Software Vendors and PDM/PLM Evolution Steps

February 9, 2012

Earlier this week, I had a conversation with engineering IT manager of a manufacturing company. Without mentioning names, we’ve been discussing how manufacturing companies are adopting technologies in general and PDM/PLM technologies specifically. According to him, software companies largely misunderstood the way manufacturing companies perceive technology adoption. The conclusion we made, was that manufacturing companies are very slow to adopt any technologies. One of the key factors that impacts future evolution of PDM/PLM technologies will cost of implementation and changes. This conversation made me think about what will be the evolution of PDM / PLM systems for coming decades.

Cloud, Unification and Integration

I can define three things that will lead future evolution in PDM / PLM. It is unification, integration and cloud. I wrote about Unification and Integration few months ago. Navigate to the following article – From PDM to PLM: Unify or Integrate? to have a sense of this topic. The reality of manufacturing companies today are that they have lots of different software packages implemented. Siloed approach was dominant in the last two decades. The question of how to move forward to the next level is actively debated by many software vendors and customers. One of the options is to move to unified systems. When it sounds like an interesting option to cut cost of integration, the overall cost of migration stops many companies from taking this approach. On the other side, affordability of cloud-based software sounds like a good reason to move one and offer new type of solutions with a fraction of cost.

4 Steps of PDM / PLM evolution

In my view, cloud (private and public) will be playing a key role in the evolution of future PDM/PLM systems. On the diagram below, I pictured how I see the evolution of PDM /PLM systems. Four steps show how I think systems will be migrating from pure “on-premises’” solution to full cloud adoption.

PDM / PLM Evolution

 

I wanted to bring 3 factors that will become critical to define vendor’s success in this evolution – cloud/on-premises balance, system integration and file content migration to the cloud. Let me talk separately about each of these factors.

Cloud / On-Premises balance

The adoption of new technologies and products is very slow. Because of that, manufacturing companies will have to balance long time between existing and new solutions. The ability of vendor to bring systems gradually to solve real business needs in an affordable way, will be a key to success. Nobody will be able to replace all systems in a single shot.

System integration

I’ve been stated it many times already, but again, the ability to integrate cloud and on-premises solution will be another key capability. Today, the integration is very messy. It is costly and, in most cases, causes data duplication with a lot of inefficiency. The ability to build linked data grid of integrated solutions will create a competitive advantage for software vendors to introduce new PDM / PLM solutions and minimize implementation cost.

File Content migration

The absolute majority of product information such as CAD data is located on premises today. With the introduction of new solutions, this content will have to migrate to cloud in order to become available also for people (globally) as well as to be re-used by different cloud and on-premises solutions. The effectiveness of this migration is another key factor to success.

What is my conclusion? I see next 10 years of PDM / PLM evolution as a very interesting time. Old technologies and software packages will retire and new will be coming. What will be the future of PLM platforms is an interesting question. This question needs to be answered by well established PLM vendors like Dassault, Siemens, PTC and by newcomers such as Autodesk. Smaller companies will innovate to provide PLM solutions and technologies that potentially can disrupt and, at the same time, provide a competitive advantage to future evolution of PDM / PLM platforms. What is your take? Speak your mind, please…

Best, Oleg

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Future PLM platforms and SAP / Oracle technological wars

January 26, 2012

All existing PDM / PLM technologies were created 15-20 years ago. I hope I’ve got your attention :) . So, let me speak a bit more about technologies today. Past 10 years of web development for the consumer market created a significant technological foundation that cannot be ignored. Most of the enterprise software in production these days is running on the technologies created at least a decade ago.

Let’s talk first about major 4 PLM providers – Dassault Systems, PTC, Siemens PLM and the platform they use for their flagship PLM products. Enovia from Dassault technological foundation came from MatrixOne acquisition formerMatrixOne/Adra development 15-20 years ago. PTC is using Windchill coming back in 1998 from CV acquisition. Siemens PLM platform – TeamCenter is also coming from acquired and transformed product lines of Metaphase and IMAN.

Thinking about PLM platforms, you cannot avoid and not to speak about long time pure-PLM rivals coming from ERP software – SAP and Oracle. Oracle is leading the way towards full-fledged usage of Oracle Fusion platform. Despite multiple delays and re-orgs, it seems to me the way Oracle is thinking about business application platform for enterprise. Oracle is also leveraging their in-house innovation of database technologies.

I was reading an interesting article by ArnoldIT – SAP: Lemons from Lemonade for Search vendors. The article referencing technology coming from SAP called HANA. According to SAP blog:

HANA is the foundation and the core of all that we do now and going forward for existing products, new products and entirely new frontiers. We are transforming enterprise software with HANA, and we are transforming our entire product portfolio,” Sikka said in a statement earlier this week announcing that SAP HANA is now generally available worldwide. “But HANA is more than a product,” Sikka continued. “It is a new paradigm, an entirely new way to build applications. It is the basis for our own intellectual renewal internally at SAP—where we rethink how we design, build, deploy, service and sell products—and the basis for our customers’ and partners’ intellectual renewal—where we help customers rethink existing business problems and help them solve entirely new challenges using design-thinking.” (Source: The Top 10 Reasons SAP HANA Is Disrupting Larry Ellison’s Grand Plans]

Take a look on a very interesting video about HANA evolution.

Few screenshots I captured from this video (below) clearly shows the technological problem PLM vendors are trying to solve already for many years- creating a scalable business application platform capable of handling the complexity of data needed for product development and manufacturers.

Typical problem of enterprise applications.

The complexity of platforms and solutions today.

HANA way to solve the problem.

What is my conclusion? The complexity of enterprise PLM software is skyrocketing. PLM products are running on proven, but outdated platforms. My hunch – all major PLM vendors having some future technology platform projects on their back-burner. I don’t know if it comes as Enovia V7, TeamCenter Future or Creo Enterprise. What is clear to me is that PLM companies need to come with the next technological platforms to leverage last 10 years development of web and consumer space. Otherwise, they will be dismissed by newcomers. ERP vendors such as Oracle and SAP also keep stakes in this enterprise software game and need to be watched carefully by PLM players. Just my thoughts..

Best, Oleg

Freebie. SAP didn’t pay me to write this post.

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What 2012 holds for Product Lifecycle Management?

January 3, 2012

Beginning of the year is a time for New Year resolutions and "annual predictions". Few days ago, I shared my plans forBeyond PLM activities in 2012. To predict what is going to happen during coming year is usually very thankless work. In the middle of December, I’ve made my broad prediction that 2012 is going to be a year of PLM rock stars (ready my post The Enterprise and PLM will rock in 2012). Today, I want to share what I think will be in a focus of PLM companies in coming 2012.

Autodesk Cloud PLM

With no doubt, it is going to be "the PLM event" of the year. Autodesk is going to make Nexus 360 Cloud PLM available in the end of Q1/2012 or beginning of Q2. That was my impression from AU2011. The expectations are high and the level of speculation about what Autodesk will release is going to be on the same level. It is going to be a big challenge for Autodesk. Even if the majority of their initial customers are SMB manufacturers, because of volume, Autodesk can potentially generate much bigger numbers from their PLM products. However, Autodesk needs to watch carefully the level of expectation and the delivery to keep the promise of making PLM different.

Dassault SolidWorks V6

It seems to me, we are going to see SolidWorks V6 preview later this year during SWW 2012. Over the past two years, we’ve heard lots of pre-announcements from SolidWorks about their cloud platforms, Enovia-based development and future use of CATIA kernel. I believe some deliveries need to happen in February in San-Diego (SWW 2012 home town)

PLM Maturity and Unification by mindshare vendors

Top 3 major PLM providers – Dassault, Siemens PLM and PTC will continue their competition for platform unification and big names wins. These days, all large manufacturers are using pieces of software from one of these companies. In many cases, companies are using software from multiple vendors. All 3 vendors are coming with the idea how unify PLM implementations using their proprietary platforms. It becomes very complicated for large companies to keep going with multiple platforms. The trend of "unification" on a single platform will continue in 2012. Because of a very high cost of change, top PLM companies will continue to do all possible to convince customers to commit towards migration to new platforms. We are going to see more of such wins in 2012.

Emerging Trends: Social and Mobile

Even if both "social" and "mobile" are hot outside of PLM, I don’t believe these two words will generate big news in 2012 for PLM. After all, these two trends (or technologies) are just enablers for PLM implementations. I expect to see more mobile applications coming from existing and new vendors.

Product and Technological Shopping

I also expect main CAD/PLM vendors to continue their shopping spree. Money is not an issue for them. Even if the amount of new companies in the industry is not big, four dominant CAD/PLM companies will try to gain advantages by acquiring smaller companies with proven products or interesting technologies.

What is my conclusion? Enterprise has a potential to become "cool again" in 2012. There are many interesting things going outside of enterprise in consumer software and web development. These products and technologies can put enterprise IT on fire in 2012. Large scale data management, social web and mobile – these technological enablers will be dominant in the new PLM development in 2012. Mature software vendors will continue their fight for the future market share increase among their existing (and overlapped) install base. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Image: Vlado / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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PLM Cloud: differentiation or “anti-cloud rant”?

December 22, 2011

After my publication PLM, Autodesk and Cloud Wars Club few days ago, I received few comments from my readers trying to figure out what is PLM vendors’ position with regards to the cloud. One of them, even tried to rank PLM companies on how they committed (or not) to the future of cloud computing. The funniest comment was by Jonathan Scott of Razorleaf – "I am waiting for someone at Siemens or PTC to come out with the "anti-Cloud rant" much like Carl Bass’ "anti-PLM" rant". About a year ago, I was writing about PLM vendors and cloud strategies. You can navigate to the followinglink to read my post from the last year. I think, some movements happened since that time, so I decided to make a second check on major PLM vendors about what they do on the cloud.

I’ve been reading an interesting article earlier this week. The Cloud: Worrying about the wrong things? written by Peter Bilello of CIMData. Peter is talking about different elements of cloud strategies and PLM. It is a good read, and I recommend you to spend few minutes and have a read. My favorite passage is about security, which is considered one of the biggest concerns of cloud software. Here is the quote:

IT chiefs in both the private and public sectors and some Internet industry analysts may be overly concerned about security. Worrisome Internet security breaches, though rare, are widely reported. By law, banks, credit card companies, and other online repositories of financial and personal data must report breaches. Two big outages were front-page news in April 2011: Amazon Web Service’s Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) was down for a couple of days. Sony’s PlayStation Network was out for five weeks…. Amazon put its EC2 data loss at 0.07—seven-hundredths—of one percent. Some perspective: information online expands exponentially while the number of digital break-ins grows far more slowly. Adding in less nefarious security lapses, system errors, and human error still does not boost these problems out of the rare category

Another interesting passage about security is coming from Rackspace:

“Security is security, in the cloud or anywhere else,” according to Web hosting company Rackspace US Inc. in San Antonio, Texas. In a 2011 white paper titled, Five Reasons Why the Cloud is Ready for the Enterprise, Rackspace points out, “The same security issues apply to an enterprise data center or on-premise application as to the cloud. Everyone must be vigilant about security, no matter where their data is stored.”

Autodesk

It is clear, Autodesk is taking the cloud story as a major differentiation. As I mentioned yesterday in my post, Autodesk sees themselves "Cloud PLM" similar to how Salesforce.com can be recognized as "Cloud CRM". Autodesk introduced multiple products on the cloud. Their latest Autodesk Nexus PLM 360 supposed to be available somewhere between Q1 and Q2 next year. Here is Buzz Kross quote from Nexus PLM announcement last month:

"Our approach to PLM is a sharp contrast to the decades old technology in the market today," said Robert "Buzz" Kross, senior vice president, Manufacturing Industry Group at Autodesk. "Autodesk 360 for PLM will enable customers of all sizes to achieve the full promise of PLM with a scalable, configurable and intuitive solution. We believe it will help our customers achieve a measurable competitive advantage through better, more accessible collaboration and business information management."

Dassault System

DS is passionate about their cloud online platform. I’ve been reviewing what DS is doing about that during Dassault customer conference (DSCC 2011) last months in Las-Vegas. Enovia V6 is a power horse behind Dassault cloud story. Read my post from DSCC 2011 by navigating on this link. Here is the quote:

Dassault is presenting ENOVIA V6 as a big deal, the only one “unique online cloud platform”. In the first day, Bernard Charles shared the information about $2B investment into R&D effort that “converge” with all technologies under a single platform available on the cloud.

Siemens PLM

Siemens is providing a very modest cloud story. As a year ago, I wasn’t able to find many references on what is Siemens PLM cloud strategy. Few announcements and press releases I found pointing on the work Siemens PLM is doing with Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Navigate to the following Siemens’ press release – Siemens PLM Software to Create Industry’s First Quality Management Solution "in the Cloud". Here is the quote. Siemens

announced a joint project with Microsoft Corporation to create the PLM industry’s first cloud computing-based quality management solution. The solution will utilize Microsoft Windows Azure™ platform cloud computing services to securely run Siemens PLM Software’s Dimensional Planning and Validation (DPV) application, showing how cloud computing can enable a world-class quality management application to be cost effectively accessed and leveraged on an as-needed basis.

PTC

From my standpoint, PTC is probably less than other PLM vendors is focusing on how the cloud reshapes PLM industry. PTC was one of the first pioneering Whidchill availability as a hosted solution via IBM. However, besides that, I haven’t seen anything about future cloud product coming from PTC. Interesting enough, I was listening for Jim Heppelmann during Creo launch event in the beginning of 2011. According to this article, here is PTC’s opinion about cloud and other PLM vendors.

While Autodesk and Dassault Systemes appear to be running headlong into developing cloud-based applications, my recent conversations with PTC representatives indicated that, as customers were not asking for it and the benefits were not clear, PTC was not heading to the cloud anytime soon. Given the error in underestimating the move to Windows, I asked Heppelmann for his view of CAD on the cloud.

Here is the passage from Jim’s quote provided in the interview to Develop3D journal:

“So, we identified these key problems and then if I say, well which of those problems does the cloud solve? It doesn’t actually solve any of those problems! It solves some other problems – perhaps ease of installation, perhaps cost of ownership, things like that. But I’m not sure those are the key problems. So we’re not pro-cloud or anti-cloud, we’re just trying to solve what we see as the biggest problems, and we don’t see solutions to these biggest problems being in any magical way enabled by cloud technology.

What is my conclusion? Here is my summary about how leading CAD/PLM companies see their cloud strategies. Autodesk is the only one that built on top of the cloud as a differentiation factor. Dassault announced Enovia V6 platform as a true cloud online platform. Despite the fact Enovia platform has deep roots in Matrix One technology developed in the end of 90s, I believe DS invested a lot of resources to re-shape MatrixOne technologies. TeamCenter shows some interesting and trying cloud water with research projects. PTC is strongly neutral the cloud. As you can see all are different. It will be interesting to see how these strategies are evolving and adopted by customers. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Manufacturing Crowd-Sourcing and Cloud PLM Opportunity

December 5, 2011

Crowd-sourcing is a popular trend these days. For those of you out of sync, in a nutshell, crowd-sourcing is a way for a community of people to build, create, print, etc. anything. Here is the classic definition of crowd-source from Wikipedia:

Crowdsourcing is a distributed problem-solving and production model. In the classic use of the term, problems are broadcast to an unknown group of solvers in the form of an open call for solutions. Users—also known as the crowd—typically form into online communities, and the crowd submits solutions. The crowd also sorts through the solutions, finding the best ones. These best solutions are then owned by the entity that broadcast the problem in the first place—the crowdsourcer—and the winning individuals in the crowd are sometimes rewarded. In some cases, this labor is well compensated, either monetarily, with prizes, or with recognition. In other cases, the only rewards may be kudosor intellectual satisfaction. Crowdsourcing may produce solutions from amateurs or volunteers working in their spare time, or from experts or small businesses which were unknown to the initiating organization.

I had a chance to write about crowd-sourcing before. Navigate to one of my previous posts – Marketplaces and Engineering Software or NoPLM and Quirky Social Product Development. Earlier last month, I’ve been reading recent announcements related to Local Motors and SolidEdge Design1. I can see it as a big deal.

Navigate to the following article in Develop3D by Al Dean to read his commentary on this. Also, you might be interested to read Evan Yares’ take on this same topic in his post – Siemens PLM and Local Motors. Here is my favorite passage from Evan’s post.

While I think the Local Motors deal is interesting, what I find more interesting is the potential Design1 might have in Siemens’ (and its competitors’) major accounts, as a low-cost interstitial CAD tool for use by engineers and others who are not full-time CAD users, or who simply don’t need history-based CAD. I could imagine some companies (particularly large automotive companies) signing up for literally thousands of copies. It could make things pretty interesting in the CAD business.

I found another source of ideas looking for GrabCAD presentation during AU2011 last week (Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend Hardi’s presentation and ended up to catch it via slideshare version).

The connection of GrabCAD to crowd-sourcing services can be interesting because it will require additional tools that can help people to communicate and re-use data.

All this, made me think about a potential impact crowdsourcing models can make on PLM software development. Here is the idea, in a nutshell. Design1 is a good start. Local Motors needed a cheap CAD tool that can be used by the community of people. The community of people is obviously using the internet as a way to communicate. So, by doing that, one of the biggest concerns of cloud PLM (cloud security) will be dissolved. It means data will flow online anyway. Obviously, the community can be interested in having PLM tools to support data management, communication and processes across the community.

What is my conclusion? The power of community is fascinating. It can impact many aspects of software development. Will community be using Google tools or special PLM software dedicate to online usage? It is a good question. What is your take? Speak your mind.

Best, Oleg

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CAD, PLM and Visual Reporting

October 17, 2011

Reporting is a very important part of product lifecycle management. Actually, without reporting it is hard to imaging how you can make all information about a product and its lifecycle usable. At the same time, PLM vendors ditched reporting capabilities for a very long time. I was writing about it few times. Maybe you can take a look on one of my posts almost two year ago – Do we need reporting standards in PLM?. Many years reporting was the add-on function, and the niche was mostly occupied by service providers and implementers.

Recently, I noted a trend that made me change my opinion. I can see some significant changes in an attitude CAD and PLM vendors put to improve some reporting capabilities. One of the elements of this trend is "visual reporting".

Siemens PLM and HD3D

I made a note about HD3D back in 2009. Navigate to this post to read about it. Earlier today, I was reading twitter stream coming out of Siemens PLM conference in Europe and found that Siemens significantly improved the capability of HD3D and it plays very nice by providing excellent reporting capabilities and navigating between 3D and non-3D information. In today’s announcement about NX8 Siemens included information about future enhancements of HD3D. Here is a quote from the following announcement:

Enhancements to NX 8 in the area of product design include more powerful and efficient modeling, drafting and validation solutions along with expanded HD3D support for better design decisions.

Expanded HD3D and design validation tools provide enhanced interaction, more powerful reporting and enriched visual presentation of PLM information from more sources. Standard HD3D features now provide a visually rich and more flexible feedback environment to help users quickly locate, diagnose and fix problems, ensuring designs comply with standards and fulfill requirements.

High Definition 3D (HD3D) capabilities include enhancements like new simulation “results measures”, that allow users to tie results directly to requirements so teams can make smarter decisions.

Al Dean of Develop3D wrote about HD3D and Visual Reporting in his article earlier today. See few screen-shots from this article.

Who else is in business of Visual Reporting?

Watching NX8, HD3D made me think about other vendors probably pushing towards the same directions. I found Dassault System 3DLive product (even earlier than HD3D) trying to accomplish almost the same goal of combing 3D visual information and information coming from PDM and ERP system. I think Siemens development folks definitely learned from Dassault 3D live before building HD3D (just my opinion and combination of dates).

Interesting enough, I found Autodesk is also not standing aside and watching how Siemens PLM and Dassault are improving the reporting capabilities of their products. Autodesk proud to call it "Visual Data Management".

What is my conclusion? I think, slowly, but surely, CAD and PLM vendors are starting to understand the value of the ability to present data reports and visualize them nicely. It recognized by many vendors (and just brought examples of Siemens PLM, Dassault Systems and Autodesk). In my view, we are going to see more examples of how reporting capabilities can increase the value of products and make it more usable. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Siemens’ Active Workspace – PLM Next Big Thing?

September 30, 2011

PLM is a lot of lifecycle. It is a very important characteristic of PLM to support product access the multiple lifecyle phases. As a result of this PLM forced to be focused on integration. The nature of PLM to live between all other enterprise systems in manufacturing organization. How many times you’ve seen a slide presenting PLM capturing product from early requirement phases and until final disposal. Over the past few years, I’ve seen the trend of PLM vendors to delivery more vertically integrated systems. It was demanded by customers, since it answered on the requests to integrate multiple enterprise products and information. About a month ago, I posted Total Integration and the Future of PLM. This blog post resonated. You can see a long history of discussion came together with this blog. It was clear to me “integration” became a key word.

Dassault System was a company that experimented with the vertical integration too. Coming with their revolutionary V6 release and 3DLive concept, Dassault introduced the environment “pulling dots” together. You can find corresponded materials on YouTube (like this) presenting how V6/3DLive supposed to provide a complete integrated working environment.

I first heard about Siemens PLM plan to deliver so called HD-PLM and HD-3D environment last year. I’ve seen examples of HD-3D. I liked a clean UI. However, I’ve seen some correspondence between ideas of 3DLive and HD-3D. Here is my blog about it from the last year – 3DLive, HD-3D, 3D UI and Efficiency.

Earlier this year, I started to get some information about Siemens PLM plan to deliver something called – Active Work Space. E The first time I’ve heard about it was a blog by Desktop Engineering called- Siemens PLM Connection: Clues to Active Workspace. It was interesting enough. I noted the following passage:

“What we’re trying to do,” said Bruce Feldt, Siemens PLM Software’s VP of Open Tools, “is to provide access to information, that complex PLM information, though a transcendent user interface …”

The end product, revealed Feldt, “is intended to be a new client [with which] PLM workers of all classes will start their work day. Active Workspace will know who the workers are, what’s on their work list, what kind of things they’re working on. It’s all centered around the notion of improved decision-making … It is a search-based application. Do not consider it as a search engine … the user interface has to be very simple to use … it’s a highly visual environment. Going through lists of texts, product structures, and information presented in hierarchical ways is useful, but we think if we present them in a more visual way, it would be more useful and easier to understand.”

Below is a slide from the presentation shows what Active Workspace is and what is it NOT.

Another piece of information about Active Workspace came later this year from Siemens PLM conference. Jim Brown of TechClarity was talking about HD-PLM and Active Workspace in his blog post – Siemens PLM: Progress Report 2011. Here is the quote from Jim’s post:

HD-PLM – This is where “smarter decisions” becomes real. The most tangible progress here is with Active Work Space (AWS). Active Work Space is a central solution for Siemens PLM that aims to bring all of the information, tools, and product context together in one place for a user. This holistic view of the product is intended to serve as the central location that decision makers access product information and the tools to create and share it. One of the key points Siemens makes is that this should put all of the tools Chuck talks about above in the context of the product and the decisions being made. At a minimum, it simplifies the view into the products for a user and provides a fresh interface to the PLM solution suite. Over time, this has the potential to develop into much more (I will share more of that as plans are made public).

Finally, Kenneth Wong of Desktop Engineering published an article earlier last week – Siemens PLM: Active Workspace in code… where he placed the following picture previewing future Active Workspace UI. According to information provided by Kenneth, Active Workspace supposed to come later in November.

What is my conclusion? I think, vertical integration and decision-making are two important trends in PLM these days. Ultimately, PLM value prop is going more and more towards “smarter product decisions”. The only way to have a smarter decision is to provide a complete and efficient tool connecting information to be used by decision makers. I sort of like Siemens PLM Active Workspace idea. However, obviously, I have many questions not answered. Cost of implementation and openness to other tools in manufacturing organization are two most important. In my view, customers’ demands are towards cheaper tools and faster implementation timelines. Is it achievable? I don’t know… I didn’t find information about how to Siemens is planning to implement Active Workspace. Hope to see it in the future. These are just my thoughts and guesses…

Best, Oleg

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Total Integration and the Future of PLM

August 12, 2011

I’m still cleaning my post-vacation backlog of feeds and messages. One of the articles by UK Eureca Magazine caught my attention, since it was named exactly as my blog – Beyond PLM. This article is an interview with managing director PLM Software, Robin Hancock about the company’s vision for the future of PLM.

One of the main topics discussed in the article was a topic of "integration" or so-called "total integration". Here, my favorite passage:

Charting the development of PLM, Hancock says, "In the old days it was all about product design. Now, while you’re designing and developing the product and getting people to collaborate around it, you’re also designing and developing your plant and your manufacturing capability concurrently. Because the pressure is to get more competitive, more highly configured products to market at a lower price and higher quality, more quickly, doing those things concurrently is the next big value proposition for manufacturing and engineering companies. But change is difficult and the last thing you want is some ‘big bang’.

Siemens PLM is planning their future HD PLM approach to help realize the potential of the total integration. Here is a visionary video Siemens PLM released a year ago:

The discussion about "the total integration" and "big bang" approach made me think about the following 3 trends I can see in a modern PLM technological and application development: Multiple System Approach, Vertical Integration and Continuous Implementation.

Multiple System Approach

The reality of manufacturing companies is simple – people stopped believing in a single system that solves all problems. Businesses understood that they need to have a blend of systems representing their unique approach of running product development. I can see multiple reasons why it happened. Among the most important ones I can see system complexity, implementation cost and high demand for fast ROI.

Vertical Integration

Customers have a strong demand for vertical integration. The days were systems could work disintegrated finally over. The question of integration between design,manufacturing, supply, execution and other elements of the overall system chain is obvious and businesses are ready to spend a lot of resources to make it work.

Continuous Implementation

This trend related to the potential implementation cost. The demand of users is to drive this cost down as much as possible. Opposite to a ‘big bang’ approach, this one is focusing on how to implement multiple small projects into a sequence of successful deployments.Each has their own cost, ROI value proposition. All of them together allows to decrease the overall implementation cost and project risks.

What is my conclusion? It seems to me, the understanding of the "integration value" is important to successfully implement PLM systems. This is not a short term project, but a long journey. I think, in the past "integration" was a "step child" in PLM product family. PLM companies focused on their own product lines and dismissed integration opportunity. However, future is integrated. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM and Post-PC Era

April 6, 2011

Picture-9.pngI found an increased trend of conversation around the "post-PC" topic. I found the conversation fascinating. Are we going to replace our PCs, workstations, laptops with mobile table devices like iPad 2? I’m not sure it is going to happen soon. I’ve been readingGartner’s prediction about PC market dynamics as well PC World article discussing the same topic. Nevertheless, I can see how mindshare PLM vendors are reacting on strong dynamics of tablet devices. Earlier last month, I posted 3D/PLM and iPad: Future or Baloney? I’m continuing to watch other CAD and PLM vendors coming to the "table" and introducing their iPad apps.

Early Adopters or Mainstream?

Autodesk was one of the first vendors coming to the tablet’s game. It started by introducingAutoCAD WS last year and followed by multiple additional Apps. In my view, Autodesk is still leading with the maximum number of various iOS apps. Dassault and SolidWorks came later this year and introduced3DVIA Mobile on iPad on SolidWorks World 2011 earlier this year. Few days ago, I found Siemens PLM introducingTeamCenter Mobility Apps. I found the following video interesting. Watch it and make you conclusion.

Mobile and Decision Making

I can see a clear trend to introduce mobile apps as something that drives to better decision making capabilities. It raises multiple use cases where end users are not necessarily needed to stick with the fully blown application tools on their PC to make a decision. I found TeamCenter app scope wider than other mobile applications introduced on iOS devices before.

What is my conclusion? I can see signs of post-PC era. I don’t think it means that we will replace our PC with mobile devices. However, it introduces a new dynamic in decision making that can help to accomplish their jobs, even if they are out of their desks. The new status quo can introduce a completely different set of expectations in front of PLM vendors these days. Important. Just my opinion.

Best, Oleg

Freebie. Siemens PLM didn’t pay me to write this post.

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Posted by olegshilovitsky

Daimler PLM Dilemma – PDM First

November 27, 2010

This week Siemens PLM announced – "Daimler AG has selected CAD Software from Siemens as their standard for their worldwide vehicle development". The event of such size is notable in the PLM space and generated a significant amount of buzz and publications. Despite the fact most of publications talked about what was a decision base for Daimler AG, my favorite quote was from Graphic Speak article:

All the MCAD/PLM vendors want the major automotive manufacturers as their customers, for both the bragging rights and the additional sales to the supply chain. But automotive is not the big story in the next few years for PLM. Recently PTC disclosed to business analysts information on their current competitive campaigns. They listed the number of targeted customers by existing PLM platforms. “In-house or home-grown” was in second place, with Siemens PLM the only vendor with more installations in the PTC cross-hairs. Real market growth is not coming from a few large vendors who have been using PLM for years, but from the thousands of smaller manufacturers who will leap-frog from a “PLM system” based on AutoCAD, Excel, email, and Windows Explorer to state-of-the-art engineering IT. This larger market is wide-open.

CAD and PDM History

For many years, CAD system was a leading software component in the overall strategy related to the design and engineering world. The decision about CAD was always one that set up the agenda to work with a vendor. At the same time, PDM was an appendix to a CAD kingdom. PDM integration with CAD system was considered as strategically important. The ability of PDM to be connected and used together with CAD environment was one of the key decision points for many companies. The importance of CAD (design) data was absolutely undoubted.

New Horizons of Product Data

In my view, last 10 years, introduced some changes in the priorities of engineering IT. The importance of "integrated solutions" raised significantly. The driver behind that is the understanding of manufacturing companies about how to control cost. The importance of product data management beyond CAD and design became clear for large OEMs and even smaller companies. The amount of product data outside of design environment outgrows the amount of CAD data. The introduction of lightweight data formats like JT, XVL and others decreased the dependencies of people outside of the design department on CAD data. Today, PDM system is a platform used to support expanded product data scope. Most of these systems are heavily customized. In includes the complication of CAD-PDM integration. However, the importance of the global product data management is growing.

PLM Platforms and Cost of Change

CAD/PLM vendors noticed the importance of vertical integration in the beginning of 2000s. This factor led them to decisions about the future platform strategies. All PLM vendors spent significant resources over the past decade to modernize and re-architecture their platforms – TeamCenter Unified, Enovia V6, Windchill. Lots of money was spent to introduce modern backbones, expanded portfolios and integration strategies. However, the reality in the field is heterogeneous software landscape. It leads to a question of "change cost" as the most important element of the future PLM decision.

What is my conclusion? Cost is important. In 2000s , the decision CAD vs. PDM was almost always CAD + any PDM Integration. Which means – CAD First. We learned something new this week. PDM and Data Management becomes more and more important. The cost of global product data platform change and potential IT disruption is much bigger compared to the cost switching to another CAD. So, in 2010s, the math CAD <or> PDM is different and the answer is probably PDM change + IT cost. Which means PDM and product data backbone first. This is an important difference, which will have an implication on engineering and manufacturing software decisions of the current decade. PDM system position can give some advantages in the PLM giant wars for large automotive and aerospace OEM accounts. Questions about cost of change and untapped PLM markets are more interesting, in my view.

Best, Oleg

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Posted by olegshilovitsky

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