At the moment this post is published I have had time to digest the latest PLMx conference organized by MarketKey. See the agenda here. For me it was a conference with mixed feelings this time and I will share more details a little further on.

Networking during the conference was excellent, good quality of conversations, however the number of people attending was smaller than previous conferences, perhaps due to too much diversification in the PI conferences?

There were several inspiring sessions and as I participated in three sessions myself, I missed a lot of potential exciting sessions that were in parallel at the same time. I believe four parallel tracks is too much and downloading the presentations later does not give you the real story.  Now some of the notable sessions I attended:

Building a Better Urban Mobility Future

The first keynote session was meant to inspire us and think of solving issues differently. Lewis Horne from a Swedish automotive startup explained their different approach to designing an electrical vehicle. Not based on classical paradigms – you do not need a steering wheel – you can navigate differently. And switching the indicator on when going left or right is now a swipe. Of course these were not the only differences.

Unity will not certify for the highest safety classes like other vehicles as car safety rules are a lot based on mechanical / human handling and responses. A fully computerized and full of sensors has complete different dynamics. And a light city car does not ride on the high-speed way. Based on the first prototype there are already more than 1000 pre-orders but Unity does not have a manufacturing facility. This will be franchised. Unity used the Apple mode – focus on an unmatched user-experience instead of manufacturability. Let’s see what happens when the first Unity’s start riding – current target prices 20.000 Euro. Will it be the new hype for modern citizens?

Focus on quality – not on happy engineers

Not only the title of this paragraph but also other statements were made by Hilmer Brunn, head of global PLM from Mettler-Toledo related to their PLM implementation strategy.  As Hilmer stated:

We should not focus to give engineers more time to design only. The job of engineering is more comprehensive than just creating designs. Engineers also need to solve issues that are related to their design – not leave it to the others.

Another interesting statement:

As long as you do not connect simulation to your design in 3D, you are actually working with 3D as if you do it with 2D. The value of 3D is more than just representation of geometry.

And the last quote I want to share from Hilmer was again related to engineering.

Engineering should consider themselves as a service provider of information to the rest of the company, providing the full information associated with a design, instead of behaving like extreme, intelligent people who need more resources to translate and complete their work.

Grand statements although during Q&A it became clear that also Mettler-Toledo did not have the magic bullet to get an organization work integrated.

Working towards a Model-Based Enterprise with PLM

I consider Model-Based practices as one of the essential needs for future PLM as this approach reduces the amount of derived information related to a product/ system. And it provides a digital continuity. In the last PDT conference in Gothenburg this topic was shared on a quit extensive matter. Have a read to fresh-up your memory here:  The weekend after PDT Europe – part 1 and part 2

The focus group  which I moderated was with approximate 20 attendees and the majority was looking for getting a better understanding what model-based would mean for their organization. Therefore, the discussion was at the end more around areas where a few persons had the experience while others still tried to grasp the concepts. For me a point to take action related to education and in future posts I will go deeper into the basics.

PLMPulse Survey results and panel discussion

Nick Leeder presented the context of the PLMPulse survey and the results in a precise manner, where perhaps the result was not that surprising to the audience as many of us are involved in PLM. Two recurring points: PLM is still considered as an engineering tool and: The value related to PLM is most of the time not clear. You can register and download the full report from here.

Next Nick lead a panel discussion where people from the audience could participate.  And here we got into a negative spiral where it became an inward-looking discussion why PLM has never been able to show the value and get out of the engineering domain. It was a someone said like an anonymous PLM meeting where members stood up and confessed they were also part of the group that could not change this behavior.

Was it the time of the day? Was it the mood of the audience? Too much old experiences?  I believe it has to do with the fact that in PLM projects and conferences we focus too much on what we do and how we do things, not connecting it to tangible benefits that are recognized at the board level. And we will see an example later.

Solar Stratos

The food and drinks at the end of day 1 probably washed away the PLMPulse feedback session and Raphael Domjan inspired us with his SolarStratos project – a mission to develop a plane that can fly on solar energy on the heights of the stratosphere. Raphael is working hard with a team now to get there.

Designing an airplane, more a glider, that can take off en reach the stratosphere on solar energy requires solving a combination of so many different challenges. The first test flight reached an altitude of 500 m, but you can imagine challenges with the stratosphere – lack of oxygen / air pressure need to be solved. Raphael is looking for funding and you can find more details here. Back to the relative easy PLM challenges

The future of PLM Consultancy

Together with Oleg Shilovitsky we had a discussion related to the ways PLM could be realized in different manners thanks to changing technology. The dialogue started through our blogs – read it here. In this session there was a good dialogue with the audience and MarketKey promised to share the video recording of this session soon.  Stay tuned to Oleg’s blog or my blog and you can watch it.

PLM in the context of digitization

This was my main personal contribution to the conference. Sharing insights why we have to approach PLM in a different manner. Not the classical linear engineering approach but as a mix of system of record and system of engagement. You can see the full presentation on SlideShare here.

My main conclusions are that PLM consultants / experts focus too much on what and how they do PLM, where the connection to WHY is missing. (See also my post PLM WHY?).

In addition I defended the statement that old and new PLM are incompatible and therefore you need to accept they will exist both in your organization. For a while or for a long time, depending on your product lifecycle.  In order to reduce the gap between old and new PLM, there is a need for data governance, model-based ways of working, which allow the company to connect at some stages the old/record data and the new data. And don’t do pilots anymore experimenting new ways of working and then stop because the next step seems to be overwhelming. Start your projects in small, multidisciplinary teams and make them real. The only way to be faster in the future.

PLM in Manufacturing as Backbone of the Smart Factory

Susanne Lauda, Director, Global Advanced Manufacturing Technology, AGCO Corporation provided an overview related to AGCO’s new PLM journey and how they were benefiting from a digital thread towards manufacturing. It felt like a smooth vendor demo as everything looked nice and reasonable. It was all about the WHAT. However two points that brought the extra:

When moving to the new system the tried to bring in the data from an existing product into then new system. According to Susanne a waste of time as the data required so much rework – there was no real value added for that. This confirms again my statement that old and new PLM are incompatible and one should not try to unify everything again in one system.

Second, I got excited at the end when we discussed the WHY for PLM and the business value of PLM. Here Suzanne mentioned PLM started as a “must-do strategic” project.  PLM lead to a reduction of time to market with almost 50 %. Suzanne did not give exact number, but you can imagine I have heard these numbers from other companies too. Why aren’t we able to connect these benefits in the mindset of the management to PLM ? Perhaps still too much engineering focused.

Next Susanne explained that they investigated the cost for quality for their manufacturing plants. What if something was produced wrong, the wrong parts were ordered, the delays to fix it, the changes needed to be made on the shop floor?  These results were so high that people were even afraid to report them. This is the case at many companies I worked with – even their PLM consultants do not receive these numbers – you just have to imagine they are big.

At AGCO they were able to reduce the cost for quality in a significant manner and Susanne explain that PLM was a main contributor to that success. However, success always has many fathers – so if your PLM team does not claim loud (and we are modest people not used to talk finance) – the success will not be recognized.

PLM’s Place Within an Enterprise Application Architecture

Peter Bilello from CIMData in the closing keynote speech gave an excellent summary and overview of where and which capabilities fit in an enterprise architecture and the positioning of a product innovation platform. A blueprint that can be used for companies to grasp the holistic view before jumping into the details of the tools.

Conclusion

PLMx Hamburg 2018 was an event with valuable highlights for me and potential I missed several more due to the fact of parallel streams. I hope to catch-up with these sessions in the upcoming month and share interesting thoughts that I discover with you. What remains crucial I believe for all vendor-neutral events is to find new blood. New companies, new experiences that are focused on the future of PLM and connect to the WHY or the WHAT WE LEARNED values.