Product data is one of my favorite topics. People in product development and manufacturing organizations are surrounded by digital data these days. The life 20 years ago was much easier. I remember the story about how people collaborated before CAD systems came to aerospace industry. Engineers were gathered in a single room, drawing boards were setup in the way similar to functional scheme of jet engine or aircraft. As a result of that, people were able to collaborate with their colleagues working on related parts and systems.
Fast forward to 21st century. The life is much more complicated. Engineering and product data are scattered among multiple systems and data sources. 3D models, drawings, CAE files, suppliers data, ERP systems, released archives, etc. Earlier this year, during PI Congress event in Berlin, I captured the following slide from Gartner’s presentation – Navigating the Shifting Product Design and Lifecycle Management Software Landscape made by Marc Halpern.
Scattered product data creates lots of complication in a manufacturing organizations. Gartner research speaks about 7 sources of mistakes in product data. The following two are specifically resonated to me – inaccurate data entry and incorrect data flow between applications. One of the ways to solve this problem is to foster data access and data reuse. It is still not unusual to see how people cut/paste or re-enter data between applications. Various point-to-point integrations create a mess in terms of ability of people (and systems) to use data located in other systems.
What is my conclusion? Data Reuse. This topic should be in a focus on people implementing engineering and manufacturing information systems. Variety of data management systems, PDM, PLM, ERP, CRM… All these systems should be focused on how to make data searchable, accessible and re-usable across the value chain. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
Posted by olegshilovitsky 
Office and other productivity tools are un-separateable parts of product development environment. Some of them such Microsoft Excel literally can stop product development and manufacturing in many companies. I’ve been blogging about Excel and Office many times. Couple of weeks ago, I came back to this topic with my – 
. Just my thoughts…
Collaboration. Magic and one of the most confusing words. People are using it in so many contexts that it became meaningless. One of the main trends that was dominant for the last few years was social collaboration. Social networks and social tools went mainstream and it impacted the way business applications and tools think about collaboration. I outlined it few years ago in my post – 
Searching for information is a tricky thing. Search may sounds as a simple operation, but in fact, it is translated to a complex computational, information and organizational task. Search isn’t a new problem. Lots of work was done in this domain for the last 20 years. Google clearly changed a consumer perception about internet search. Google "lady Gaga" and in less than a second you will have all relevant internet information about Lady Gaga.
Process management is an important elements of PLM implementations. PLM systems usually offer a variety of solutions for process management – from simple message routing to complex workflow management systems. However, regardless of process and workflow complexity, all customers are interested how to integrate processes and workflows with their email system.
PLM and ERP integration is not a new topic. Step in the discussion about any PLM implementation and you will come to the topic of PLM+ERP integration in less than 5 minutes. Integration between two enterprise software suites is usually a complicated tasks which involves lots of planning, adjustments and hard-wiring from both sides.
Enterprise software is a fascinating place these days. It comes in a different angles and perspective. The disruption of consumer technologies, cloud, BYOD and many other factors. We can see the influence coming from both technological and business factors. Few months ago, I posted – 
Delete is a special function. In the system dealing with the live data, the meaning of delete is interesting. My first lesson about <delete> function in PDM was 25 years ago. In one of very first data management systems I implemented we used a special flag to mark deleted parts. Later on, I was discussing delete functionality with engineering managers of one of the firms. Think about parts used in production. How you can delete them? They can be not effective for usage, out of stock, discontinued, etc. However, you cannot literally delete them. Back 20 years ago the technology was different. We marked parts and revisions as "obsolete", but we didn’t keep them forever.
The discussion around Google Glass is heating up. Google was very transparent by rolling out Google Glasses and providing lots of information about what Google Glass experience will look like. You cannot get Google Glasses now- 
Manufacturing businesses are getting more dynamic these days. It is all about how to change and change fast. The days where manufacturing companies allowed months and even years to respond to business changes are gone. Competition is getting more aggressive. Cost pressure is getting tight. Companies need to have a way to analyze what they do in a perspective of time. This is actually one of the places where PLM technology can provide a bigger value in the future. Think about design changes and problems reported in your products with the time lapse of last 10 years. Think about quality and cost of suppliers for the last 5 years. How PLM can provide such type of insight and information?
