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The trigger for this post is based was a discussion I had around the Autodesk 360 cloud based PLM solution. To position this solution and to simplify the message for my conversation partner Joe the plumber, I told him”: “You can compare the solution with Excel on-line. As many small mid-market companies are running around with metadata (no CAD files) in Excel, the simplified game changer with this cloud based PLM offering is that the metadata is now in the cloud, much easier to access and only a single version exists.”
(sorry for Autodesk, if I simplified it too much, but sometimes your conversation partner does not have an IT background as they are plumbers)
Interesting enough Joe said: “But what is the difference with Google docs or SharePoint where I can centralize my Excel files too – and Google Docs is like a cloud solution, right ?”
He was right and I had to go more in-depth to explain difference. This part of the conversation was similar to discussions I had in some meetings with owner / operators in the civil and energy sector, discussing the benefits of PLM practices for their industry.
I wrote about this in previous posts:
Using a PLM system for asset lifecycle management requires a vision
PLM practices for the engineering / construction industry
The trouble with dumb documents
Here it was even more a key point of the discussion that most of the legacy data is stored in dumb documents. And the main reason dumb documents are used is because the data needs to be available during the long lifecycle of the the plant, application independent if possible. So in the previous century this was paper, later scanned documents (TIFF – PDF) and currently mainly PDF. Most of the data now is digital but where is the intelligence ?
The challenges these companies have is that despite the fact information is now stored in a digital file, the next step is how to deal with the information in an intelligent manner. A document or an Excel file is a collection of information, you might call it knowledge, but to get access to the knowledge you need to find it.
Did you try to find a specific document in Google docs or SharePoint ? The conclusion will be the file name becomes very important, and perhaps some keywords ?
Is search the solution ?
To overcome this problem, full text search and search based applications were developed, that allow us to index and search inside the documents. A piece of cake for Google and a niche for others to index not only standard documents but also more technical data (drawings, scans from P&ID, etc, etc).
Does this solve the problem ?
Partly, as suddenly the user finds a lot more data. Search on Google for the words “Right data” and you have 3.760.000.000 hits (or more). But what is the right data ? The user can only decide what is the right data by understanding the context.
- Is it the latest version ?
- Is it reflecting the change we made at that functional position ?
- What has changed ?
And here comes the need for more intelligent data. And this is typically where a PLM system provides the answer.
A PLM systems is able to manage different types of information, not only documents. In the context of a plant or a building, the PLM system would also contain:
- a functional definition / structure (linked to its requirements)
- a logical definition / structure (how is it supposed to be ?)
- a physical definition / structure (what is physically there ?)
- a location definition / structure (where in the plant / building ?)
and this is all version managed and related to the supported documents and other types of information. This brings context to the documents and therefore it exposes knowledge.
As there is no automatic switch from dumb documents towards intelligent data, it will be a gradual process to move towards this vision. I see a major role for search based applications to support data discovery. Find a lot of information, but than have the capability to capture the result (or generate a digest of the result) and store it connected to your PLM system, where is it managed in the future and provides the context.
Conclusion: We understand that paper documents are out of time. Moving these documents to digital files stored in a central location, either in SharePoint or a cloud-based storage location is a step we will regret in ten years from now, as intelligent data is not only inside the digital files but also depending on its context.
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)
Last week I started a small series of posts related to the topic PLM 2.0. I was hoping for more comments and discussion about the term PLM 2.0, although I must say I was glad Oleg picked it up in his posts: PLM 2.0 born to die? and Will JT-open enable future of PLM 2.0?
Oleg, as a full-time blogger, of course had the time to draw the conclusions, which will take me another two weeks, hoping meanwhile the discussion evolves. Where Oleg’s focus is on technology and openness (which are important points), I will also explain that PLM 2.0 is a change in doing business, but this will be in next week’s post.
This week I will focus on the current challenges and pitfalls in PLM. And we all know that when somebody talks about challenges, there might be problems.
| Last week | : What is PLM 2.0? |
| This week: | : Challenges in current PLM |
| Next | : Change in business |
| Final post | : Why PLM 2.0 – conclusions |
The Challenges in current PLM
First I want to state that there are several types of definition in the world for PLM, coming from different type of organizations – I listed here two vendor independent definitions:
In industry, product lifecycle management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its conception, through design and manufacture, to service and disposal. PLM integrates people, data, processes and business systems and provides a product information backbone for companies and their extended enterprise.
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the business activity of managing a company’s products all the way across the lifecycle in the most effective way. The objective of PLM is to improve company revenues and income by maximizing the value of the product portfolio
And there are more definitions. Just recently, I noticed on the PlanetPTC blog from Aibhe Coughlan a post where she promoted a definition of PLM published in the Concurrent Engineering blog. Here I got immediate a little irritated reading the first words: “PLM is software designed to enhance process efficiencies ……… and more …”
I do not believe PLM is software. Yes there is software used to automate or implement PLM practices, but this definition starts to neglect the culture and process sides of PLM. And as Oleg was faster – read his more extended comment here
(I am not paid by Oleg to promote his blog, but we seem to have similar interests)
Back to the classical definitions
The Wiki definition gives the impression that you need to have an infrastructure to manage (store) all product data in order to serve as an information backbone for the extended enterprise. It becomes more an IT-project, often sponsored by the IT-department, with the main goal to provide information services to the company in a standardized manner.
This type of PLM implementations tends to be the same type of implementation as an ERP system or other major IT-system. In this type of top-down implementations, the classical best practices for project management should be followed. This means:
- A clear vision
- Management sponsorship
- A steering committee
- A skilled project leader and team
- Committed resources
- Power user involvement
- Communication
- …… and more …
These PLM projects are promoted by PLM vendors and consultants as the best way to implement PLM. And there are a lot of positive things to say about this approach. For many big companies implementing cPDM or PLM was a major step forward. Most of the ROI stories are based on this type of implementations and have been the showcases on PLM events. It is true that data quality increases, therefore efficiency and product quality. Without PLM they would not reach the same competiveness as they have now.
But sometimes these projects go into extreme when satisfying users or IT-guidelines
To avoid the implementation of a ‘new IT-system’, companies often have the strategy that if we already have an ERP-system , let’s customize or extend it, so we can store the additional data and perform workflow processes based on this system.
In a recent webinar, I heard a speaker saying that in their company they had the following automation strategy defined together with IT is:
- First they will see if the needed PLM functionality exists in their ERP system or is part of the portfolio of their ERP provider. If the functionality is there (this means the ERP vendor has the capability to store metadata and a factsheet mentioning the right name), there is no looking outside.
- If the functionality is not there, there will be a discussion with the ERP vendor or implementer to build it on top of their ERP system.
I have seen implementations where the company has developed complete custom user interfaces in order to get user acceptance (the users would not accept the standard graphical interface). At that time, no one raised the flag about future maintenance and evolution of these custom environments. The mood was: we kept it simple – one single system.
I believe this closes the door for real PLM, as storing data in a system does not mean you will use it in an efficient and optimized manner. How will you anticipate on changes in business if it is just doing more with the same system?
And mid-market companies ?
The top-down approach described before is the fear of many mid-market companies, as they remember how painful their first ERP implementation was. And now with PLM it is even more unclear. PLM aims to involve the engineering department, which so far has not worked in a very procedural manner. Informal and ad-hoc communication combined with personal skills within this department was often the key for success.
And now an unfriendly system is brought in, with low or little usability, pushing these creative people to enter data without seeing any benefits. The organization downstream benefits but this will be only noticed later in time. And for the engineering department it will take more effort to change their work methodology focused on innovation. However, in general in the mid-market, the target of a PLM project is to have a Return on Investment (ROI) in a very short timeframe ( 1-2 years). Investing in usability should be even more important for this type of companies as there is less top-down pressure to accept this new PLM system.
And flexibility ?
In the past years we have seen that business is changing – there is a shift in global collaboration and manufacturing and from the recent history we can learn that those big enterprise projects from the past became a threat. Instead of being able to implement new concepts or new technology, the implementation became more and more vendor monolithic as other capabilities and applications do not fit anymore. This is against the concept of openness and being flexible for the future. I believe if PLM becomes as rigid as ERP, it blocks companies to innovate – the challenge for big companies is to find the balance between stability and flexibility (This was the title from Sony Ericsson’s presentation at the PLM forum in Sweden this year)
And again for mid-market companies who do not have the budget or resources to invest in similar projects. They have less a drive to optimize themselves in the same manner as big companies do as flexibility is often their trade mark (and capability to innovate) . So PLM for the mid-market will not work in the classical way.
This is one of the reasons why a mid-market PLM standard has not yet been found (yet ?). From the other hand many mid-market companies are dealing with PLM practices although often it is more close to PDM and CAD data management. And mid-market companies do not change their organization easily – there is more a departmental approach avoiding therefore a change in business.
To summarize the biggest challenges in current PLM described in this post:
- PLM is considered complex to implement
- PLM is a huge IT-project
- PLM requires change and structuring – but what about flexibility
- Where is the PLM value and ROI – user acceptance
- PLM for the mid-market – does it exist ?
Conclusion: I have been writing about the PLM challenges in the past, see the links below if you are interested in more details on a specific topic.
In 2008,I thought that Out-of-the-Box PLM systems and standard functionalities could bring a solution for the mid-market, perhaps future solutions based on the cloud. However I learned that if you want to do real PLM in a modern manner, you need to change the way you do your business – and this I will explain in my upcoming post.
Related links:
During this summer holiday, I was looking back on recent implementations and sales efforts related to PLM. Some had particular challenges regarding the PLM implementation and the relation to the IT department. The role of the IT-department was crucial, but always in a positive manner ? Judge yourself.
First this statement:
In many mid-market companies the choice for PLM is not that clear.
Let me explain what I mean by a typical mid-market company – it is not based on size or turn-over. For me a mid-market company is a company, not allocating the resources to have an overall strategic department and in addition the IT-department is limited to a team of people with a main focus to keep the company operational – ERP first.
The impact of this situation is twofold:
- From one way new business initiatives will mostly come from departments, either sales, marketing, engineering, production, service or IT. Companywide business initiatives are not likely to come from a separate department as each department is working on their own issues.
- Secondly IT often has a tendency to ‘standardize’ on certain environments. Some quotes:
“We love/hate Microsoft”
“SharePoint is our standard”
“If it is not Linux it is not reliable”
“Our ERP provider has also a PLM module, so this is going to be the standard”
And this standardization is often at the end the business killer
So where does PLM come from in a mid-market company ?
Example 1: The IT-department in company XYZ had the opinion there was a need to provide a company infrastructure for document management – people complained about not being able to find the right information. Related to the CAD system in use, it often became a kind of PDM implementation with extended document management. The IT-department provided the infrastructure (we need Oracle / SQL /DB2 – based on their standards) and engineering was allowed on top of that infrastructure to define their PDM environment.
As most of the people involved in this project were very familiar with computers, the implemented system was highly customized, due to specific actions the engineers wanted and what IT envisioned users would require. The overall thought was that other users would automatically get enthusiastic when seeing this implementation
In contrary: the regular users refused to work with the new PDM system – too complex, it takes too much time to fill in information and in situations of heavy customization some users became afraid of the system. Making one mistake was hard to undo and could have a chain reaction of events further down in the organization. They preferred the traditional method of sending documents or Excels to the other departments and getting face-to-face feedback. Of course in case of missing information or a mistake this could be clarified easily too.
Conclusion from all the PLM pessimists: PLM is too complex, PLM is hard to implement.
My intermediate conclusion: Good will to improve the company’s business is important, however you need business people to define and lead the implementation.
Example2: IT in a company ABC developed a custom PLM infrastructure for their users and everyone was happy, till …… business changed. Where several years ago, the users decided that the standard PLM software was not good enough as some details were not supported and the standard system PLM system was able to do too much, IT generously decided to build a complete, nice user environment for their company.
Everybody happy for three years, till recently, due to acquisitions, outsourced contracting (engineering and manufacturing), the IT-department has to hire more people to support more and more custom connections and data exchange. Now in an overheated state they are looking for ways to use PLM standard software instead, however IT does not want to write off the previous investments that easy, the users are not aware of the problems in changing business and the future PLM decision is again driven by IT and not by business,
Internal conclusion: The IT-department was very helpful for the end users, who appreciated the simple to-the-point interface – whispering: Therefore never a change process took place anticipating strategic changes upcoming. The result a kind of dead end.
My intermediate conclusion: If you are a mid-market company and you are not in software development, stay out of it. It is always a temporary and people dependent (who can/will leave at some time).
Just two examples out of many, typically for mid-market companies. I think also larger enterprises sometimes demonstrate the same problematic. Good IT-people and IT-department are crucial for every company. The challenge is to keep the balance between business and IT. The risk is that due to the fact that there is a lack of business strategy resources, the IT-department becomes the business standard.
Conclusion: PLM is about business change and PLM is not an IT-tool. However a PLM implementation requires good and intensive support from IT. The challenge for every company is that the IT-department often has the most skilled people for a company-wide implementation, however the business drivers and strategy should come from outside.
Your thoughts ???
Recently i noticed two different discussions. One on LinkedIn in the CMPIC® Configuration Management Trends group, where Chris Jennings started with the following statement:
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) vs CM
An interesting debate has started up here about PLM vs CM. Not surprisingly it is revealing a variety of opinions on what each mean. So I’m wondering what sort of reaction I might get from this erudite community if I made a potentially provocative statement like …
“Actually, PLM and CM are one and the same thing” ?24 days ago
It became a very active discussion and it was interesting to see that some of the respondents saw PLM as the tool to implement CM. Later the discussion moved more towards system engineering, with a focus on requirements management. Of course requirements management is key for CM, you could say CM starts with the capturing of requirements.
There was some discussion about what is the real definition of PLM and this triggered my post. Is the definition of PLM secured in a book – and if so – in which book as historically we have learned that when the truth comes from one book there is discussion
But initially in the early days of the PLM, requirements management was not part of the focus for PLM vendors. Yes, requirements and specifications existed in their terminology but were not fully integrated. They focused more on the ‘middle part’ of the product lifecycle – digital mockup and virtual manufacturing planning. Only a few years later PLM vendors started to address requirements management (and systems engineering) as part of their portfolio – either by acquisitions of products or by adding it natively.
For me it demonstrates that PLM and CM are not the same. CM initially had a wider scope than early PLM systems supported, although in various definitions of PLM you will see that CM is a key component of the PLM practices.
Still PLM and CM have a lot in common, I wrote about is a year ago in my post: PLM, CM and ALM; not sexy ! and both fighting to get enough management support and investments. There is in the CMIP group another discussion open with the title: What crazy CM quotes have you heard ? You can easily use these quotes also for the current PLM opinion. Read them (if you have access and have fun)
But the same week another post caught my interest. Oleg’s post about Inforbix and Product Data Management. I am aware that also other vendors are working on concepts to provide end users with data without the effort of data management required. Alcove9 and Exalead are products with a similar scope and my excuses to all companies not mentioned here.
What you see it the trend to make PLM more simple by trying to avoid the CM practices that often are considered as “non-value add”, “bureaucracy” and more negative terms. I will be curious to learn how CM practices will be adhered by these “New Generation of PDM” vendors, as I believe you need CM to manage proactively your products.
What is your opinion about CM and PLM – can modern PLM change the way CM is done ?
In the past two weeks I had some interesting observations related to the core of PLM. Reading posts and some in-depth discussions with customers lead to the statements below:
Single version of truth ?
First I am going back to the intent of PLM – companies that implement PLM are not looking for a system where they can store information in a single database. Often the single version of the truth story is translated into technology . To illustrate this statement I was explaining a medical device company some weeks before how in PLM practices the interaction of requirements, integrated with regulatory compliance verification speeds up the product development process as deviations are early discovered during the development stage. The astonishing answer from the customer was; “Yes we already store this information in our well-known ERP system – so no need for PLM to handle this”
For this person the conclusion was that once data is stored in a system, it is managed. However what the company never tried was to track each requirement individually (and its possible change) during the engineering process and have a direct connection to regulatory demands.
In that area Excel, people’s knowledge and stored documents were used to collaborate. Off course with the late discovery of errors and several extra iterations due to it. As long as this company does not understand that the PLM system is not yet another tool to store data, but an enabler to work different and more efficient, these tools based statements will not bring them further. But as nobody get fired for selecting a well-known ERP system, but trying to change the way people work is a risk, often the first option is chosen.
And the more conservative the company culture, the more likely this will happen.
Tools do not make a change
In a last week meeting I met a VP of a business group of a real global company. I am stressing the word real as there are many global companies, that actually have one main location where the IP and influence comes from – as compared to the real global companies where all around the world the knowledge and IP of the company is invented and spread from there. Although the discussion was on the current status and quality of the tools in use, during breaks we concluded that although the discussion is about tools, the hardest part for implementing PLM in their company is to master and motivate the changes in the way of working towards the users.
In several blog posts from Oleg (and others) I see the hope that new user interfaces, user data handling can provide a break through here. I partly agree here – in the eighties/nineties we had the single window terminal screens, which were easy to understand (no multi-tasking / no multi-windows). Slowly the current workforce got used to windows (still no multi-tasking) and the new generation (generation-Y) is less and less single tasking and has different ways of solving issues. New interfaces can contribute to the acceptation of a tool, but as in the end we are still doing the same – storing data in a central system without changing the way we work – there is nothing improved
MBOM in PLM
Another interesting statement of this VP was also that they are in the process of bringing all engineering data coming from different disciplines in their R&D / PLM environment. Originally it was the ERP system that was used to combine all data coming from different disciplines. However the disadvantage was that this product definition resided partly in an ERP (there is no concept of a single ERP as manufacturing differ so much globally) and partly in PLM. Their future plan was therefore to extend the coverage of PLM toward the whole preparation for manufacturing – my favorite topic too: see Where is the MBOM ?
Conclusion so far
In day to day relations customers and PLM vendors, implementers are talking about functions and features to implement and where and how data is stored. The major driver should be the concept of changing the way we work to be more efficient, more clever and with higher quality. This is not reached by storing data, but by having the right data available at the right moment. And this moment changes when implementing PLM
- PLM Customers: Make sure that change of doing business is the target of your PLM implementation – do not look for tools only – check with your implementer and vendor which experience they have.
- PLM Implementers: Schedule time and activities during the implementation to understand the business change and the customer to adapt. It is a different type of skill required but as important.
- PLM Vendors: You have a hard time – as all are talking about the tools, you do not want to talk about the changes PLM implies – a pity but most customers do not want to hear this side during their PLM selection process
It has been silent from my side the past – more than two months. Extremely busy and sometimes surprised to see the amounts of post some of my colleagues could produce, with Oleg as the unbeaten number one. During this busy period I was able to observe some interesting trends listed below:
Going Social
Social Media and PLM is one of the favorite topics for both bloggers and some PLM vendors at this moment. New products for community based collaboration or social engineering are promoted. Combined with discussions and statements how the new workforce (Generation Y) should get challenging jobs without doing the ‘old boring stuff’.
True arguments to initiate a change in the way we work. And I agree, must of current PLM systems are not ‘intelligent’ enough to support engineers in a friendly manner. However is there an alternative at this moment ? Below a commercial (in Dutch) promoting that elderly workers are still required for quality.
I discussed the relation PLM and Social Media some time ago in my post Social Media and PLM explained for dummies. In addition my observation from the field, gives me the feeling that in most companies the management is still dominated by the older generation, and most of the time they decide on the tools they will be using. No X and Y at this moment. Therefore I do not see a quick jump to social media integrated with PLM – yes the vision is there – but the readiness of most companies is not yet there.
Cloud
PLM and Cloud are also more and more mentioned by PLM vendors as a new solution specially for the mid-market. And with an optimistic mind you can indeed believe that with a low investment (pay per use) mid-market companies can do their PLM on-line. But why are existing on-line PLM systems not booming at this time ? (Arena / PLMplus / and the major PLM vendors) I believe that there are two key reasons for that:
- Implementing PLM is not equal to installing a system. PLM is a vision to be implemented using a system. And the difficulty is that a vision does not match function and features from a product vendor. There is a need for a driving force inside the company that will support the business change. Where are the consultants and advocates (with experience) for this type of solutions ?
- There is still a reluctance to store intellectual property somewhere on-line in a cloud without direct control and ownership of data. Mid-market companies are not known to choose solutions ahead of the mass. In this type of companies cloud based CAD tools might be an entry point, but all product data – no way they say.
PLM or ERP
Before even talking about new technologies or fundamentals for PLM, I see the biggest challenge for PLM is still to get the recognition as the system for product knowledge (IP) and innovation. In too many companies ERP rules and PLM is considered as a way to capture CAD and engineering data. The main PLM vendors are not addressing this challenge – they neglect ERP (yes we can connect). And ERP vendors like SAP and Oracle are not known for their PLM messages and strategy (yes we have PLM). As ERP is often the major IT-system historically, there is so often the (wrong) opinion that everything should be built and based on one system.
In some publications I have seen the Swiss knife as an example for the multi-functional system with all tools embedded. My question remains – who wants to work only with a Swiss knife when doing professional work ?
I like to have the right tools to do my job
The most important topic around my blog the past 3 years has been around the Manufacturing BOM – where should it be – and where is the MBOM current ?
Sweden – a reality check
Last week I attended the DS PLM forum in Gothenburg to present the vision of using a PLM system as the backbone for plant information management for owners/operators and how ENOVIA supports this vision.
But I also learned Sweden is (one of) the most innovative countries (I need to verify the criteria used but can imagine there is a source of truth). What impressed me more where the presentations from Staffan Lundgren from Sony Ericsson with the title “Living in a world of change – balancing stability and flexibility” and Magnus Olsson from Volvo Cars with the title “Driving operational excellence in a challenging business environment”. Both companies are well known for their robust image. From both speakers you could experience that they are not worried so much about Generation Y, their success is depending on a clear vision and a will to go there. And this basic drive is often missing – PLM is not a product you buy and then business continues as usual
Conclusion
PLM vendors made a lot of noise the past months (events / product announcements) and customers might get the impression that technology and software (or the price of software) are the main criteria for successful PLM. Although not unimportant, I would focus on the vision and to assure this vision is understood and accepted by the company. 
Am I old fashioned ?
In the past months, I have talked and working with various companies about the topic of Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) based on a PLM system. Conceptual it is a very strong concept and so far only a few companies have implemented this approach, as PLM systems have not been used so much outside the classical engineering world.
Why using a PLM system ?
To use a PLM system for managing all asset related information ( asset parameters, inventory, documents, locations, lifecycle status) in a single system assures the owner / operator that a ‘single version of the truth’ starts to exist. See also one of my older posts about ALM to understand the details.
The beauty lies in the fact that this single version of the truth concept combines the world of as-built for operators and the world of as-defined / as-planned for preparing changes. Instead of individual silos the ALM system provides all information, of course filtered in such a way that a user only sees information related to the user’s role in the system.
The challenge for PLM vendors is to keep the implementation simple as PLM initially in its core industries was managing the complexity. Now the target is to keep it extremely simple and easy to used for the various user roles, meanwhile trying to stay away from heavy customizations to deliver the best Return on Investment.
Having a single version of the truth provides the company with a lot of benefits to enhance operations. Imagine you find information and from its status you know immediately if it is the latest version and if other versions exists. In the current owner / operator world often information is stored and duplicated in many different systems, and finding the information in one system does not mean that this is the right information. I am sure the upcoming event from IDC Manufacturing Insights will also contribute to these findings
It is clear that historically this situation has been created due to the non-intelligent interaction with the EPC contractors building or changing the plant. The EPC contractors use intelligent engineering software, like AVEVA
, Bentley, Autodesk and others, but still during hand-over we provide dumb documents, paper based, tiff, PDF or some vendor specific formats which will become unreadable in the upcoming years. For long-term data security often considered the only way, as neutral standards like ISO-15926 still require additional vision and knowledge from the owner/operator to implement it.
Now back to the discussions…
In many discussions with potential customers the discussion often went into the same direction:
“How to get the management exited and motivated to invest into this vision ? The concept is excellent but applying it to our organization would lead to extra work and costs without immediate visibility of the benefits !”
This is an argument I partly discussed in one of my previous posts: PLM, CM and ALM not sexy. And this seems to be the major issue in western Europe and the US. Business is monitored and measured for the short term, maximum with a plan for the next 4 – 5 years. Nobody is rewarded for a long-term vision and when something severe happens, the current person in power will be to blame or to excuse himself.
As a Dutch inhabitant, I am still proud of what our former Dutch government decided and did in the after the flooding in 1953. The Dutch invested a lot of money and brain power into securing inhabitants behind the coast line in a project called the Delta Works. This was an example of vision instead of share holder value. After the project has been finished in the eighties there was no risk for a severe flooding anymore and the lessons learned from that time, brought the Dutch the knowledge to support other nations at risk for flooding. I am happy that in 1953 the government was not in the mood to optimize their bonus ( an unknown word at that time)
Back to Asset Lifecycle Management ….
Using a PLM system for asset lifecycle management provides the economical benefits by less errors during execution (working on the right information), less human involvement in understanding the information ( lower labor costs) and lower total cost of ownership (less systems to maintain and connect by IT).
But these benefits are in no relation with risk containment. What happens if something goes really wrong ?
If you you are a nuclear plant owner, you are in global trouble. A chemical plant owner or oil company can be in regional trouble, but they also will suffer from the damage done to their brand name globally. Other types of plant owners might come away with less, depending on the damage they potential ‘embank’
The emerging visionaries
For that reason, it is enlightening to see that some companies in Asia think different. There the management understands that they have the opportunity to build their future in a more clever way. Instead of copying the old way EPC contractors and plant owners work together, they start from a single version of the truth concept, pushing their contractors to work more integrated and clever with them. Instead of becoming boiling frogs, they are avoiding to fall into the same trap of many owners / operators in European and US based companies: “Why change the way we work, it does not seem to be so bad”
It requires a vision for the long term, something that will lead to extra benefits in the long term future: more efficient management of their assets, including risk containment and therefore being more competitive. If European and US-based companies want to be dominating in this industry they will need to show their vision too ..
Tomorrow I am attending the European Chemical Manufacturing Masters conference in Berlin, where I hope to learn and discuss this vision with the participants. I will keep you updated if i found the vision …..
In many PLM communities, you see discussions and statements, that there will be a significant impact on the way we perform product lifecycle management using social media capabilities. In this post I will give my thoughts without going in-depth into certain products. At the bottom of this post you will find some links to posts which contributed to my opinion (the usual suspects).
PLM
Let’s first establish a baseline, why we want Product Lifecycle Management. In a general PLM is a vision, to bring products to the market faster, with better quality, being innovative and more customer focused.
This vision can be implemented by best practices, like a standardized global staged New Product Introduction process, an enterprise wide Engineering Change Process, integration between different disciplines to work globally on a single repository for product definition and many more depending on your industry..
Two words pop up here: a single repository for product definition and global. This is where the technology comes in. Due to an improved world-wide (internet / WAN) connectivity, the capabilities are there to communicate efficient around a single repository for product definition and reliable, around the globe . The world became a global workplace and we are all connected. The improved connectivity enables PLM vendors (and others) to promote the “single version of the truth” concept.
Single Version of the truth
The idea behind it is that, if you store everything in a single database, you will always find the right information. This idea was developed at the time the world was not yet global and people were thinking more local.
Some of the major ERP vendors also push for this concept. If you store all your data in their single platform, you are sure there is no redundancy of data, so you are always confident about the content is the message. This concept is often embraced by IT-departments, as the message having one single platform or one single system for all enterprise data sound like efficient. (I call it Swiss Knife thinking – it does everything – but would you use it for professional work ?)
As long as we are talking about explicit data and local activities, this concept seems to prove itself. However, a lot of informal activities exist around the product development process, and these activities are not managed.
In 2009, I participated in a COE Automotive panel, where one of the attendees in the audience stood up accused the PLM vendors of making their life so complex. He said:
“If we have an issue on the shop floor with production, we just gather the right people and solve the issue – no need to fill in screens of data that PLM or ERP systems require. And if there was a customer with a problem, we send a service engineer and the problem is fixed”
Of course if his company was a global company, it would be impossible to gather all around the shop floor, or to visit the customer site and solve it in a reasonable time.
To avoid missing information, PLM and ERP systems try to collect as much as possible information in their systems, to have the best possible single version of the truth. Through immersive integrations and clever business logic, the user has to enter the minimum of information only once. However for the user still too much and way to complex they complain (and still not enough information is captured).
My conclusion so far: Single version of the truth is a concept to collect a majority of product related data, however missing all the informal communication, which is exchanged during talking (and later emailing and modern means of communication).
Extending the single version of the truth
The single version of the truth is an important implementation concept for PLM and it requires already a major challenge for companies. Imagine all information that you produce will be stored in such a manner that everyone authorized can see it and it is stored in such a manner that someone else also can understand the information (and not only you) . This is such an important change process often overlooked by IT-driven PLM implementations.
PLM Vendors focus on the tools to provide a platform to capture and share product data all around the product lifecycle. Not easy either as development is often based on generic functionality not optimized for a certain user role.
To understand the context of the shared data, you would like to hear or rewind the discussions people had at that time – as from these discussion a lot of implicit information can be retrieved. But no one wants to enter implicit information in a PLM system.
And then going global
Continuing with product development towards a global operation and addressing the communication around the product development is the next logic step. As it is much more difficult to communicate directly with everyone around the world, it is obvious that here social media come in the picture.
Initial people were using email to exchange ideas with other people around the world. This created new problems – sometimes huge attachments of unmanaged data, sometimes important information in mail boxes of only a few people, relevant for many. Email is against the concept of a single version of the truth as people were creating there own non-pubic archives of product discussions. Before the WEB 2.0 revolution, PLM vendors provided email integrations or embedded email functionality in their PLM system. Still there a millions of email databases (Lotus Notes / Exchange) with product data, development data and more not visible for many.
The 2.0 change
A trend we see in social media is that your ‘old’ email system becomes more a notification system, that you got a direct message through one of your social platforms (RSS feeds, LinkedIn, Facebook, Blog, etc). Of course, if you are connected to all these platforms on-line all the time, you do not need a notification system anymore and you are connected to whom you want and when you want – a little bit back to the old days. If you enter a social environment, you are a participant of the communication going on – you can look around or participate.
The benefit from social collaboration is that is does not push you into a structure of managed data. And it provides you with on-line communication with everyone who is in your selected community. The downside with the known social media is that it is not clear and secure, what happens with this information shared in social platforms. Will it be sold to special interest groups ? Can you find it through a search engine ?
For product related social collaboration, we need obviously more secure communities to collaborate. And as for this collaboration you do not know who is in your trusted company network, it is clear that cloud based solutions come in as a logical technical infrastructure. Of course these communities must be as easy accessible as popular social media and well integrated in the user’s environment.
Global single version of the truth ?
Combining the single version of the truth concept and the loose communication and content of social media brings us to the challenge of current PLM consultants, vendors and implementers. All the information collected in current social platforms is hard to find or interpret. If you use the embedded search functions in these communities, they are not designed for clever searches – you need to know the context? And then the question pops up if it is all information that existed ? You do not know as you do not see the full picture.
An old-fashioned managing all this data in our PLM system won’t work either. The capturing and classification and linking of data would be too much overhead for the reluctant user. We do not want to manage and justify each action that we do. (although this were knowledge management concepts in the 90’s)
Extended search
And this is where extended search comes in for PLM. The extended search is the glue between the single version of the truth and all the unmanaged data around the product in communities. Integrating this in a single environment is the challenge for PLM vendors (and less important for ERP vendors).
Why mainly for PLM vendors ? The main reason is that in product development a lot of iterations, knowledge building, searching and capturing of date takes place. The more you know and understand, the better you are capable to make adequate decisions, understanding the right context during your development process. And for that you need the formal and informal information, global available across disciplines, companies and countries.
I see two major requirements for these extended search capabilities.
- First of all the search engine should understand your context and skip irrelevant discussions and posts from your social media. I have seen how this could be done. In 2007, Yedda, an Israeli startup bought by AOL, came with an intelligent question and answer engine. The concept behind the engine was that it mapped the context of the question to your profile, to the community you belonged and compared it to other profiles of people in the community. The more you asked and the more your answered the clearer your context became. In additions your answers were rewarded by others, and the more thumbs up you got, the more value you provided to the community – saving your boss to do appraisals.
- Search engines should provide you with a facetted search to drill down on the search results. As you do not know exactly what you are looking for, some keywords should do and then as a next step based on your context and the search context you should be able to drill down to the information you are looking for. This information should now give you a better understanding of the context of your product – if it is versioned ? if it is the latest ? Leave this to PLM.
My conclusion:
Classic PLM (single version of the truth) and social media capabilities (easy collaboration in communities) combined with an extended search engine are the mandatory capabilities for a modern global PLM implementation where both formal and informal data are managed in the context of a product
Links for reference:
In my previous post (PLM Selection – Don’t do this) – I wrote about what not to do, if you want to make a PLM selection and many thanks for the responses and feedback I got on this post. It is obvious that a PLM selection is not as simple as purchasing a new car, but for the sake of the simplification, I will use it as a comparison once and a while in this post.
Understanding the need
All around you, people are driving cars and there are objectives you can only achieve in an efficient matter if you have the flexibility of car. In some countries, the governments are pushing people to public means of transport for obvious reasons. However this reduces the flexibility, and in general it fails due to our individual (read customer centric) needs.
For PLM this is somehow the same. Many companies require an implementation of the PLM vision to achieve their goals and being more customer-centric. Of course there are lots of standard tools available which bring you from A to B, but then you have to walk from B to C in order to get connected again for the next part. Not efficient and not connected. The challenges of public transport as an analogy for connectivity in a tool based environment.
So let’s assume which PLM to look for is similar to which car to select. From your needs and budget you will narrow down the search.
Do you need a bus, a jeep, a van, a sports car, an SUV, etc, etc?
You can write down all the features and functions that you can imagine to do with your new car on a checklist and send this list out to somebody (a car consultant?) to do the verification with all the known car manufacturers. (You use a car consultant as it is too time consuming and you are not the expert in this area)
From the previous post we learned this is waste of time and budget, except for the consultant. I am pretty sure that most of the companies are aware of their pains and if they would invest in understanding the PLM vision, without jumping immediately into products, they would be able to create a shortlist of needs based on their main characteristics:
- What is my main businesses process (ETO – BTO – CTO – MTS – etc) and where do I want to be in the long term?
- Am I using a single CAD platform or do I require a multi-CAD strategy?
- Do I go with the flow (low risk/lower costs/less different) or do I want to be outside the flow (develop new practices / new technology / differentiate)
- Is my company really independent in its processes and data or are we depending on specific collaboration. For example in a supply chain or conglomerate of companies?
For those questions, to formalize the company’s strategy and dependencies between business goals and organization, it is not as easy as buying a car. Often external help is needed, as inside your company it is very rare that you will find someone, who can spend the time to collect this knowledge (or has this broad knowledge) and to bring it back to the company in an ‘objective’ manner.
That’s the role of an independent PLM consultant. I underlined the word independent as you can read some remarks in the footnote of this post on what independent means in this context.
There must be hundreds of independent PLM consultants, who can assist a company formalizing their PLM needs, without jumping and starting to talk immediately from the point of view of a specific product. Complementary you have the dependent PLM consultants and also there you will find good expertise. Their knowledge and focus however is more to fit you in their product range – good once you have made your choice.
Or you might say: “I do not need this consultant. Let’s spent some money on reports from known independent PLM consultancy firms”. They have general reports about PLM and for each of the major PLM vendors, they will have a specific, sponsored reports explaining the PLM capabilities of these platforms. Again look at the footnote of what it means independent.
Narrowing down the choice
Finish the first phase would mean in car selection terminology, you understood now where to look – it will be:
- An electrical car (new technology, sustainable, short distances required so far)
going for the future – knowing the future is open - A high-end tuned CAR (a big investment, but now you can enjoy)
as long as you do not get in or out a personal crisis - the mid-range CAR (everyone uses this car, it is price effective)
but you do not want to be like everyone - the nano (it is cheap – it is a car)
understanding this car does not fit expansion of the family - the MPV – (it can do everything – even consume fuel)
never comfortable but it serves all - leasing /renting CAR capacity (drive immediately – the on-line CAR)
you have to get rid of the idea that you need to own it - a free CAR (drive now – pay later – the Open Source car)
freedom comes with other obligations in the long term
Evaluating the need
Now that you have narrowed down the selection, you are able to go into the details. And then the second most important option of the selection process comes: how does this PLM product/partner fit to my company.
In car terminology, you would do a test drive. You step into the car and you drive and experience. In PLM this is impossible, it is software applied to your company, it is business and people change. So your choice will be more based on feeling comfortable with the future
You might want to start with some basic PLM functionality, which suits best at your current situation, and gradually you extend the PLM coverage (as you own and should have the vision) inside the company.
So what I have seen companies are doing? They invite 3 to 5 suppliers of a PLM system to come and do a benchmark. Sometime they have a predefined scenario which everyone should follow; sometimes they allow the vendor to suggest best practices. I do not believe in this approach as I wrote in one of my older posts – I called it the academic approach.
I believe a PLM implementation requires a partner who understands your business, has experience in your business and is available and affordable to consult and work with.
Here there is not the unique need any more for independent consultants, as most of the PLM vendors have their consultants with product specific experience in your market. Only be aware of the following:
- In this stage you are in a sales process – so each vendor will explain how easy and fast to implement, how easy to understand and how unique they are. Check here with customers.
- They will use FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) and it is very difficult to understand the reality here. Here an independent consultant or customer reference can help to understand the reality
- If the PLM supplier is selling hammers, for sure everywhere in your organizations there nails will pop up
The main goal is to find a partner for the future, which you trust, from whom you feel they understand your business without immediately selling product features or customizations.
In my analogy with the car selection process, I live in a small village where we have one real car dealer for the mid-market from a certain French brand. The car dealer claims 60 % of the people in our village drive a car from this brand, due to the local support (I am sure it is less but it is visible)
Part of their sales process is to explain that if you consider another brand you might get stuck in the village on a snowy morning without support when you urgently need it (horror stories and all the other FUD). And if you want an electrical car, they will explain you that you do not want an electrical car as from insiders (unknown to us), they learned that they are not reliable, not cost-effective, where their brand is in the top of most of the lists.
So what replaces the test drive?
I assume if you have gone through the selection of a partner, who speaks the same language, has a clear vision and has shown the capability to deliver (through references and the interaction you had so far), you have only a short-list of one or maybe two candidates.
So what is usual the case – the purchasing department starts to negotiate with both candidates (and sometimes invite a third supplier as this is company policy) and they try to squeeze out each of the PLM suppliers to the maximum for the full project scope till both sides have the feeling there is a base for a partnership .
How did you engage with your partner 
?
My recommendation is to discuss with both candidates your possible roadmap. Let them explain in detail what should be done as the first small step and have them propose from there the next following steps. The first step should be with a clear budget, time (max 2 – 3 month) and effort specification – internal and external; the other steps roughly budgeted for costs and efforts
Then you have to make your choice, you do this first step, making sure it is reversible or it can be a single step. It is a verification of your first step (call it engagement / a test drive for a month) and from there you evaluate if you continue for the big step or rethink your first choice.
As choosing a PLM platform is a long term relation – at least 5 – 10 years – you need to use the engagement phase to meet the family and learn and understand the future.
Again the independent consultant?
Yes, when writing down the above paragraphs, I realized again that it is easier said than done. If you are not experienced with the PLM market guiding this process will be difficult and time consuming if you do it once in your life. So also in the selection phase an independent consultant can assist you with the selection process, the most logical roadmap for your company and interface with the PLM suppliers, knowing their strengths & weaknesses
Conclusion
PLM selection is not such a complex process where you need to understand all the details upfront. It is based on common sense, not equal to buying a car but also not rocket science. The independent consultant fits well in this approach, in cases where you did not have the time or people to build the expertise internally to define a PLM vision, justification and selection
Looking forward to your feedback
- not influenced or controlled in any way by other people, events or things
- free; autonomous, self-governing, sovereign; self-reliant, self-sufficient
The above definition says it all – not influenced or controlled. However being independent does not mean you have the knowledge of all products and technologies that exist. So an independent consultant should assist with the common best practices of PLM, independent of the software.
The same for the comments on PLM Research – see the LinkedIn post in case you are group member – The Trouble with PLM Research .
An interesting discussion as also these PLM research organizations work with a certain state of mind – there is no single PLM definition according to the PLM suppliers – and each of the PLM research companies have to deal with their understanding of what these supplier can do, meanwhile keeping their business also alive.
Which means in order to have good relationships with the PLM supplier, they need to be in a good relation and due that relation they sometimes write some biased reports about a single PLM supplier who sponsored the white paper. Nothing wrong with this approach as long as you understand the context of this information.
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