Dear readers, it is time for me to relax and focus on Christmas and a New Year upcoming. I realize that not everyone who reads my posts will be in the same mood. You might have had your New Year three months ago or have New Year coming up in a few months. This is the beauty and challenge of a global, multicultural diverse society. Imagine we are all doing the same, would you prefer such a world ? Perhaps it would give peace to the mind (no surprises, everything predictable) however for human survival we need innovation and new ways of life.

This mindset is also applicable to manufacturing companies. Where in the past companies were trying to optimize and standardize their processes driven by efficiency and predictability, now due to the dynamics of a globally connected world, businesses need to become extremely flexible however still reliable and profitable.

How will they make the change ?

Digital transformation is one of the buzz words pointing to the transition process. Companies need to go through a change to become flexible for the future and deliver products or solutions for the individual customer. Currently companies invest in digital transformation, most of the time in areas that bring direct visibility to the outside world or their own management, not necessarily delivering profitable results as a recent article from McKinsey illustrated: The case for digital reinvention.

And for PLM ?

I have investigated digital transformation in relation to PLM  with particular interest this year as I worked with several companies that preached to the outside world that they are changing or were going to make a change. However what is happening at the PLM level ? Most of the time nothing. Some new tools, perhaps some new disciplines like software engineering become more critical. However the organization and people do not change their ways of working as in particular the ongoing business and related legacy are blocking the change.

Change to ?

This is another difficult question to answer.  There is no clearly defined path to share. Yes, modern PLM will be digital PLM, it will be about data-driven connected information. A final blueprint for digital PLM does not exist yet. We are all learning and guessing.  You can read my thoughts here:

Software vendors in various domains are all contributing to support a modern digital product innovation management future. But where to start?  Is it the product innovation platform? Is it about federated solutions? Model-Based? Graph-databases? There are even people who want to define the future of PLM.  We can keep throwing pieces of the puzzle on the table, but all these pieces will not lead to a single solved puzzle. There will be different approaches based on your industry and your customers. Therefore, continuous learning and investing time to understand the digital future is crucial. This year’s PDT Europe conference was an excellent event to learn and discuss the themes around a model-based lifecycle enterprise. You can read my reviews here: The weekend after PDT Europe 2017 part 1 and part 2.

The next major event where I plan to discuss and learn about modern PLM topics is the upcoming PI PLMx event in Hamburg on February 19-20 organized by MarketKey. Here I will discuss the Model-Based Enterprise and lecture about the relation between PLM and digital transformation. Hoping to see some of you there for exciting discussions and actions.

Conclusion

Merry Christmas for those who are celebrating and a happy, healthy and prosperous 2018 to all of you. Thanks for your feedback. Keep on asking questions or propose other thoughts as we are all learning. The world keeps on turning, however for me the next two weeks will the time relax.

Talk to you in 2018 !