This is the moment of the year, where at least in my region, most people take some time off to disconnect from their day-to-day business.  For me, it is never a full disconnect as PLM became my passion, and you should never switch off your passion.

On August 1^st, 1999, I started my company TacIT, the same year the acronym PLM was born. I wanted to focus on knowledge management, therefore the name TacIT.  Being dragged into the SmarTeam world with a unique position interfacing between R&D, implementers and customers I found the unique sweet spot, helping me to see all aspects from PLM – the vendor position, the implementer’s view, the customer’s end-user, and management view.

It has been, and still, is 20 years of learning and have been sharing most in the past ten years through my blog. What I have learned is that the more you know, the more you understand that situations are not black and white. See one of my favorite blog pictures below.

So there is enough to overthink during the holidays. Some of my upcoming points:

From coordinated to connected

Instead of using the over-hyped term: Digital Transformation, I believe companies should learn to work in a connected mode, which has become the standard in our daily life. Connected means that information needs to be stored in databases somewhere, combined with openness and standards to make data accessible. For more transactional environments, like CRM, MES, and ERP, the connected mode is not new.

In the domain of product development and selling, we have still a long learning path to go as the majority of organizations is relying on documents, be it Excels, Drawings (PDF) and reports. The fact that they are stored in electronic file formats does not mean that they are accessible. There is still manpower needed to create these artifacts or to extract the required information from them.

The challenge for modern PLM is to establish new best practices around a model-based approach for systems engineering (MBSE), for engineering to manufacturing (MBD/MBE) and operations (Digital Twins). All these best practices should be generic and connected ultimately.  I wrote about these topics in the past, have a look at:

• Model-Based – an introduction
• The Challenges of a connected ecosystem for PLM

PLM Vendors are showing pieces of the puzzle, but it is up to the implementers to establish the puzzle, without knowing in detail what the end result will be. This is the same journey of Columbus. He had a boat and a target towards the unknown. He discovered a country with a small population, nowadays a country full of immigrants who call themselves natives.

However, the result was an impressive transformation.

Reading about transformation

Last year I read several books to get more insight into what motivates us, and how can we motivate people to change. In one way, it is disappointing to learn that we civilized human beings most of the time to not make rational decisions but act based on our per-historic brain.

Thinking, Fast and Slow from Daniel Kahneman was one of the first books in that direction as a must-read to understand our personal thinking and decision processes.

I read Idiot Brain: What Your Head Is Really Up To from Dean Burnett, where he explains this how our brain appears to be sabotaging our life, and what on earth it is really up to. Interesting to read but could be a little more comprehensive

I got more excited from Dan Ariely”s book: Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions as it was structured around topics where we handle completely irrational but predictable. And this predictability is used by people (sales/politicians/ management) to drive your actions. Useful to realize when you recognize the situation

These three books also illustrate the flaws of our modern time – we communicate fast (preferable through tweets) – we decide fast based on our gut feelings – so you realize towards what kind of world we are heading.  Going through a transformation should be considered as a slow, learning process. Like reading a book – it takes time to digest.

Once you are aiming at a business transformation for your company or supporting a company in its transformation, the following books were insightful:

Leading Digital: Turning Technology into Business Transformation by George Westerman, Didier Bonnet and Andrew McAfee is maybe not the most inspiring book, however as it stays close to what we experience in our day-to-day-life it is for sure a book to read to get a foundational understanding of business transformation.

The book I liked the most recent was Leading Transformation: How to Take Charge of Your Company’s Future by Nathan Furr, Kyle Nel, Thomas Zoega Ramsoy as it gives examples of transformation addressing parts of the irrational brain to get a transformation story. I believe in storytelling instead of business cases for transformation. I wrote about it in my blog post: PLM Measurable or a myth referring to Yuval Harari’s book Homo Sapiens

Note: I am starting my holidays now with a small basket of e-books. If you have any recommendations for books that I must read – please write them in the comments of this blog

Discussing transformation

After the summer holidays, I plan to have fruitful discussions around topics close to PLM. Working on a post and starting a conversation related to PLM, PIM, and Master Data Management. The borders between these domains are perhaps getting vaguer in a digital enterprise.

Further, I am looking forward to a discussion around the value of PLM assisting companies in developing sustainable products. A sustainable and probably circular economy is required to keep this earth a place to live for everybody. The whole discussion around climate change, however, is worrying as we should be Thinking – not fast and slow – but balanced.

A circular economy has been several times a topic during the joint CIMdata PLM Roadmap and PDT conferences, which bring me to the final point.

On 13^th and 14^th November this year I will participate again in the upcoming PLM Roadmap and PDT conference. This time in La Defense, Paris, France. I will share my experiences from working with companies trying to understand and implement pieces of a digital transformation related to PLM.

There will be inspiring presentations from other speakers, all working on some of the aspects of moving to facets of a connected enterprise. It is not a marketing event, it is done by professionals, serving professionals. Therefore I hope if you are passioned about the new aspects of PLM, no matter how you name label them, come and join, discuss and most of all, learn.

Conclusion

Modern life is about continuous learning  – make it a habit. Even a holiday is again a way to learn to disconnect.

How disconnected I was you will see after the holidays.