During my summer holiday in my “remote” office, I had the chance to digest what I recently read, heard,  saw and discussed related to the future of PLM.

I noticed this year/last year that many companies are discussing or working on their future PLM. It is time to make progress after COVID, particularly in digitization.

And as most companies are avoiding the risk of a “big bang”, they are exploring how they can improve their businesses in an evolutionary mode.

 

PLM is no longer a system

The most significant change I noticed in my discussions is the growing awareness that PLM is no longer covered by a single system.

More and more, PLM is considered a strategy, with which I fully agree. Therefore, implementing a PLM strategy requires holistic thinking and an infrastructure of different types of systems, where possible, digitally connected.

This trend is bad news for the PLM vendors as they continuously work on an end-to-end portfolio where every aspect of the PLM lifecycle is covered by one of their systems. The company’s IT department often supports the PLM vendors, as IT does not like a diverse landscape.

The main question is: “Every PLM Vendor has a rich portfolio on PowerPoint mentioning all phases of the product lifecycle.

However, are these capabilities implementable in an economical and user-friendly manner by actual companies or should PLM players need to change their strategy”?

A question I will try to answer in this post

 

The future of PLM

I have discussed several observed changes related to the effects of digitization in my recent blog posts, referencing others who have studied these topics in their organizations.

Some of the posts to refresh your memory are:

To summarize what has been discussed in these posts are the following points:

The As Is:

  • The traditional PLM systems are examples of a System of Record, not designed to be end-user friendly but designed to have a traceable baseline for manufacturing, service and product compliance.
  • The traditional PLM systems are tuned to a mechanical product introduction and release process in a coordinated manner, with a focus on BOM governance.
  • The legacy information is stored in BOM structures and related specification files.

System of Record (ENOVIA image 2014)

The To Be:

  • We are not talking about a PLM system anymore; a traditional System of Record will be digitally connected to different Systems of Engagement / Domains / Products, which have their own optimized environment for real-time collaboration.
  • The BOM structures remain essential for the hardware part; however, overreaching structures are needed to manage software and hardware releases for a product. These structures depend on connected datasets.
  • To support digital twins at the various lifecycle stages (design. Manufacturing, operations), product data needs to be based on and consumed by models.
  • A future PLM infrastructure is hybrid, based on a Single Source of Change (SSoC) and an Authoritative Source of Truth (ASoT) instead of a Single Source of Truth (SSoT).

Various Systems of Engagement

 

Related podcasts

I relistened two podcasts before writing this post, and I think they are a must to listen to.

The Peer Check podcast from Colab episode 17 — The State of PLM in 2022 w/Oleg Shilovitsky.  Adam and Oleg have a great discussion about the future of PLM.

Highlights: From System to Platform – the new norman. A Single Source of Truth doesn’t work anymore – it is about value streams. People in big companies fear making wrong PLM decisions, which is seen as a significant risk for your career.

There is no immediate need to change the current status quo.

The Share PLM Podcast – Episode 6: Revolutionizing PLM: Insights from Yousef Hooshmand.  Yousef talked with Helena and me about proven ways to migrate an old PLM landscape to a modern PLM/Business landscape.

Highlights: The term Single Source of Change and the existing concepts of a hybrid PLM infrastructure based on his experiences at Daimler and now at NIO. Yousef stresses the importance of having the vision and the executive support to execute.

The time of “big bangs” is over, and Yousef provided links to relevant content, which you can find here in the comments.

 

In addition, I want to point to the experiences provided by Erik Herzog in the Heliple project using OSLC interfaces as the “glue” to connect (in my terminology) the Systems of Engagement and the Systems of Record.

Conclusion of the Heliple-1 project

If you are interested in these concepts and want to learn and discuss them with your peers, more can be learned during the upcoming CIMdata PLM Roadmap / PDT Europe conference.

In particular, look at the agenda for day two if you are interested in this topic.

 

The future for the PLM vendors

If you look at the messaging of the current PLM Vendors, none of them is talking about this federated concept.

They are more focused with their messaging on the transition from on-premise to the cloud,  providing a SaaS offering with their portfolio.

I was slightly disappointed when I saw this article on Engineering.com provided by Autodesk: 5 PLM Best Practices from the Experiences of Autodesk and Its Customers.

The article is tool-centric, with statements that make sense and could be written by any PLM Vendor. However, Best Practice #1  Central Source of Truth Improves Productivity and Collaboration was the message that struck me. Collaboration comes from connecting people, not from the Single Source of Truth utopia.

I don’t believe PLM Vendors have to be afraid of losing their installed base rapidly with companies using their PLM as a System or Record. There is so much legacy stored in these systems that might still be relevant. The existence of legacy information, often documents, makes a migration or swap to another vendor almost impossible and unaffordable.

The System of Record is incompatible with data-driven PLM capabilities

I would like to see more clear developments of the PLM Vendors, creating a plug-and-play infrastructure for Systems of Engagement. Plug-and-play solutions could be based on a neutral partner collaboration hub like ShareAspace or the Systems of Engagement I discussed recently in my post and interview: The new side of PLM? Systems of Engagement!

Plug-and-play systems of engagement require interface standards, and PLM Vendors will only move in this direction if customers are pushing for that, and this is the chicken-and-egg discussion. And probably, their initiatives are too fragmented at the moment to come to a standard. However, don’t give up; keep building MVPs to learn and share.

Some people believe AI, with the examples we have seen with ChatGPT, will be the future direction without needing interface standards.

I am curious about your thoughts and experiences in that area and am willing to learn.

Talking about learning?

Besides reading posts and listening to podcasts, I also read an excellent book this summer. Martijn Dullaart, often participating in PLM and CM discussions, had decided to write a book based on the various discussions related to part (re-)identification (numbering, revisioning).

The book: The Essential Guide to Part Re-Identification: Unleash the Power of Interchangeability and Traceability (The Future of Configuration Management).

As Martijn starts in the preface:

“I decided to write this book because, in my search for more knowledge on the topics of Part Re-Identification, Interchangeability, and Traceability, I could only find bits and pieces but not a comprehensive work that helps fundamentally understand these topics”.

I believe the book should become standard literature for engineering schools that deal with PLM and CM, for software vendors and implementers and last but not least companies that want to improve or better clarify their change processes.

Martijn writes in an easily readable style and uses step-by-step examples to discuss the various options. There are even exercises at the end to use in a classroom or for your team to digest the content.

The good news is that the book is not about the past. You might also know Martijn for our joint discussion, The Future of Configuration Management, together with Maxime Gravel and Lisa Fenwick, on the impact of a model-based and data-driven approach to CM.

I plan to come back with a more dedicated discussion at some point with Martijn soon. Meanwhile, start reading the book. Get your free chapter if needed by following the link at the bottom of this article.

I recommend buying the book as a paperback so you can navigate easily between the diagrams and the text.

Conclusion

The trend for federated PLM is becoming more and more visible as companies start implementing these concepts. The end of monolithic PLM is a threat and an opportunity for the existing PLM Vendors. Will they work towards an open plug-and-play future, or will they keep their portfolios closed? What do you think?