PLM, Organization and Information Silos: Good, Bad and Ugly

October 2, 2011

Earlier this month, I posted What is the biggest PLM challenge? Since then I had multiple conversations on twitter, blog and LinkedIn groups. Discussing a potential level of changes in the organization, I came to the topic of “information silos”. I found this topic interesting. Information silos – is it good or bad? Is it a problem at all? What PLM vision need to be applied to handle it? I wanted to quote one of my readers:

…It is about maintaining a trade-off between what is local and what is global in a company. The problem in my view is one of terminology. If we say “silos” we immediately think “bad”. This in turn promotes actions to minimize silos, which is harmful if driven too far. We need to conceptualize the organization in a different way. My take is “work practice” or similar constructs. An organization would be seen as a constellation of workpractices, each contributing to the overall goal of the organization. This would provide a perspective where trade-off, silos, business processes, etc., could be discussed from a more productive point of view.

I followed up the same topic on the round table during Autodesk Forum in Moscow. During the discussion, we found some interesting facts. Few participants mentioned that one of the challenges during PLM implementation is that PLM improve the transparency of processes and corresponded information in an organization. You can say – this is a really good thing. However, I’ve heard people faced organizational resistance. Information and process control is a power in every organization. So, people responsible for it don’t want to lose it. At the same time PLM streamlines processes it reduces the power of “gate keepers”. This is the ugly truth.

What is my conclusion? PLM is not only about technology. It can (actually does) change the way organization works top-down and bottom up. To manage this change is an important part of every implementation. However, PLM technologies nee to allow to make this change more transparent and less painful. Just my thoughts… I’d be interested to hear more about your experience. Speak your mind.

Best, Oleg

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PLM, Sharing Information and Googe+ Circles

October 1, 2011

If you developed or implemented PDM or PLM system, you probably know that definition of users, groups and roles are an essential piece of your implementation. The ability to set them and maintain within the time is very important and can influence many aspects of how a system performs and how business processes in the company will be managed. I’ve seen multiple implementations of users, groups and roles management tools and all of them looks pretty much the same.

Recently, lots of conversations happen around a so-called “social” topic. In a nutshell, lots of these talks about how to streamline organizational processes as a result of re-use some of the experience social networking website and web 2.0 applications gathered for the last 3-5 years. Social networks have been challenged by a significant increase in the level of complexity. Systems growing to 10s and 100s million of users invested a lot in the development of mechanisms to group people and establish different mechanisms define users and groups. Privacy concern made a key role in forcing social networks to develop very sophisticated information sharing mechanisms.

Most probably you had a chance to experience Google+ already. If you haven’t, make a try… Despite the obvious comparison with Facebook, I found it, actually, very different. Even if Google+ is only 3 months old, it is already running to add new features. I’ve been reading Mashable article – Now you can share your Google+ Circle with others. Google Circles are the mechanism that allows you to split and share multiple information streams. Watch the following video to see how you can share Circles:

This feature made me think about how Google+ Circle Share feature can be used to share information between different people and teams across the organizations. The user experience is the key point here. Instead of running complicated tools you can help people to find a right person to connect in the organization based on the contextual information (i.e. people’s role, project belonging, etc.). Do you think the idea is completely crazy? Tell me what tools are you using, for the moment, in your organization?

What is my conclusion? Everything becomes flat these days. Organizations are not exclusion from this rule. Complicated hierarchies and dependencies need to go away. To develop new ways to share information between people in organizations is extremely important. Google+, as well as other social nets are good examples of what future may look like. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

 

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Social PLM: More Syndication and Less Communities

July 7, 2010

I’ve been thinking more about what are the gaps in taking PLM to the next level of collaboration. Social trend started on Web 2.0 sites got explored more and growing Facebook population is just another confirmation of the fact that people are looking for new ways to communicate and work together.In the past few months I had chance to share my thoughts about how I see PLM development catching up with various social trends. Facebook is having the most strong influences on the way social aspects of PLM can be developed for the future. You can take a look on my previous posts related to this topic:

The ABC of PLM Facebooking
PLM and Facebook Open Graph
How To Facebook PLM?

Facebook and Content

In my view, content is one of the big misleading elements of Facebook’s strategies. Lots of people are thinking about Facebook as an ultimate way to generate content. However, posting content to Facebook is not creating desired effect. Facebook is predominantly about people communication and not content creation. I found a very interesting observation about what Facebook is doing in Ken Auletta’s book – Googled.

The comparison of Facebook with phone communication where all participants are on the same line made me think there is a potential to create some similarity in product development organization.

Communication and Context
When Facbook is associated with a single phone conversation, it may not be so practical to be implemented exactly in the same for the business in an organization. The biggest difference, in my view, is that fact business by definition cannot be focused on a single conversation between friends. People in the business can have multiple contexts that create need to communicate. There are many examples – projects, ECOs, design discussions and many others. When using Facebook, your context is a single ‘online conversation’ that happens all the time. To be able to provide multiple contexts can be a challenging task for PLM.

Connect vs. Syndicate
In Facebook-like communication, the connection between people created an ultimate way to syndicate information. Is it true for organizations? No, I don’t think so. Connection between people in the organization has a different meaning. The fact I want to stay connected with a person, still doesn’t mean I want to syndicate an information stream coming from him. The syndication needs to be done on the contextual level, rather than on personal. So, community will have less importance to have a successful social PLM implementation.

What is my conclusion? Facebook provides a new paradigm for information sharing. The way doing so is to syndicate on the fly multiple information streams coming from people you are staying connected. This is the ultimate way to create a single conversation and not multiple conversations. What is the value in Product Lifecycle Management? The idea of syndication is extremely powerful. The way it is catching up now with different “communities concepts” and “social product development” stories might be wrong, in my view. There is a fundamental difference between a need of people to stay connected and information sharing. To apply this difference in a successful manner will be a key question in the future of collaborative systems for product development. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Posted by olegshilovitsky

3D Perspectives: Visual Complexity

July 23, 2009

New post on 3D Perspectives. Visual complexity. Cool stuff…

Visual Complexity

visual complexity post

Best, Oleg.

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Posted by olegshilovitsky

PLM Prompt: Should we combine PLM and PIM efforts?

July 20, 2009

Short prompt – I’m looking on definition of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Product Information Management (PIM).

Product lifecycle management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its conception, through design and manufacture, to service and disposal. [1] PLM integrates people, data, processes and business systems and provides a product information backbone for companies and their extended enterprise.[2]

Product information management (PIM) or PIM refers to processes and technologies focused on centrally managing information about products, with a focus on the data required to market and sell the products through one or more distribution channels. A central set of product data can be used to feed consistent, accurate and up-to-date information to multiple output media such as web sites, print catalogs, ERP systems, and electronic data feeds to trading partners. PIM systems generally need to support multiple geographic locations, multi-lingual data, and maintenance and modification of product information within a centralized catalog to provide consistently accurate information to multiple channels in a cost-effective manner.

Even difference is clear, it looks like combination of PIM and PLM efforts can bring significant benefits to the company to streamline information management around a product.

Just my opinion. What do you think about it?

12 Comments | PLM and organization, PLM Prompt, Technology | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by olegshilovitsky

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