best, Oleg

6 Comments | Business Process Management, Collaboration, Daily PLM Think Tank, Future Trends | Tagged: , , | Permalink
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Google Wave Server – Is It the Next Collaborative Process Engine for PLM?

October 1, 2009

Picture 1130 September was time for 100’000 happy individuals to get Google Wave invitation. Even I’m not part of these 100’000, internet is full of updated reviews about Google Wave. If you remember, my initial short Prompt about Google Wave - Google Wave is ringing bell for PLM collaboration. So, I will wait for the next portion of Wave invitations, but for the moment I’d like to share with you some additional thoughts about Google Wave and possible applications. Until now, email remains the most widely used collaboration and communication tool. Designers and Engineers are not exclusion from this space. They are using emails too. Interesting, that even if an organization implements PDM/PLM/BPM/ERP, email keeps going as an interface between these applications and people. And I think, simplicity is a key word why people continue using mail for multiple purposes.

Now, let’s think about collaboration between designers and engineers. I think, the following characteristics will turn Google Wave to ultimate design collaborative process engine. Here my four characteristics:

1. One line per item/discussion – “wave”. All communications are in single wave. Single line in your user interface. This “wave” is going up and down as much as discussion and communication is progressing in this Wave. So, wave is a very good boundary for new type of design and engineering processes.

2. End to end visibility (including search and hierarchy). The information inside of Wave is completely available – you can browse and even search, which make it even more powerful.

3. Multiple ad-hoc participants. You can add somebody to the existing wave any time. For groups of designers and engineers, this is a very strong capability.

4. History and play-back. And, finally, wave can keep history of everything you did. This is your discussion summary. In addition, history can be visually presented. No more additional screens with histories and logs. You can see this video.

What is the top missing part in Google Wave from my standpoint to apply this technology for product development collaboration? In my mind, this is a connection to product content – information located in CAD/PDM/PLM software.

Let me know what do you think? Maybe somebody got Google Wave invitation and already is trying it live. Please let me know.

Best, Oleg

16 Comments | Collaboration, Daily PLM Think Tank, Google, Technology | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
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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.

11 Comments | Daily PLM Think Tank, Future Trends, PLM and organization | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

6 reasons Why Google Wave will Change PLM Collaboration

June 12, 2009

 It’s impossible to speak about collaboration these days, in my opinion,  without touching Google Wave. I analyzed multiple presentations, demos, videos, analyzes and would like to present my take on the 6 top reasons as to why Wave will change today’s PLM collaboration world.

 1.    Real Time

Everything happens at the same time. You are typing, uploading, searching. You can be absolutely synchronized with your colleagues and other people involved into this collaboration process. Real-time is important because in today’s life, many forms of asynchronous collaboration and/or communication create more problems rather than benefits – and this need to change. If you look at products like 3DLive,  you will see the initial appearance of online collaboration. But with the invention of GW, you will get additional performance and adaptation boost.

 2.    Online Content

Staying connected online and in real-time, actually, opens additional doors for people who are interested in online content – IP, documents, Bill of Materials. Since Wave facilitates storage of documents on the cloud, this is will be an important overall shift toward such technologies.

 3.    Embedded

Everything you are doing in GW can be embedded into the content with which Wave operates. So, from this standpoint, future PLM implementations will be able more easily to include 3D models and drawings and documents in your Collaborative Waves. Even though I still want to see how this will happen, in my opinion, it will still give an additional push for the development of technologies which will be able to merge the collaboration of one set of data with other sources of PLM data.  

 4.    Playback History

This is the killer function, in my view. The ability to play back everything you do will be the ultimate goal for all people in PLM dealing with the comparison of history (i.e. what WAS done) vs. the future (what is being proposed by the current user).

 5.    Federation

Wave will be unique and be able to run and be synchronized on multiple instances of Wave Servers. The only association that comes to my mind in this context is past SMTP implementation. I think that GW will provide a new communication model with distributed services. So, I will be able to host my GW server, let people work with this server, and collaborate with other servers.

 6.    Automation and Extensions

This is the golden age of everything. The ability to extend GW will bring many additional people and implementations so that end-users will gain even greater benefits.

 Please, note, there is no order of importance. The current order is absolutely not scientific and reflects my memory of Google Wave stuff, and not the memory of Google itself (whom I cannot compete withJ).

 So, even if GW is still not available for a wider audience, I think we can already learn a bit about how collaboration will occur in the future.

22 Comments | Cloud Application, Collaboration, Daily PLM Think Tank, Technology | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

PLM Collaboration – To Catch Wave vs. To Share List

June 2, 2009

I think that I’m not exaggerating by saying that every conversation about “collaboration” last week started from  the Google Wave announcement on the Google I/O conference last week. I’ve seen many initial feedbacks in CAD/PDM/PLM related communities and spoke to many colleagues. I think that the majority of people were excited by being able to introduce a new way of collaboration and the potential impact Google Wave can make on Product Lifecycle Management. I’d like to point to a few comments from non-PLM communities. One was made by Dion Hinchcliffe about enterprise implication of Google Wave. Another one came from Stephen Arnold “A Surprising Ripple for Wave in the SharePoint Ocean”. I’d recommend you read both.

 I’d like to take a look at how to improve PLM collaboration by comparing two approaches I found very fundamental and different. One came from the success of Microsoft SharePoint and the second from the initial presentation of Google Wave. Although I understand that it’s hard to compare something that exists and is successful with something that is new, fresh from an announcement, I’ll try anyway.

 SharePoint Collaboration

Here’s my short summary of how I see the SharePoint-based collaboration without going into much detail. The core of SharePoint collaboration is a List and Folders mechanism that can be used by people working on specific documents, activities, groups and organizations. Where <List> is something that is mostly oriented on tabular data (think about a shared Excel file), <Folder> is something more oriented towards working with various documents. You can go beyond the basic list and folders by organizing them into <Workspaces>, <Sites> and <Site collections>. So far, this very successful collaboration model, in my opinion, allows people to share data and files and work together. The most important addition is the very seamless connection to the Exchange Server that allows you to associate lists and folders with email accounts and get inbound and outbound messages directly into folders. So, you want to collaborate? Define what you want to collaborate on, setup workspaces and folders, and share information and/or collaborate with the people you need. Seamless integration with Office products makes conversations between Excel and List/Folders in SharePoint easy.

SharePoint Document Library 

SharePoint Lists

Google Wave Collaboration

As I understand from the many announcements, information, video and other materials (I haven’t had a chance to try out Google Wave myself), the fundamental collaboration model of Google Wave is a definition of Wave. The core definition in Google Wave collaboration is a threaded conversation <Wave> and a set of <Wavelets>. These <Wavelets> are combined with something called <Blips>. The interesting part starts when Blip can actually reuse any type of available web resource – Mail, Wiki, Pictures, Blogs etc. There are two ways to enhance this model by providing Gadgets and Robots. Gadget enhances client appearance for a wavelet (i.e. connects to Facebook or other collaboration sites) and Robot can support potential functionality on a server (i.e. online translation).

Introduction Google Wave

Below is a summary of my preliminary thoughts on how these two models can evolve.

  1. The strong point of SharePoint model is that it starts from content (list, folder, excel etc.) This model is strong in enterprise in general, but also has Product Lifecycle Management roots. Your Bill of Materials, List of Documents etc. are in the general list of information. Also, Office/Excel/Email integration adds a lot of additional benefits to this model.
  2. The SharePoint list model tries to resolve the email mess when you are trying to find multiple threads of communication. But this model still cannot provide, in my view, a good solution for that, since even if you route all messages to the list according to your rules, you still end-up with lists you need to track – so this is still similar to a mailbox.
  3. The Wave model has many strong points by allowing you to connect dots in a threaded conversation and communication. So, you can follow each topic about which you are collaborating and then you’re always up-to-speed about what’s going on.
  4. On the content side, I see that the Google Wave model is still weak and does not present capabilities to be connected to the popular data views in the enterprise.

My conclusion for now is that it will be very interesting to see how both models will evolve separately and cross-influence. I see a great potential in both models and see an opportunity to mix them as well. I’m looking forward to hear your comments and thoughts on this.

6 Comments | Collaboration, Daily PLM Think Tank, PLM and organization, PLM and Social Environment, Technology | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

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