PLM and DIY Applications

March 11, 2013

do-it-yourself-plmI’m sure you are familiar with the term DIY (do it yourself). While the term is not PLM specific, I’m often using it when explaining the way many manufacturing companies are approaching PLM implementations. Because of high cost and complexity of large integrated PLM suites, companies are deciding to make “homegrown” development by using variety of tech infrastructure. For the last 5-7 years, SharePoint was adopted by many companies as core element of infrastructure. In parallel, Microsoft Office and, specifically, Excel and MS Outlook/Exchange are by fact the most popular elements in building homegrown PDM/PLM solutions.

The last decade of web software development, open source and mobile apps brought significant amount of new tools and technologies. As a result, it open new horizons and opportunity to develop new tools that can be much cheaper and efficient for DIY biz apps compared to outdated Lotus databases and complicated and costly SharePoint deployments. Recently, I found two examples of applications that can be potentially used to develop business and product data management applications.

One example is so called STOIC platform. You can navigate to the following link to learn more. It realized the idea of simply tables combined with different data presentation and arrangement. The following video shows a short demo. The platform is not released yet. However, what was impressive in the video is ease of use and speed of application creation. It is far from being ready, but it shows the potential and direction.

Another example is application called mysimplegrid developed by startup mydatalynx. The idea of mysimplegrid is to provide a flexible and fast way to develop data models that can be transformed into grid-based applications. Learn more about what this app can do here. In a nutshell, it allows you to create a data model, fill it with data, play with data and collaborate it in a way of a table with other people. The following video shows you how it works. The app is available in beta stage now.

What is my conclusion? The cost of web developed is a fraction of what it was a decade ago. As a result of this we are going to see much more examples of product and technologies available to manufacturing companies to manage data. They will have a potential to disrupt SharePoint and Lotus Notes empire as well as provide a reliable tool to companies to build applications. While they are not mature enough to be used for large deployment, I can see see them growing fast. What is also important, the cost of this apps will be probably a fraction of today’s enterprise solutions. Enterprise software and PLM vendors should take a note. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Image courtesy of [Grant Cochrane] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net


PLM Scale and Some Internet Factoids

December 22, 2012

The scalability of enterprise systems is an interesting topic. Enterprise IT usually keeps the story about scalability of systems close to their chest. It involves data centers, databases, channels, networks, latency, and many other aspects that allows you to tune your enterprise PLM. And I know, it was absolutely true for existing enterprise PDM and PLM.

The situation is different nowadays. Last 10 years of web development and internet established a new level of scale. The amount of data and user activities web and social networks can handle is going much beyond typical enterprise deployments. The following AronoldIT factoid article captured my attention earlier this week. I don’t know if these numbers are accurate. But knowing that Gangnam style fist video just hit 1B Youtube views, I can easy believe that.

Every minute more than 1,649,305 tweets get shared.
Every minute more than 3,472,225 photos get added to Facebook.
Every minute more than 2,060 brand new blogs are created.
Every minute more than 52,488 minutes of video are added to YouTube.
Every minute more than 31,510 new articles are created by an online newspaper.
Every minute more than 3,645,833,340 new spam emails are delivered online.

What is my conclusion? The consumer web and social media introduced a completely different perspective of scale, capacity and system performance. Enterprise PLM vendors and IT service companies need to start paying attention. The technological gap consumer systems are developing these days can easy outperform existing enterprise PDM and PLM deployments. Important. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Image courtesy of [ddpavumba] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net


3 things PLM can learn from UCO (Used Car Ontology)

December 18, 2012

Our digital and real lives are getting more and more connected. Think about our web experience these days. Mobile devices, map service, location based query, social networks. The list of examples can continue. One of the biggest challenges we have, as a result of web exposure in our real life, is the need to integrate and interconnect many sources of information coming from different places. Think about intertwining of your location information, photo posts and reviews. You have Facebook Nearby service (the enhancement of this service was just announced yesterday), You can get some interesting perspective on the service here.

Moving to the main topic I wanted to discuss today, navigate your browser to the following SemanticWeb article - Introducing the used car ontology (UCO). The article speaks about publishing of ontology (knowledge of concepts) that supports a precise description of used cars. The article reference MakoLab, the company that made this work as well as provides a link to the ontology itself. I found the following passage interesting.

“Publishing information about used cars… containing a description which refers to the Used Cars Ontology will allow for easier searching of cars for purchase, along with a more in-depth description of their state of exploitation. The UCO supplements the more general ontologies GoodRelations and Vehicle Sales Ontology created by Professor Martin Hepp. The GoodRelations ontology is now integrated with the famous dictionary schema.org created by Google, Yahoo and Bing, for the purpose of improvement of information searching on the Internet and better positioning of websites.”

Dig a bit into UCO ontology document and you find some examples of queries and operations build with the use of UCO ontology. Spent some time with the document and you will learn how to get report of used cars, getting car description, updating information about the car and more. The information about used cars can be located on multiple websites. It made me think about possibility to improve interaction with multiple island of information. Here are top 3 things I came after the analyzes of UCO doc:

1. Ontology can be used to produce a meaningful queries. The web technologies are providing a reliable instrument to work with data located in multiple websites. Semantic web provides set of technologies helping you to describe, query and manipulate the data.

2. Nobody is interested how data is stored. It is almost meaningless how data is stored. The website with the information about used cars can use any technology (from text files to excels and databases) to store data. This information is not needed to process data on a web scale.

3. Publishing semantic information can improve cross system data access. When your website and/or service is publishing information in semantically accessible way the information can be intertwined and used by other services for different purposes.

What is my conclusion? Web is a good example of the system that grew up beyond the level of single database. Web data processing mechanisms are interesting from the standpoint of sustainability and data scalability. Used car ontology provide a good example of organizing interoperability beyond the level of a single website. My hunch, we are going to see some of these technologies can change the way PLM systems operate today. Just my thoughts… What is your take?

Best, Oleg


What is behind “GitHub for CAD” marketing buzz?

October 16, 2012

PLM and marketing are not good friends. Marketing did a poor job for the last 10 years for PLM. For many years, PLM was advertised as something that can do everything… and even coffee. At the same time, marketing is indeed very important. Especially, it is critical for a new startup company. Between two risks (technical and marketing), marketing risk is usually more costly and painful to fix.

Gen-Yers are coming to 3D, CAD and PLM

The following two press releases drove my attention during last two weeks. One of them came from Sunglass.io, which came out of beta stage announcing – the following – Sunglass Launches Web-Based Platform Out of Beta, Effectively Creating a ‘GitHub for 3D Design’. Press and bloggers cover this announcement pretty well. My favorite SolidSmack posted – Breaking: Sunglass.io blast out of beta, snags "GitHub for 3D design’ title. Here is how Josh describes Sunglass.io:

Sunglass wants to be the go to place for all things 3D+collaboration, even to the extent of adding plugin into the most common 3D software and combining cloud services such as rendering and simulation. They’ve added support for all the popular formats and plugins for SolidWorks, Inventor and Sketchup, with CATIA, Rhino and Processing plugins coming.

Sunglass.io press release outlines the following functionality of Sunglass.io: version browser, integrated plug-ins, share spaces, collaborative assembly for concurrent work, rich media annotation.

One more announcement came yesterday from another startup company – GrabCAD. Navigate to the following link to read TechCrunch article – GrabCAD Raises $8.15M From Charles River Ventures, Yammer Co-Founder & Others For Its ‘GitHub For Mechanical Engineers’. Here is my favorite passage from this announcement – GrabCAD says it will use the new capital to accelerate the company’s growth as it builds new collaborative tools to improve the design and communication processes in the “creation of physical products”.

I’ve been posting about GrabCAD several times. Take a look on one of the last posts – GrabCAD: From Facebook for Engineers to PLM? GrabCAD recently switched the strategy from "community for engineers" to "building collaboration tools to help design and build products". I recommend you the following read about GrabCAD on WIRED magazine – GrabCAD Is Building Community in 3-D. Here is an interesting part how Hardi Meybaum explains the problem GrabCAD supposed to solve:

The problem, he says, is that engineers create CAD files with offline desktop software and haven’t traditionally shared what they’ve made. Meybaum thinks that attitude is shifting. “The old way of thinking was that ‘products are my own and I don’t want to share them.’ But we’ve found that people want that to change because there are so many benefits in sharing and collaborating.” Those benefits include getting help fixing a mechanical problem, getting suggestions on how to improve a design, and learning tips from more experienced engineers when you’re just trying to get your start.

GitHub for CAD/PLM?

If you are building software these days, you should know GitHub providing free public repositories, collaborator management, issue tracking, wikis, downloads, code review, graphs and much more. Here is how Wikipedia defines GitHub -

GitHub is a web-based hosting service for software development projects that use the Git revision control system. GitHub offers both paid plans for private repositories, and free accounts for open source projects. As of May 2011, GitHub was the most popular open source code repository site.[3] The site provides social networking functionality such as feeds, followers and the network graph to display how developers work on their versions of a repository. GitHub also operates a pastebin-style site called Gist,[8] wikis for individual repositories, and web pages that can be edited through a Git repository.

So, why I think GitHub is a good association for new CAD/PLM? It represents a new modern web-based way to collaborate. It also includes community and project orientation . If you think about PLM marketing, you won’t find any new buzzwords here. Web based, collaborate, projects… All these words have been used by marketing wizards before. There is an imporant difference, in my view. GitHub serves the needs of a specific community of software developers. It heavily relies on paradigms of open source development and web. From that specific point, it combines two worlds – open-source software development and web-based work behaviors. Open-source software development has strong web roots. Because of this connection, things worked so successfully together.

What is my conclusion? GitHub for 3D. GitHub for Engineers. GitHub for Design. I think, what is behind "GitHub" buzzword is a try to change the way how people work together. Open vs. Close. Keep information vs. Share Information. You can continue this list. Technology is easy, but people are hard. Some of them, will see an increased demand for openness and share as IP problem (you can read about it here). On the opposite side (read here), you can see it as a big part of the future of the whole tech ecosystem. Today, Gen-Yers are trying to change the world by applying methods of work developed for the last decade in a public web. I don’t see significant technical risks in this process. Web-based collaboration technology is proven by many web applications. However, there is a market risk related to how manufacturing companies and engineers will adopt new methods of work. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Picture credit the carrierrocketter.


PLM: How to Cut Tree Hierarchies and Empower Data Networks

August 14, 2012

One of the most profound ideas in the history of PLM is the idea of PLM database that contains all information about product and its lifecycle. Major PLM vendors made a significant effort in establishment of centralized PLM repositories and product architecture backing up the idea and advantages of PLM database. In a nutshell, PLM DB represents the hierarchy of the data – requirements, product configuration, variety of Bill of Materials and not only.

Another idea that correlates to PLM database is the idea of the whole truth. I’ve been blogging about that in my post – PLM and the whole truth problem couple of weeks ago. Here is the conclusion I’ve made back in March.

PLM vendors need to learn more about last decade of web development and organization of large scalable web systems. In my view, an attempt to build a “singular” system won’t be successful and create a complex system that hard to maintain, change and scale. The future belongs to data networks and more flexible data organization.

The idea of PLM database is dominating now among PDM/PLM vendors. When it comes to discussion about how to put everything in a single data, you can hear voices explaining about integration and federation. However, in practice, it usually means an establishment of single mediated schema of data and centralized data repository. This repository is conceptually set of hierarchies. It comes to trees of product structures, variety of Bill of Materials, etc.

My hunch that one of the next PLM challenges will be movement from a single database power to the power of network. I conceptualized this idea during my AU 2011 talk last year – The new frontiers in PLM software. You can see slides here and video here.

Few days ago, my attention was caught by the following video: RSA Animate – The Power of Networks by Manuel Lima. Take your time and watch it. I found it quite interesting. Manuel Lima is a Senior UX Design Lead at Microsoft Bing and founder of VisualComplexity.com. More information about Manuel’s work related to the power of networks is here.

The video brings some very powerful examples related to the shift from hierarchical organization to network organization of information, data abstraction and data. I think PLM data architects need to think how such type of information organization can help to PLM implementations.

What is my conclusion? The complexity of data in product development and manufacturing is growing. In order to solve the problem of data complexity, PLM vendors need to find new models that can scale up and leapfrog the current limitations of databases. Network model is much more powerful and promising in this context. Important, in my view. Just my thoughts…

Oleg

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net


Why PLM Need To Lean Web APIs?

July 10, 2012

I want to talk about the cloud today. However, I don’t want to speak about PLM cloud. I want to talk about the real cloud, the one that available on the everyday basis to all of us – the web. This is a place where today concentrated a lot of information – used and unused. The power of this cloud generated all social media repositories, customer-generated content, pictures, videos, social-networking information and many others.

A very interesting aspect of the public cloud is the fact many of these web cloud resources provide an access using Web API. If you are savvy enterprise software users, you are probably familiar with the concept of API (Application Programming Interface). The era of cloud and web created a new category – Web API. A very short, but informative Wikipedia article provides the following definition of Web API:

A web API (Application Programming Interface) is typically a defined set of HTTP request messages along with a definition of the structure of response messages, typically expressed in JSON or XML. While “web API” is sometimes considered a synonym for web service, the Web 2.0 applications typically have moved away from SOAP-based web services towards more direct REST-style communications.[1] Web APIs allow the combination of multiple services into new applications known asmashups.[2]

Navigate your browser to the Mashable article – How Web APIs unlock the value in the cloud? I recommend you to spend some time with this article and dig into examples of APIs and usages. Here is an interesting passage and example of Web API usage:

Just as the power of crowds has populated the social content repositories of Web 2.0 — YouTube videos, Facebook updates, tweets, and more — the web API enables designers and developers to re-purpose the body of knowledge that is the cloud. Here are some examples of how companies have used a web API to create more value. Business Tools:Salesforce.com opened their core services to partners via API, enabling them to innovate and extend Salesforce services. API traffic to Salesforce accounts for more than 60% of total Salesforce traffic.

If you dig a bit more inside, you can discover the resource – programmableweb.com which provide you an access to the information about public Web APIs available today. Navigate to this link to browse through APIs, purpose and examples. Below is a snippet of the website with resources and information.

Why Web APIs are important for PLM community?

I can see a growing number of voices in PLM community speaking about openness and data availability. The amount of systems and the level of complexity of data in manufacturing companies is very high. Yesterday I read a blog post by Virtual Dutchman (Jos Voskuil) – PLM is dead, long live….? Jos raised some very important questions and mentioned modern trends focusing on how to make information in a company to be accessed and optimized for re-use. In my view Web APIs is a good example how how proven web technologies can help to evolve PLM environment from today’s walled garden state to the future of programmable enterprise web PLM.

What is my conclusion? I think PLM systems and implementations are going to learn a lot about public web achievements very soon and very fast. Actually, I believe the smartest one are already doing so. Web is the most stable system that never been rebooted since the interception, and it is open and flexible. The future of PLM is in open programmable enterprise web API giving access to the information and providing resources to all applications and people. Just my thoughts..

Best, Oleg


PLM: From “document-centric” to the future without files?

June 3, 2012

Files. It is so obvious, right? We are using files everywhere in our life. Documents, Pictures Photos, Excel spreadsheets, CAD files, Reports, etc. It is around all the time. New, Open, Save, Save As… It is easy. In design, engineering and manufacturing world, file is an important paradigm that holds many processes in organization. We use CAD system for design and store files on the disc, when we need to store information for a long time we think about file archives. When we need to exchange information, we use files to do so.

I wasn’t able to attend 3D CIC conference last month in Colorado, so I use twitter to be up to speed with discussions and topics. One of the topics that caught my attention (and actually was heavy presented) was about 3D PDF files. One of my twitting buddies, @evanyares posted the following comment comparing different standards.

What’s the difference between STEP, JT, and 3D PDF? 3D PDF is a document-centric standard, ideal for human consumption. #3DPDF

— evanyares (@evanyares) May 23, 2012

His statement about document-centric standards made me think about some trends related to documents and files. The history of computer file’s paradigm is going back to 1950. According to Wikipedia article

In an RCA (Radio Corporation of America) advertisement in Popular Science Magazine[1] describing a new "memory" vacuum tube it had developed, RCA stated: "…the results of countless computations can be kept "on file" and taken out again. Such a "file" now exists in a "memory" tube developed at RCA Laboratories. Electronically it retains figures fed into calculating machines, holds them in storage while it memorizes new ones – speeds intelligent solutions through mazes of mathematics."

File paradigm is continued to be the one understood the best by the majority of computer users in consumer space, but not only. Desktop engineering software (CAD, CAE, etc.) is using files for save and retrieve information. Files are used for archiving and data exchange. Because of simplicity, it well understood by everybody and gives a feeling of "information protection". Everybody can take files and store it in the computer, external drive, or elsewhere.

Web, Cloud and new paradigms

Nowadays days, we can see how old paradigms are changing with the introduction of modern web technologies. The re-imagination is coming from the web. Will it change "file" paradigm? What can replace the concept of "file". Is it going to be "database record", "object", etc. as it was dreamed by many CAD / PLM developers over the past two decades? Looking around on applications like Google Docs, Office 365 and many others, the concept of file becomes secondary. The interaction happens in the browser. Your activity can span across multiple devices. The concept of "file to store data" becomes obsolete. We need to find a better way to capture, store and retrieve information during design, manufacturing, maintenance and future use regardless on device and application. I’m not talking about "physical storage" where everything remains files or binary blocks anyway. I’m speaking more about logical paradigm supported by many applications. One of the attractive technologies to follow up these days is semantic web and linked data. It has been with us for the last 10-15 years and captured some interesting achievements already. You might be interested to follow SemTech Biz conference next week in San-Francisco, CA.

What is my conclusion? File was (and still is) the mainstream paradigm to keep the logic of information retrieval in most of engineering applications. However, in our outside web and consumer world, we are asking for URL and not for FileName to get access to the information we need. So, it is a time to re-imaging what we do. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

picture credit to Wikipedia Computer File article.


Product Lifecycle Management and Obsessive Taxonomies

March 26, 2012

I’ve been reading tweeter stream during my short weekend at home. One of the tweets from Randal Newton caught my special attention. This is the message:

This message made me think about PLM systems, taxonomies and folksonomies. If you’re new to this term, a short intro.Taxonomies is what you most probably know as data classification. From Wikipedia article:

Taxonomy (from Greek: τάξις taxis “arrangement” and Greek: νομία nomia “method”[1]) is the science of identifying and naming species, and arranging them into aclassification.[2][3] The field of taxonomy, sometimes referred to as “biological taxonomy”, revolves around the description and use of taxonomic units, known as taxa (singulartaxon). A resulting taxonomy is a particular classification (“the taxonomy of …”), arranged in a hierarchical structure or classification scheme.

Taxonomies are created by a single individual or a team, and it is clearly represented as hierarchical structure. Opposite to taxonomies, folksonomy presents a different way of data organization.

A folksonomy is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content;[1][2] this practice is also known as collaborative tagging,[3] social classification, social indexing, and social tagging. Folksonomy, a term coined by Thomas Vander Wal, is aportmanteau of folk and taxonomy. Folksonomies became popular on the Web around 2004[4] as part of social software applications such as social bookmarking and photograph annotation. Tagging, which is one of the defining characteristics of Web 2.0 services, allows users to collectively classify and find information. Some websites include tag clouds as a way to visualize tags in a folksonomy.[5] A good example of a social website that utilizes folksonomy is 43 Things.

Take a look on an interesting picture presenting opposite worlds of taxonomies and folksonomies. It is about top-down and bottom-up:

I’ve been thinking about taxonomies and folksonomies in a sense of system rigidity. Most of PLM systems built with a predefined set of rules and models. It creates a certain level of resistance when it comes to the usage of the systems. Customization of systems is complicated, sometimes is cumbersome. Opposite to that, folksonomies is a model that can be “collaboratively created“. This element of collaborative creation is something that can be very much appealing to most of the engineering that like to think more flexible.

Social is another aspect. Social is trending and some companies are trying to bring it as a differentiation in PLM game these days. It would be interesting to see if social PLM and other systems pretending to be “social” are using folksonomical approach to help people to organize data within lifecycle.

What is my conclusion? PLM needs to learn new words and methods of work that prove themselves in the last 10 years of Web. Folksonomies is one of them. The rigidity of existing systems (obsessive taxonomies) need to be transformed into a more flexible and granular approach. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg


What if… “PLM on the cloud” succeeds?

May 24, 2011

Push aside our fear about security and PLM on the cloud. I was reading Washington Post’s “Video Viewing on Netflix Accounts for Up to 30 Percent of Online Traffic“. The following link leads us picture comparing web traffic coming from various providers. Video is king on the web.

CAD files, visualizations and other heavy weighted stuff. It is not lightweight Twitter 140 chars status updates or Facebook low resolution picture sharing. Cloud service providers from Amazon to Google and Rackspace are building data centers to accommodate the future of cloud applications. It made me think “What if PLM on the cloud succeeds?”, what will be the cost of this solution? CAD and PLM companies are starting to offer solutions to share data on the cloud for better collaboration and data exchange. I wrote about such a type of the solutions before.

The following quote from Wash. Post article is interesting:

Last week, Cable One introduced metered prices for U.S. customers that include 50 to 100 gigabytes per month. According to its Web site, the company (owned by The Washington Post Co.) will charge customers 50 cents for each gigabyte beyond the caps, but it will continue to offer a flat-rate monthly plan also.

Beginning this month, AT&T began limiting data usage to 150 gigabytes for DSL subscribers and 250 gigabytes for its UVerse broadband customers. Users will be charged an extra $10 a month if they exceed the cap. Comcast also has a 250-gigabyte cap for its broadband users.

What is my conclusion? The PLM on the cloud conversations is always about the security and never about the price and cloud usage. I don’t know if my drawings will be stolen faster on cloud. The question what if the transfer of my drawings, models, animations and rest of the stuff on the web will be costly. It might be significantly more costly than today’s software licenses. What is your take?

Best, Oleg


CAD and PLM Vendor Website Traffic

April 6, 2011

Picture-14.pngI was playing around the data I can take from the website Compete.com. You plug the URL of major CAD or PLM vendor and get the information back for free. I found it interesting to compare. In today’s world online traffic can be one of the important elements of a company marketing strategy. Unfortunately, a free version doesn’t work with sub-domains, so some of the companies were not included into my experiments.

My first test was to put Dassault and PTC. These companies are on the top list also as CAD and mindshare PLM vendors. You can see that their traffic is pretty much compatible. You can see the result online navigating on the following link.

Picture-11.png

Following my discussion about Autodesk and their potential move into PLM (or MLP) space, my next experiment was to compare mindshare PLM vendors and Autodesk. You can see the result navigating the following link. Now, picture is more interesting. Autodesk and Dassault are companies compatible in terms of revenues. At the same time, Autodesk outperforms Dassault 10 times from the standpoint of traffic.

Picture-12.png

My last test was to poke one of the PLM challengers. I picked up Aras and tried to compare their traffic with Dassault. Unfortunately, Compete alerted me that aras.com has a low traffic rate. Nevertheless, I found that results interesting. Dassault and Aras are not compatible in terms of size, but their web traffic is pretty much compatible.

Picture-13.png

What is my conclusion? Few years ago, I was reading the book Numerati, by Stephen Baker. The subtitle of the book states – “the must read for anyone who wants to understand life and business in the Google Age“. If you have some free time during the week, read this book. I think, we are coming to the point of time, when the online influence will be become a critical for company business success. Newcomers can use it as power to enter to the business. Large companies can watch it, in order not to lose their significance tomorrow. Important. Just my opinion, of course. YMMV.

Best, Oleg


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