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Last week I started my final preparation for the PLM Innovation Congress 2012 on February 22nd and 23rd in Munich, where I will speak about Making the Case for PLM. Looking forward for two intensive days of knowledge sharing and discussion
The question came to my mind that when you make the case for PLM, you also must be clear about what you mean by PLM. And here I started to struggle a little. I have my perception of PLM, but I am also aware everyone has a different perception about the meaning of PLM.
I wrote about it last year, triggered by a question in the CMPIC group (configuration management) on LinkedIn. The question was Aren’t CM and PLM the same thing ? There was a firm belief from some of the members that PLM was the IT-platform to implement CM.
A few days ago Inge Craninckx posted a question in the PDM PLM CAD network group about the definition of PLM based on a statement from the PLMIG. In short:
“PDM is the IT platform for PLM.”Or, expressed from the opposite viewpoint: “PLM is the business context in which PDM is implemented
The response from Rick Franzosa caught my attention and I extracted the following text:
The reality is that most PLM systems are doing PDM, managing product data via BOM management, vaulting and workflow. In that regard, PDM [read BOM management, vaulting and workflow], IS the IT platform for the, in some ways, unfulfilled promise of PLM.
I fully agree with Rick’s statement and coming back to my introduction about making the case for PLM, we need to differentiate how we implement PLM. Also we have to take into our minds that no vendor, so also not a PLM vendor, will undersell their product. They are all promising J
Two different types of PLM implementation
Originally PLM has started in 1999 by extending the reach of Product Data outside the engineering department. However besides just adding extra functionality to extend the coverage of the lifecycle, PLM also created the opportunity to do things different. And here I believe you can follow two different definitions and directions for PLM.
Let’s start with the non-disruptive approach, which I call the extended PDM approach
Extended PDM
When I worked 6 years ago with SmarTeam on the Express approach, the target was to provide an OOTB (Out of the Box) generic scenario for mid-market companies. Main messages were around quick implementation and extending the CAD data management with BOM and Workflow. Several vendors at that time have promoted their quick start packages for the mid-market, all avoiding one word: change.
I was a great believer of this approach, but the first benchmark project that I governed demonstrated that if you want to do it right, you need to change the way people work, and this takes time (It took 2+ years). For the details: See A PLM success story with ROI from 2009
Cloud based solutions have become now the packaging for this OOTB approach enriched, with the ease of deployment – no IT investment needed (and everyone avoids the word change again).
If you do not want to change too much in your company, the easiest way to make PDM available for the enterprise is to extend this environment with an enterprise PLM layer for BOM management, manufacturing definition, program management, compliancy and more.
Ten years ago, big global enterprises started to implement this approach, using local PDM systems for mainly engineering data management and a PLM system for the enterprise. See picture below:
This approach is now adapted by the Autodesk PLM solution and also ARAS is marketing themselves in the same direction. You have a CAD data management environment and without changing much on that area, you connect the other disciplines and lifecycle stages of the product lifecycle by implementing an additional enterprise layer.
The advantage from this approach is you get a shared and connected data repository of your product data and you are able to extend this with common best practices, BOM management (all the variants EBOM/MBOM/SBOM, …) but also connect the market opportunities and the customer (Portfolio management, Systems engineering)
The big three, Dassault Systemes, Siemens PLM and PTC, provide the above functionality as a complete set of functionalities – either as a single platform or as a portfolio of products (check the difference between marketing and reality).
Oracle and SAP also fight for the enterprise layer from the ERP side, by providing their enterprise PLM functionality as an extension of their ERP functionality. Also here in two different ways: as a single platform or as a portfolio of products. As their nature is on efficient execution, I would position these vendors as the one that drive for efficiency in a company, assuming all activities somehow can be scheduled and predicted
My statement is that extended PDM leads to more efficiency, more quality (as you standardize on your processes) and for many companies this approach is a relative easy way to get into PLM (extended PDM). If your company exists because of bringing new products quickly to the market, I would start from the PDM/PLM side with my implementation.
The other PLM – innovative PLM
Most PLM vendors associate the word PLM in their marketing language with Innovation. In the previous paragraph I avoided on purpose the word Innovation. How do PLM vendors believe they contribute to Innovation?
This is something you do not hear so much about. Yes, in marketing terms it works, but in reality? Only few companies have implemented PLM in a different way, most of the time because they do not carry years of history, numbering systems, standard procedures to consider or to change. They can implement PLM in a different way, as they are open to change.
If you want to be innovative, you need to implement PLM in a more disruptive manner, as you need to change the way your organization is triggered – see the diagram below:
The whole organization works around the market, the customer. Understanding the customer and the market needs at every moment in the organization is key for making a change. For me, an indicator of innovative PLM is the way concept development is connected with the after sales market and the customers. Is there a structured, powerful connection in your company between these people? If not, you do the extended PLM, not the innovative PLM.
Innovative PLM requires a change in business as I described in my series around PLM 2.0. Personally I am a big believer that this type of PLM is the lifesaver for companies, but I also realize it is the hardest to implement as you need people that have the vision and power to change the company. And as I described in my PLM 2.0 series, the longer the company exist, the harder to make a fundamental change.
Conclusion
There are two main directions possible for PLM. The first and oldest approach, which is an extension of PDM and the second approach which is a new customer centric approach, driving innovation. Your choice to make the case for one or the other, based on your business strategy.
Looking forward to an interesting discussion and see you in Munich where I will make the case
Since the past six months I am involved in several discussions related to the (building) construction industry. If you look to this industry, it seems like this is one of the few industries without innovation in its processes.
Someone in the discussion even claimed that if a worker from the middle ages would come back to this century, he would be quickly adapt and understand the way people work. OK, there are some new tools and materials, but the way the building construction industry works has not changed.
And let’s look to productivity. Where in the past 60 years in all industries productivity has increased, I have seen a survey where productivity in this industry has not increased and even decreased a little.
Although the survey ends in 2003, another article caught my attention. Robert Prieto, Senior Vice President from Fluor Corporation wrote end of last year in Engineering News Record his viewpoint: Engineering-Construction Needs a New Model. Reading this article and the comments demonstrates there is a need for innovation in the building construction industry.
Failure costs up to 15 % and delayed deliveries are considered normal business in this industry, where if this would be applied to mid-market companies in the manufacturing industry, they would have gone bankrupt due to claims and lost profit.
If we look at this industry, the first excuse you hear is that every project is unique and that project execution is done by a group of loose connected suppliers, not really pushed to stay within the targeted budget. But you might ask yourself: what is the correct budget?
I noticed that in this industry when a project is estimated, suppliers are asked to deliver their bid and proposed solution based on their understanding. Usually the lowest bid wins the bid.
All participants are aware that not all requirements are clear, but no one wants to ask and invest further as to invest more in accurate cost estimation. This is not anticipated. It is about winning the bid with the lowest trouble and investment.
So who is to blame? First of all, the client who has a short term vision. By selecting the lowest bids and not pushing for in-depth analysis of the project delivery and operational costs in the long term, the situation will not change.
What if the client was using the basics of PLM – Product Lifecycle Management? For me PLM means a connection and sharing of the concept phase, the delivery phase, production phase and maintenance phase.
What I consider as strange is the fact that in the engineering and construction industry these four phases are not connected and often that the maintenance phase (operations) is not taken into account during the concept phase.
And then there is the data handover. After engineering and construction specific data is handed over to the maintenance organization. What is the quality of the data, how applicable is it to the maintenance organization and how does it support maintenance is not clear. There is a disconnect and loss of knowledge as the handover is just based on the minimum data required.
What if the engineering construction industry would use PLM best practices, like:
- Requirements Management – connecting, implementing and validating all the requirements from each stakeholder. Making sure all requirements are considered and negotiated in a structured manner – no excuse for surprises.
- Data sharing with versions and status. Instead of a handover, data becomes mature during the lifecycle of the project. It requires the maintenance organization to be involved from the start
- Standardized validation and approval processes related to requirements and data. These processes might be considered as an overhead but they are the ones that lead to quality, risk and cost management
Conclusion: I believe connecting the engineering and maintenance phase for engineering construction companies will lead to higher productivity and quality. For sure the initial engineering cost will be higher, but during the construction and maintenance phase these costs will be recovered and probable much more – here is the ROI
As my intention was to write shorter blog posts this year, I stop at this point and look forward to your comments for a further discussion.
YOUR THOUGHTS ??
Related articles
- Why PLM 2.0 – Conclusions (virtualdutchman.com)
Sorry for the delay between this post and the previous post. A break with a lot of PLM work on my side and no adverts on your side: win-win. But now I have time to continue the serial around PLM 2.0. We are in the middle.
A small recap on the agenda:
| First post | : What is PLM 2.0? – published Aug 24th |
| Second post | : Challenges in current PLM – published Sept 4th |
| This post | : Change in business – published Oct 3rd |
| Final post | : Why PLM 2.0 – conclusions |
In the first post I described the changes in PLM messaging from vendors – PLM 2.0 or similar terms. In the second post I described the current challenges of PLM, which are well known – if you have access to in LinkedIn to the PLM related groups you will find discussions around the challenges of current PLM. And they set the spirit – good or bad.
Now in this post I will bring up some trends, which to my opinion, unmistakably must lead to a new way of PLM in order to adapt to the future.
Generation Y – a new generation of workers
Generation Y: It is interesting to learn that everywhere companies are complaining or warning that their existing workforce is going to retire with all their knowledge without decent follow-up. In parallel they state it is difficult to find new employees with similar skills that will guarantee the future of the company. The new generation of workers, often identified as Generation Y, has different skills and different motivations.
Some interesting generalizations (note I am not a social anthropologist).
The older generations were raised with the concept: Knowledge is Power – You as an individual needed to have in-depth skills to be the right person for a job – a job is your life and for life. As a negative result of this approach, you see that exactly this older generation sometimes ‘sits’ on their knowledge as a kind of job guarantee – they do not like sharing information – “Come to me and I will help you” is their motto till they retire.
Generation Y does not have this job for life attitude – they look more for short term success and fulfillment and therefore they do not fit so well in the way traditional companies work. They are not the type of knowledge workers previous generations had, but they are, thanks to their skills with modern digital media, capable of finding information and combining information into knowledge. They work different.
The interesting observation from my side is that Generation Y is exactly the type of people PLM requires, as it is all about sharing and combining data. What is blocking their acceptance for current PLM is that the implementation is not architected to their work motivation. Look at:
- The way information is stored (too structured),
- The way information is presented (too structured, boring screens).
- The way information has to be entered in the system (too unfriendly – overkill)
For them PLM needs to move more to an intuitive way of presenting information, capturing data as-if it is something like serious gaming. And the new PLM needs to have a way to manage structured and unstructured data combined.
For companies that complain, they are losing skilled workers in the future, they should not complain but adapt. They should look forward and solve the problems for the future, which means a different way of doing business and implementing PLM. Do not choose what the dinosaurs did.
New styles of business management
Here I want to come back to my first post – I was intrigued by reading Steve Denning’s posts and its relation to PLM. Through the post Why Amazon can’t Make a Kindle in the USA, I found the post The Death and Reinvention of Management the best fitting with my PLM drive.
Steve describes five fundamental shifts in management that make companies ready for the 21st century.
Take time to read the post (and go more in-depth if you get as enthusiastic as me) – but come back to read the rest of this post
I summarize/quote the five shifts from Steve here (as I am sure not everyone has done the reading):
1. The company’s goal has to shift to one of delighting clients i.e. a shift from inside-out (“You take what we make”) to outside-in (“We seek to understand your problems and will surprise you by solving them”)
2. The role of the manager has to shift from being a controller to an enabler, so as to liberate the energies and talents of those doing the work and remove impediments that are getting in the way of work.
3. The mode of coordination shifts from hierarchical bureaucracy to dynamic linking, i.e. to a way of dynamically linking self-driven knowledge work to the shifting requirements of delighting clients.
4. There is a shift from value to values; i.e. a shift from a single-minded focus on economic value and maximizing efficiency to instilling the values that will create innovation and growth for the organization over the long term.
5. Communications shift from command to conversation: i.e. a shift from top-down communications comprising predominantly hierarchical directives to communications made up largely of adult-to-adult conversations that solve problems and generate new insights.
Here we see the typical PLM 2.0 targets. I will translate them into our PLM terminology.
Shift # 1 – The shift to delight clients – from which PLM vendor do we hear this statement? Which PLM vendor puts the customer in focus, instead of their “superior” technology?
Shift #2, #3 and #5 are typical PLM 2.0 capabilities which I described in my first post. See below the PLM 2.0 differentiators:
And where do we find shift #4? How do PLM vendors address this change beyond marketing?
My conclusion on this point: Both PLM and management require a change to be ready for the 21st century – It is exactly what generation Y is looking for, it is exactly what future consumers are looking for. However currently classical PLM and classical Management are dominating the thought process – and they do not like change so much as it would put past investments and achievements at risk.
The Importance of Social Media
Already described in the two previous trends, social media concepts fit exactly in the shift that we see towards the future. It impacts the way companies change their marketing and address their customer base. In parallel it affects the ways teams collaborate in the product development space, innovation teams are global product development teams.
My thoughts: Social media might look like a hype, but the basic concepts of social media will be required for future PLM
Globalization for SMB
The major trend from the past decade is that SMB’s (Small and Medium Businesses) do not longer serve and fight for a regional existence. Competition and customers come from everywhere and production is more and more outsourced. The traditional company that is #1 in their region does not longer exist. Even SMBs have to consider ways to collaborate globally – again another driver for PLM 2.0
My thought: Traditional SMBs are never the leading companies in new trends, they hang on their core knowledge and have probably a longer way to go to really adapt to the future. Startup SMBs with no historical hindrance are likely to outperform them.
Innovation, Intellectual Property & War on Patents
In a global market, innovation is the key driver to be successful combined with the point above: delight the customer. In order to delight the customer you need to innovate as delightment does not come from commodities.
And with innovation I am not only addressing the consumer market, innovation is required in all areas: green products, green production as world climate and its population forces us to change.
The successful products for the future will be those that are bringing innovation and when your company owns this Intellectual Property, your near future is going to be profitable,
Therefore the “War for Patents” will be everywhere. We currently see in the news the tablet and Smartphone patents wars, but it pops up everywhere, some more visible than others.
A “War for Patents” costs a lot of money (mainly spent to lawyers). Therefore the balance should be found between protecting your IP and to innovate faster. In this way your patents become less relevant because newer exist. To my opinion the new PLM should be the engine for innovation first and secondly the system to protect your IP
Conclusion:
Again too many words for a blog post, but the topic is huge and I hope you see the need for a different PLM (PLM 2.0): A PLM that is targeted to the change in business all around the world. The monetary crisis which is another symptom of the old business gives us a chance to change. We need to change organizations and collaboration to remain profitable in the future – don’t be an ostrich
My thoughts –looking forward to your feedback
This week I was reading a management article completely unrelated to PLM, but very applicable for PLM. The article stated that one of the basics of capitalism is innovation through crisis. Never let a crisis pass by without using it for your benefits was the message.
As we are currently in the middle of the economical downturn (according to the optimists or pessimists – we still have to figure out who is right), this is the moment for the management to decide. Do we try to sit still till it does not hurt anymore , or are we making strategic changes that will for sure demolish some holy houses but from the other hand will create a more lean and stronger organization after the change ?
Examples of IBM and GM were given from the nineties. IBM made the change from a hardware company towards a software company, where GM kept on doing the same with even bigger SUVs’. We know the results…….
Does it prove anything ?
For sure there are many companies that haven’t survived the nineties as they were not successful in their transformation, although they really tried. So where is the relation to PLM ?
I believe that the problem of implementing PLM, and specially in mid-market companies is the fact that there is no ambition for change when things are going relatively well. In one of my old posts I referred to the story of the boiling frog.
This happens when an organization is slipping down slowly and it is hard for the management to change and define and sell internally another strategy. Jobs and people are kept in place as long as affordable and only natural evolvement (an aging workforce) or mergers are drivers for a change.
Now with this crisis it is different. Everyone realizes (or should realize) that going on the same manner with the same people is not good for survival (unless you are in one of the few industries that benefit from the crisis – apparently the fast food industry I read)
In times of a crisis, first of all the management is challenged to come with a survival plan and in most cases this time they can get support from their employees as there is always the threat of lay offs if people are not creative or flexible for change. Secondly, employees will be also more flexible to save their jobs and the company (usually in this order)
Therefore this is the ideal moment to implement PLM in phased approach. For a successful PLM implementation you need employees, who are open minded to change the way they work, plus you need internal resources that have time to work with the implementer to fine tune the PLM system.
This moment exists now and by implementing PLM in a phased approach, each phase will bring ROI, perhaps even before the end of the crisis as you can start with the low hanging fruits and start to collect the benefits.
In parallel there is the discussion around free open source software or dumping software for free by some PLM providers in order to stay in the market. I think here as a customer you should always realize that every company, also software providers, need to survive the crisis and will look for income in another way – services / maintenance / additional software.
So my conclusion this time:
I never realized that both capitalism and PLM were striving for innovation. They have a crisis in common – For capitalism it is a must to push innovation for PLM it is an enabler for innovation
Last week was a week of transition. As I wrote in my previous post, I finalized a traditional PLM 1.0 project ( I will come back on this term ‘traditional’ PLM 1.0) and now probably because of the sunny days and some interesting articles I read (each word goes to a different article), I am reflecting what it means to think about the new trends: WEB 2.0 or even PLM 2.0
In this post I will try to explain the developments I have seen so far in the mid-market and from there project what might happen.
In the 80’s there was no PDM or PLM in the mid-market. This was the time most companies were moving away from the drawing board towards CAD. Most of the CAD was 2D and at that time in the mid-market AutoCAD was the dominant CAD software.
At that time I was working for the biggest AutoCAD distributor in the Netherlands (picture on the left). This was the golden age for hardware and software resellers – margins were high and there was little or none IT-knowledge inside mid-market companies. In order to keep the high margin we provided a free helpdesk for our customers to differentiate from others. It was an interesting time. Prospects came to our demo room to plot a drawing of A0 format and to discuss the quality of the lines and the hatching as compared to handmade drawings. There was always the discussion if CAD was more productive and must of us agreed that benefits only came when rework or changes were needed. In parallel we offered a training course for the heads of a design department how they learned to understand if their designers were productive. They were used to observe the behavior of the draftsman and the minor bar on the drawing board and from there they understood if someone was productive. We were talking about the new digital generation that would replace the people at the drawing board.
Are there still drawing boards ? Is there still free support as the margins are high ? This was 20 years ago.
Then slowly 3D CAD was introduced for the mid-market, initially only on Unix boxes, but with the introduction of Microsoft Windows it became achievable – SolidWorks for sure was leading in this area. Hardware became already more a commodity so the customer relation changed from free support to paid support, which required quality and knowledge. At that time in my company, we also saw the first demands for what customers called an “engineering database”. In the 2D world it was all about drawing management, now with 3D the focus was on managing the whole product. Initially called EDM (Engineering Data Management), later evolving in Product Data Management. The term PDM was not known at that time and I remember one of our customers visiting us with a sample of 13 reports – drawing list, spare part list, manufacturing BOM, etc. He told us: “I need a system that can generate these reports for me at anytime”. The solution: we implemented a PDM system for this customer. At the end of the nineties 3D was introduced in the mid-market combined with PDM. We were talking about the new generation of people that thinks in 3D which would replace the people who still worked in 2D
Are we still working with 2D ? Do we still look for support on hard- and software ? This was 10 years ago.
Then came the era of connectivity, initially through the first internet wave, leading to terms as cPDM and ultimately PLM. Instead of focusing on productivity in a single department, the intention was to focus on collaboration between departments, development teams and to address the whole product lifecycle. Specially Dassault Systems extended this concept by focusing on the process and virtualization: test and build your product virtually before you spend any money on prototypes. Autodesk does the same in different words, they call it Digital Prototyping and they try to avoid talking about the processes as here we touch the most sensitive point in mid-market companies: touching or changing processes – ‘classical PLM 1.0. And this is also what I read between the lines of Jim Brown’s post Is innovation or product pipeline killing profitability ? As long as we do not change our product development process but focus still on doing the same with better tools, the real innovation will not come. We are now talking about the global collaboration generation that has to learn to work together and replaces the people who are not changing their processes.
Are we still solving our departmental problems only ? Can we survive keep on doing the same ? This is now !
And meanwhile mid-market companies are learning to understand and digest the above, we already see the new wave coming. WEB 2.0 – social networking – social collaboration – PLM 2.0 – communities and more. Instead of companies working on their own data, the future is to work in communities, live data, cross-company with employees, who are focused as a team to bring a result, we do not send so much emails anymore, we chat, we twitter, we …….. and more. In addition as we will see the trend that teams have members from all around the world, the question comes up: What is the standard communication language ? German (past) , English (present), Chinese (future) ? Here I am a big fan and believer of the Dassault vision that 3D becomes the global language for communication as the people participating do not come from the same educational background anymore – so it easier to see what you mean. Meanwhile the futurists are all the time talking about the aging workforce (a lot of people plan to retire), but if you read back, you will notice every ten years we are talking about an aging workforce. Every time there was a new generation picking up the new capabilities and challenging the next generation.
Are we in 2020 a global, 3D twittering world ? What is each individual’s added value ? What are companies doing to anticipate to the above trends ? It looks like it is going to happen and the current economical downturn allows us to anticipate even earlier till the next pit stop.
A thought I take with me on the summer holidays.
(Yes, in Europe we still have holidays that are so long you have time to think about work –
you can find me on the island below in August)
The past few weeks I have been busy in an area which I believe is crucial for understanding PLM. I had meetings, web meetings with prospects, with implementers and existing customers – of course all in the mid-market. And the generalized key question on the table was: “
Yes, we understand document management, and yes, CAD management is understandable to us, but why do you need to work with the BOM further down the product lifecycle, as this is ERP, isn’t it ?
I realized several topics play a role here:
- Mid-market companies usually do not think top-down in their approach. As an example: they will not look at their whole organization’s business processes and then try to map all the activities cross departments, cross suppliers, etc. Usually they are looking per department to optimize the way they are working.
Classical enterprise PLM implementations are designed to go top-down. Describe the as-is situation, describe the the to-be situation and then transform the company to meet the to-be situation. Decisions are pushed to the people in the company as the to-be situation seems to be clear. Many of the classical PLM implementers still believe in this approach – and the risk / challenge is always that the to-be situation was not well understood, or that at the time we reach the to-be situation the environment of the company has changed and another to-be is needed. - Mid-market companies understand a central storage for documents brings a lot of benefits. Most companies realize that all this departmental archives of documents and files create too much overhead and a higher quality risk. Finding the absolute right file for a certain product release might be a quest and of course each of the departments claims that their solution fits exactly their needs. This is what I believe the main driver behind the success of SharePoint. As Microsoft Office is used as a common document authoring tool among all departments, why not use the Office Document Management tool as our common backbone ? PLM and ERP vendors might say we also manage documents, but usually these documents are managed in a structured manner – related to revisions of a product or to a product order. Usually an infrastructure to manage unstructured documents does not exist in ERP systems.
- Mid-market companies do not understand the value of managing the BOM outside ERP. As I mentioned, everyone understands documents, but items seem to be the domain of an ERP system. Understandable as ERP was often the first IT-system implemented. As mid-market companies usually do not have a holistic view, items will remain to be managed there (“as we invested so much in the first implementation the management will say – no other source for items !!!”)
And here i believe is the crucial go-no/go point for a PLM implementation. Once the company starts to understand that the definition of items is not done in the ERP system, but is a result of the work done in the engineering department, only then the value of managing the BOM outside ERP become apparent. And here is the catch 22, we already manage our documents in environments without items (BOM’s) (SharePoint / CAD Documents management) – so no place for PLM ?
So what to do as a mid-market company ?
It is hard to understand the full picture (because of the above points), can you trust the selling PLM partner ?(we have been promised easy implementations in the past with other IT-systems too) and at the end you do not believe the value PLM can bring (as you cannot imagine and digest the impact of PLM to your company)
And just when thinking about this – three articles came to my attention as they all address this topic, somehow from a different perspective:
- An upcoming white paper written by TechClarity on ENOVIA SmarTeam Express solutions
- A blog post written by Jim Brown (TechClarity) on the TeamCenter Express solution
- A blog post written by Oleg Shilovitsky (PLMtwine): PLM action plan for dummies
The first two posts deal with a packaged approach for mid-market companies, allowing them to implement PLM faster and with a faster ROI. As Jim (and many others are stating – in an economical down turn you cannot focus on efficiency only (the ERP slogan). It is innovation – better and more customer oriented and attractive products – brings much higher revenue as compared to doing more of the same more efficient.
Oleg focuses on the steps to implement PLM and I agree with most of the statements there. It needs to be gradual and implementing the business processes comes as the last phase.
There is one difference I see in my approach compared to what Jim and Oleg are writing. Both believe that PLM brings value (and i support this statement 100 % based on experiences with customers I have worked).
However the missing point to be addressed is the lack of understanding (and often also trust) of companies talking with a PLM vendor and committing to PLM. I tried to explain these points in the above 3 statements. As long as those points are not addressed, each stepped approach will lead to the question: “When are we really going to do PLM instead of CAD Document management or enhanced ERP ? “
My experiences with guiding successful PLM implementations are the following:
- Start with basic document management and CAD data management. It aligns with the understanding of companies that a centralized and secure repository for documents brings ROI. This step introduces to the company that a company wide approach of data management brings value (and ROI). Some basic processes might be introduced here already- basic document approval as required by all quality systems.
- Once basic CAD and Document Management are introduced, the company will realize that it is missing ‘place holders’ to hook the information. If you work in a document management system only, the system implementer will say: Use projects to collect your product data and use folders to collect your item related data. A PLM vendor would say; Now you are ready to introduce Items in your system, as they are the logical place holders for information. Here PLM starts to be introduced.
- Once understood that the item is a needed place holder to manage development data, the understanding for managing items in a structure becomes clear. Here we introduce the EBOM and as Items also contain logistical data, this is the first point to start connecting PLM and ERP to work with a shared ‘place holder’ but with different focus on characteristics.
- Once the Engineering BOM is understood, the discussion starts around the MBOM. Who is responsible for defining how a product is manufactured ? PLM believes this is part of their duty, ERP vendors will say, we own the item historically ,so we manage the MBOM. As a 100 % PLM believer, I think it should be in PLM as it is not part of the execution but part of the product definition (See the post I wrote on this topic: Where is the MBOM).
At the end the defined MBOM can be pushed to ERP once required. - Once you are able to manage and centralize all data related to product development and definition, a company becomes ready to guarantee the quality and flow of the data, by implementing company wide engineering change and development processes. Much in line with Oleg’s PLM action plan.
I have supported implementations of the above approach in several mid-market companies and key success factors were:
- the company understanding PLM brings benefits but also understands it will take a time to realize this vision.
Management vision and support were always there. - a PLM system that allows you to start simple with centralizing documents and keeping things understandable but also allows you to scale up to a PDM system and finally supporting the whole PLM vision once accepted and understood .
Think Top-Down – Implement Bottom-Up - an implementer who understands that in the mid-market a push of concepts will bring rejections from the end-users, and where listening to the end-users only, it will result in an unguided system. The implementation partner needs to say No at the right time and to push for Yes when needed.
The implementer is 50 % of the success !
Conclusion: A management vision, a scalable PLM system and an experienced implementation partner are needed to bring the innovation to survive in the long term – document management and ERP alone will not bring this unique value. The phased approach allows a company with digestible steps to grow to their ‘to-be’ situation – as building trust and understanding is still required in the mid-market of PLM
See also: ENOVIA SmarTeam Express
This time a short post. When I committed myself to write posts about connecting PLM and ERP, I already touched several times the PLM and ERP vision (from the point of view of a PLM missioner of course)
Just as a reminder the 5 most objections I heard the most from companies when discussing a PLM implementation. You also will find references to the first two objections I already discussed.
The 5 reasons not to implement PLM I heard the most were:
- The costs for a PLM implementation are too high
- A PLM implementation takes too long
- We already have an ERP system
- Isn’t PLM the same as managing CAD files ?
- We are so busy, there is no time to have a PLM implementation in our company
3. We already have an ERP system.
From the analyst point of view, PLM has established itself as a discipline beside ERP and CRM. Which discipline requires the major focus in a company depends on the major business process of the company. It is clear PLM brings it benefits for manufacturing companies, where innovation and managing their product IP are major reasons for success.
Various publications on this topic (in order of relevance):
- Collaborative Visions.com- PLM action
Perfectly explaining where PLM brings value and where it is different from ERP - Aberdeen Group – The Best Kept Secret of Top SMB Product Developers. Finding the Shortest Path to PLM Value
Showing the difference in perception and real attention needed when implementing PLM and where the benefits are for SMB companies - AMR research- PLM Report
Showing the PLM market is growing steady, which means for companies that PLM vendors will invest in a more and more mature product based on common principles - TechClarity – Complementary Roles of ERP and PLM
Explaining the differences between ERP and PLM and why you need them together - Aberdeen Group – Integrating the PLM Ecosystem
Explaining integration of your PLM system will bring competitive advantages - CIMdata – SAP PLM roadmap
Showing that even SAP recognizes PLM exists
So by studying all the links in this post, you might come to the conclusion below:
Conclusion
All my previous posts and the above publications (and much more) explain that if a company is interested in managing their Intellectual Property (IP) – the reason why they really differentiate , plus if they want to remain in business by being innovative,PLM is the proven approach for this type op companies.
And tired of innovation, watch this:
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