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The last month I have been working with Aerosud Aviation in South Africa to finalize and conclude on ROI and the lessons learned around their PLM implementation, which started in May 2007. I was lucky to be involved in the initial scoping of the project in 2007 and assisted the local Value Added Reseller together with the team from Dassault Systèmes UK team in a step by step project towards PLM.
When I met the people in Aerosud the first time in 2007, I noticed it was a young company, with open-minded people, everyone trying to improve their daily activities per department. There was the need for PLM as some of their major customers required Aerosud to have a PLM system in place. Also Configuration Management was mentioned many times in the interviews and what I learned that time: Excel was the tool for configuration management.
Based on the initial interviews a plan needed to be developed in which steps to implement PLM. The following three major points were the guidance for the implementation:
- The company was thinking documents and understanding documents especially Excel
- The company had no clear understanding of what PLM would mean for them as real awareness was not inside the company. Customers like Boeing and Airbus talked about the importance of PLM, but how this could impact Aerosud as a company was no commonly clear
- People in the company had a major focus on their department and there was no availability of a overarching group of people leading the implementation
You could say you will see the above points in many smaller and medium-sized companies. I wrote about it also in one of my previous posts: Where does PLM start beyond document management ?
The project phases
The good news for Aerosud was that their PLM Champion was an expert in CATIA and was familiar with writing macros in Visual Basic plus the fact that everyone in the company was open for using the system as standard as possible – no demands for special behavior of the system: “because we do this already for 100 years”
The last phrase you hear a lot in ancient Europe
The choice was to start with implementing ENOVIA SmarTeam Design Express and to focus in two phases around design data management (phase 1) and the usage of design data by other users (phase 2)
The plan was that each phase would take maximum 2-3 months and we would give the users the time to digest and change their habits towards the standards in the system. In reality it took almost a year, not due to technical or conceptual issues, but this was the maximum pace we could have with the amount of time and available resources. The good news after these two phases was that the first bullet was much clearer understood – the difference between having a system with a single version of the truth or Excel management.
In the summer of 2008 (our summer – as it was winter in South Africa) there was a management workshop in Aerosud and here after three days of discussion the position of PLM became clear. One year ago this would not have been possible, now people had seen ENOVIA SmarTeam and they could imagine what benefits the system could further bring. This addressed the second bullet I mentioned before. Although this workshop was not scheduled upfront, looking back now I see this was a crucial point to get understanding for the next PLM steps.
The next PLM steps were extending to a real Item-centric data model, because if you want to do PLM you need to work around Bill of Materials and all related information to the items in the Bill of Material. At the end this gives you configuration management without chasing Excels.
Again the next steps were divided in two phases with again a scope of 2 – 3 months. The implementation would be based on the ENOVIA SmarTeam Engineering Express methodology which came as a logic extension of the current implementation, without having to change the database or existing data model.
In the first phase we had awareness sessions for BOM (discussing EBOM / MBOM / Effectivity, etc) plus in parallel we introduced the item as place holder for the information. Not longer folders or projects as the base.
Introduction of the item was conceptual not a big issue and the major activities in this phase were focused on connection legacy data or current data from projects to the items. Data coming from various sources (directories, legacy databases) plus NC data became connected and visible in the single version of truth.
In the second phase of moving to PLM the focus was on EBOM and MBOM. Initially assuring that from the designer point of view the CATIA design and EBOM were connected as smoothly as possible, trying to avoid a lot of administrative overhead on the designer (sometimes unavoidable – see my previous post: Where is my ROI, Mr. Voskuil)
After having implemented a streamlined CATIA – EBOM connection, the focus moved to the MBOM. For me this is the differentiator for companies if they implement PLM or just Product Data Management). Implementing the MBOM requires a culture change and this is the place where the ERP people need to see the benefits instead of the threats . Luckily in Aerosud the manufacturing engineers were working in their Excels initially and not in the ERP system – which happens a lot in older companies.
For that reason the concept of MBOM in PLM was much better understood. Now Aerosud is experiencing these capabilities and once they become obvious for everyone the third bullet will be addressed: people start to work in processes cross-departmental instead of optimizing their department with a specific tool.
As this activity will continue, I also conducted with the Aerosud management and PLM implementation team an ROI assessment. Estimates about the experienced and projected benefits were kept low and on the realistic side. The result was that the outcome for the ROI period was approx 27 months, almost the same time as the whole project had as throughput time. This proved again the statement about a phased PLM approach. payback of project comes in parallel with the implementation and will ultimately fund the next steps.
End of July I will be holding a webinar with more details about this implementation for the Dassault VAR Community. I will be happy to expand this information for a wider audience afterwards, as I believe the project is representative for many mid-market companies that struggle to find the place where PLM fits ….. and brings ROI
Let me know if you are interested in this follow up and I will collect the inputs for a follow up.
It is time to continue with my posts about ROI and the need for measuring. I described in previous posts the concept phase and planning phase and will touch in this post the development phase.
But before doing so, there are two points I want to share before.
Queen’s Day in the Netherlands 2009
First as a Dutchman (although many times virtual) I enjoy April 30, as a special day, as it is our Queen’s Day.
People around the world celebrate the 1st of May, we Dutch celebrate Queen’s Day the day before.
It is a celebration of the people, with free flee markets, concerts and activities all around the country and at some special locations our royal family contributes to the atmosphere by participating amongst us. We celebrate this day not because the Dutch are so royalty minded, it is also a good excuse to celebrate our existence together, and there is always the discussion if a president of the country would bring more to the country as compared to the royal family.
This year Queens Day however became the blackest Queens Day ever. A lunatic apparently decided to make a statement and tried to drive his car into the bus with the royal family. However to get there he drove through the cheering crowd – 7 people died, including the driver because of this attempt. It makes you realize that in the modern society innocence is gone and that life is not as obvious as it is.
Hopefully Queen’s Day will be again a day of the people celebrating , with respect to the victims, still we should not change our lives because we fear.
Concurrent Engineering around the BOM
Next point, back to PLM again, I read an interesting discussing on two blogs regarding the need for the BOM – For me the shared and consolidated BOM, is the major object (placeholder / entry point) for a company to share developed data, so it is an interesting discussion.
Read these posts at: vuuch.com and plwtwine.com – they give points to consider, and I support the observation that although we try to do concurrent engineering already for many years, I haven’t seen many successful implementations, mainly due to the human behavior. Classically PDM and PLM require the BOM for collaboration and we might stay with this concept for a long time. Knowing the mid-market, I believe alternative solutions have to come up as a boom embraced by everyone (and conquer the market within a few years) or we will stick to what we know and what we are doing – changing habits and culture is hard. For the moment I stick to the current situation.
To PLM or Not to PLM – Measuring the development phase
So what happens in the development phase.> We have a concept and a plan and now we need to develop or change the product. In the past this was much easier. Companies worked mainly locally and around a single discipline. Now product development has the typical challenges of collaboration between different locations (many times around the globe), different disciplines (mechanical, electrical, software), integrate suppliers (as we focus on core competence) and meanwhile comply to (local) regulations. A lot of activities in parallel that should run coordinated to a single goal, the developed product. The phase where a lot of data is created and need to be shared among along the enterprise.
So the most important questions related to the development phase are:
- How many review cycles does a product introduction require in general?
Measure: time spent on getting a joined status on development and plan next detailed steps
Analyze: Can we improve the quality of the status information to better plan next steps - How much time does it take to prepare a product status review
Measure: the amount of time and people spent to collect information to make a status review
Analyze: Can this process of collecting data be shortened and (semi-) automated - How do we make sure we select the right parts and solutions for a certain function / system ?
Measure: The amount of changes during the development phase or after this phase
Analyze: Why were these changes needed ? Missing information, obsolete/redundant parts, failed solutions ? - How do we make sure our products comply to local regulations
Measure: At which state of the development process compliance is checked and how it affects development / go to market time.
Analyze: Can we verify compliance earlier than current – and how - How much effort does it take to communicate around an engineering change
Measure: What does it take to communicate and implement a change during the development phase. How much time, many resources are involved around this communication process (and how reliable is it)
Analyze: Can we improve by doing things different ? Implementing processes, push technology, ….?
Most of the above points focus on facilitating (global) processes and making information available anywhere needed. This brings me to my previous post, where I talked about Can ERP vendors do PLM ? The ERP vendors that do PLM, will claim they are addressing these points in their PLM offering too. The major difference however is that (and I am generalizing) ERP based systems score low on usability as their systems are not planned to work from within an application (CAD or Office for example) . This is the major difference with PLM systems, closely related to CAD systems. Through their CAD integrations, the PLM environment will be embedded in the day-to-day user / design environment (immersive is the term).
An immersive integration has the benefit that collecting data is much more natural and the chance of having more accurate data available all the time is higher. So most of the point mentioned above will have a higher ROI when working from an integrated PLM environment. And in addition to that, in the mid-market users have a voice – their acceptance is also part of the ROI.
Conclusion
The keywords for the development phase are global collaboration and visibility of actual data and affected changes. To make data available, integration with the data creator’s desktop is important as then it will be available straight from the source. I keep it here to ‘classical’ PDM / PLM as new concepts like PLM 2.0 will drastically change the way we work, however getting there will take years
Note: It might be misleading to talk about ROI benefits per phase, as other and additional benefits may come from doing the whole process different. I will stick to my initial approach as it will give you a baseline to start working from. Remember in order to understand– you need to start measuring even if it is not the ultimate approach
And closing with Queen’s day how it could be (2008 – learning Dutch is not required)
You might have heard about the chaos theory and the butterfly effect ? In general, the theory promoted by Edward Lorentz and others, claims that the flapping of the wings of a butterfly, somewhere in South America may influence ultimately the path of a tornado, either preventing or accelerating that a tornado may hit at a certain place in North America.
WOW, if a butterfly can do this, can you imagine the impact of all of us, flapping our notes and plans around PLM in an organization ? What a chaos we can create ?
I came to this association, looking back on my activities the past three weeks. Talking with implementers and companies, who all had a tornado of wishes and activities, trying to create order through a PLM implementation – the anti-chaos theory.
Most of the discussions were based on a typical mid-market approach.
What do I mean by a typical mid-market approach – and I am generalizing here. None of the people I have been talking to in the past weeks match the exact characteristics, however all contributed to the picture in my mind.
Typical mid-market approach (my generalization):
- (Power) User Driven / Do It yourself approach – inside the organization there are people who have the dream to improve the company with PDM / PLM and the energy to prove it. They build the plan and define the solutions. External resources are only hired to do specialized services, fitting in the thought process of the power users. They believe that everyone will see the benefits of the implementation and join their approach step-by-step enthusiastically.
- Focus on technical details– often the wishes are based on implementing technical capabilities close to the understanding of users, usually requiring a minimum of change in the daily processes. For example the focus might be on a technical capability how to connect the PLM system to the ERP system (Middleware / XML /Web Services / …..) instead of discussing how it will work from the process point of view – how is the process impacted ?
- Task solving – much in combination with the previous point, the focus is on optimizing and/or automating tasks of a certain user. The end-user’s daily tasks/pains are the focus for solving, which means trying to automate as much as possible, providing as much as possible single system / single screen solutions.
- Risk Avoidance – often these companies do not have the capabilities (people / time / budget) to experiment with new directions. Approaches from other similar companies are followed (looking for references). For sure not a bad approach, however the result is it will be harder to be differentiate from your competitors. And of course risk avoidance should always be considered in the scope of manageable risks.
- Lack of top-management investment / push – although the top management in these companies subscribe to the needs for PLM, the focus of the investment is usually mainly on the external costs (software and services), where internal resources are forced to do the PLM activities beside daily tasks. Later the management will wonder why things are going slow, as they did their job (they approved the investment– waiting for the results now)
- Focus on business skills – the people in the project team are often well educated in their daily business and practices, but lack project management, risk management and change management skills. These ‘soft’ skills are often acquired by buying a book to be placed on the desk.
After writing these generalizations, I had the feeling that instead of characteristics, i was writing about risks . As this was not the intention, let see the how to manage these risks:
- The power users should realize that they are sent on a difficult mission which requires a lot of creativity to implement changes in the context of the PLM project. And strange as it seems the PLM software might not be the biggest challenge.
The biggest challenge will be on choosing the right best practices and to implement them with acceptance of the users. This is change management combined with implementation knowledge / experience. They point for the power users should be to have an implementation partner with experience, who can explain why best practices work and explain how other companies address this issue. Without practical guidance the power users have become pioneers, which is something the management for sure wants to avoid.
Often to avoid user objections, the project team decides on heavy customizations or ‘weird’ compromises – nice to keep the user community quiet, but bad for the future, as benefits will not be the same.
This mainly happens as there is too much focus the ‘hard’ side of the project ( hardware /software /IT /Services ) , and no or limited attention to the human / change management side.
Power Users – be aware ! - The management should realize that it is a company’s decision and vision. So from their side a steering committee with a clear vision is required. Their job is to keep the vision, prioritize the activities and make sure the power users are not creating an isolated solution based on their dreams.
The most important role of the management is to take continues responsibility for the project – it does not end by giving the approval for the project and budget. Where users might reluctantly accept changes, it is the job of the management to enforce the changes and support them.
This can be done in a harsh way by imposing the changes, however this will cause resistance and the end users will demonstrate the management was wrong. This leads at the end to a situation where the company as a whole will be in a worse position as before.
So managing by motivation should be the approach, as after all the power lies in motivated users, who understand the benefits of the changes and benefits for their future job.
Management – be aware ! - Make sure the focus and priority is on business not on IT. Sell and explain the business benefits internally all the time.
All be aware !
To conclude:
- The mid-market characteristics look like risks for a successful PLM implementation, if not addressed and taken seriously
- There is significant management support and control needed to monitor, guide and sell the PLM project.
To make sure the company benefits are targeted and not the individual users or departments demands only. - Implement bottom up but control and direct top-down
- Your implementation partner should have resources with skills for both levels – so not only programmers who can do miracles, but also consultants that can explain, validate best practices based on other experiences
Understanding chaos – enjoy:
Finally I have time to continue on my sequence: “How to come to measurable PLM benefits ?” I think it is a topic where everyone talks about, but little is known in concrete figures. One of the main challenges is also “What to measure ? “. As I added to Martin’s comment on my previous post, we can measure comparable activities, like how much time and people are involved in average for an engineering change. And when a company makes the statement: “We reduced the time for an engineering change in average from 23 days to 8 days” – what does it mean ?
Does is mean people have spent less time to understand and implement correctly the change ? Probably – so there might me xxx amount of money related to this saving in time. Of course, there might be also a saving in distribution costs, assuming in the traditional approach a paper-based distribution process was used – people spending time in distribution, printing, copying etc.
Everyone experienced with Excel and formulas can make these kind of calculations (and I did it too) and often I was surprised about the huge benefits showing up in the spreadsheet. So please continue filling spreadsheets as in general the benefits will be high
In parallel a second approach should be considered. Benchmarking against similar companies and Aberdeen has published some papers in this area, (see for example: The Best Kept Secret of Top SMB Product Developers -Finding the Shortest Path to PLM Value) . Maybe less specific per activity but they offer a good secondary view of the PLM benefits, in this case viewed from the business point of view.
Back to ROI measuring – and now in the planning phase
The planning phase, by my definition is the phase where we have a concept and we start to analyze which activities and which resources are required to develop the concept. In a Built To Order process, the planning phase might overlap the concept phase, as the inputs from the prospect require besides to provide a solution also the need to have it done within a certain budget and timeframe.
So the most important questions related to the planning phase are:
- How many projects we are doing are similar in approach?
Measure: time spent in finding similar solutions / percentage reuse /classify projects
Analyze: Can we improve by standardization - How often do we have to do a major change /disruption in our planning ?
Measure: the amount of projects that have small compared to major changes (define a rule to differentiate)
Analyze: What is the reason for the major changes - During execution of a project – do we know if we are on track ?
Measure: Select an arbitrary project and make a status
Analyze: Was this status correct looking back later ? ( a month – some months) - How much time and effort do we spent to understand the status of a project ?
Measure: Select an arbitrary project and make a status
Analyze: How much time and people were involved to get the status - How much time does it take to plan an engineering change ?
Measure: Once an ECO (Engineering Change Order) has been approved, what does it take to plan the change
(perhaps you already planned too as part of the ECR process- excellent) – resources and time
Analyze: Can we improve by doing things different
Again all the above points can be addressed by PLM, either through a sales and product configurator (a configurator btw already requires a certain level of standardization or modularization of products. I will write more on configurators and how to get there perhaps in the future. Meanwhile read this excellent white paper from the Valent Group: 7 Myths of Configurators).
Project and program management combined with template best practices, how to do execute an customer order or a new product introduction are also providing huge benefits. Every time you have the chance to do something similar, you have reduced the risk dramatically. So investing in standardization and templates is an investment in risk reduction and increased reliability
At then the measurable results will come from two sides: customer satisfaction and market share (hard to measure) and internal increased efficiency (easy to measure)which contributes to your margin or to your market share as you can follow a different price point.
Conclusion
The keywords for the planning phase are: standardization, reuse (in the broadest context) and activities that can be monitored with low effort . This allows companies to control their margin and their risks and their health status.
And planning is import – see video below (and I hope all are still alive)
In the past year I shared with you my thoughts around PLM. Most of the post were based on discussions with customers, implementers, resellers and peers around the world. I learned a lot and will keep on learning I assume, as PLM has many aspects:
– the products, there are many products with the label PLM
– the concept, how do we interpret PLM per industry
– the customers, what do they want to achieve, without buzz-word
– the world, people and economic trends drive us sometime to irrational decisions
In this post I will give an overview from the 2008 posts, categorized by topic. I am looking forward to further suggestions in the comments if you are interested in more depth in certain areas. In parallel I will continue to share my experiences and provide an overview of best-practices and terminology experienced in the PLM space.
PLM concepts
Managing the MBOM is crucial for PLM
Is there a need for classification – and how should it be done ?
Is the PLM concept applicable for mid-market companies too ?
What will happen with PLM – looking towards 2050
PLM and ERP
PLM and ERP – the culture change, continued
Connecting PLM and ERP – part 1, part 2, part 3
PLM and ROI
Implementing PLM is too costly ?
Implementing PLM takes too long ?
Why implement PLM next to an ERP system ?
How is PLM different from CAD data management ?
Economical crisis creates the opportunity for change
Business Process Change
PLM in SMB requires a change in thinking
The management is responsible to initiate a change towards PLM
The change in automotive/aero supply chains to more advanced partners
How will mid-market companies pick-up the benefits from implementing PLM ?
Experiences
European Enovia Customer Conference (ECC)
PLM in Greece – does it exist ?
Is the concept for PLM mature enough ?
Don’t expect a bottom up PLM implementation to become successful
Conclusion
I would like to conclude with a quote from my favorite scientist, who taught us everything is relative, however:
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
Looking forward to your feedback, wishes in 2009 !
Jos Voskuil
As the year ends, I decided to take my crystal ball to see what would happen with PLM in the future. It felt like a virtual experience and this is what I saw:
- Data is not replicated any more – every piece of information that exists will have a Universal Unique ID, some people might call it the UUID. In 2020 this initiative became mature, thanks to the merger of some big PLM and ERP vendors, who brought this initiative to reality. This initiative reduced the exchange costs in supply chains dramatically and lead to bankcrupcy for many companies providing translators and exchange software.
- Companies store their data in ‘the cloud’ based on the previous concept. Only some old-fashioned companies still have their own data storage and exchange issues, as they are afraid someone will touch their data. Analysts compare this behavior with the situation in the year 1950, when people kept their money under a mattress, not trusting banks (and they were not always wrong)
- After 3D, a complete virtual world, based on holography, became the next step for product development and understanding of products. Thanks to the revolutionary quantum-3D technology, this concept could be even applied to life sciences. Before ordering a product, customers could first experience and describe their needs in a virtual environment
- Finally the cumbersome keyboard and mouse were replaced by voice and eye-recognition. Initially voice recognition and eye tracking were cumbersome. Information was captured by talking to the system and capturing eye-movement when analyzing holograms. This made the life of engineers so much easier, as while researching and talking, their knowledge was stored and tagged for reuse. No need for designers to send old-fashioned emails or type their design decisions for future reuse
- Due to the hologram technology the world became greener. People did not need to travel around the world and the standard became virtual meetings with global teams(airlines discontinued business class). Even holidays could be experienced in the virtual world thanks to a Dutch initiative based on the experience with coffee. The whole IT infrastructure was powered by efficient solar energy, reducing the amount of carbon dioxide drastically
- Then with a shock, I noticed PLM did not longer exist. Companies were focusing on their core business processes. Systems/terms like PLM, ERP and CRM did not longer exist. Some older people still remembered the battle between those systems to own the data and the political discomfort this gave inside companies
- As people were working so efficient, there was no need to work all week. There were community time slots, when everyone was active, but 50 per cent of the time, people had the time to recreate (to re-create or recreate was the question). Some older French and German designers remembered the days when they had only 10 weeks holiday per year, unimaginable nowadays.
As we still have more than 40 years to reach this future, I wish you all a successful and excellent 2009.
I am looking forward to be part of the green future next year.
The past few weeks a had various moments to interrogate myself about the values for PLM and what would be the best way to address PLM for a mid-market company.
First I was in Copenhagen, attending the Microsoft Convergence event. A meeting where Dynamic customers, resellers and partners from all around Europe came together to learn the latest from Microsoft, to network with other partners and discuss their business processes.
Of course the focus from all of the 4000 attendees was around logistical processes, I was very curious to learn how manufacturing companies would describe their needs and where they feel the missing link – PLM.
But they did not feel it ……….
I believe this is one of the most challenging issues for mid-market companies. They have been investing in their ERP system and consider this as the company’s backbone. Their production and finance is dependent on it. Other departments, like sales and engineering provide somehow their inputs to the system, often Excel is here the information carrier. No PLM vision exist – or in case it exists – it is perfectly hidden.
I touched this topic in one of my previous post, called: “We do not need PLM, we already have ERP”
So why is PLM not yet adopted by mid-market companies and I raise this question mainly for those companies that obvious would benefit from PLM ?
I believe the major reason is the fact that often in mid-market companies there is no high-level strategy available analyzing where the company should be in 5 years from now and what are the challenges to overcome. Most of the companies I am currently working with want to implement something they call PLM, but often it is just PDM.
The big difference between PLM and PDM is that PLM requires the company to work different across departments, where PDM is considered more as an automated way to centralize product data, without changing the department responsibilities.
And now some generalizations
In addition mid-market CAD resellers try to explain their customers that PLM is only for big enterprises and that they just need PDM. This of course makes their sales beyond CAD easier, as touching cross-departmental processes requires different knowledge (which their resellers do not have), a different product (which they do not sell) and of course a longer sales cycle.
The same happens from the ERP side. ERP resellers consider what happens in the engineering department as a black box, where product data is generated and at the end a (configurable) Bill Of Materials. ERP vendors do not jump on PLM as extending the process to engineering requires different knowledge (which is not their domain) , a more extended product (which they do not have (yet))
Mid-market companies are of course influenced by these resellers of their core components and as mentioned before do not have the time and budget to take a strategic, holistic view where the company should be in 5 years. Usually their focus is on solving the pains they experience in their organization. For example we have too many databases and spreadsheets per department, let’s put them all in one central place – more an IT focus then a business focus.
So how to get the vision ?
Companies should ask themselves the following questions:
- what is the success of my company ?
- will I still be successful in 5 years from now if I keep on doing the same ?
- how does globalization affect me ? Risks but also challenges.
- how do I capture the knowledge of my (experienced) workforce before they retire ?
To answer these questions (and the above ones are only the most probing) it requires time and understanding to build a vision. Perhaps the economical downturn creates the opportunity or need to prepare for the future (survival).
And if you are working in a mid-market manufacturing company, chances are big that implementing PLM is a way to guarantee the company’s future and success. This has been proven in big enterprises and mid-market companies are not so different at the end.
Adapting business processes and connecting the whole product lifecycle are key activities. Beyond PDM and ERP it brings portfolio management (which product bring the real revenue) and innovation (New Product Introduction – how do we make sure we introduce a good product in the market).
Conclusion
PLM requires a company vision and strategy. Building the vision is something that PLM vendors, business consultants and others can assist you with. Each group has its own pro’s and con’s but at the end it is the vision that is needed before making the change – it requires first of all an investment in brain power – not in products
Interesting to read:
Stay with the business processes or change them ?
The past month I was involved in a two ENOVIA SmarTeam projects, where both had the target to become the company’s PLM system. However the way these projects were executed lead to the conclusion that the first one was probably going to fail as a PLM system, were the second project was going to be successful.
And only by looking back to the history of the first implementation, it became clear what prevented it from becoming implemented as a PLM system. It had all to do with a bottom-up approach and a top-down approach. I guess ENOVIA SmarTeam is one of the few products that allows a customer to make a choice between bottom-up or top-down.
Somehow also Jim Brown’s post was in line with this observation, but judge yourself.
Most classical PLM systems require a top-down approach as the PLM scope requires departments to work in a different way and to enforce a change on the organization. Organizational change usually only happens top-down based on the vision of the management.
ENOVIA SmarTeam however has the option to be implemented as a CAD data management system, managing the Product Data in the form of documents. This brings a lot of value to the engineering department and depending on the PLM awareness of the company they might try to replace the Excel based Bill Of Materials into a BOM inside the system. As we are working in the scope of engineering this is in most of the cases the Engineering BOM.
There are also other CAD data management systems that claim to be an enterprise PDM system as they manage the product data (usually only the native CAD data) and the engineering BOM. As these systems do not contain capabilities to become an enterprise PLM system, it will be clear for the organization, where to position it – and to keep it in the engineering department.
There are engineering managers in mid-market companies that have the PLM vision and this was the case in the first implementation I mentioned. As his initial mission was to manage the product data based on SolidWorks and AutoCAD, the company decided that ENOVIA SmarTeam was the best multi-CAD data management solution for the company. Meanwhile the engineering manager had the hope (or dream) that once this implementation was completed all other departments would stand in a queue to get connected to ENOVIA SmarTeam too………
…. and this did not happen. Why ?
The main reason for that was that at the time the management had understood the PLM benefits and considered implementing PLM, they looked at SmarTeam and it was implemented too much as an engineering solution, too rich in functionality (and complexity) to be used and integrated by other departments. But when the company was looking to an PLM extension from their ERP system, the engineers refused to work with that system, as according to their opinion the system did not support their needs.
How could this be prevented ?
This was done exactly in the second project. Also here the implementation started in the engineering department, but from the start it was clear for the management, that they would extend the implementation towards a full cross-departmental PLM implementation. The main difference was that the implementation was not focused on satisfying the designers, but from the start it was clear ENOVIA SmarTeam should be useful for other departments too. This implicated less customization on the existing product, more standard functionality. Yes, the designer had to change their way of working as they worked file-based before. But as the focus of the implementation was always on providing data access across the organization, the system remained attractive for the production planning and manufacturing people. It was not an engineering tool only.
Additionally the standard ENOVIA SmarTeam system required from all departments adaptations to their working methods, but as it was not heavily customized, it was much easier to extend the scope beyond engineering.
So what is the conclusion:
- Do not try to build the ultimate engineering solution as step 1 in a PLM project. Remain with the core capabilities.
- Keep the focus on storing information in such a way that it becomes usable for departments outside engineering. This requires less detailed data and more reporting capabilities
- Do not hide the intentions to the management that ENOVIA SmarTeam can become the company’s PLM system. Make the management aware of that but also explain the benefits of a step-by-step implementation, starting with engineering and expanding when the time is ripe
- It would not be the first time that ENOVIA SmarTeam was the best kept secret for the management. The engineering department was happy, but no-one made the effort to explain the full capabilities to the top management
And now a small advertisement add the end
The ENOVIA SmarTeam Express offering allows a customer to start design centric (SDE = SmarTeam Design Express) and to extend the scope step by step by applying engineering capabilities extending the scope from Concept to Manufacturing (SNE = SmarTeam Engineering Express), guiding a bottom-up implementation step-by-step.
The past weeks I have been traveling and visited several implementers and potential PLM customers in Europe. Afterwards I presented and joined a panel session in the SAE 2008 Commercial Vehicle event.
Between the traveling I had enough time to reflect what i saw and heard and I realized that in the mid-market and perhaps in the lower tiers of the automotive industry, people are locked in by the way they are working and thinking, meanwhile seeing PLM vendors already coming with future concepts, talking about PLM 2.0
Many of the mid-market manufacturing companies I met in Europe are just realizing PDM (Product Data Management) in their company, usually as an extension of CAD data management. If you look to the demands of these companies through RFQs, they are trying to build a complete environment for their product data mostly around the engineering department.
This is the classical way bigger companies were implementing 15 years ago, and now mid-market companies see and understand the maturity of this concept.
Is PDM the first step to PLM ?
In my previous posts I already argued that implementing PLM (which goes beyond PDM) brings the real benefit for manufacturing companies, but this requires a change in the current way of working. Disciplines (marketing/sales,engineering, production engineering, maintenance & service) have to collaborate around the major business processes from the company, instead of optimizing each department and then forward information to the next department as we can see from the (classical) picture below:
Now these companies implement PDM, but what is the result ?
For mid-market companies the above step is easier to implement as it has not so much impact on the organization, however the fundamental way of working does not improve and does not provide the full benefits that bigger enterprises experience. The main benefits in the above situation are quality and efficiency benefits for engineer. As there is still no connection between the customers (marketing/sales) and the field (customers / service), the engineering department will work in an ivory tower, knowing what’s best. Only the real problems will reach them but the fine, combined information from the field will not reach them, and for that reason innovation is much harder to come from this approach.
Although PDM can be a first step towards PLM, it is only a step to get organized
The real benefits come when the collaboration around the whole product lifecycle is implemented. This is mostly not going to happen by a bright individual in the company. It requires a strategic vision and approach from the management, to change the way departments are working and connected.
In the very small mid-market companies this kind of collaboration has always existed ad-hoc. Quotes I heard in the past weeks were:
“if there was an issue, we all gathered around the machine in production and we solved it on the floor. This is collaboration.”
or:
“we do not need workflow and other tools to spend time informing each other. If there is something required, we just talk to each other”
These quotes above show, that people are not prepared for a structured, global approach. The main manufacturing process should be defined in such a way that exceptions like the first quote do not occur. Also the talking from the second quote is replaced by something that is traceable and secure, in order to guarantee repeatable results. This is the major task for the management in mid-market companies.
Meanwhile it is the role of the PLM providers to talk and understand the language from the mid-market companies. Not technology but work/task-oriented solutions will narrow the gap between the user and the software. Once the gap becomes smaller, mid-market companies might understand and feel the benefits of PLM.
So is the gap 15 years ?
I guess not, and for the following trends:
- More and more early adapters from PLM in the mid-market report the benefits from their PLM implementation. So the acceptance for PLM becomes mature.
- Mid-market companies will become more and more part of enterprises, which will bring the strategic vision of PLM to them.
- The aging workforce requires companies to capture knowledge that will disappear if they keep on working the same way. Joe, who knows everything, will retire in 5 – 10 years. This is where the management will get alerted to act – in time we hope.
- The new workforce comes with different, multi-tasking skills, used to work with a computer on parallel sessions. It is to the management to understand these new talents and develop them.
As most of the points are addressed to the management, I want to point once more to the following posts from the past:
culture change in a mid-sized company a management responsibility
Jos Voskuil's Weblog 
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