PLM and the death of complexity

April 24, 2012

The complexity of engineering and manufacturing software is a well-known fact. The topic isn’t really new. For the last couple of years the complexity topic came to me in different context and various forms. Two weeks ago, I was writing about that in my blog – PLM: Data, Search and Future User Experience. If you haven’t had a chance to read it, please take a look.

One of my working hypotheses these days is that consumer market and consumer software provides a significant injection of ideas for user experience. In parallel consumer behaviors of web and other software are changing state of mind of many end users. I was reading an article outline from Gartner about consumer trends that impact technology. I found this write up quite interesting. Navigate your browser to the following link to read it – Gartner Outlines 10 Consumer Macro Trends to Impact Technology, Media and Service Providers for Next 10 Years and have a read. This passage is my favorite one.

Market Trend No. 9 — The Death of Complexity

The consumer market is becoming progressively less tolerant of complexity. Although consumers tend to buy products with ever-richer features, they often prefer those that are simple and intuitive. The ability to provide appealing and intuitive user interfaces has become a critical point of differentiation among competing technology providers. As technology becomes more complex, vendors need to invest more in keeping the user interface simple and intuitive. T&SPs therefore need to focus on simplifying technology, pricing, brand messaging, and feedback and interaction, and consider offering chargeable help services for consumers challenged by installing and configuring new equipment and services in their homes.

It made me think that fighting complexity will be one of the most critical elements of the future CAD/PLM vendor strategies. I was looking on what CAD/PLM companies are doing these days. I can summarize it in the following 3 directions:

1- Leverage OS user experience.

This direction was very popular in the past. In the world of Microsoft Windows dominance, to adopt OS user experience and make your application transparent is an interesting decision. It started from leveraging File Explorer UI and continue towards deeper integration with Microsoft Office, SharePoint and other systems. The examples are SolidWorks EPDM, PTC Windchill and few others.

2- Mimic successful web application in consumer market

Web is the source of inspiration for many startup companies and well established brands in CAD / PLM. The most popular elements of use experience that companies have tried to use were – Google search and Social Networking. The experiments presented by Siemens PLM as Active Workspace is one of the examples. Dassault came with Exalead search SBA, but I have never seen something that was delivered in this space by Exalead after DS acquisition.

3- 3D and Gaming

Because design content in CAD is visual and in many cases is 3D, companies have tried to use gaming analogies to develop the next successful user experience in this space. 3DLive from Dassault was clearly pioneering in this space by delivering their 3DLive. These days, I want to mention Siemens PLM Active Workspace. It is another interesting experience of mixing of 3D and search experience.

What is my conclusion? The death of the complexity is here. PLM and other software vendors in the manufacturing and engineering space need to take a note. The user experience will not be set by enterprise monsters. New generation of people will not tolerate the complex PLM software. This is a time to rest the expectations. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM: Ugly vs. Cool

April 9, 2012

Do you think PLM software must be cool? More than two years ago, I posted FREE and COOL trends in CAD/PLM. I’m observing an increased amount of discussions about "PLM coolness" in the past few weeks. The release of PLM 360 by Autodesk just amplified the interest to the "cool" side of PLM. In my view, this discussion is related to the following two modern treneds: consumerization and user experience. I will try to speak about that.

Consumerization and BYOD

I’ve been talking about PLM and IT consumerization back in February during PLM innovation in Munich. Navigate here to refresh your memory. The following slide represents the typical "consumer behavior" – simple, easy, fast and DIY.

It is clearly come opposite to all traditions of "enterprise software" that requires planning, installation, training, etc.

User Experience and "Don’t Make Me Think"

This is another topic to discuss. Years (if not decades) people are talking about usability of enterprise software. I remember the pathetic phrase – "you are here to work, not to play", that was said in the context of enterprise software usability. The typical enterprise application doesn’t change much for the last 15 years.

At the same time, I can see that vendors started to pay attention. Navigate here to read one of my previous blogs comparing what PLM vendors are doing to improve user experience. Latest Siemens PLM release of Active Workspace is clear confirmation of the importance of "don’t make me think" concept.

Why you might decide to keep your PLM ugly?

So, why you can consider "ugly PLM" as a good thing? It is easy. Companies are looking how to solve their business problems. IT and business people are working with software vendors providing "value proposition" behind future investment into the software packages. All these processes are complicated, and interplay with the strategies related to the selection of "trusted IT providers", long-term strategies of IT platforms, existing software platforms and replacement cost and many other things.

You can imagine the following speech – "PLM should be ugly and complicated. This is a business system (or even strategic approach) that prevents CEO to go to jail because of manufacturing failures. PLM systems business benefit is to validate manufacturing planning to be smooth and optimal, to satisfy regulatory and compliance needs and follow regulation rules". All what I said before, multiply with the cost optimization. If PLM software does all this stuff, but still NOT COOL, would you care? Now, guess what is the answer?

Why PLM turns to be cool sooner than later?

There are three main aspects why I think PLM software will become COOL – cost of complexity, consumer software trends and people. Let me talk a bit about each of these.

Many IT organizations hide the cost of complexity. It implied in installation, training and many other aspects. What is the main reason why people decided towards Excel and not enterprise software? Easy answer – it is simpler. People don’t like complicated software, and this distrust will just increase. These days enterprise IT will be on fire to compete with services coming from the consumer world. Who will be using complicated FTP services provided by IT at the time dropbox can do the job painlessly? Finally people like what they like in their everyday life. This is actually started to happen. Look on BYOD trend. People will stop tolerating complicated software. The one that makes them think…

What is my conclusion? As the late British advertising guru David Ogilvy said: "The trouble with market research is that people don’t think how they feel, they don’t say what they think and they don’t do what they say." Another fact I recently discovered that despite lots of "business justifications", "ROI calculators", etc. the decision engineering IT is taking with regards to PLM systems is very subconscious. I think, the same subconscious decision will be moving towards COOL stuff sooner than later. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Graphic logo credit to TrustoCorp. It is pretty cool artist. Check out twitter, and see more of the work on Flicker site.

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PLM: Data, Search and Future User Experience

April 4, 2012

Disclosure: As a co-founder of Inforbix, I understand that my opinion about PLM Data and Search can be unintentionally biased. Nevertheless, I believe the topic itself is very important, so I decided to share my thoughts anyway.

PLM Data. A lot of data. You are probably familiar with that. The amount of data is growing. I can say the same about the complexity of the products and product development processes. It creates significant challenges for everybody in the company – designers, engineers, manufacturing, marketing, sales and support. How to overcome the level of complexity and provide customers with easy and intuitive tools? This is one of the challenges I mentioned in my presentation few months ago during AU 2011.

In this article which is going to be unusually long, I’d like to explore trends and show examples of applications specifically focusing on user experience.

TeamCenter Active Workspace

Siemens just released videos and information about so-called TeamCenter Active Workspace. Per my understanding Active Workspace is a first module to implement so-called HD-PLM vision Siemens PLM presented last year. I caught the initial info about Active Workspace was in October 2011. I captured it in my Inforbix blog. The discussion was started on twitter by @dorasmith. In addition, you might be interested to read an early review done by Kenneth Wong of Desktop Engineering. The short definition of Active Workspace was like this “Active Workspace is like Internet search, simplifying PLM complexity”. I was listening to the following video by Chuck Grindstaff of Siemens PLM talking about Active Workspace.

Finally it came to the release. In the following video, you can see a first review of the product.

I find user experience quite comprehensive. In my view, it is clear simplification compared to a traditional PLM environment. According to my understanding Active Workspace is running on top of TeamCenter platform (as a module). So, where it provides a clear user experience simplification, customers still needs to take care of IT, installation and implementation cost.

Dassault System 3DExperience and Exalead SBA

DS has a concern about user experience too. DS started 3DLive product about 5 years ago as an innovative way to collaborate, visualize and navigate through product information. These days, DS is presenting something they call 3D Experience platform that allows people to experience real product in a virtual environment. According to Dassault, it will change the way innovators innovate with consumers. You can see a visionary video below. This is still a vision, in my view.

3D Experience platform contains many elements supported by other DS products. One of them, Exalead is a platform for Search Based Applications. DS acquired Exalead two years ago. Since that time, I’ve heard lots of talks about Exalead as a platform. According to Dassault, Exalead platform and applications can be embedded into other applications or used a platform for building new apps. Known as “French Google”, Exalead was a company founded back in the beginning of 2000 with some core roots in Alta Vista search platform. In my view, Exalead is a powerful toolkit. With all power it comes with, Exalead is a very generic and not related to PLM. In the video below, I found an application developed by DS partner – NovaQuest, which can be positioned as much as close as possible to PLM.

Autodesk PLM 360

The story of Autodesk PLM 360 is just in a very early beginning. Autodesk is presenting PLM 360 as a major breakthrough into changing the way people work in PLM including delivery and implementation (Instant On the cloud) and ending up with a user experience. I presented some of my thoughts about PLM 360 on my blog before. Navigate to the following link to read more. From the standpoint of user experience, PLM 360 is completely browser-based (except of Workflow designer)

It also provides some interesting capabilities for product information navigation.

Opposite to Siemens PLM and Dassault, PLM 360 is running in the cloud. User interface is a strong point of PLM360. It is also very flexible and customizable. At the same time, because of the cloud, connection with the data in the company, remains one of the weak points and the gap that Autodesk needs to cover.

PTC, Windchill and SharePoint

The last version of Windchill product put a lot of focus on the user experience. PTC mentioned it many times in their presentations. You can see a video of Windchill 10 demonstrating all usability enhancements. The core concept of Windchill UI is to combine the best desktop experience with the best web experience. How successful is that? Take a look on the video and tell me, please.

On the side of search, PTC relies on SharePoint infrastructure heavily. In the following video, you can see how PTC mixing SharePoint search with Windchill products.

Inforbix Product Data Applications

The big idea of Inforbix is to change the way how people in manufacturing company can access product data located in disparate locations (file vaults, local computer drives, database, PDM/PLM applications and other sources). Inforbix doesn’t require you to migrate data into a single database. Inforbix runs from the cloud (private or public), scans product data and helps you to search, find connected elements and create different reports and visualization. Learn more here. User experience plays one of the central roles in Inforbix. The following video shows Inforbix Search user experience that helps you navigate and discover product data.

This video presents Inforbix Tables user experience helping you to slice and dice data in virtual reports.

What is my conclusion? User experience is very important these days. What we learned from the internet and mobile space, one “extra click” can kill your product. The new motto – “don’t make me think” can be easy applied as the most important requirements nowadays. The idea of user experience started to proliferate to enterprise space. PLM companies are clearly interested how to make improvements and create new generation of tools, which will not look like ’95 anymore. Just my thoughts….

Best, Oleg

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How to streamline PLM?

December 10, 2011

One of the biggest problem I can see in all PDM / PLM tools is a high level of the complexity. I’ve been thinking about it many times. After observing this industry for quite some time, I started to come to conclusion that solutions are becoming more complicated without becoming more functional. I’ve been reading the article The case for stripped-down enterprise 2.0 tools on by Moly Bernhart Walker. He was quoting Tim Young of Socialcast. Here is my favorite passage:

"Simple tools are incredibly powerful," said Young Nov. 15, during a keynote at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara, Calif. It’s very difficult to solve a complex problem with a complex tool, he added. What we’ve been doing with customers is actually moving away, stripping away functionality and making it very, very simple by just focusing on one or two activity screens. And we’ve actually begun to see the value in this," said Young.

I decided to pull few old pictures of EDM and PDM tools and take a look on them from the angle of PLM 2012.

How to strip-down PLM?


I think, we’ve been obsessed by the power of computer, higher screen resolution and interest to push additional functionality in the PLM software. It is a time to stop and think. Here is the slide from last presentation I’ve made during Autodesk University 2011.

PLM software is bloody complicated. To find a right strip-down option will be an appropriate way to think about the next PLM solution.

What is my conclusion? PLM was born many years to solve the problem of product development in complex defense and aerospace companies. Since that time, software vendors passed a long way developing new functionality. However, I don’t think it made solutions better. It is very hard to remove functionality for existing software. At the same time, I don’t see any alternative to that in the future. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM and Re-thinking UI paradigms

October 11, 2011

I’m spending more and more time with alternative UIs. It first started from mobile and web. Now it is coming from everywhere. Retrieving my old memories about SCO/Xenix, DOS and Windows, my hunch is we are going to another UI paradigm shift very soon. During this long weekend, I was reading Adopting the metro style for line of business apps blog post by Bil Simser. Take a read. The fact it is coming from analyzes of Windows Metromakes it even more interesting. I wrote about metro style few weeks ago in one of my posts.

A Typical PLM User Experience

Can you think about typical PLM/PDM user experience? It goes that way: TREE VIEW -> LIST VIEW -> ITEM VIEW. Most of PLM (and not only) user interfaces built around this paradigm. Therefore, the following passage co-sounded:

Metro is different. It forces you to think about your application in a different manner. No longer are you trying to get tree view feeding items into list view feeding details into file view. There are still groups and collection of groups and all that but remember your UI now is a functional, breathing, living thing. Minimalism is best here so you want to get out as much information in as effective space as possible. As Microsoft pointed out, a live tile isn’t something you should be posting every detail to. It’s an extension of the application so treat it as a first class citizen, not a UI element that needs to be pretty.

If you think about the following picture (credit to Bil Simser post), you probably will see a long list of applications that you have in use these days in your company.

New paradigms: Tasks and Virtual Assistant

Where do you think new paradigms will be coming from? In my view, the majority of them will come as a re-thinking of web 2.0 websites and mobile applications. One of my favorite applications for the last two years on my iPhone is Siri. I wrote about Siri almost two years ago here – What are your questions to PLM Virtual Assistant? I’m so glad to see Siri is finally coming to iPhone 4S these days.

What is my conclusion? I think, time is coming to re-think an old way of designing enterprise applications. It won’t be simple. The biggest problem, in my view, is a significant investment made by companies in existing software. So, the question of ROI, etc. will have to be answered. However, new users will demand new stuff to come. So, it is inevitable. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM User Experience and Google Related

August 17, 2011

PLM User Experience… Yes, I know. This is a painful point. Everybody wants it simpler, intuitive and easy. My best quotes about how to design a good user interface belongs toSteve Krug – “Don’t Make Me Think”. One of the most painful elements of user experience in data-management systems like PDM and PLM is “clicks”. You need to click to move to another screen, open a form, open another form… very painful. Apparently, user experience is a common problem. Take a look something new coming from Google Israel calledGoogle Related.

What is my take? I played with Google Related this morning when working on my daily social medial stuff. I found it slick and useful. It definitely helped me to save few clicks back and forth in a browser. Maybe UX designers thinking about next PLM products need to take a note.

Best, Oleg

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PLM User Experience, Windows 8 and the End of Desktop

June 5, 2011

Some time ago, I wrote about future user experience – PUI: Not PLM UI. Future User experience. One of the fundamental elements of user experience for the last 20 years was the desktop. The organization of desktop didn’t change since first was invented together with file system and first versions of Windows.

The Microsoft announcement and preview of Windows 8 made me think about fundamental changes finally started to happen. This is the first time for the last time Microsoft made me think – the game is not over. Yes, lots of things may happen until the release of Windows 8, but I can definitely see – some folks in Redmond are thinking outside of the box.

The Windows 8 preview made me think again about what changes are expected soon of user experience in CAD/PLM world. The following two videos present some ideas. The first one – Autodesk Sketchbook Pro for ipad. You can see a full absence of a mouse as well as touch user experience.

The following one is Numbers for iPad. Many PLM apps have intensive data processing elements. What can be a new paradigm? I think Numbers are a decent example of the directions.

What is my conclusion? In coming years, we will see a growing set of examples of new user experience. Mouse and Keyboard are phasing out. Touch and new forms of user interaction are coming. A good place to innovate… Just my thoughts.

Best, Oleg

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COFES, PLM, BIM and Augmented Reality

April 15, 2011

The first day at COFES 2011 over. I hope, you had a chance to follow COFES 2011 via twitter (COFES2011). If not, navigate your browser to the following link. COFES is always a good time to have a conversion with bunch of really smart people. It gives lots of materials for inspiration and… yes, blogging. This afternoon I had a chance to attend pre-COFES session: Augmented reality: Practical Business Applications presented by Joseph Juhnke of Tanagram Partners. I posted about augmented reality before. You can take a look on my earlier post: The Role of Augment Reality in PLM. Back that time, I’ve seen some interesting augment reality implementations for virtual identification, virtual design, simulation.

I found today’s presentation made by Joseph very inspiring. Part of the presentation was dedicated to the presentation of pictures with possible use cases for augmenting reality from BIM and PLM space. Take a look on the following pictures and make your opinion.

What is my take? I think we are standing in front of a very big distraction in enterprise systems in general and PDM/PLM specifically. It is about changing “user experience”. In one of my tweets today I asked if “NUI” – natural user interface is a future. In my view, presentation of the information in a more natural way, can change a lot. “Augment reality” can play a significant role in making this change happen. Is it a time for PLM companies to re-think some of their UI concepts?

Just my thougths…

Best, Oleg

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PUI: Not PLM UI. Future User Experience.

June 22, 2010

I’d suggest to have some fun in the beginning. What is PUI? Do you think this is a new PLM UI? No, marketing didn’t get it yet… I hope, they will not do so. I’ve got this PUI TLA reading Enterprise Irregulars Blog – Three Types of GUIs: Past Present and Future. Thanks ArnoldIT blog for referencing me to this article. The author explains three different type of GUI – Task UI, Desktop UI and Process UI.  I found it very interesting. It made me think about the evolution of user experience in engineering applications and PLM.

TUI, DUI, PUI in Engineering applications
If you think about CAD applications, they look very task oriented. You have a 2D drawing (lately transformed into 3D model) and everything you do around this drawing or model, can be considered as tasks. You can create a new model or modify an existing one. Another big group of applications, CAE is also focusing on different tasks (i.e. calculations, etc.) around 2D/3D models.

The initial development of data management application created an idea of “Desktop”. In the beginning, data management was focused on “meta-data” management. Meta-data was considered as everything surrounding CAD files. The need to present data in various forms created lots of modifications of data forms. You can find it in most PDM/PLM applications during last 10-15 years.

Process was one of the top ideas that PLM focused on for the past 5-6 years. Organization can understand a “process language”. Software vendors in PLM space learned it from their big ERP brothers. I had chance to see lots of PUI modifications focusing on different processes.

PLM and PUI problem – Scalability
In my view, process orientation was a big excitement for PLM and other engineering software companies. It created a scalable model to grow the amount of applications, they can provide to companies. Since everything is a process, imaging how many process-oriented application you can create using this approach. Licensing wasn’t the last reason in this decision. Looks like PUIs were the way to go. PLM companies are tried to implement PUI approach. Take a look on the quote from Enterprise Irregulars Blog:

Now imagine business or enterprise apps that are process based, not single task items knit together by DIY process: An app that can pick up an idea, issue or request and run it through an unpredictable process that might look like a ball of yarn all the way to an implemented idea, a solved issue or a happy customer.

Where is the problem? In my view, the biggest problem is a scalability of this process. Every organization is different. Process oriented applications became very complex. This is what happens to PUI in PLM. Customers cannot implement an existing process oriented application. However, to tailor it will skyrocket cost of services.

Future User Experience
It is clear to everybody that the level of the complication kills. So, what will be the UI in the future? Many of companies are looking for the next big thing in UI. I can identify two main trends in PLM UI simplification – 1/ Embedding into the mainstream UI (i.e. Email, Excel, SharePoint, etc.), 2/Imitating successful applications in consumer space (i.e. Facebook). What will be the next big thing in UI? Do you think it will come from augmented reality? Games? Voice? I can see SIRI acquisition by Apple as the sign of possible direction in the future. I had chance to write about how I see the future user experience in my blog too.

What is my conclusion? User Interface is a hard problem in PLM apps. I think, we are in the mist of UI discussions. I can see many people are innovating in this space and trying to find a solution to this problem. We are in the beginning of mass migration of application from consumer space to the enterprise software. It will be very interesting to get back to this discussion in a couple of years.

Best, Oleg

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PLM And New Types Of User Experience

May 5, 2010

User experience is important. It comes with all cool gadgets, Web 2.0 websites and iPhone apps. I think, people started to understand it even in enterprise organizations. I can hear lots of people voices asking when enterprise tools will become cooler than today. The obvious answer of PLM and other related vendors for many years was 3D. Everything looks better in 3D – visualization, animation, etc. I want to focus on few examples of trends that can potentially introduce new types of user experience.

Augmented Reality
The latest trend in 3D space is augmenting reality. It helps us to mix virtual and real 3D spaces into a single one. The nice thing about it is that it helps you to realize the potential of your product before it even comes to prototyping and manufacturing. I had chance to see many examples of augmented reality. One of the best ones is iQ Toyota. The impressive piece of this video is how you can create a virtual disassemble of the car.

3D Working Environment
This example is actually coming from the BumpTop acquisition Google made this week. BumpTop is a nice idea simulating real 3D environment on your desktop. And it is specially interesting, since the existing desktops remain unchanged the last 10-15 years, and it sounds like a potential change in this place. I can imaging it coming to the product design environment too.

Voice Collaborative Communication
In my view, this is the most unusual one. I’ve been watching Siri - assistant application since it was introduced last year on iPhone. This is a nice example of collaborative application that interact with user in a very unusual and intuitive manner. I posted about this apps few mounts ago in my article – What Are You Questions PLM Virtual Assistant? So, this company was acquired by Apple earlier this week, which means for me Apple is investing in more intuitive ways of collaboration and communication. I think, this is also something that can fit very well today’s product development environment.

So, what is my conclusion? I can definitely see something new is coming in user experience and communication. The trends in  communication and collaboration made by non-PLM software manufacturers can outrun design and engineering software vendors. PLM vendors are dealing with a huge amount of legacy code and legacy implementations. However, this is a time to think about what can bring next potential leap in collaborative manufacturing, engineering and design software.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

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