3D, Games and Product Development

January 27, 2011

Almost two years ago, I published the following post – Virtual World: Where is the boarder between game and PLM software? Gaming technology is developing very fast. Today’s games open lots of opportunities to improve existing design and engineering software, as well as to develop a new class of application. This week, during SolidWorks World 2011 in San Antonio, Dassault and SolidWorks presented a new product – Post3D, part of 3DVia brand portfolio.

The idea of this application is to allow multiple users to participate in a product review in a virtual way. You can take a brief look on what Dassault means by that on the following video:

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Virtual Collaboration – Community and Game

I found the idea of Post3D inspiring. There are few straightforward issues with Post3D – the ability to load 3D models and review them. My hunch, there is something beyond that. The main point is the ability to communicate in a different way. In addition such type of software can release product from 3D CAD boundaries. By using game-like technologies, in the future, you’ll be able to share and use 3D data beyond the point of creation in CAD system. The ability to interact in 3D is one of the key aspects in a vision of Dassault’s CEO Bernard Charles. In the next longer video, you can see Dassault’s Charles personally demonstrating the new virtual showroom together with his colleagues during SolidWorks world.

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What is my conclusion? I can see Game Technologies as a clear trend in a future of design and product development. Games develop a new way to interact. When I watch my kids playing Kinect, I can see a huge potential Gaming technology will bring later into PLM space. However, the learning curve can be tough for non-GenY folks. It will be interesting to see the adoption curve of such visionary tools. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM, Product Development and Social Search

April 27, 2010

Last week I wrote a post about how I can see twitter and other social tools can be used to predict the future of products. As much as social tools’ popularity is growing, the importance of monitoring these tools are growing. Manufacturers in consumer goods, telecommunication and others facing end users (but not only), can think about various ways to get input from social environment these days. I can see multiple use cases.

Requirements Gathering
Social space can be an excellent environment to find what are your potential customers are looking for. There is a real possibility to establish a set of keywords that can be used to find them out. The same social connections (i.e Twitter and Facebook) can be used to communicate new products with advanced features.

Quality Monitoring
Another interesting use case, in my view. I can see multiple users communicate the experience about a product they use in the social network. Pro-active monitoring of such experience can provide a good input to quality department and help to fix product problems on the early stages of usage.

Competition
The competition is a significant threat for most of the manufacturers these days. You can use the same social tools to monitor your competitor’s activity. In my view, it becomes a must thing to do nowadays.

I’d like to put below a short collection of various online social search and monitoring tools. These tools mostly cover Twitter, Facebook, Social Bookmarking sites such as digg, redit and some others. This is of course not exhaustive. I had chance to listen to Steve Arnold presentation yesterday and would like to give me credit to him related to the selection of search tools. I loaded most of the examples and links with “Product Lifecycle Management” keywords. This is what I’m monitoring. However, you can play around various keyword selections relevant to you.

Topsy. A search engine powered by tweets.

Sency. Search what is going on.

Its Trending. a real time feed of the most shared content on Facebook

Glozer. What is trending online?

Tweetmeme- Hottest Links on Twitter.

Collecta.Real-time information.


Itpints. Real-time search.

Scooper.


What is my conclusion today? It is amazing how much information you can find these days. As a manufacturers, you can get a significant competitive advantage in using these tools. As a software vendors, you can get an ultimate connection to your users and their experience. This is, of course, an addition to all existing traditional methods of work.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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Posted by olegshilovitsky

What Are The Metrics For PLM Innovation?

April 14, 2010

A couple of weeks ago I had healthy debates about PLM and Innovation with Jim Brown of TechClarity. If you haven’t had chance to be part of this discussion you can check out the following post – PLM vs. ERP: Don’t Manage Innovation. During the last couple of days, I had chance to have an additional discussion on the “innovation” topic with some of my readers off line and online, and I came to the conclusion that I need to refresh this topic. I want to take the notion of “management” and “innovation” as starting points. The combination of them together made me think about the fact I need to bring some metrics in this “innovation management” process. Since, if you don’t know how to measure it, you hardly be able to “manage it”.

PLM and Product Innovation
I think, that PLM-minded people think about the innovation in the context of product development. Since, the  goal of CAD/CAE/PDM/PLM and other system related to engineering is about how to create products, this is the only innovation that counted for product development. Obviously, other areas of business such as manufacturing planning, supply chain, business accounting also may contain innovative aspects, but they are not in the scope of PLM vision. So, I came to the conclusion that development of new, innovative products is the ultimate goal of PLM innovation.

Innovation and Golden Eggs
When I think about an innovation process, the best association I can bring is the idea of golden eggs. Each new idea or product can be actually considered as the potential golden egg. However, the biggest problem with golden eggs is that they can crack. To decrease the risk of having cracked egg, I can potentially think about having more than one egg in my innovation bag. So, when I think about innovation management, I’d like to think about how to turn my innovation process to goose that will lay down golden eggs. As soon as I can do that, I can manage this process to produce as many eggs as I can and choose the appropriated ones applying specific metrics.

PLM Innovation Metrics
When I think about potential measures of product innovation, I can come with set of criteria related to the different aspects of organization and product performance performances. I’d like to put below some of the ideas about possible metrics.

Organization Performance
- Revenues from new product
- Customer satisfactions from new product
- ROI from new product

Product Characteristics
- Cost
- Performance
- Usability
- Novelty

Innovation Process
- Number of new ideas in the pipeline
- Number of new ideas comes from outside of the organization
- Time from the idea to the realization
- % of the ideas materialized as a new product or new development.

I’m sure this is an incomplete list and may be different for the specific organization. However, I hope gives an idea about what can be considered as a metrics for PLM (product) innovation.

Just my thoughts… I’m very interested to know your opinion and get your feedback.
Best, Oleg

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Posted by olegshilovitsky

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