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Yes, it is not a typo. Clayton Christensen famous book written in 1995 discussed the Innovator’s Dilemma when new technologies cause great firms to fail. This was the challenge two decades ago. Existing prominent companies could become obsolete quickly as they were bypassed by new technologies.
The examples are well known. To mention a few: DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), Kodak, and Nokia.
Why the innovation dilemma?
This decade the challenge has become different. All companies are forced to become more sustainable in the next ten years. Either pushed by global regulations or because of their customer demands. The challenge is this time different. Besides the priority of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, there is also the need to transform our society from a linear, continuous growth economy into a circular doughnut economy.
The circular economy makes the creation, the usage and the reuse of our products more complex as the challenge is to reduce the need for raw materials and avoid landfills.
The circular economy concept – the regular product lifecycle in the middle
The doughnut economy makes the values of an economy more complex as it is not only about money and growth, human and environmental factors should also be considered.
Doughnut Economics: Trying to stay within the green boundaries
To manage this complexity, I wrote SYSTEMS THINKING – a must-have skill in the 21st century, focusing on the logical part of the brain. In my follow-up post, Systems Thinking: a second thought, I looked at the human challenge. Our brain is not rational and wants to think fast to solve direct threats. Therefore, we have to overcome our old brains to make progress.
An interesting and thought-provoking was shared by Nina Dar in this discussion, sharing the video below. The 17 Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) describe what needs to be done. However, we also need the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) and the human side to connect. Watch the movie:
Our society needs to change and innovate; however, we cannot. The Innovation Dilemma.The future is data-driven and digital.
What is clear to me is that companies developing products and services have only one way to move forward: becoming data-driven and digital.
Why data-driven and digital?
Let’s look at something companies might already practice, REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals). This European directive, introduced in 2007, had the aim to protect human health and protect the environment by communicating information on chemicals up and down the supply chain. This would ensure that manufacturers, importers, and their customers are aware of information relating to the health and safety of the products supplied.
The regulation is currently still suffering in execution as most of the reporting and evaluation of chemicals is done manually. Suppliers report their chemicals in documents, and companies report the total of chemicals in their summary reports. Then, finally, authorities have to go through these reports.
Where the scale of REACH is limited, the manual effort to have end-to-end reporting is relatively high. In addition, skilled workers are needed to do the job because reporting is done in a document-based manner.
Life Cycle Assessments (LCA)
Where you might think REACH is relatively simple, the real new challenges for companies are the need to perform Life Cycle Assessments for their products. In a Life Cycle Assessment. The Wiki definition of LCA says:
Life cycle assessment or LCA (also known as life cycle analysis) is a methodology for assessing environmental impacts associated with all the stages of the life cycle of a commercial product, process, or service. For instance, in the case of a manufactured product, environmental impacts are assessed from raw material extraction and processing (cradle), through the product’s manufacture, distribution and use, to the recycling or final disposal of the materials composing it (grave)
This will be a shift in the way companies need to define products. Much more thinking and analysis are required in the early design phases. Before committing to a physical solution, engineers and manufacturing engineers need to simulate and calculate the impact of their design decisions in the virtual world.
This is where the digital twin of the design and the digital twin of the manufacturing process becomes relevant. And remember: Digital Twins do not run on documents – you need connected data and various types of models to calculate and estimate the environmental impact.
LCA done in a document-based manner will make your company too slow and expensive.
I described this needed transformation in my series from last year: The road to model-based and connected PLM – nine posts exploring the technology and concept of a model-based, data-driven PLM infrastructure.
Digital Product Passport (DPP)
The European Commission has published an action plan for the circular economy, one of the most important building blocks of the European Green Deal. One of the defined measures is the gradual introduction of a Digital Product Passport (DPP). As the quality of an LCA depends on the quality and trustworthy information about products and materials, the DPP is targeting to ensure circular economy metrics become reliable.
This will be a long journey. If you want to catch a glimpse of the complexity, read this Medium article: The digital product passport and its technical implementation related to the DPP for batteries.
The innovation dilemma
Suppose you agree with my conclusion that companies need to change their current product or service development into a data-driven and model-based manner. In that case, the question will come up: where to start?
Becoming data-driven and model-based, of course, is not the business driver. However, this change is needed to be able to perform Life Cycle Assessments and comply with current and future regulations by remaining competitive.
A document-driven approach is a dead-end.
Now let’s look at the real dilemmas by comparing a startup (clean sheet / no legacy) and an existing enterprise (experience with the past/legacy). Is there a winning approach?
The Startup
Having lived in Israel – the nation where almost everyone is a startup – and working with startups afterward in the past 10 years, I always get inspired by these people’s energy in startup companies. They have a unique value proposition most of the time, and they want to be visible on the market as soon as possible.
This approach is the opposite of systems thinking. It is often a very linear process to deliver this value proposition without exploring the side effects of such an approach.
For example, the new “green” transportation hype. Many cities now have been flooded with “green” scooters and electric bikes to promote transportation as a service. The idea behind this concept is that citizens do not require to own polluting motorbikes or cars anymore, and transportation means will be shared. Therefore, the city will be cleaner and greener.
However, these “green” vehicles are often designed in the traditional linear way. Is there a repair plan or a plan to recycle the batteries? Reuse of materials used.? Most of the time, not. Please, if you have examples contradicting my observations, let me know. I like to hear good news.
When startup companies start to scale, they need experts to help them grow the company. Often these experts are seasoned people, perhaps close to retirement. They will share their experience and what they know best from the past: traditional linear thinking.
As a result, even though startup companies can start with a clean sheet, their focus on delivering the product or service blocks further thinking. Instead, the seasoned experts will drive the company towards ways of working they know from the past.
Out of curiosity: Do you know or work in a startup that has started with a data-driven and model-based vision from scratch? Please add the name of this company in the comments, and let’s learn how they did it.
The Existing company
Working in an established company is like being on board a big tanker. Changing its direction takes a clear eye on the target and navigation skills to come there. Unfortunately, most of the time, these changes take years as it is impossible to switch the PLM infrastructure and the people skills within a short time.
From the bimodal approach in 2015 to the hybrid approach for companies, inspired by this 2017 McKinsey article: Toward an integrated technology operating model, I discovered that this is probably the best approach to ensure a change will happen. In this approach – see image – the organization keeps running on its document-driven PLM infrastructure. This type of infrastructure becomes the system of record. Nothing different from what PLM currently is in most companies.
In parallel, you have to start with small groups of people who independently focus on a new product, a new service. Using the model-based approach, they work completely independently from the big enterprise in a data-driven approach. Their environment can be considered the future system of engagement.
The data-driven approach allows all disciplines to work in a connected, real-time manner. Mastering the new ways of working is usually the task of younger employees that are digital natives. These teams can be completed by experienced workers who behave as coaches. However, they will not work in the new environment; these coaches bring business knowledge to the team.
People cannot work in two modes, but organizations can. As you can see from the McKinsey chart, the digital teams will get bigger and more important for the core business over time. In parallel, when their data usage grows, more and more data integration will occur between the two operation modes. Therefore, the old PLM infrastructure can remain a System of Record and serve as a support backbone for the new systems of engagement.
The Innovation Dilemma conclusion
The upcoming ten years will push organizations to innovate their ways of working to become sustainable and competitive. As discussed before, they must learn to work in a data-driven, connected manner. Both startups and existing enterprises have challenges – they need to overcome the “thinking fast and acting slow” mindset. Do you see the change in your company?
Note: Before publishing this post, I read this interesting and complementary post from Jan Bosch Boost your digitalization: instrumentation.
It is in the air – grab it.
Two weeks ago, I wrote a generic post related to System Thinking, in my opinion, a must-have skill for the 21st century (and beyond). Have a look at the post on LinkedIn; in particular interesting to see the discussion related to Systems Thinking: a must-have skill for the 21st century.
I liked Remy Fannader’s remark that thinking about complexity was not something new.
This remark is understandable from his personal context. Many people enjoy thinking – it was a respected 20th-century skill.
However, I believe, as Daniel Kahneman describes in his famous book: Thinking Fast and Slow, our brain is trying to avoid thinking.
This is because thinking consumes energy, the energy the body wants to save in the case of an emergency.
So let’s do a simple test (coming from Daniel):
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A bat and a ball cost together $ 1.10 – the bat costs one dollar more than the ball. So how much does the ball cost?
Look at the answer at the bottom of this post. If you have it wrong, you are a fast thinker. And this brings me to my next point. Our brain does not want to think deeply; we want fast and simple solutions. This is a challenge in a complex society as now we hear real-time information coming from all around the world. What is true and what is fake is hard to judge.
However, according to Kahneman, we do not want to waste energy on thinking. We create or adhere to simple solutions allowing our brains to feel relaxed.
This human behavior has always been exploited by populists and dictators: avoid complexity because, in this way, you lose people. Yuval Harari builds upon this with his claim that to align many people, you need a myth. I wrote about the need for myths in the PLM space a few times, e.g., PLM as a myth? and The myth perception
And this is where my second thoughts related to Systems Thinking started. Is the majority of people able and willing to digest complex problems?
My doubts grew bigger when I had several discussions about fighting climate change and sustainability.
Both Brains required
By coincidence, I bumped on this interesting article Market-led Sustainability is a ‘Fix that Fails’…
I provided a link to the post indirectly through LinkedIn. If you are a LinkedIn PLM Global Green Alliance member, you can see below the article an interesting analysis related to market-led sustainability, system thinking and economics.
Join the PLM Global Green Alliance group to be part of the full discussion; otherwise, I recommend you visit Both Brains Required, where you can find the source article and other related content.
It is a great article with great images illustrating the need for systems thinking and sustainability. All information is there to help you realize that sustainability is not just a left-brain exercise.
The left brain is supposed to be logical and analytical. That’s systems thinking, you might say quickly. However, the other part of our brain is about our human behavior, and this side is mostly overlooked. My favorite quote from the article:
Voluntary Market-Led activities are not so much a solution to the sustainability crisis as a symptom of more profoundly unsustainable foundations of human behavior.
The article triggered my second thoughts related to systems thinking. Behavioral change is not part of systems thinking. It is another dimension harder to address and even harder to focus on sustainability.
The LinkedIn discussion below the article Market-led Sustainability is a ‘Fix that Fails’… is a great example of the talks we would like to have in our PLM Global Green Alliance group. Nina Dar, Patrick Hillberg and Richard McFall brought in several points worth discussing. Too many to discuss them all here – let’s take two fundamental issues:
1. More than economics
An interesting viewpoint in this discussion was the relation to economics. We don’t believe that economic growth is the main point to measure. Even a statement like: “Sustainable businesses will be more profitable than traditional ones” is misleading when companies are measured by shareholder value or EBIT (Earnings Before Interest or Taxes). We briefly touched on Kate Raworth’s doughnut economics.
This HBR article mentioned in the discussion: Business Schools Must Do More to Address the Climate Crisis also shows it is not just about systems thinking.
We have seen this in the Apparel industry with the horrible collapse of a factory in Bangladesh (2013). Still, the inhumane accidents happen in southeast Asia. I like to quote Chris Calverley in his LinkedIn article: Making ethical apparel supply chains achievable on a global scale.
No one gets into business because they want to behave unethically. On the contrary, a lack of ethics is usually driven by a common desire to operate more efficiently and increase profit margins.
In my last post, I shared a similar example from an automotive tier 2 supplier. Unfortunately, suppliers are not measured or rewarded for sustainability efforts; only efficiency and costs are relevant.
The seventeen Sustainability Development Goals (SDG), as defined by the United Nations, are the best guidance for sustainable drivers beyond money. Supporting the SDGs enforce systems thinking when developing a part, a product, or a solution. Many other stakeholders need to be taken care of, at least if you truly support sustainability as a company.
2. The downside of social media
The LinkedIn discussion related to Market-led Sustainability is a ‘Fix that Fails’… The thread shows that LinkedIn, like other social media, is not really interested in supporting in-depth discussions – try to navigate what has been said in chronological order. With Patrick, Nina and Richard, we agreed to organize a follow-up discussion in our PLM Global Green Alliance Group.
And although we are happy with social media as it allows each of us to reach a global audience, there seems to be a worrying contra-productive impact. If you read the book Stolen Focus. A quote:
All over the world, our ability to pay attention is collapsing. In the US, college students now focus on one task for only 65 seconds, and office workers, on average, manage only three minutes
This is worrying, returning to Remy Fannader’s remark: thinking about complexity was not something new. The main difference is that it is not new. However, our society is changing towards thinking too fast, not rewarding systems thinking.
Even scarier, if you have time, read this article from The Atlantic: about the impact of social media on the US Society. It is about trust in science and data. Are we facing the new (Trump) Tower of Babel in our modern society? As the writers state: Babel is a metaphor for what some forms of social media have done to nearly all of the groups and institutions most important to the country’s future—and to us as a people.
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Congratulations
support
The fact that you reached this part of the post means your attention span has been larger than 3 minutes, showing there is hope for people like you and me. As an experiment to discover how many people read the post till here, please answer with the “support” icon if you have reached this part of the post.
I am curious to learn how many of us who saw the post came here.
Conclusion
Systems Thinking is a must-have skill for the 21st century. Many of us working in the PLM domain focus on providing support for systems thinking, particularly Life Cycle Assessment capabilities. However, the discussion with Patrick Hillberg, Nina Darr and Richard McFall made me realize there is more: economics and human behavior. For example, can we change our economic models, measuring companies not only for the money profit they deliver? What do?
Answering this type of question will be the extended mission for PLM consultants of the future – are you ready?
The answer to the question with the ball and the bat:
A fast answer would say the price of the ball is 10 cents. However, this would make the price of the bat $1.10, giving a total cost of $1.20. So the right answer should be 5 cents. To be honest, I got tricked the first time too. Never too late to confirm you make mistakes, as only people who do not do anything make no mistakes.
Sustainability has been already a topic on my agenda for many years. So when Rich McFall asked me to start the PLM Global Green Alliance (PGGA) in 2018, I supported that initiative. You can read more about my PLM and Sustainability ideas in this post here.
I have been lecturing about the relation between PLM and Sustainability last year. In 2018, the PGGA was a niche alliance trying to find people who would like to work and share PLM-related practices with others for a greener and sustainable planet.
Thanks to, or actually due to, the pandemic, climate disasters and the return of the US supporting the Paris Climate agreements, it became clear companies need to act. And preferably as soon as possible, which led to sustainability activities in many companies.
Also, the main PLM vendors started to publish their support and vision for a sustainable future, the area where we believe the PGGA can contribute in spreading the practices and experiences.
For that reason, the PGGA is aiming this year to have a series of discussions with the main PLM Vendors and their sustainability programs.
SAP
This time we are happy to publish an interview with Darren West from SAP. Darren West is the product management lead for SAP’s Circular Economy solutions. His role is to work with customers, sales and pre-sales colleagues, partners, solutions teams and product owners to expand existing and build new sustainability products, particularly those impacting Circular Economy topics.
We are glad to speak with Darren, as we believe sustainability and the circular economy go hand in hand and it requires systems thinking. We believe SAP, strong in managing materials and manufacturing processes, should be a leader in providing insights in ESG reporting. Helping companies to improve their environmental impact of products and production processes as they have the data.
Have a look at this 34 minutes interview and discussion with Darren West
The slides shown in this recording can be found here: Circular Economy -SAP for PLM Green Alliance
What we have learned
The interview showed that SAP is actively working on a sustainable future. Both by acting by themselves, but even more important, by helping their customers to change to more sustainable designs and production methods. There is still a way to go and we do not have too much time to sit back. The power of the current SAP Responsible Design and Production module is that it allows companies to understand their environmental impact and improve where possible. This is step 1 in my opinion to find a way to create sustainable products and business models.
The second, more general observation, is that we need to make our full product lifecycle management digital and connected. Data-driven is the only way to have efficient processes to estimate and calculate our environmental impact – my favorite From Coordinated to Connected topic.
Want to learn more?
In the context of this recording, Daren shared the following links for those of you who got inspired by the discussion (in alphabetical order):
- Catena-X, the german automotive alliance for secure and standardized data exchange
- Circularity Gap Report – a status where we are in our circularity targets
- Ellen MacArthur Foundation – all you want to learn about the circular economy
- Material Economics – Circular Economy and Climate study -explores the opportunities for the four largest materials in terms of emissions (steel, plastics, aluminum, and cement) and two large use segments for these materials (passenger cars and buildings).
- PLM Global Green Alliance – the place where Climate Change & Sustainability are discussed in the context of PLM
- SAP Circular Economy offerings and information
- SystemIQ – the place to discuss systems change/systems thinking
- World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) – their vision and more
- World Economic Forum Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP) – a plastic sustainable economy
- World Wildlife Fund (WFF) about plastic pollution and plastic usage
Conclusion
This was a motivating session to see PLM-related vendors are taking action. Next time, you will learn more from the design side when we talk with Autodesk about their sustainability program.
Unfortunately the day after this motivating session we were shocked by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. So I am in a mixed mood, as having friends in both countries makes me realize that one dictator can kill people and hope.
Listen to president Zelensky’s speech to the Russian people and get inspired to act against any brainwashing or dictatorship. To my friends and readers, wherever you are, stay strong, informed and human.
After all my writing about The road to model-based and connected PLM, a topic that interests me significantly is the positive contribution real PLM can have to sustainability.
To clarify this statement, I have to explain two things:
- First, for me, real PLM is a strategy that concerns the whole product lifecycle from conception, creation, usage, and decommissioning.
Real PLM to articulate the misconception that PLM is considered as an engineering infrastructure of even system. We discussed this topic related to this post (7 easy tips nobody told you about PLM adoption) from my SharePLM peers.
- Second, sustainability should not be equated with climate change, which gets most of the extreme attention.
However, the discussion related to climate change and carbon gas emissions drew most of the attention. Also, recently it seemed that the COP26 conference was only about reducing carbon emissions.
Unfortunately, reducing carbon gas emissions has become a political and economic discussion in many countries. As I am not a climate expert, I will follow the conclusions of the latest IIPC report.
However, I am happy to participate in science-based discussions, not in conversations about failing statistics (lies, damned lies and statistics) or the mixture of facts & opinions.
The topic of sustainability is more extensive than climate change. It is about understanding that we live on a limited planet that cannot support the unlimited usage and destruction of its natural resources.
Enough about human beings and emotions, back to the methodology
Why PLM and Sustainability
In the section PLM and Sustainability of the PLM Global Green Alliance website, we explain the potential of this relation:
The goals and challenges of Product Lifecycle Management and Sustainability share much in common and should be considered synergistic. Where in theory, PLM is the strategy to manage a product along its whole lifecycle, sustainability is concerned not only with the product’s lifecycle but should also address sustainability of the users, industries, economies, environment and the entire planet in which the products operate.
If you read further, you will bump on the term System Thinking. Again there might be confusion here between Systems Thinking and Systems Engineering. Let’s look at the differences
Systems Engineering
For Systems Engineering, I use the traditional V-shape to describe the process. Starting from the Needs on the left side, we have a systematic approach to come to a solution definition at the bottom. Then going upwards on the right side, we validate step by step that the solution will answer the needs.
The famous Boeing “diamond” diagram shows the same approach, complementing the V-shape with a virtual mirrored V-shape. In this way providing insights in all directions between a virtual world and a physical world. This understanding is essential when you want to implement a virtual twin of one of the processes/solutions.
Still, systems engineering starts from the needs of a group of stakeholders. So it works to the best technical and beneficial solution, most of the time only measured by money.
System Thinking
The image below from the Ellen McArthur Foundation is an example of system thinking. But, as you can see, it is not only about delivering a product.
Systems Thinking is a more holistic approach to bringing products to the market. It is about how we deliver a product to the market and what happens during its whole life cycle. The drivers for system thinking, therefore, are not only focusing on product performance at the most economical price, but we also take into account the impact on resource extraction in the world, the environmental impact during its active life (more and more regulated) and ultimately also how to minimize the waste to the eco-system. This means more recycling or reuse.
If you want to read more about systems thinking more professionally, read this blog post from the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere (MAHB) related to Systems Thinking: A beginning conversation.
Product as a Service (PaaS)
To ensure more responsibility for the product lifecycle, one of the European Green Deal aspects is promoting Product as a Service. There is already a trend towards products as a service, and I mentioned Ken Webster’s presentation at the PLM Roadmap & PDT Fall 2021 conference: In the future, you will own nothing, and you will be happy.
Because if we can switch to such an economy, the manufacturer will have complete control over the product’s lifecycle and its environmental impact. The manufacturer will be motivated to deliver product upgrades, create repairable products instead of dumping old or broken stuff because this is cheap for selling. PaaS brings opportunities for manufacturers, like greater customer loyalty, but also pushes manufacturers to stay away from so-called “greenwashing”. They become fully responsible for the entire lifecycle.
A different type of growth
The concept of Product as a Service is not something that typical manufacturing companies endorse. Instead, it requires them to restructure their business and restructure their product.
Delivering a Product as a Service requires a fast feedback loop between the products in the field and R&D deciding on improving or adding new features.
In traditional manufacturing companies, the service department is far from engineering due to historical reasons. However, with the digitization of our product information and connected products, we should be able to connect all stakeholders related to our products, even our customers.
A few years ago, I was working with a company that wanted to increase their service revenue by providing maintenance as a service on their products on-site. The challenge they had was that the total installation delivered at the customer site was done through projects. There was some standard equipment in their solution; however, ultimately, the project organization delivered the final result, and product information was scattered all around the company.
There was some resistance when I proposed creating an enterprise product information backbone (a PLM infrastructure) with aligned processes. It would force people to work upfront in a coordinated manner. Now with the digitization of operations, this is no longer a point of discussion.
In this context, I will participate on December 7th in an open panel discussion Creating a Digital Enterprise: What are the Challenges and Where to Start? As part of the PI DX spotlight series. I invite you to join this event if you are interested in hearing various digital enterprise viewpoints.
Doing both?
As companies cannot change overnight, the challenge is to define a transformation path. The push for transformation for sure will come from governments and investors in the following decades. Therefore doing nothing is not a wise strategy.
Early this year, the Boston Consultancy Group published this interesting article: The Next Generation of Climate Innovation, showing different pathways for companies.
A trend that they highlighted was the fact that Shareholder Returns over the past ten years are negative for the traditional Oil & Gas and Construction industries (-18 till -6 %). However, the big tech and first generation of green industries provide high shareholders returns (+30 %), and the latest green champions are moving in that direction. In this way, promoting investors will push companies to become greener.
The article talks about the known threat of disrupters coming from outside. Still, it also talks about the decisions companies can make to remain relevant. Either you try to reduce the damage, or you have to innovate. (Click on the image below on the left).
As described before, innovating your business is probably the most challenging part. In particular, if you have many years of history in your industry. Processes and people are engraved in an almost optimal manner (for now).
An example of reducing the damage could be, for example, what is happening in the steel industry. As making steel requires a lot of (cheap) energy, this industry is powered by burning coal. Therefore, an innovation to reduce the environmental impact would be to redesign the process with green energy as described in this Swedish example: The first fossil-free production of steel.
On December 9th, I will discuss both strategies with Henrik Hulgaard from Configit. We will discuss how Product Lifecycle Management and Configuration Lifecycle Management can play a role in the future. Feel free to subscribe to this session and share your questions. Click on the image to see the details.
Note: you might remember Henrik from my earlier post this year in January: PLM and Product Configuration Management (CLM)
Conclusion
Sustainability is a topic that will be more and more relevant for all of us, locally and globally. Real PLM, covering the whole product lifecycle, preferably data-driven, allows companies to transform their current business to future sustainable business. Systems Thinking is the overarching methodology we have to learn – let’s discuss
This week I attended the PLM Roadmap & PDT Fall 2021 with great expectations based on my enthusiasm last year. Unfortunately, the excitement was less this time, and I will explain in my conclusions why. This time it was unfortunate again a virtual event which makes it hard to be interactive, something I realize I am missing a lot.
Over two hundred attendees connected for the two days, and you can find the agenda here. Typically I would discuss the relevant sessions; now, I want to group some of them related to a theme, as there was complementary information in these sessions.
Disruption
Again like in the spring, the theme was focusing on DISRUPTION. The word disruption can give you an uncomfortable feeling when you are not in power. It is more fun to disrupt than to be disrupted, as I mentioned in my spring presentation. Read The week after PLM Roadmap & PDT Spring 2021
In his keynote speech Peter Bilello (CIMdata) kicked off with: The Critical Dozen: 12 familiar, evolving trends and enablers of digital transformation that you cannot or should not live without.
You can see them on the slide below:
I believe many of them should be familiar to you as these themes have been “in the air” already for quite some time. Vendors first and slowly companies start to investigate them when relevant. You will find many of them back in my recent series: The road to model-based and connected PLM, where I explored the topics that would cross your path on that journey.
Like Peter said: “For most of the topics you cannot pick and choose as they are all connected.”
Another interesting observation was that we are more and more moving away from the concept of related structures (digital thread) but more to connected datasets (digital web). Marc Halpern first introduced this topic last year at the 2020 conference and has become an excellent image to frame what we should imagine in a connected world.
Digital web also has to do with the uprise of the graph database mentioned by Peter Bilello as a potentially disruptive technology during the fireside chat. Relational databases can be seen as rigid, associated with PLM structures. On the other hand, graph databases can be associated with flexible relations between different types of data – the image of the digital web.
Where Peter was mainly telling WHAT was happening, two presentations caught my attention because of the HOW.
First of all, Dr. Rodney Ewing (Cummins) ‘s session: A Balanced Strategy to Reap Continuous Business Value from Digital PLM was a great story of a transformational project. It contained both having a continuous delivery of business value in mind while moving to the connected enterprise.
As Rodney mentioned, the contribution of TCS was crucial here, which I can imagine. It is hard for a company to understand what is happening in the outside (PLM) world when applying it to your company. Their transformation roadmap is an excellent example of having the long-term vision in mind, meanwhile delivering value during the transformation.
Talking about the right partner and synergy, the second presentation I liked in this context of disruption was Ian Quest’s presentation (Quick Release): Open-source Disruption in Support of Audacious Goals. As a sponsor of the conference, they had ten minutes to pitch their area of expertise.
After Ian’s presentation, focused on audacious goals (for non-English natives translated as “brave” goals), there was only one word that stuck to my mind: pragmatic.
Instead of discussions about the complexity, Ian gave examples of where a pragmatic data-centric approach could lead to great benefits, as you can see from one of the illustrated benefits below:
Standards
A characteristic topic of this conference is that we always talk about standards. Torbjörn Holm (Eurostep) gave an excellent overview of where standards have led to significant benefits. For example, the containerization of goods has dramatically improved transportation of goods (we all benefit) while killing proprietary means of transport (trains, type of ships, type of unloading). See the image below:
Torbjörn rightfully expanded this story to the current situation in the construction industry or the challenges for asset operators. Unfortunately, in these practices, many content suppliers remain focusing on their unique capabilities, reluctantly neglecting the demand for interoperability among the whole value chain.
It is a topic Marc Halpern also mentioned last year as an outcome of their Gartner PLM benefits survey. Gartner’s findings:
Time to Market is not so much improved by using PLM as the inefficient interaction with suppliers is the impediment.
Like transport before containerization, the exchange of information is not standardized and designed for digital exchange. Torbjorn believes that more and more companies will insist on exchange standards – like CHIFOS – an ISO1596-derived exchange standard in the process industry. It is a user-driven standard, the best standard.
In this context, the presentation from Kenny Swope (Boeing) and Jean Yves Delaunay (Airbus) The Business Value of Standards-based Information Interoperability for Aerospace & Defense illustrated this fact.
While working for competitors, the Aerospace industry understands the criticality of standards to become more efficient and less vendor-dependent. In the aerospace & defense group, they discuss these themes. The last year’s 2020 Fall sessions showed the results. You can read their publications here
The A&D PLM action group uses the following framework when evaluating standards – as you can see on the image below:
The result – and this is a combined exercise of many participating experts from the field; this is their recommendation:
To conclude:
People often complain about standards, framed by proprietary data format vendors, that they lead to a rigid environment, blocking agility.
In reality, standards allow companies to be more agile as the (proprietary) data flow is less an issue. Remember the containerization example.
Sustainability and System Thinking
This conference has always been known for its attention to the circular economy and green thinking. In the past, these topics might have been considered disconnected from our PLM practices; now, they have become a part of everyone’s mission.
Two presentations stood out on this topic for me. First, Ken Webster, with his keynote speech: In the future, you will own nothing and you will be happy was a significant oversight of how we as consumers currently are disconnected from the circular economy. His plea, as shown below, for making manufacturers responsible for the legal ownership of the materials in the products they deliver would impact consumer behavior.
Product as a Service (PaaS) and new ways to provide a service is becoming essential. For example, buildings as power stations, as they are a place to collect solar or wind energy?
His thoughts are aligned with what is happening in Europe related to the European Green Deal (not in his presentation). There is a push for a PaaS model for all products as this would be an excellent stimulant for the circular economy. PaaS combined with a Digital Product Passport – more on that next year.
Making upgrades to your products has less impact on the environment than creating new products to sell (and creating waste of the old product). Ken Webster was an interesting statement about changing the economy – do we want to own products or do we want to benefit from the product and leave the legal ownership to the manufacturer.
A topic I discussed in the PLM Roadmap & PDT Conference Spring 2021 – look here at slide 11
Patrick Hillberg‘s presentation Rising to the challenge of engineering and optimizing . . . what? was the one closest to my heart. We discussed Sustainability and Systems Thinking with Patrick in our PLM Global Green Alliance, being pretty aligned on this topic. Patrick started by explaining the difference between Systems Engineering and Systems Thinking. Looking at the product go-to-market of an organization is more than the traditional V-model. Economic pressure and culture will push people to deviate from the ideal technological plan due to other priorities.
Expanding on this observation, Partick stated that there are limits to growth, a topic discussed by many people involved in the sustainable economy. Economic growth is impossible on a limited planet, and we have to take more dimensions into account. Patrick gave some examples of that, including issues related to the infamous Boeing 737 Max example.
For Patrick, the COVID-pandemic is the end of the old 2nd Industrial Revolution and a push for a new Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is not only technical, as the slide below indicates.
With Patrick, I believe we are at a decisive moment to disrupt ourselves, reconsider many things we do and are used to doing. Even for PLM practitioners, this is a new path to go.
Data
There were two presentations related to digitization and the shift from document-based to a data-driven approach.
First, there was Greg Weaver (Gulfstream) with his presentation Indexing Content – Finding Your Needle in the Haystack. Greg explained that by using indexation of existing document-based information combined with a specific dashboard, they could provide fast access to information that otherwise would have been hidden in so many document or even paper archives.
It was a pragmatic solution, making me feel nostalgic seeing the SmarTeam profile cards. It was an excellent example of moving to a digital enterprise, and Gulfstream has always been a front runner on this topic.
Warning: Don’t use this by default at home (your company). The data in a regulated industry like Aerospace is expected to be of high quality due to the configuration management processes in place. If your company does not have a strong CM practice, the retrieved data might be inaccurate.
Martijn Dullaart (ASML)’s presentation The Next disruption, please….. was the next step into the future. With his statement “No CM = No Trust,” he made an essential point for data-driven environments.
There is a need for Configuration Management, and I touched on this topic in my last post: The road to model-based and connected PLM (part 9 – CM).
Martijn’s presentation can also be found on his blog here, and I encourage you to read it (saving me copy & paste text). It was interesting to see that Martijn improved his CM pyramid, as you can see, more discipline and activity-oriented instead of a system view. With Martijn and others, I will elaborate on this topic soon.
Conclusion
This has been an extremely long post, and thanks for reading until the end. Many interesting topics were presented at the conference. I was less excited this time because many of these topics are triggers for a discussion. Innovation comes from meeting people with different backgrounds. In a live conference, you would meet during the break or during the famous dinner. How can we ensure we follow up on all this interesting information.
Your thoughts? Contact me for a Corona Friday discussion.
Last week I wrote about the recent PLM Road Map & PDT Spring 2021 conference day 1, focusing mainly on technology. There were also interesting sessions related to exploring future methodologies for a digital enterprise. Now on Day 2, we started with two sessions related to people and methodology, indispensable when discussing PLM topics.
Designing and Keeping Great Teams
This keynote speech from Noshir Contractor, Professor of Behavioral Sciences in the McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science, intrigued me as the subtitle states: Lessons from Preparing for Mars. What Can PLM Professionals Learn from This?
You might ask yourself, is a PLM implementation as difficult and as complex as a mission to Mars? I hoped, so I followed with great interest Noshir’s presentation.
Noshir started by mentioning that many disruptive technologies have emerged in recent years, like Teams, Slack, Yammer and many more.
The interesting question he asked in the context of PLM is:
As the domain of PLM is all about trying to optimize effective collaboration, this is a fair question
Structural Signatures
Noshir shared with us that it is not the most crucial point to look at people’s individual skills but more about who they know.
Measure who they work with is more important than who they are.
Based on this statement, Noshir showed some network patterns of different types of networks.
Click on the image to see the enlarged picture.
It is clear from these patterns how organizations communicate internally and/or externally. It would be an interesting exercise to perform in a company and to see if the analysis matches the perceived reality.
Noshir’s research was used by NASA to analyze and predict the right teams for a mission to Mars.
Noshir went further by proposing what PLM can learn from teams that are going into space. And here, I was not sure about the parallel. Is a PLM project comparable to a mission to Mars? I hope not! I have always advocated that a PLM implementation is a journey. Still, I never imagined that it could be a journey into the remote unknown.
Noshir explained that they had built tools based on their scientific model to describe and predict how teams could evolve over time. He believes that society can also benefit from these learnings. Many inventions from the past were driven by innovations coming from space programs.
I believe Noshir’s approach related to team analysis is much more critical for organizations with a mission. How do you build multidisciplinary teams?
The proposed methodology is probably best for a holocracy based organization. Holocrazy is an interesting concept for companies to get their employees committed, however, it also demands a type of involvement that not every person can deliver. For me, coming back to PLM, as a strategy to enable collaboration, the effectiveness of collaboration depends very much on the organizational culture and created structure.
DISRUPTION – EXTINCTION or still EVOLUTION?
We talk a lot about disruption because disruption is a painful process that you do not like to happen to yourself or your company. In the context of this conference’s theme, I discussed the awareness that disruptive technologies will be changing the PLM Value equation.
A disruption like the switch from mini-computers to PCs (killed DEC) or from Symbian to iOS (killed Nokia) is therefore not likely to happen that fast. Still, there is a need to take benefit from these new disruptive technologies.
My presentation was focusing on describing the path of evolution and focus areas for the PLM community. Doing nothing means extinction; experimenting and learning towards the future will provide an evolutionary way.
Starting from acknowledging that there is an incompatibility between data produced most of the time now and the data needed in the future, I explained my theme: From Coordinated to Connected. As a PLM community, we should spend more time together in focus groups, conferences on describing and verifying methodology and best practices.
Nigel Shaw (EuroStep) and Mark Williams (Boeing) hinted in this direction during this conference (see day 1). Erik Herzog (SAAB Aeronautics) brought this topic to last year’s conference (see day 3). Outside this conference, I have comparable touchpoints with Martijn Dullaert when discussing Configuration Management in the future in relation to PLM.
In addition, this decade will probably be the most disruptive decade we have known in humanity due to external forces that push companies to change. Sustainability regulations from governments (the Paris agreement), the implementation of circular economy concepts combined with the positive and high Total Share Holder return will push companies to adapt themselves more radical than before.
What is clear is that disruptive technologies and concepts, like Industry 4.0, Digital Thread and Digital Twin, can serve a purpose when implemented efficiently, ensuring the business becomes sustainable.
Due to the lack of end-to-end experience, we need focus groups and conferences to share progress and lessons learned. And we do not need to hear the isolated vendor success stories here as a reference, as often they are siloed again and leading to proprietary environments.
You can see my full presentation on SlideShare: DISRUPTION – EXTINCTION or still EVOLUTION?
Building a profitable Digital T(win) business
Beatrice Gasser, Technical, Innovation, and Sustainable Development Director from the Egis group, gave an exciting presentation related to the vision and implementation of digital twins in the construction industry.
The Egis group both serves as a consultancy firm as well as an asset management organization. You can see a wide variety of activities on their website or have a look at their perspectives
Historically the construction industry has been lagging behind having low productivity due to fragmentation, risk aversion and recently, more and more due to the lack of digital talent. In addition, some of the construction companies make their money from claims inside of having a smooth and profitable business model.
Without innovation in the construction industry, companies working the traditional way would lose market share and investor-focused attention, as we can see from the BCG diagram I discussed in my session.
The digital twin of construction is an ideal concept for the future. It can be built in the design phase to align all stakeholders, validate and integrate solutions and simulate the building operational scenarios at almost zero materials cost. Egis estimates that by using a digital twin during construction, the engineering and construction costs of a building can be reduced between 15 and 25 %
More importantly, the digital twin can also be used to first simulate operations and optimize energy consumption. The connected digital twin of an existing building can serve as a new common data environment for future building stakeholders. This could be the asset owner, service companies, and even the regulatory authorities needing to validate the building’s safety and environmental impact.
Beatrice ended with five principles essential to establish a digital twin, i.e
I think the construction industry has a vast potential to disrupt itself. Faster than the traditional manufacturing industries due to their current needs to work in a best-connected manner.
Next, there is almost no legacy data to deal with for these companies. Every new construction or building is a unique project on its own. The key differentiators will be experience and efficient ways of working.
It is about the belief, the guts and the skilled people that can make it work – all for a more efficient and sustainable future.
Leveraging PLM and Cloud Technology for Market Success
Stan Przybylinski, Vice President of CIMdata, reported their global survey related to the cloud, completed in early 2021. Also, Stan typified Industry 4.0 as a connected vision and cloud and digital thread as enablers to implementing this vision.
The companies interviewed showed a lot of goodwill to make progress – click on the image to see the details. CIMdata is also working with PLM Vendors to learn and describe better the areas of beneft. I remain curious about who comes with a realization and business case that is future-proof. This will define our new PLM Value Equation.
Conclusion
These were two exciting days with enough mentioning of disruptive technologies. Our challenge in the PLM domain will be to give them a purpose. A purpose is likely driven by external factors related to the need for a sustainable future. Efficiency and effectiveness must come from learning to work in connected environments (digital twin, digital thread, industry 4.0, Model-Based (Systems) Engineering.
Note: You might have seen the image below already – a nice link between sustainability and the mission to Mars
Last Friday, we discussed with several members of the PLM Global Green Alliance the book: “How to avoid a Climate Disaster” written by Bill Gates. I was happy to moderate the session between Klaus Brettschneider, Rich McFall, Lionel Grealou, Ilan Madjar and Patrick Hillberg. From the LinkedIn profiles of each of them, you can see we are all active in the domain of PLM. And they have read the book upfront before the discussion.
I think the book addresses climate change in a tangible manner. Bill Gates brings structure into addressing climate changes and encourages you to be active. What you can do as an individual, as a citizen. My only comment to this book would be that as a typical nerd, Bill Gates does not understand so much human behavior, understanding people’s emotions that might lead to non-logical behavior.
When you browse through the book’s reviews, for example, on Goodreads, you see the extreme, rating from 1 to 5. Some people believe that Bill Gates, due to his wealth and ways of living, is not allowed to write this book. Other like the transparent and pragmatic approach discussing the related themes in the book.
Our perspective
Klaus, Rich, Lio, Ilan and Patrick did not have extreme points of view – so don’t watch the recording if you are looking for anxiety. They reviewed How to Avoid a Climate Disaster from their perspective and how it could be relevant for PLM practitioners. It became a well-balanced dialogue. You can watch or listen to the recording following this link:
Book discussion: How to avoid a climate disaster written by Bill Gates
Note: we will consolidate all content on our PLMGreenAlliances website to ensure nothing is lost – feel free to comment/discuss further.
More on sustainability
If you want to learn more about all sorts of disruption, not only disruption caused by climate change, have a look at the upcoming conference this week: DISRUPTION—the PLM Professionals’ Exploration of Emerging Technologies that Will Reshape the PLM Value Equation.
My contribution will be on day 2, where I combine disruptive technology with the need to become really sustainable in our businesses.
It will be a call for action from our PLM community. In the coming nine years, we have to change our business, become sustainable and use the relevant new technologies. This requires system thinking – will mankind being able to deal with so many different parameters.
Conclusion
Start the dialogue with us, the PLM Global Green Alliance, by watching and reading content from the website. Or become an active member participating in discussion sessions related to any relevant topic for our alliance. More to come at the end of May, you too?
This Friday, February 26th, we had a PLM Green Global Alliance (PGGA) core team meeting to discuss our current status and next steps for 2021. If you are a PGGA member, you joined us because of the PLM Green Global Alliance LinkedIn group. The LinkedIn group is currently our primary channel for social interaction with the outside world.
Meanwhile, in the background, Rich McFall has been working on structuring the PLM Green Alliance website, which you can find here.
The PLM Green Alliance website is the place where we consolidate information and will experiment with forum discussions. LinkedIn is not the place to serve as an archive for information. Neither is LinkedIn a place for discussion on sensitive topics. Viewpoints on LinkedIn might even damage your current or future career if you have a controversial opinion. More about the forum discussions soon.
The PLM Green Alliance website
Therefore, the PLM Green Alliance website will be the place where interested parties can obtain information and active members can participate in forum discussions.
As a reminder, all our actions are related to PLM and PLM-related technologies – a niche environment bringing PLM-related skills and a Green and Sustainable society together.
Our actions are driven by a personal interest to contribute. With the limited time and means, we are aware of the differences with more prominent and professional organizations addressing a much broader scope and audience.
What makes us unique is the focus on PLM and PLM-related practices/technologies.
The PLM Green Themes
Although the website is still under development, our intentions become visible through the home page header. I want to zoom in on the area where we are currently focusing, the PLM Green Themes.
We decided on five PLM Green Themes, with each of them having their dedicated moderation and focus. Although the themes can overlap, they will help us to specialize and dive deeper into specific topics.
PLM and Climate Change
You might argue PLM and its related technologies do not directly impact activities related to climate change. However, as the moderators of this theme group, Klaus Brettschneider, and Richard McFall state:
The goal of this PLM Green discussion forum and working group on Climate Change is to promote activities to understand, analyze and reduce human-generated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through PLM-enabling technologies. We hope to help to answer the question of what the role and value of PLM technologies is in addressing the most critical challenge facing humankind this century, climate change.
And although there are still individuals with other opinions, the group will focus on the targeted outcome: reducing greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. What are the types of innovations that make this possible? Find interesting posts here and start contributing.
PLM and Sustainability
This theme will be moderated by me, Jos Voskuil. We are still looking for one or more volunteers to extend our capabilities here.
The topic of sustainability is again broad, as you can read on the Sustainability theme page.
To be more precise, the page states:
Specific topics we wish to discuss further in this forum include how PLM can be used to:
- Make products and processes more efficient and greener.
- Understand and measure the impact on the carbon footprint of design decisions and production processes, along with changes to them.
- Develop, distribute, and use new sources of renewable green energy.
- Design products and their lifecycles to be sustainable.
- Recycle, reuse, or repurpose assets, materials, and natural resources.
- Enhance the resiliency and Sustainability of infrastructures, communities, and economies.
In my early 2021 survey asked participants their viewpoint on PLM and Sustainability. As you can see from the scores, the majority of us are currently observing what is happening.
One of the interesting “other” responses I highlighted here: “I am not sure if you mean real sustainability or just greenwashing.”
Good point. Greenwashing is needed when you know you have something to fix/hide. We are not fixing or hiding; we will discuss and share information and probably dismantle greenwashing attempts.
PLM and Green Energy
Green energy is an important topic on its own as many of the issues related to a green and sustainable society are dealing with the transition from limited fossil energy sources to a sustainable energy model. The moderator of this theme group, Bjorn Fidjeland, is well known for his skills and coaching on PLM in the context of Plant Lifecycle Management through his PLMpartner website.
Of course, we are looking for an additional moderator to support Bjorn, so feel free to contact Bjorn through the website if you can and want to contribute. The theme group objectives are:
…. to share experiences, examples, and best practices in a collaborative mode to promote discussion, learning, and understanding with respect to the mentioned focus areas. We also plan to publish our own “industry heads up” news, articles and case studies illustrating all that is happening in the global race towards “going green” and a low-carbon economy.
PLM and a Circular Economy
As the Circular Economy is itself an innovation, it provides an opportunity to innovate business models and reimagine how we consider something to be a product, a service, or a product as a service. Similarly, a more circular way of thinking requires different expectations when it comes to Information Technology systems, including PLM, that support the enablement of these new business models and the execution of their commercial strategies.
This theme group is currently moderated by a real passionate follower of the Circular Economy, Hannes Lindfred, and also here we are looking to another volunteer.
A year ago, I saw Hannes Lindfred presentation at the TECHNIA PLM Innovation Forum and wrote about his lecture as one of the highlights from the first day.
See my blog post: The Weekend after the PLM Innovation Forum, where I mention his session in the Business drivers for Sustainable Manufacturing paragraph.
The circular economy framework nicely aligns with concepts like “Product as a Service” or Outcome-based services. The original manufacturer becomes responsible for the full lifecycle of their products. A theme group, I expect we can make a lot of progress through sharing.
Accordingly, the main objective within our theme discussion group is to provide a support network for PLM professionals who seek to overcome the legacy linear economy mindset that may be systemic in their jobs, products, employers, or industries. We hope to incite the development and use of road maps for employing both existing and new PLM technologies to implement Circular Economy principles and best practices.
PLM and Industry 4.0
A topic that is closely related to PLM is Industry 4.0. At first glance, Industry 4.0 is an initiative to manufacture products smarter, more flexible, more automated, more modular by using new technologies and practices, all with the goal for (initially German) companies to become more competitive.
We are pleased that the PLM and Industry 4.0 theme group’s moderator is Lionel Grealou, quite active in the area of knowledge sharing related to PLM. A second moderator would be more than welcome too for this theme.
Recently Lionel published this interesting article on engineering.com: Exploring the Intersection of PLM and Industry 4.0. In this article, Lionel touches briefly on the potential contribution of Industry 4.0 towards a circular economy, new business models, and waste reduction, thanks to the interaction of PLM and Industry 4.0. There is a lot to explore, as Lionel states on the theme group introduction page:
This PLM Green theme group’s plan will explore the “intersection” of how PLM strategies and technologies enable the vision of Industry 4.0 for a more sustainable circular economy. In doing so, we plan to investigate the following questions concerning their green value:
- How do data and product connectivity contribute to feeding smart factories and enhancing the product lifecycle practice?
- How to improve feedback loops and data integration upstream-downstream of new product development to contribute positively to the circular economy?
- How to drive downstream waste reduction by improving data traceability and accessibility with better product analytics throughout its lifecycle?
- How to link more tightly manufacturing planning and execution?
- How to more robustly connect and integrate engineering, manufacturing, and service/maintenance process operations?
- How to reduce time to market, with both product development and production cost optimization, integrating co-creation from the design office to the shop floor?
- How to align the digital and the physical worlds, delivering more customer-centric products enabled by fully horizontally-integrated PLM strategies, taking an ecosystem approach to collaboration, leveraging more agile and continual release processes?
- How to reduce pre-launch costs and generate downstream manufacturing improvements?
Much more to do.
As you can see, the PLM Green Global Alliance is transforming slowly, as we are not marketing people, web designers, or a sponsored organization. We rely on our networks and your inputs to reach the next level of interaction. The majority of the PLM Themes need a second moderator to keep the workload balanced.
Do you want to contribute?
In the core team meeting, we also discussed improving ways to make the PLM Green Alliance more interactive, shifting and balancing the LinkedIn group’s activities and the persistent PLM Green Alliance website.
Conclusion
As a person, I cannot do big things for our future society; however, I can do small things. And if we all make sure our “small things” are directed to the same outcome, we achieve big things without a revolution. Be part of the active PLM Global Green Alliance with your small things.
It Is 2021, and after two weeks’ time-out and reflection, it is time to look forward. Many people have said that 2020 was a “lost year,” and they are looking forward to a fresh restart, back to the new normal. For me, 2020 was the contrary of a lost year. It was a year where I had to change my ways of working. Communication has changed, digitization has progressed, and new trends have become apparent.
If you are interested in some of the details, watch the conversation I had with Rob Ferrone from QuickRelease, just before Christmas: Two Santas looking back to 2020.
It was an experiment with video, and you can see there is a lot to learn for me. I agree with Ilan Madjar’s comment that it is hard to watch two people talking for 20 minutes. I prefer written text that I can read at my own pace, short videos (max 5 min), or long podcasts that I can listen to, when cycling or walking around.
So let me share with you some of the plans I have for 2021, and I am eager to learn from you where we can align.
PLM understanding
I plan a series of blog posts where I want to share PLM-related topics that are not necessarily directly implemented in a PLM-system or considered in PLM-implementations as they require inputs from multiple sources. Topics in this context are: Configuration Management, Product Configuration Management, Product Information Management, Supplier Collaboration Management, Digital Twin Management, and probably more.
For these posts, I will discuss the topic with a subject matter expert, potentially a vendor or a consultant in that specific domain, and discuss the complementary role to traditional PLM. Besides a blog post, this topic might also be more explained in-depth in a podcast.
The PLM Doctor is in
Most of you might have seen Lucy from the Charley Brown cartoon as the doctor giving advice for 5¢. As an experiment, I want to set up a similar approach, however, for free.
These are my conditions:
- Only one question at a time.
- The question and answer will be published in a 2- 3 minute video.
- The question is about solving a pain.
If you have such a question related to PLM, please contact me through a personal message on LinkedIn, and I will follow-up.
PLM and Sustainability
A year ago, I started with Rich McFall, the PLM Green Global Alliance. Our purpose to bring people together, who want to learn and share PLM-related practices, solutions, ideas contributing to a greener and more sustainable planet.
We do not want to compete or overlap with more significant global or local organizations, like the Ellen McArthur Foundation or the European Green Deal.
We want to bring people together to dive into the niche of PLM and its related practices. We announced the group on LinkedIn; however, to ensure a persistent referential for all information and interactions, we have launched the website plmgreenaliance.com.
Here I will moderate and focus on PLM and Sustainability topics. I am looking forward to interacting with many of you.
PLM and digitization
For the last two years, I have been speaking and writing about the gap between current PLM-practices, based on shareable documents and files and the potential future based on shareable data, the Model-Based Enterprise.
Last year I wrote a series of posts giving insights on how we reached the current PLM-practices. Discovering sometimes inconsistencies and issues due to old habits or technology changes. I grouped these posts on a single blog page with the title: Learning from the past.
This year I will create a collection of posts focusing on the transition towards a Model-Based Enterprise. Probably the summary page will be called: Working towards the future currently in private mode.
Your feedback
I am always curious about your feedback – to understand in which kind of environment your PLM activities take place. Which topics are unclear? What am I missing in my experience?
Therefore, I created a small anonymous survey for those who want to be interacting with me. On purpose, the link is at the bottom of the post, so when you answer the survey, you get my double appreciation, first for reaching the end of this post and second for answering the survey.
Take the survey here.
Conclusion
Most of us will have a challenging year ahead of us. Sharing and discussing challenges and experiences will help us all to be better in what we are doing. I look forward to our 2021 journey.
Image courtesy of http://www.blagues-et-dessins.com
For those living in the Northern Hemisphere: This week, we had the shortest day, or if you like the dark, the longest night. This period has always been a moment of reflection. What have we done this year?
Rob Ferrone (Quick Release), the Santa on the left (the leftist), and Jos Voskuil (TacIT), the Santa on the right (the rightist), share in a dialogue their highlights from 2020
Wishing you all a great moment of reflection and a smooth path into a Corona-proof future.
It will be different; let’s make it better.
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