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Last week we celebrated World Ozone Day on September 16 again. Forty years ago, many nations united to protect the ozone layer through science and action.
For those who missed the excitement, it started with a historic environmental agreement: the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.
What has happened?
In the 1970s and 1980s, scientists discovered that CFCs from refrigerators, sprays, and foams were damaging the ozone layer. In 1985, the “ozone hole” over Antarctica was confirmed. Also, the ozone layer at the Arctic side showed signs of depletion.
As a result of these findings, the Montreal Protocol was adopted on September 16, 1987. It is a global treaty signed by virtually all countries concerning the rapid elimination of substances that deplete the ozone layer.
Countermeasures are slowly restoring the ozone layer, making the treaty a success story.
What were the reasons for success?
Although scientists engaged in a discussion about the scientific evidence, there were no significant economic forces behind the scenes influencing the scientific research.
The lack of substantial financial dependencies, combined with the absence of social media and Duning-Kruger experts, led to the belief that human influence on the Earth’s atmosphere could be stopped.
And probably an even more important fact, the depletion of the ozone layer was at the poles, making, in particular, the richer countries more vulnerable to the effects.
Where most attention focused on the hole above the South Pole, affecting New Zealand and Australia, the thinner layer at the North Pole was making Canada, the US, and Northern Europe vulnerable.
What have we learned?
- Switching from CFCs was a minor inconvenience for consumers. Now we all accept the current solutions.
- There was enough consensus in science when the majority of scientists agreed. In addition, there were no undermining forces with financial stakes in CFCs. Science was leading.
- Today, science struggles as stakeholders sponsor research to protect their interests. In addition, social media is used to recruit supporters in a polarized environment (the side effect of social media)
- Ultimately, after 40 years, the hole in the Ozone layer gets smaller and smaller and hopefully becomes normal. We keep on working on the long term.
The PLM Green Global Alliance
When Rich McFall approached me at the end of 2019 to start the PLM Green Global Alliance together, there was a kind of consensus that we human beings both influence the planet’s climate and its natural resources.
Where Rich focused on the causes and consequences of climate change due to human-generated greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from products and processes, my additional focus was broader, encompassing Sustainability in the context of where PLM practices could have an impact.
Our idea was to bring people together to address these issues by sharing thoughts and practices or enabling discussions in the context of PLM-related technologies.
Can we develop more eco-friendly products, and what are the conditions required?
Meanwhile, six years later, a lot has happened for better and for worse. Here is a set of observations
The PLM Green Global Alliance continues to grow.
Currently, we have over 1,500 registered members in our LinkedIn group.
Historically, most members came from Europe and then the US; now, India is catching up and approaching the number of US members.
This trend suggests that the focus of the alliance should shift slightly and seek more contributors from Asian countries.
We look forward to having Asian representatives in our PLM Green Global Alliance to gain a deeper understanding and engage in discussions about global issues.
Please feel free to contact us if you are interested in joining the core team. It might be a challenge to have group meetings that accommodate all time zones, but the planet is still relatively small compared to the universe – nothing is impossible.
The tools are there ..
In PLM, we often discuss people, processes, and then the tools. Here, we can confirm that, through our work and discussions with major PLM vendors, they are all providing tools and, in some cases, embedded practices to support a more sustainable product development process.
Have a look at our YouTube channel: The PLM Green Global Alliance channel.
The tools for generative design, life cycle assessment, and, of course, digital twins for the various lifecycle phases can help companies to develop and manufacture more sustainable products.
However, as mentioned, the tools will only be practical when the people have the mandate and when the processes are transformed into data-driven ones.
The need for a data-driven approach
Two years ago, during the PLM Roadmap/PDT Europe conference in Gothenburg, I had already mentioned that Sustainability might prompt companies to invest more time and effort in achieving a digital transformation in their PLM domain.
Compliance with regulations can be challenging when you still need to collect data from various sources with a lot of “guesstimate”. Greenhouse gas reporting, ESG reporting, and the upcoming Digital Product Passport can only be done efficiently if data is directly accessible without requiring people to collect it.
Unfortunately, in my recent discussions with companies, particularly management, they are not seeking a fundamental digital transformation from a document-driven approach to a data-driven and model-based approach.
Part of this challenge is the lack of education among top management, who are primarily focused on efficiency gains rather than adopting new approaches or mitigating risk.
The other challenge is that, as most companies lag behind on this topic, they do not feel the pressure of competition and do not want to take the risk of being first.
I will discuss this last topic in my upcoming PLM blog
It is about the people!
However, first and foremost, the most critical factor in driving sustainability within organizations is the people. Where companies are challenged in creating a green image, including the introduction of the Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO), there has always been resistance from existing business leaders, who prioritize money and profitability.
The global shift towards right-wing capitalism and efforts to remove regulations supporting sustainability are currently impacting these efforts. The term “Sustainability” has become negatively connoted, similar to “PLM” (Product Lifecycle Management – Don’t mention the P** word), and there is a need to reframe discussions at the management level to focus on risk mitigation and business strategies.
Where politicians might avoid a long-term vision, there are examples of companies like Ørsted, Pacific Gas & Electric, Maersk, the Holcim group, BlackRock, IKEA and more that are adopting sustainable practices as a risk mitigation strategy for the future and securing their companies’ long-term existence.
An interesting game changer for both businesses and behavior might be the rising costs of insurance against natural disasters. As the graph shows, the estimated global insured losses due to natural disasters over the last 15 years have increased significantly, starting in 2019. In the richer countries, the governments might be pushed to provide financial help after a disaster, but this will also have a (taxpayer) limit.
We are the people!
There is a lot we can do as a PLM Green Global Community. Have you read CIMdata’s commentary, written by our Sustainability & Energy core team member Mark Reisig – read the full article here: How PLM is Decarbonizing Automotive Transport—Amid Political Uncertainty, addressing the importance of modern digital PLM to support digital twin, digital thread and digital product passport implementations.
Or the paper from our core team member, LCA specialist Klaus Brettschneider, with the title The Sustainability Thread – Rethinking the digital thread to drive sustainability performance and green R&D, again stressing the importance of extending the digital thread to include sustainability metrics, enabling companies to design, produce, and operate products more efficiently while reducing environmental impact and supporting green R&D.
Additionally, there are the monthly ESG newsletters from Vincent De La Mar of Sustaira, as well as the recent interview with Vincent, in which PGGA and Sustaira continue to discuss sustainability. Sustaira helps companies with a sustainability reporting platform on top of their existing enterprise systems. A first step that is needed to understand where measures have an impact.
A regular guest at our discussions, Dave Duncan, Head of Sustainability at PTC, who published this year a very comprehensive, free-to-download book: Product Sustainability for Dummies. We also had a great discussion about the Product Service System, a mandatory business model for sustainable business.
And recently, we saw the kick-off for the Design for Sustainability workgroup, organised by Erik Reiger and Matthew Sullivan. They are in the process of establishing this workgroup, where there will be more discussion and information exchanged between the workgroup members about the people and process angle (Erik‘s focus) and the tools and technology dimension (Matthew‘s focus)
The post concludes with Rich McFall, who, in 2018, observed that there was so little organized action fighting climate change and started to motivate people to launch the PLM Green Global Alliance. It was his initiative to bring people together and raise awareness about the fact that, as a PLM community, we can help one another and start making a difference. Rich helped us a lot in setting up the website and ensuring that we have regular updates and a persistent storage of the information generated.
Working on the long term
We are still in the awareness phase and are seeing progress in the field. There is more to come and share, and we need your help. Working on the long term in a hectic day-to-day environment can be a challenge. However, in the end, if each of us helps our business and social ecosystem move towards a more sustainable economy and planet, we are moving in the right direction. It will take time, but we have an undeniable mission. Join and help us!
After a summer holiday in the south of Greece, it is time to resume my activities. The south of Crete is largely an analogue environment, far from any digital hype.
Tempted by LinkedIn posts, I noticed the summer was full of memories, with Martin Eigner sharing 40 years of PLM experience, Oleg Shilovitsky sharing 30 years of PDM Evolution, and Michael Finochario publishing posts on PLM vendors, CAD kernels, and more.
So where do I stand? While digesting all these historical experiences, I reflected on what we can learn from them and what we didn’t learn from them.
It started with technology.
From 1990 to 1999, I worked with mid-market companies, where data management was the most significant challenge. The introduction of MS Windows made data management more user-friendly, evolving from drawing management systems with version and status management capabilities.
Who remembers Automanager Workflow from Cyco, before SmarTeam came on the market?
For that reason, in the early days, PDM was an IT job. As the PDM system primarily dealt with engineering data, it was relatively easy to implement as an organizational change process. We transitioned from analogue to electronic in the department.
Connecting with other systems, particularly ERP, was a serious IT job and a financial challenge. Connecting with other systems, particularly ERP, was a serious IT job and a financial challenge. The rapid decline of IT components, combined with the rapid growth of global connectivity, has created new opportunities for collaboration.
As part of the Dassault/IBM/SmarTeam organization, I explained and taught these new capabilities worldwide.
In 2008, my VirtualDutchman blog and coaching journey began, evolving from explanations of technology to modern methodologies, which led to organizational change and expectation management – skills not traditionally associated with IT.
Then came digital transformation
With growing connectivity, smartphones and Web 2.0 technology have led to more PLM-like discussions. PLM vendors expanded their scope and developed capabilities beyond mechanical engineering.
The expansion of capabilities was also the moment when the confusion about the term PLM reached its peak: a PLM strategy or a PLM system?
At the time, they were largely considered the same in discussions and advertisements..
Meanwhile, digital transformation was occurring at the marketing and sales levels – companies invested in direct communication with their customers through the web.
Meanwhile, the internal ways of working for R&D, engineering, and manufacturing did not change significantly. Still, they were following linear processes, and despite the existence of 3D CAD, the 2D drawing remained the primary carrier of legal information between engineering, manufacturing, and suppliers.
Note: the option where the most benefits could be achieved – connected supply chains – had the lowest focus in 2017 – something that would change with COVID-19.
Fundamental digital transformation in the PLM domain occurred gradually. ARAS came with its overlay approach (the platform), connecting various disciplines and enterprise systems. In contrast, Dassault Systèmes introduced its 3DEXPERIENCE platform, utilizing its own software brands as platform components.
The Aras overlay approach
Most PLM vendors rapidly countered Aras’ overlay approach with their low-code offerings based on Mendix, ThingWorx or Netvibes, to enable data flows beyond the traditional PDM scope. The Coordinated Digital Thread was born.
The good news is that PLM has now clearly become a strategy based on a federated system infrastructure. The single PLM system no longer exists, although many of us still use the term’ PLM system’ to refer to the main component of a PLM infrastructure – the System of Record.
Moving to a federated PLM infrastructure is already a challenge for companies, not because of the available technology, but first of all because of the legacy data and, closely related to that, legacy processes and people skills.
Legacy is creating the inertia, not technology!
Next came the cloud – SaaS
With the availability of cloud solutions that support real-time interactions between stakeholders, either within an enterprise or in a value chain, a new paradigm has emerged: the connected enterprise.
A connected enterprise no longer needs interfaces to transfer data from one system to another.
Instead, with apps and dashboards, combined data from different online sources is presented in a single, user-friendly working environment – A combination of the Systems of Record with the new environments – the Systems of Engagement.
The technology used to create dashboards and apps is based on modern data-driven technologies and principles (ontologies, graph databases, and the semantic web). The Connected Digital Thread was born.
However, legacy systems play an essential role again, as some systems of engagement can be implemented in a complementary manner to the systems of record, allowing companies to work within an integrated technology model.
People will work in a particular mode, either coordinated or connected, but organizations can operate in both modes simultaneously. A story I have been sharing a lot – it is not about migrations but about an evolutionary approach towards an integrated technology model.
At this point, it becomes essential that business objectives drive the implementation of a PLM infrastructure. Of course, you hear me say we should start from the business; however, the big difference now is that a company should coordinate the technologies, systems, and tools it acquires to avoid isolated islands of information.
Follow Yousef Hooshmand‘s 5 + 1 business transformation steps.
An open SaaS infrastructure enables a company to let data flow almost in real-time. There is a lot of discussion related to data quality and governance, and if you have missed it, please read these three articles I created together with Rob Feronne, the product Digital PLuMber:
- Data Quality and Data Governance – A hype? (part 1)
- Data Quality and Data Governance – the WHY and HOW (part 2)
- Building the Future: Data Quality and Governance in the Digital Age (part 3)
There are some great insights in this dialogue and the associated LinkedIn comments.
Despite the increasing availability of technology, it is the legacy of people, processes, and culture that is hindering progress.
Rob Feronne had a shocking lightbulb moment 😲 in our discussion about the future of PLM, where the participants – see below – answered a question related to the importance of technology in our PLM domain – shocking also for me.
My thumb was up because modern technology matters! The question inspired Oleg Shilovitsky to write a whole blog post on this topic. If you’re truly shocked, read his post, where I agree with the content; the question is too simple to answer with a thumbs up/down.
As technology has become more accessible than before, you no longer need an IT department to establish a PLM infrastructure. And then indeed, the people and process side needs and deserves much more attention..
And now there is AI
If you haven’t read anything about AI recently, you must be living in an isolated location. Regardless of the business discussions you are following, it is all about the potential of AI.
Although AI is not a new concept, the fact that various AI capabilities have now reached the end-user level is what drives the hype. Currently, I believe we are at the peak of the hype.
Last week, I participated in an interesting discussion in the series: The Future of PLM moderated by Michael Finochario, this time talking with the analysts. Click on the link to see Michael’s excellent summary and access to the recording of the event.
It was an interesting discussion for a little more than an hour, and the majority of our discussion was about the potential impact of AI on businesses. First, the impact AI can have on the traditional work of an analyst and next, the effects on the PLM domain.
I believe we agreed that AI at this moment is mainly providing higher user efficiency and performance, very much aligned with the interesting research I have been reading in the MIT NANDA report with the title The GenAI Divide: STATE OF AI IN BUSINESS 2025
The report’s interesting findings included high adoption of tools but low transformation. Despite significant investment in Generative AI (GenAI), most organizations are not achieving meaningful business transformation.
- 95% of organizations report zero return on GenAI investments.
- Only 5% of integrated AI pilots generate millions in value.
- 80% of organizations have explored or piloted tools like ChatGPT, but these primarily enhance individual productivity.
- 60% of organizations evaluated enterprise-grade systems, but only 20% reached the pilot stage, and just 5% reached production.
- Key barriers include brittle workflows, a lack of contextual learning, and operational misalignment.
Therefore, the question is – Is current AI the next bubble?
In 2014, I wrote about the lack of digital transformation in the PLM domain, and two images (below) from a report by The Economist could be used again. The report can be found here: The Onrushing Wave.
Click on the image to read the 2013 predictions.
I realized that my current job, as a recreational therapist and firefighter at the time, was not at risk, and that some of the predictions from 10 years ago had become a reality. Who is still bothered by telemarketers or retail salespersons?
However, many of the AI symptoms mentioned in the MIT NANDA report are similar to the hype surrounding digital transformation.
The only reservation I have now – will it take a decade before we understand and demonstrate the value of AI, or are we accelerating?
In this context, the upcoming PLM Roadmap/PDT Europe conference on 5 – 6 November will be interesting, as here we will discuss reality.
For a few of you interested in more, there is the day before the conference, a (free) workshop where we will discuss with some thought leaders and experts from various companies how the future of PLM could look like – based on standards, AI tools and more. Click on the image below the conclusion.
Conclusion
The summertime was a nice moment to reflect, inspired by others in my network. What is clear is that there is a shift from technology towards people and change. The rapid expansion of AI tools, along with connected technologies, has created an overwhelming array of possibilities. Now it is time for business leadership to understand them and utilize them for significant business improvement, where the fear is that substantial change will always be slowed down by organizational inertia.
Jos Voskuil's Weblog 
Interesting reflection, Jos. In my experience, the situation you describe is very recognizable. At the company where I work, sustainability…
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Jos, all interesting and relevant. There are additional elements to be mentioned and Ontologies seem to be one of the…
Jos, as usual, you've provided a buffet of "food for thought". Where do you see AI being trained by a…