You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘PLM’ category.
It is the holiday season many groups, religions have their celebrations in this period, mostly due to the return of the light on the Northern hemisphere – Christmas, Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Santa Lucia are a few of them. Combined with a new decade upcoming, also a time for me to reflect on what have we learned and what can we imagine in the next ten years.
Looking back the last decade
Globalization is probably one of the most significant changes we have seen. Almost the whole world is connected now through all kinds of social and digital media. Information is instantly available and influences our behavior dramatically. The amount of information coming to us is so huge that we only filter the information that touches us emotionally. The disadvantage of that, opinions become facts and different opinions become enemies. A colorful society becomes more black and white.
These trends have not reached us, in the same manner, the domain of PLM. There have been several startups in the past ten years, explaining that PLM should be as easy as social communication with Facebook. Most of these startups focused on integrations with MCAD-systems, as-if PLM is about developing mechanical products.
In my opinion, the past decade has shown that mechanical design is no longer a unique part of product development. Products have become systems, full of electronics and driven by software. Systems Engineering became more and more important, defining the overall concept of a product, moving the focus to the earlier stages of the product design – see image below.
During Ideation and system definition, we need “social” collaboration between all stakeholders. To get a grip on this collaboration, we use models (SysML, UML, Logical, 2D, 3D) to have an unambiguous representation, simulation and validation of the product already in the virtual world.
Actually, there is nothing social about that collaboration. It is a company-driven demand to deliver competitive products to remain in business. If our company does not improve multidisciplinary collaboration, global competitors with less nostalgic thoughts to the past will conquer the market space.
Currently in most companies there are two worlds, hardware and software, almost 100 %-separated managed by either PLM or ALM (Application Lifecycle Management). It is clear that “old” PLM – item-driven with related documents cannot match the approach required for ALM – data-elements (code) based on software models (and modules).
In the hardware world a change can have a huge effect on the cost (or waste) of the product, however, implementing a hardware change can take months. Think about new machinery, tooling in the worst case. In the software domain, a change can be executed almost immediately. However here testing the impact of the change can have serious effects. The software fix for the Boeing 737 Max is not yet proven and delivered.
Therefore, I would like to conclude that in the past decade we learned in the PLM-domain to work in a Coordinated manner – leaving silos mostly in place.
Next week I will look forward to our challenging upcoming decade. Topics on my list for the next decade are:
- From Coordinated to Connected – Generation Change
- Sustainability of our Earth (and how PLM can help)
- Understanding our human behavior to understand how to explain PLM to your execs- PI PLMx London 2020
- All combined with restoring trust in science
I wish you all a happy and healthy New Year – take time to listen and learn as we need dialogue for the future, not opinions.
See you in 2020
To avoid that software geeks are getting curious about the title – in this context, ALM means Asset Lifecycle Management. In 2008 I was active for SmarTeam to promote PLM concepts relevant for Asset Lifecycle Management. The focus was on PLM being complementary to asset operation management (EAM Enterprise Asset Management and MRO – Maintenance Repair and Overhaul).
This topic has become actual for me in the past two months, having discussed and seen (PDT) the concepts of a model-based approach for assets and constructions. PLM, ALM, and BIM converge conceptually. Every year I give a one-day update from the field for students doing a master for PLM & BIM on top of their engineering/architectural background. Five years ago, there was no mentioning of BIM, now the ratio of BIM-oriented students has become significant. For me it is always great to see young students willing to learn PLM or BIM on top of their own skillset. Read more about this particular Master class in French when you click on the logo to the left.
In 2012 I started to explain PLM benefits to EPC companies (Engineering Procurement Construction), targeting a more profitable and efficient delivery of their constructions (oil platform, plant, building, infrastructure). The simplified reasoning behind using PLM was related to a more efficient and quality of multidisciplinary collaboration, reducing costly fixes during construction, and smoothening the intensive process of data handover.
More and more in the process industry, standards, like ISO 15926 (Process Industry) and ISO 19650 (BIM – mainly in the UK), became crucial. At that time, it was difficult to convince companies to focus on the horizontal-integrated process instead of dedicated, disconnected tools. Meanwhile, this has changed, thanks to the Digital Twin hype. Let’s have a look.
PLM and ALM
The initial value for using PLM concepts complementary to MRO systems came from the fact that MRO systems are mainly focusing on plant operations. You could compare these systems with ERP systems for manufacturing companies, focusing execution and continuous operation. Scheduled maintenance and inspections are also driven by the MRO system. Typical MRO systems are Maximo and SAP PM. PLM could deliver configuration management, linking the design intent to the physical implementation. Therefore provide higher data quality, visibility, and traceability of the asset history.
The SmarTeam data model for Asset Lifecycle Management
In 2010, I shared these concepts in two posts: Asset Lifecycle Management using a PLM-system and PLM for Asset Lifecycle Management and Asset Development based on lessons learned with some (nuclear) plant owner/operators. They started to discover the need for configuration management to ensure data quality for operations. In 2010-2014 the business case using PLM complementary to MRO was data quality and therefore reduced down-time when executing large maintenance programs (dependencies between the individual projects were not visible without PLM)
In MRO-systems, like in ERP-systems, the data for execution is based on information coming from various engineering sources – specifications, PFDs, P&IDs. Questions owner/operators ask themselves are:
- What are the designed operational settings?
- Are the asset parameters currently running as designed?
- What is the optimized maintenance period?
- Can we stretch maintenance intervals?
- Can we reduce inspections?
- Can we reduce downtime for maintenance and overhaul?
- What about predictive maintenance?
Most of these questions are answered by experts that use their tacit knowledge and experience to give the best so far answers. And when the answers were wrong, they were accepted as new learning points. Next time we won’t make this mistake, and the experts become even more knowledgeable.
Now, these questions could be answered if you can model your asset in a virtual environment. In the virtual world, you would use simulation models, logical models, and 3D Models to describe the asset. This is where Model-Based Systems Engineering practices are used. However, these models need to be calibrated based on reality. And that is where IoT and Asset Operation Monitoring comes in connecting physical behavior with virtual predicted behavior. You can read more about this relationship in my post: Will MBSE the new PLM instead of IoT?
PLM and BIM
In 2014 when I started to discuss PLM concepts with EPC-companies (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction), mainly in the Oil & Gas industry. Here excellent asset development tools (AVEVA, Intergraph, Bentley) are the standard, and as the purpose of an EPC company is to deliver a plant or platform. Each software tool has its purpose and there is no lifecycle strategy. The value PLM could bring was providing a program overview (complementary with Primavera), standardization, multidisciplinary coordination and visibility across projects to capture knowledge.
Most of the time, the EPC companies did not see the value of optimizing themselves as this was accepted in the process. Even while their productivity and cost due to poor quality (fixing during construction /commissioning) were absurd (10-20 % of the project budget). Cultural change – think longer instead of fix later – was hard to explain. In the end, the EPC was not responsible for operations, so why bother that much?
My blog posts: PLM for all Industries and 2014 – the year that the construction industry did not discover PLM illustrate the challenge at that time. None of the EPCs and construction companies had the, that improving collaboration based on information-continuity (not data-driven yet) could bring the significant benefits, despite their relatively low-profit margin (1- 3 % is considered excellent). Breaking the silos is too.
Two recent trends, however, changed the status quo that existed.
First of all, more and more, the owner/operator does not want to be responsible for the maintenance and operations of the asset. The typical EPC-companies now became DBO-companies (Design Build and Operate), this requires lifecycle thinking for these companies as most of the costs of an asset are during its maintenance and operation phase.
Advanced Thinking (read: (Model-Based) Systems Engineering) can help these companies to shift their focus on a more sustainable design of the asset for the future and get rewarded for that. In the old EPC-model, the target was “just” to deliver as specified.
A second significant trend is the availability of cloud infrastructure for the construction world. A cloud infrastructure does not require considerable investment for the stakeholders in a construction project. By introducing BIM in a common data environment (CDE), a comparable infrastructure to PLM is created and likely the Maintenance-and-Operatie stakeholder is eager to have the full virtual definition here for the future.
Read more about BIM and CDE for example, here: CDE – strategic BIM process tool.
Of course, technology and standards are there to collaborate. Now it is up to the stakeholders involved to develop new skills for collaboration (learn or hire) and implement them through new ways of working. A learning process can never be pushed by a big-bang, so make sure your company operates in two modes while learning.
As I mentioned the Maintenance-and-Operate stakeholders or in traditional cases, the Owner/Operators are incredibly interested in a well-defined virtual model of the asset. This allows them to analyze and simulate the implementation of fixes and enhancements for the future with an optimum result. Again we are talking about a digital twin of the asset here
Conclusion
Even though the digital twin is on the top of the Gartner Hype cycle, it has become already a vital principle to implement in particular for substantial, critical assets. As these precious assets, minor inefficiencies in data continuity can still be afforded to learn. From the moment companies have established a digital continuity between their virtual and physical assets, the concept for Digital Twin can also be profitable (and required) for other industries. In particular when these companies want to deliver their products as a service.
Note: I have been talking this year a lot about the challenges of digital transformation applied to PLM in particular. During PI PLMx London 2020 on February 3 and 4, I will lead a Think Thank session related to the challenge of connecting your PLM transformation to your executives’ vision (and budget). See you there ?
Last week I shared the first impression from my favorite conference, the PLM Roadmap / PDT conference organized by CIMdata and Eurostep. You can read some of the highlights here: The weekend after PLM Roadmap / PDT 2019 Day 1.
Click on the logo to see what was the full agenda. In this post, I will focus on some of the highlights of day 2.
Chernobyl, The megaproject with the New Arch
Christophe Portenseigne from the Bouygues Construction Group shared with us his personal story about this megaproject, called Novarka. 33 years ago, reactor #4 exploded and has been confined with an object shelter within six months in 1986. This was done with heroic speed, and it was anticipated that the shelter would only last for 20 – 30 years. You can read about this project here.
The Novarka project was about creating a shelter for Confinement of the radioactive dust and protection of the existing against external actions (wind, water, snow…) for the next 100 years!
And even necessary, the inside the arch would be a plant where people could work safely on the process of decommissioning the existing contaminated structures. You can read about the full project here at the Novarka website.
What impressed me the most the personal stories of Christophe taking us through some of the massive challenges that need to be solved with innovative thinking. High complexity, a vast number of requirements, many parties, stakeholders involved closed in June 2019. As Christophe mentioned, this was a project to be proud of as it creates a kind of optimism that no matter how big the challenges are, with human ingenuity and effort, we can solve them.
A Model Factory for the Efficient Development of High Performing Vehicles
Eric Landel, expert leader for Numerical Modeling and Simulation at Renault, gave us an interesting insight into an aspect of digitalization that has become very valuable, the connection between design and simulation to develop products, in this case, the Renault CLIO V, as much as possible in the virtual world. You need excellent simulation models to match future reality (and tests). The target of simulation was to get the highest safety test results in the Europe NCAP rating – 5 stars.
The Renault modeling factory implemented a digital loop (below) to ensure that at the end of the design/simulation, a robust design would exist. Eric mentioned that for the Clio, they did not build a prototype anymore. The first physical tests were done on cars coming from the plant. Despite the investment in simulation software, a considerable saving in crash part over cost before TGA (Tooling Go Ahead).
Combined with the savings, the process has been much faster than before. From 10 weeks for a simulation loop towards 4 weeks. The next target is to reduce this time to 1 week. A real example of digitization and a connected model-based approach.
From virtual prototype to hybrid twin
ESI – their sponsor session Evolving from Virtual Prototype Testing to Hybrid Twin: Challenges & Benefits was an excellent complementary session to the presentation from Renault
PLM, MBSE and Supply chain – challenges and opportunities
Nigel Shaw’s presentation was one of my favorite presentations, as Nigel addressed the same topics that I have been discussing in the past years. His focus was on collaboration between the OEM and supplier with the various aspects of requirements management, configuration management, simulation and the different speeds of PLM (focus on mechanical) and ALM (focus on software)
How can such activities work in a digitally-connected environment instead of a document-based approach? Nigel looked into the various aspects of existing standards in their domains and their future. There is a direction to MBE (Model-Based Everything) but still topics to consider. See below:
I agree with Nigel – the future is model-based – when will be the issue for the market leaders.
The ISO AP239 ed3 Project and the Through Life Cycle Interoperability Challenge
Yves Baudier from AFNET, a reference association in France regarding industry digitation, digital threads, and digital processes for Extended Enterprise/Supply chain. All about a digital future and Yves presentation was about the interoperability challenge, mentioning three of my favorite points to consider:
- Data becoming more and more a strategic asset – as digitalization of Industry and Services, new services enabled by data analytics
- All engineering domains (from concept design to system end of life) need to develop a data-centric approach (not only model-centric)– An opportunity for PLM to cover the full life-cycle
- Effectivity and efficiency of data interoperability through the life-cycle is now an essential industry requirement – e.g., “virtual product” and “digital twin” concepts
All the points are crucial for the domain of PLM.
In that context, Yves discussed the evolution of the ISO 10303-239 standard, also known as PLCS. The target with ISO AP239 ed3 is to become the standard for Aerospace and Defense for the full product lifecycle and through this convergence being able to push IT/PLM Vendors to comply – crucial for a digital enterprise
Time for the construction / civil industry
Christophe Castaing, director of digital engineering at Egis, shared with us their solution framework to manage large infrastructure projects by focusing on both the Asset Information (BIM-based) and the collaborative processes between the stakeholders, all based on standards. It was a broad and in-depth presentation – too much to share in a blog post. To conclude (see also Christophe’s slide below) in the construction industry more and more, there is the desire to have a digital twin of a given asset (building/construction), creating the need for standard information models.
Pierre Benning, IT director from Bouygues Public Works gave us an update on the MINnD project. MINnD standing for Modeling INteroperable INformation for sustainable INfrastructures in xD, a French research project dedicated to the deployment of BIM and digital engineering in the infrastructure sector. Where BIM has been starting from the construction industry, there is a need for a similar, digital modeling approach for civil infrastructure. In 2014 Christophe Castaing already reported the activities of the MINnD project – see The weekend after PDT 2014. Now Pierre was updating us on what are the activities for MINnD Season 2 – see below:
As you can see, again, the interest in digital twins for operations and maintenance. Perhaps here, the civil infrastructure industry will be faster than traditional industries because of its enormous value. BIM and GIS reconciliation is a precise topic as many civil infrastructures have a GIS aspect – Road/Train infrastructure for example. The third bullet is evident to me. With digitization and the integration of contractors and suppliers, BIM and PLM will be more-and-more conceptual alike. The big difference still at this moment: BIM has one standard framework where PLM-standards are still not in a consolidation stage.
Digital Transformation for PLM is not an evolution
If you have been following my blog in the past two years, you may have noticed that I am exploring ways to solve the transition from traditional, coordinated PLM processes towards future, connected PLM. In this session, I shared with the audience that digital transformation is disruptive for PLM and requires thinking in two modes.
Thinking in two modes is not what people like, however, organizations can run in two modes. Also, I shared some examples from digital transformation stories that illustrate there was no transformation, either failure or smoke, and mirrors. You can download my presentation via SlideShare here.
Fireplace discussion: Bringing all the Trends Together, What’s next
We closed the day and the conference with a fireplace chat moderated by Dr. Ken Versprille from CIMdata, where we discussed, among other things, the increasing complexity of products and products as a service. We have seen during the sessions from BAE Systems Maritime and Bouygues Construction Group that we can do complex projects, however, when there are competition and time to deliver pressure, we do not manage the project so much, we try to contain the potential risk. It was an interactive fireplace giving us enough thoughts for next year.
Conclusion
Nothing to add to Håkan Kårdén’s closing tweet – I hope to see you next year.
For me, the joint conference from CIMdata and Eurostep is always a conference to look forward too. The conference is not as massive as PLM-Vendor conferences (slick presentations and happy faces); it is more a collection of PLM-practitioners (this time a 100+) with the intent to discuss and share their understanding and challenges, independent from specific vendor capabilities or features. And because of its size a great place to network with everyone.
Day 1 was more a business/methodology view on PLM and Day 2 more in-depth focusing on standards and BIM. In this post, the highlights from the first day.
The State of PLM
Peter Bilello, CIMdata’s president, kicked of with a review of the current state of the PLM industry. Peter mentioned the PLM-market grew by 9.4 % to $47.8 billion (more than the expected 7 %). Good for the PLM Vendors and implementers.
However, Peter also mentioned that despite higher spending, PLM is still considered as a solution for engineering, often implemented as PDM/CAD data management. Traditional organizational structures, marketing, engineering, manufacturing, quality were defined in the previous century and are measured as such.
This traditional approach blocks the roll-out of PLM across these disciplines. Who is the owner of PLM or where is the responsibility for a certain dataset are questions to solve. PLM needs to transform to deliver end-to-end support instead of remaining the engineering silo. Are we still talking about PLM in the future? See Peter’s takeaways below:
We do not want to open the discussion if the the name PLM should change – too many debates – however unfortunate too much framing in the past too.
The Multi View BOM
Fred Feru from Airbus presented a status the Aerospace & Defense PLM action group are working on: How to improve and standardize on a PLM solution for multi-view BOM management, in particular, the interaction between the EBOM and MBOM. See below:
You might think this is a topic already solved when you speak with your PLM-vendor. However, all existing solutions at the participant implementations rely on customizations and vary per company. The target is to come up with common requirements that need to be addressed in the standard methodology. Initial alignment on terminology was already a first required step as before you standardize, you need to have a common dictionary. Moreover, a typical situation in EVERY PLM implementation.
An initial version was shared with the PLM Editors for feedback and after iterations and agreement to come with a solution that can be implemented without customization. If you are interested in the details, you can read the current status here with Appendix A en Appendix B.
Enabling the Circular Economy for Long Term Prosperity
Graham Aid gave a fascinating presentation related to the potentials and flaws of creating a circular economy. Although Graham was not a PLM-expert (till he left this conference), as he is the Strategy and Innovation Coordinator for the Ragn-Sells Group, which performs environmental services and recycling across Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Estonia. Have a look at their website here.
Graham shared with us the fact that despite logical arguments for a circular economy – it is more profitable at the end – however, our short term thinking and bias block us from doing the right things for future generations.
Look at the missing link for a closed resource-lifecycle view below.
Graham shared weird examples where scarce materials for the future currently were getting cheaper, and therefore there is no desire for recycling them. A sound barrier with rubble could contain more copper than copper ore in a mine.
In the PLM-domain, there is also an opportunity for supporting and working on more sustainable products and services. It is a mindset and can be a profitable business model. In the PDT 2014 conference, there was a session on circular product development with Xerox as the best example. Circular product development but also Product As A Service can be activities that contribute to a more sustainable world. Graham’s presentation was inspiring for our PLM community and hopefully planted a few seeds for the future. As it is all about thinking long-term.
With the PLM Green Alliance, I hope we will be able to create a larger audience and participation for a sustainable future. More about the PLM Green Alliance next week.
The Fundamental Role of PLM in Data-driven Product Portfolio Management
Hannu Hannila (Polar) presented his study related to data-driven product portfolio management and why it should be connected to PLM. For many companies, it is a challenge to understand which products are performing well and where to invest. These choices are often supported by Data Damagement as Hannu called it.
An example below:
The result of this fragmented approach is that organizations make their decisions on subjective data and emotions. Where the assumption is that 20 % of the products a company is selling is related to 80 % of the revenue, Hannu found in his research companies where only 10 % of the products were contributing to the revenue. As PPM (Product Portfolio Management) often is based on big emotions – who shouts the loudest mentality, influenced by the company’s pet products and influence by the HIPPO (HIghest Paid Person in the Office). So how to get a better rationale?
Hannu explained a data-driven framework that would provide the right analytics on management level, depending on overall data governance from all disciplines and systems. See below:
I liked Hannu’s conclusions as it aligns with my findings:
- To be data-driven, you need Master Data Management and Data Governance
- Product Portfolio Management is the driving discipline for PLM, and in a modern digital enterprise, it should be connected.
Sponsor sessions
Sponsors are always needed to keep a conference affordable for the attendees. The sponsor sessions on day 1 were of good quality. Here a quick overview and a link if you want to invest further
Configit – explaining the value of a configurator that connects marketing, technical and sales, introducing CLM (Configuration Lifecycle Management) – a new TLA
Aras – explaining their view on what we consider the digital thread
Variantum – explaining their CPQ solution as part of a larger suite of cloud offerings
Quick Release – bringing common sense to PLM implementations, similar to what I am doing as PLM coach – focusing on the flow of information
SAP – explaining the change in focus when a company moves toward a product as a service model
SharePLM – A unique company addressing the importance of PLM training delivered through eLearning
Conclusion
The first day was an easy to digest conference with a good quality of presentations. I only shared 50 % of the session as we already reached 1000+ words. The evening I enjoyed the joint dinner, being able to network and discuss in depth with participants and finished with a social network event organized by SharePLM. Next week part 2.
In recent years, more and more PLM customers approached me with questions related to the usage of product information for downstream publishing. To be fair, this is not my area of expertise for the moment. However, with the mindset of a connected enterprise, this topic will come up.
For that reason, I have a strategic partnership with Squadra, a Dutch-based company, providing the same coaching model as TacIT; however, they have their roots in PIM and MDM.
Together we believe we can deliver a meaningful answer on the question: What are the complementary roles of PLM and PIM? In this post, our first joint introduction.
Note: The topic is not new. Already in 2005, Jim Brown from Tech-Clarity published a white-paper: The Complementary Roles of PIM and PLM. This all before digitization and connectivity became massive.
Let’s start with the abbreviations, the TLAs (Three-Letter-Acronyms) and their related domains
PLM – level 1
(Product Lifecycle Management – push)
For PLM, I want to stay close to the current definitions. It is the strategic approach to provide a governance infrastructure to deliver a product to the market. Starting from an early concept phase till manufacturing and in its extended definition also during its operational phase.
The focus with PLM is to reduce time to market by ensuring quality, cost, and delivery through more and more a virtual product definition, therefore being able to decide upfront for the best design choices, manufacturing options with the lowest cost. In the retail world, own-brand products are creating a need for PLM.
The above image is nicely summarizing the expected benefits of a traditional PLM implementation.
MDM (Master Data Management)
When product data is shared in an enterprise among multiple systems, there is a need for Master Data Management (MDM). Master Data Management focuses on a governance approach that information stored in various systems has the same meaning and shared values where relevant.
MDM guards and streamlines the way master data is entered, processed, guarded, and changed within the company, resulting in one single version of the truth and enabling different departments and systems to stay synced regarding their crucial data.
Interestingly, in the not-so-digital world of PLM, you do not see PLM vendors working on an MDM-approach. They do not care about an end-to-end connected strategy yet. I wrote about this topic in 2017 here: Master Data Management and PLM.
PIM (Product Information Management)
The need for PIM starts to become evident when selling products through various business channels. If you are a specialized machine manufacturer, your product information for potential customers might be very basic and based on a few highlights.
However, due to digitization and global connectivity, product information now becomes crucial to be available in real-time, wherever your customers are in the world.
In a competitive world, with an omnichannel strategy, you cannot survive without having your PIM streamlined and managed.
Product Innovation Platforms (PLM – Level 2 – Pull)
With the introduction of Product Innovation Platforms as described by CIMdata and Gartner, the borders of PLM, PIM, and MDM might become vague, as they might be all part of the same platform, therefore reducing the immediate need for an MDM-environment. For example, companies like Propel, Stibo, and Oracle are building a joint PLM-PIM portfolio.
Let’s dive more profound in the two scenarios that we meet the most in business, PLM driving PIM (my comfort zone) and PIM driving the need for PLM (Squadra’s s area of expertise).
PLM driving PIM
Traditionally PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) has been focusing on several aspects of the product lifecycle. Here is an excellent definition for traditional PLM:
PLM is a collection of best practices, dependent per industry to increase product revenue, reduce product-related costs and maximize the value of the product portfolio (source 2PLM)
This definition shows that PLM is a business strategy, not necessarily a system, but an infrastructure/approach to:
- ensure shorter time to market with the right quality (increasing product revenue)
- efficiently (reduce product-related costs – resources and scrap)
- deliver products that bring the best market revenue (maximize the value of the product portfolio)
The information handled by traditional PLM consists mostly of design data, i.e., specifications, manufacturing drawings, 3D Models, and Bill of Materials (physical part definitions) combined with version and revision management. In elaborate environments combined with processes supporting configuration management.
PLM data is more focused on internal processes and quality than on targeting the company’s customers. Sometimes the 3D Design data is used as a base to create lightweight 3D graphics for quotations and catalogs, combining it with relevant sales data. Traditional marketing was representing the voice of the customer.
PLM implementations are more and more providing an enterprise backbone for product data. As a result of this expansion, there is a wish to support sales and catalogs, more efficiently, sharing master data from creation till publishing, combining the product portfolio with sales and service information in a digital way.
In particular, due to globalization, there was a need to make information globally available in different languages without a significant overhead of resources to manage the data or manage the disconnect from the real product data.
Companies that have realized the need for connected data understood that Product Master Data Management is more than only the engineering/manufacturing view. Product Master Data Management is also relevant to the sales and services view. Historically done by companies as a customized extension on their PLM-system, now more and more interfacing with specialized PIM-systems. Proprietary PLM-PIM interfaces exist. Hopefully, with digital transformation, a more standardized approach will appear.
PIM driving the need for PLM
Because of changes in the retail market, the need for information in the publishing processes is also changing. Retailers also need to comply with new rules and legislation. The source of the required product information is often in the design process of the product.
In parallel, there is an ongoing market trend to have more and more private label products in the (wholesale and retail) assortments. This means a growing number of retailers and wholesalers will become producers and will have their own Ideation and innovation process.
A good example is ingredients and recipe information in the food retail sector. This information needs to be provided now by suppliers or by their own brand department that owns the design process of the product. Similar to RoHS or REACH compliance in the industry.
Retail and Wholesale can tackle own brands reasonably well with their PIM systems (or Excels), making use of workflows and product statuses. However, over the years, the information demands have increased, and a need for more sophisticated lifecycle management has emerged and, therefore the need for PLM (in this case, PLM also stands for Private Label Management).
In the image below, illustrates a PLM layer and a PIM layer, all leading towards rich product information for the end-users (either B2B or B2C).
In the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) world, most innovative products are coming from manufacturers. They have pipelines with lots of ideas resulting in a limited number of sellable products. In the Wholesale and Retail business, the Private Label development process usually has a smaller funnel but a high pressure on time to market, therefore, a higher need for efficiency in the product data chain.
Technological changes, like 3D Printing, also change the information requirements in the retail and wholesale sectors. 3D printing can be used for creating spare parts on-demand, therefore changing the information flow in processes dramatically. Technical drawings and models that were created in the design process, used for mass production, are now needed in the retail process closer to the end customer.
These examples make it clear that more and more information is needed for publication in the sales process and therefore needs to be present in PIM systems. This information needs to be collected and available during the PLM release process. A seamless connection between the product release and sales processes will support the changing requirements and will reduce errors and rework in on data.
PLM and PIM are two practices that need to go hand in hand like a relay baton in athletics. Companies that are using both tools must also organize themselves in a way that processes are integrated, and data governance is in place to keep things running smoothly.
Conclusion
Market changes and digital transformation force us to work in value streams along the whole product lifecycle ensuring quality and time to market. PLM and PIM will be connected domains in the future, to enable smooth product go-to-market. Important is the use of data standards (PLM and PIM should speak a common language) – best based on industry standards so that cross-company communication on product data is possible.
What do you think? Do you see PLM and PIM getting together too, in your business?
Please share in the comments.
When I wrote my post two weeks ago: A cross-platform interface standard for impact analysis? based on an article written by Martijn Dullaart and Martin Haket, I had the impression they were expressing the need for a standard for Impact Analysis. Apparently, I was wrong, like several other readers from my blog. We got more clarity from Martijn in his follow-up post: CM2: the cross-platform standard for impact analysis!
Of course, I should have known the answer, as Martijn was the chairperson at the Integrated Process Excellence (IPX) Congress. IpX is best known as they state:
We are best known for our founding CM2 (CMII) certification program initiated in 1986. Today, CM2 remains the global industry standard for enterprise change and configuration management. We take pride in facilitating positive lasting transformation.
Why should I have known the answer? Without wanting to offend anyone, it is similar to a situation where Jehovah’s Witnesses knock at your door, and they want to talk about the purpose of life. In that case, you immediately realize, it will be no discussion. (Or in Dutch: We from WC-eend recommend WC-eend)
The “mistakes” I made
Therefore, if you read Martijn’s follow-up post, you will realize we arrived in the nitty-gritty discussion between a well-documented, overarching concept of CM2 and the gray area that exists between PLM and general CM practices.
One of the examples:
If you call it CM or not, every company deals with CM. All regulated industries, like aerospace, defense, automotive, medical/healthcare, are clear about the need for CM. Not all companies call it CM, some call it indeed PLM or even something else. There are even companies that implement a change process per CM2 e.g., Facebook and Microsoft implement CM2 based processes using PLM tools. They might not call it CM but still use the CM2 standard.
Here I want to repeat my claim that I work and have worked with companies where people were CM2-trained. Either out of curiosity or business needs as something had to happen to manage the quality of product information. However, in most cases, only some concepts were implemented, mainly due to organizational resistance. Organizational resistance is quite known to PLM implementations. If companies would follow precisely the PLM methodology advocated by PLM vendors, there will be massive resistance from the end-users.
The cost for non-quality is in most organizations almost invisible as the silos in an organization, sales, R&D, engineering, manufacturing, and services are not connected. Hidden information leaves a place for blaming, unless you implement full CM2 based processes and additional PLM-practices for modularity, reuse, etc., etc.
The reality is that companies do not work according to the book. Digitalization creates a new challenge or opportunity. As digital, connected processes leave less opportunity to work outside the process, root causes and impacts become visible. In general, the visibility of decisions scares off people!
An open standard?
There are many ways to claim you are open. Some people claim PLM systems are not open as you have to buy APIs licenses to retrieve data from them. Others claim to be open-source; however, you need to pay a fee to use their software industrially. Understandable as there is a business model behind that, and this is the same for CM2.
Joseph Anderson, (president of IpX) explains:
“The CM2-600 standard is an open standard. We work with all solution providers. The cross industry integrated process excellence global congress that Martijn has chaired leads industry best practice discussions and its foundation is CM2.”
Which made me again curious about this CM2-600 open standard. Try to search for CM2 or the CM2-600 standard, and you end up with only high-level information, mostly referring to training to take.
Note: There is no reference to CM2-600 content directly available on (my) internet search. Only a link to the CM2-600 training. How to get people interested about the topic before joining training?
Joseph recommended me the following, in order to write about CM2:
Prior to releasing an opinion on a OCM method, standard, training, and or tool (people, process, systems) perhaps writers should do more to research…
1) I invite you to take the CM2-C Training sessions at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond.
2) Interface with the cross industry global congress from companies such as ASML, Bose, Sub-Zero, Airbus, Northrop Grumman, AGCO, Purdue, GE, …
3) Research what was presented at the 32nd annual ConX event. https://ipxhq.com/about/events/past-events/2019 I look forward to continuing the discussion.
As you can see, quite an investment needed just to have just an opinion. You can understand the IpX business model immediately.
Note: The podcasts you will find related to point 3) are helpful to know however no details (for the one that I listened to)
Compare this to the ISO15926 standard, which is very common in the Oil & Gas and other process industries. Here the exchange of information between engineering contractors (EPCs), Suppliers, and Owner/Operators is the main driving force for this standard.
If you search on the web, e.g. “ISO 15926 wiki”, you will find a lot of information. All the work is done by the members, often representing their company or following their ideals to support an open world. All the information is downloadable to understand the content. For example, have a look here: ISO-15926 explained.
What’s next?
In the past twenty years, we made progress through information sharing. Wikipedia is an example where information is liberated and has educated many people around the world, who did not have access to information that was locked in the past. Of course, academics do not like this popularization of knowledge and I am aware of the Dunning-Kruger effect. However, there is nothing wrong with academic language in an academic world.
As I responded to Joseph Anderson, the social world of blogging is not intended to be exact. You can find my presentations on SlideShare. If through blogging, an interest can be reached to implement PLM or CM2, we have made progress overall.
How to get people on-board is probably the crucial question for PLM and CM. PLM and CM are not sexy, as I wrote in 2010, after participating in a CMII conference in Amsterdam. Both PLM and CM are closed communities, telling themselves and some other believers, how important they are. Connecting to a broader audience is what I miss for CM2 (compare to ISO 15926), but also in PLM. Where are the few people discussing PLM methodology, instead of functions & features?
Conferences should be a place where experts discuss the details, including cultural change management.
Claims like:
- Get C-level support
- Educate yourself
- Business leads and IT will follow
- Think Big – Start Small
are all open-door-statements, often heard at every conference. You have to ask yourself: What is the unique value of your conference? The central theme to my opinion is how to change the traditional coordinated PLM approach towards a connected approach, becoming data-driven. A challenge for CM2 – a challenge for PLM. See Coordinated or Connected. Will CM2 also adapt to a model-based approach?
Speaking about conferences!
On 13 and 14 November, I will participate again in the CIMdata Roadmap – PDT Europe conference where we will meet with people from Airbus, BAE Systems Maritime, Bouygues, Renault, discussing standards like PLCS (ISO 10303-239) and more. The valuable part of this conference for me is that most participants have a genuine interest in sharing information. There are in-depth technical presentations; there are new ideas and more. Everyone participating in this conference is aware of CM.
What you can learn from this conference is ,that we always start with the technology, the processes, and methodology; however, we all struggle with implementing it. There is no “golden bullet” but a continuous learning process – the target of our domain.
Conclusion
No more PLM – CM ping-pong needed. I believe we made our points, and it does not bring value to the joined target: Getting people involved and understand CM and PLM. I believe in the democratization of knowledge so everyone can benefit and grow. It allows me to focus on the human side of the challenge.
A week ago, Martijn Dullaart and Martin Haket, both well skilled in configuration management, published a post on MDUX.net and LinkedIn where they pledged for standardization across domains, first of all when supporting processes between PLM and ERP – read the full article here: We need a cross-platform interface for impact analysis!
In the article, some standards with various scopes related to product information are mentioned (PDX, ISO 10303, ISO305:2017), and the article suggests that impact analysis should be done in an overarching domain, the CM domain, outside PLM. See the image on the left. I have several issues with this approach, which I will explain here.
PLM and/or CM are overarching domains
The diagram puts CAD, SW, PLM, and ERP as verticals, where I would state PLM is responsible for the definition of the Product, which means governing CAD and SW and publishing towards ERP for execution. You might discuss if CM is part of PLM or that CM is a service on top of PLM.
We had this discussion before: PLM and Configuration Management – a happy marriage? and one of my points was that in aerospace, defense, and automotive companies actively invest in CM. If you go to other industries and sizes of business, CM becomes more an intention than a practice.
Somehow the same challenge PLM has when it comes to full lifecycle support.
Now let’s look at impact analysis
During my personal PLM lifecycle, I discussed with many companies how a PLM system could provide a base for impact analysis. These scenarios were mainly based on a Where-Used analysis in the context of an engineering change, which PLM should be able to offer.
PLM would provide the information in which actual running products or upcoming products are impacted by a potential change – this would provide the technical answer and the impact on production.
To support the financial case, a more advanced impact analysis was required. This is often a manual process. In more advanced cases customization is used, to provide real-time information about the current warehouse stock (scrap?) and potential ordered parts/materials.
I could imagine some other potential impacts to analyze, for example, the marketing/sales plans, but haven’t come across these situations in my projects.
To start from a well-thought approach, I expected more from the article, Martijn and Martin wrote:
A good candidate to be used as interface between the expert domains and CM domain is, in our opinion, the CM2 impact matrix. This captures the information on an aggregate level like a part, or document or dataset. This aggregate level can be used by other expert domains to identify impact within their scope or by the CM domain to support cost estimation and implementation planning.
So I followed the link to discover and digest the CM2 impact matrix. However, the link leads to CM2 training, not directly useful information – the impact matrix. Should I get CM2 trained before to gain access to the information?
This is the same lock-in where a PLM Vendor will state:
Buy our system and use our impact analysis.
I believe every respectable PLM system has a base for impact analysis and probably a need to be customized for outside data. Martijn and Martin agree on that, as they write:
This interface is currently not existent in the offerings of the various vendors. If an impact matrix is available, it is to support the impact analysis within the tool of a vendor not to support impact analysis within a business. That is why Martin and I challenge the vendors in the various expert domains to come with a standard to allow businesses to perform a high-quality cross-functional impact analysis that improves the quality of decision making.
Vendors coming with a standard?
In particular, the sentences challenging the vendors to come with a standard is a mission impossible, to my opinion.
A vendor will never come with a standard unless THEY become the standard.
CATIA in Aerospace/Automotive, DXF in 2D mid-market CAD, IFC for the building market, Excel for calculations, are all examples where one vendor dominates the market. I do not believe there will be in any R&D department of a software company, people working spontaneously on standards,
Companies have to develop and push for standards
Standards have always been developed because there was a need to exchange information, most of the time needed for an exchange between companies – OEMs – Suppliers – partners. In the case of impact analysis, the target might be slightly different. Impact analysis is mainly focusing on internal systems within the organization that is planning a change.
And this makes the push for standardization again more complicated.
Let me explain why:
First, there is ERP – the image above shows Management of Change in the SAP help environment.
In most companies, the ERP-system is the major IT-system and all efforts to automate processes were targeted to be solved within ERP.
Therefore, you will find basic impact analysis capabilities, mainly related to the execution side: actual stock, planned production orders, and logistics in ERP. The rest of impact analysis is primarily a manual task.
Next, with the emergence of PLM-systems, impact analysis shifted towards the planning side: Where Used or Where Related became capabilities related to engineering change request. In my SmarTeam days we developed templates for that:
Where the Analysis was still a manual action, where the PLM-system would provide Where Used support and potentially a custom ERP-connection would give some additional information.
Nowadays, I would state all PLM vendors have the technical capabilities to create an impact analysis dashboard. Aras by rapid customization, Dassault Systemes by using Exalead, PTC by using Navigate and Siemens by using Mendix – so technology exists, but what about standards?
In the comments section to the LinkedIn post, Martijn mentions that the implemented change behavior in PLM is not exactly as he (or CM2 methodology) would propose. – the difficulty in the happy marriage between PLM and CM. See his comment here.
For me, these comments are change requests to the PLM vendors, and they will be only heard when there is a push from the outside world.
Therefore my (simplified) proposal:
- Start an Impact Analysis community outside CM2 as there are many companies not following CM2; still they have their particular ways of working. Perhaps this community exists and lacks visibility – I am happy to learn.
- Describe the potential processes and people involved and collect/combine the demands – think tool independent as this is the last step.
- Publish the methodology as an open standard and have it rated by the masses. The rating will influence the software vendors in the market.
Conclusion
Asking vendors to come with a cross-platform interface standard for impact analysis is a mission impossible. Standards appear when there is a business need that needs to come from the market. Impact Analysis has an additional difficulty as it is mostly a company-internal process.
The usage of standards has been a recurring topic the past 10 months, probably came back to the surface at PI PLMx Chicago during the PLM Leaders panel discussion. If you want to refresh the debate, Oleg Shilovitsky posted an overview: What vendors are thinking about PLM standards – Aras, Dassault Systemes, Onshape, Oracle PLM, Propel PLM, SAP, Siemens PLM.
It is clear for vendors when they would actively support standards they reduce their competitive advantage, after all, you are opening your systems to connect to other vendor solutions, reducing the chance to sell adjacent functionality. We call it vendor lock-in. If you think this approach only counts for PLM, I would suggest you open your Apple (iPhone) and think about vendor lock-in for a moment.
Vendors will only adhere to standards when pushed by their customers, and that is why we have a wide variety of standards in the engineering domain.
Take the example of JT as a standard viewing format, heavily pushed by Siemens for the German automotive industry to be able to work downstream with CATIA and NX models. There was a JT-version (v9.5) that reached ISO 1306 alignment, but after that, Siemens changed JT (v10) again to optimize their own exchange scenarios, and the standard was lost.
And as customers did not complain (too much), the divergence continued. So it clear vendors will not maintain standards out of charity as your business does not work for charity either (or do you ?). So I do not blame them is there is no push from their customers to maintain them.
What about standards?
The discussion related to standards flared up around the IpX ConX19 conference and a debate between Oleg & Hakan Kardan (EuroSTEP) where Hakan suggested that PLCS could be a standard data model for the digital thread – you can read Oleg’s view here: Do we need a standard like PLCS to build a digital thread.
Oleg’s opening sentence made me immediately stop reading further as more and more I am tired of this type of framing if you want to do a serious discussion based on arguments. Such a statement is called framing and in particular in politics we see the bad examples of framing.
Standards are like toothbrushes, a good idea, but no one wants to use anyone else’s. The history of engineering and manufacturing software is full of stories about standards.
This opening sentence says all about the mindset related to standards – it is a one-liner – not a fact. It could have been a tweet in this society of experts.
Still later,I read the blog post and learned Oleg has no arguments to depreciate PLCS, however as he does not know the details, he will probably not use it. The main challenge of standards: you need to spend time to understand and adhere to them and agree on following them. Otherwise, you get the same diversion of JT again or similar examples.
However, I might have been wrong in my conclusion as Oleg did some thinking on a Sunday and came with an excellent post: What would happen if PLM Vendors agree about data standards. Here Oleg is making the comparison with a standard in the digital world, established by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex : Schema.org: Evolution of Structured Data on the Web.
There is a need for semantic mapping and understanding in the day-to-day-world, and this understanding makes you realize the same is needed for PLM. That was one of the reasons why I wrote in the past (2015) a series of posts related to the importance of a PLM data model:
All these posts were aimed to help companies and implementers to make the right choices for an item-centric PLM implementation. At that time – 2015, item-centric was the current PLM best practice. I learned from my engagements in the past 15 years, in particular when you have a flexible modeling tool like SmarTeam or nowadays Aras, making the right data model decisions are crucial for future growth.
Who needs standards?
First of all, as long as you stay in your controlled environment, you do not need standards. In particular, in the Aerospace and Automotive industry, the OEMs defined the software versions to be used, and the supply chain had to adhere to their chosen formats. Even this narrow definition was not complete enough as a 3D CAD model needed to be exported for simulation or manufacturing purposes. There was not a single vendor working on a single CAD model definition at that time. So the need for standards emerged as there was a need to exchange data.
Data exchange is the driving force behind standards.
In a second stage also neutral format data storage became an important point – how to save for 75 years an aircraft definition.
Oil & Gas / Building – Construction
These two industries both had the need for standards. The Oil & Gas industry relies on EPC (Engineering / Procurement / Construction) companies that build plants or platforms. Then the owner/operator takes over the operation and needs a hand-over of all the relevant information. However if this information would be delivered in the application-specific formats the EPC companies have used, the owner/operator would require various software environments and skills, just to have access to the data.
Therefore if the data is delivered in a standard format (ISO 15926) and the exchange follows CFIHOS (Capital Facilities Information Hand Over Specification) this exchange can be done more automated between the EPC and Owner/Operator environment, leading to lower overall cost of delivering and maintaining the information combined with a higher quality. For that reason, the Oil & Gas industry has invested already for a long time in standards as their plants/platform have a long lifecycle.
And the same is happening in the construction industry. Initially Autodesk and Bentley were fighting to become the vendor-standard and ultimately the IFC-standard has taken a lot from the Autodesk-world, but has become a neutral standard for all parties involved in a construction project to share and exchange data. In particular for the construction industry, the cloud has been an accelerator for collaboration.
So standards are needed where companies/people exchange information
For the same reason in most global companies, English became the standard language. If you needed to learn all the languages spoken in a worldwide organization, you would not have time for business. Therefore everyone making some effort to communicate in one standard language is the best way to operate.
And this is the same for a future data-driven environment – we cannot afford for every exchange to go to the native format from the receiver or source – common neutral (or winning) standards will ultimately also come up in the world of manufacturing data exchange and IoT.
Companies need to push
This is probably the blocking issue for standards. Developing standards, using standards require an effort without immediate ROI. So why not use vendor-formats/models and create custom point-to-point interface as we only need one or two interfaces? Companies delivering products with a long lifecycle know that the current data formats are not guaranteed for the future, so they push for standards (aerospace/defense/ oil & gas/construction/ infrastructure).
3D PDF Model
Other companies are looking for short term results, and standards are slowing them down. However as soon as they need to exchange data with their Eco-system (suppliers/ customers) an existing standard will make their business more scalable. The lack of standards is one of the inhibitors for Model-Based Definition or the Model-Based Enterprise – see also my post on this topic: Model-Based – Connecting Engineering and Manufacturing
When we would imagine the Digital Enterprise of the future, information will be connected through data streams and models. In a digital enterprise file conversions and proprietary formats will impede the flow of data and create non-value added work. For example if we look to current “Digital Twin” concepts, the 3D-representation of the twin is recreated again instead of a neutral 3D-model continuity. This because companies currently work in a coordinated manner. In perhaps 10 years from now we will reach maturity of a model-based enterprise, which only can exist based on standards. If the standards are based on one dominating platform or based on a merger of standards will be the question.
To discuss this question and how to bridge from the past to the future I am looking forward meeting you at the upcoming PLM Roadmap & PDT 2019 EMEA conference on 13-14 November in Paris, France. Download the program here: PLM for Professionals – Product Lifecycle Innovation
Conclusion
I believe PLM Standards will emerge when building and optimizing a digital enterprise. We need to keep on pushing and actively working for meaningful standards as they are crucial to avoid a lock-in of your data. Potentially creating dead-ends and massive inefficiencies. The future is about connected Eco-systems, and the leanest companies will survive. Standards do not need to be extraordinarily well-defined and can start from a high-level alignment as we saw from schema.org. Keep on investing and contributing to standards and related discussion to create a shared learning path.
Thanks Oleg Shilovitsky to keep the topic alive.
p.s. I had not time to read and process your PLM Data Commodizitation post
Last week I read Verdi Ogewell’s article: PTC puts the Needle to the Digital Thread on Engineering.com where Verdi raised the question (and concluded) who is the most visionary PLM CEO – Bernard Charles from Dassault Systemes or Jim Heppelman from PTC. Unfortunately again, an advertorial creating more haziness around modern PLM than adding value.
People need education and Engineering.com is/was a respected site for me, as they state in their Engineering.com/about statement:
Valuable Content for Busy Engineers. Engineering.com was founded on the simple mission to help engineers be better.
Unfortunately this is not the case in the PLM domain anymore. In June, we saw an article related to the failing PLM migration at Ericsson – see The PLM migration dilemma. Besides the fact that a big-bang migration had failed at Ericsson, the majority of the article was based on rumors and suggestions, putting the sponsor of this article in a better perspective.
Of course, Engineering.com needs sponsoring to host their content, and vendors are willing to spend marketing money on that. However, it would be fairer to mention in a footnote who sponsored the article – although per article you can guess. Some more sincere editors or bloggers mention their sponsoring that might have influenced their opinion.
Now, why did the article PTC puts the Needle to the Digital Thread made me react?
Does a visionary CEO pay off?
It can be great to have a visionary CEO however, do they make the company and its products/services more successful? For every successful visionary CEO, there are perhaps ten failing visionary CEOs as the stock market or their customers did not catch their vision.
There is no lack of PLM vision as Peter Bilello mapped in 2014 when imagining the gaps between vision, available technology, and implementations at companies (leaders and followers). See below:
The tremendous gap between vision and implementation is the topic that concerns me the most. Modern PLM is about making data available across the enterprise or even across the company’s ecosystem. It is about data democratization that allows information to flow and to be presented in context, without the need to recreate this information again.
And here the marketing starts. Verdi writes:
PTC’s Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), digital twin and augmented reality (AR) investments, as well as the collaboration with Rockwell Automation in the factory automation arena, have definitely placed the company in a leading position in digital product realization, distribution and aftermarket services
With this marketing sentence, we are eager to learn why
“With AR, for example, we can improve the quality control of the engines,” added Volvo Group’s Bertrand Felix, during an on-stage interview by Jim Heppelmann. Heppelmann then went down to a Volvo truck with the engine lifted out of its compartment. Using a tablet, he was able to show how the software identified the individual engine, the parts that were included, and he could also pick up the 3D models of each component and at the same time check that everything was included and in the right place.
Impressive – is it real?
The point is that this is the whole chain for digital product realization–development and manufacturing–that the Volvo Group has chosen to focus on. Sub-components have been set up that will build the chain, much is still in the pilot stage, and a lot remains to be done. But there is a plan, and the steps forward are imminent.
OK, so it is a pilot, and a lot remains to be done – but there is a plan. I am curious about the details of that plan, as a little later, we learn from the CAD story:
The Pro/ENGINEER “inheritor” Creo (engine, chassis) is mainly used for CAD and creation of digital twins, but as previously noted, Dassault Systémes’ CATIA is also still used. Just as in many other large industrial organizations, Autodesk’s AutoCAD is also represented for simpler design solutions.
There goes the efficient digital dream. Design data coming from CATIA needs to be recreated in Creo for digital twin support. Data conversion or recreation is an expensive exercise and needs to be reliable and affordable as the value of the digital twin is gone once the data is incorrect.
In a digital enterprise, you do not want silos to work with their own formats, you want a digital thread based on (neutral) models that share metadata/parameters from design to service.
So I dropped the article and noticed Oleg had already commented faster than me in his post: Does PLM industry need a visionary pageant? Oleg refers also to CIMdata, as they confirmed in 2018 that the concept of a platform for product innovation (PIP), or the beyond PLM is far from reality in companies. Most of the time, a PLM implementation is mainly a beyond PDM environment, not really delivering product data downstream.
I am wholly aligned with Oleg’s technical conclusion:
What is my(Oleg’s) conclusion? PLM industry doesn’t need another round of visionary pageants. I’d call democratization, downstream usage and openness as biggest challenges and opportunities in PLM applications. Recent decades of platform development demonstrated the important role network platforms played in the development of global systems and services. PLM paradigm change from isolated vertical platforms to open network services required to bring PLM to the next level. Just my thoughts..
My comments to Oleg’s post:
(Jos) I fully agree we do not need more visionary PLM pageants. It is not about technology and therefore I have to disagree with your point about Aras. You call it democratization and openness of data a crucial point – and here I agree – be it that we probably disagree about how to reach this – through standards or through more technology. My main point to be made (this post ) is that we need visionary companies that implement and rethink their processes and are willing to invest resources in that effort. Most digital transformation projects related to PLM fail because the existing status quo/ middle management has no incentive to change. More thoughts to come
And this is the central part of my argumentation – it is not about technology (only).
Organizational structures are blocking digital transformation
Since 2014 I have been following several larger manufacturing companies on their path from pushing products to the market in a linear mode towards a customer-driven, more agile, fast responding enterprise. As this is done by taking the benefit of digital technologies, we call this process: digital transformation.
(image depicting GE’s digital thread)
What I have learned from these larger enterprises, and both Volvo Trucks and GE as examples, is that there is a vision for an end result. For GE, it is the virtual twin of their engines monitored and improved by their Predix platform. For Volvo Trucks, we saw the vision in the quote from Verdi’s article before.
However, these companies are failing in creating a horizontal mindset inside their companies. Data can only be efficiently used downstream if there is a willingness to work on collecting the relevant data upstream and delivering this information in an accessible format, preferably data-driven.
The Middle Management Dilemma
And this leads to my reference to middle management. Middle managers learn about the C-level vision and are pushed to make this vision happen. However, they are measured and driven to solve these demands, mainly within their own division or discipline. Yes, they might create goodwill for others, but when it comes to money spent or changing people’s responsibilities, the status quo will remain.
I wrote about this challenge in The Middle Management dilemma. Digital transformation, of course, is enabled by digital technologies, but it does not mean the technology is creating the transformation. The crucial fact lies in making companies more flexible in their operations, yet establishing better and new contacts with customers.
It is interesting to see that the future of businesses is looking into agile, multidisciplinary teams that can deliver incremental innovations to the company’s portfolio. Somehow going back to the startup culture inside a more significant enterprise. Having worked with several startups, you see the outcome-focus as a whole in the beginning – everyone contributes. Then when the size of the company grows, middle-management is introduced, and most likely silos are created as the middle management gets their own profit & loss targets.
Digital Transformation myths debunked
This week Helmut Romer (thanks Helmut) pointed me to the following HBR-article: Digital does not need to be disruptive where the following myths are debunked:
- Myth: Digital requires radical disruption of the value proposition.
Reality: It usually means using digital tools to better serve the known customer need. - Myth: Digital will replace physical
Reality: It is a “both/and.” - Myth: Digital involves buying start-ups.
Reality: It involves protecting start-ups. - Myth: Digital is about technology.
Reality: It’s about the customer - Myth: Digital requires overhauling legacy systems.
Reality: It’s more often about incremental bridging.
If you want to understand these five debunked myths, take your time to read the full article, which very much aligned with my argumentation, albeit that my focus is more on the PLM domain.
Conclusions
Vendor sponsoring at Engineering.com has not improved the quality of their PLM articles and creates misleading messages. Especially as the sponsor is not mentioned, and the sponsor is selling technology – the vision gap is too big with reality to compete around a vision.
Transforming companies to take benefit of new technologies requires an end-to-end vision and mindset based on achievable, incremental learning steps. The way your middle management is managed and measured needs to be reworked as the focus is on horizontal flow and understanding of customer/market-oriented processes.
Three weeks ago, I closed my PLM-twisted mind for a short holiday. Meanwhile, some interesting posts appeared about the PLM journey.
- Is it a journey?
- Should the journey be measurable?
- And what kind of journey could you imagine?
Together these posts formed a base for a decent discussion amongst the readers. I like these discussions. For me, the purpose of blogging is not the same as tweeting. It is not about just making noise so others will chime in or react (tweeting), it is about sharing an opinion, and if more people are interested, the discussion can start. And a discussion is not about right or false, as many conversations happen to be nowadays, it is about learning.
Let’s start with the relevant posts.
How to measure PLM?
The initial discussion started with Oleg Shilovitsky’s post about the need to measure the value of PLM. As Oleg mentions in his comments:
“During the last decades, I learned that every company that measured what they do was winning the business and succeeded (let’s count Google, Amazon, etc ..)”
This is an interesting statement, just measure! The motto people are using for digital businesses. In particular for the fast-moving software business. Sounds great, so let’s measure PLM. What can we measure with PLM? Oleg suggests as an example:
“Let’s say before PLM implemented a specific process, sales needed 2 days to get a quote. After PLM process implementation, it is 15 min.”
So what does this result tell us? Your sales can do 64 times more sales quotes. Do we need fewer salespeople now? We do not know from this KPI what is the real value for the company. This because there are so many other dependencies related to this process, and that makes PLM different from, for example, ERP. We do not talk about optimizing a process as Oleg might suggest below:
“Some of my PLM friends like to say – PLM is a journey and not some kind of software. Well, I’m not sure to agree about “journey,” but I can take PLM as a process. A process, which includes all stages of product development, manufacturing, support, and maintenance.”
Note: I do not want to be picky on Oleg, as he is provoking us all many times with just his thoughts. Moreover, several of them are a good points for discussion. So please dive into his LinkedIn posts and follow the conversation.
In Oleg’s follow-up post on measuring the value, he continued with Can we measure the PLM-journey which summarizes the comments from the previous post with a kind of awkward conclusion:
What is my conclusion? It is a time for PLM get out of old fashion guessing and strategizing and move into digital form of thinking – calculating everything. Modern digital businesses are strongly focused on the calculation and measurement of everything. Performance of websites, metrics of application usage, user experience, efficiency, AB testing of everything. Measurement of PLM related activity sounds like no brainier decision to me. Just my thoughts…
I think all of us agree that there needs to be a kind of indicative measurement in place to justify investments in place. There must be expected benefits that solve current business problems or bottlenecks.
My points that I want to share with you are:
- It is hard to measure non-comparable ways of working – how do you measure collaboration?
- Do you know what to measure? – engineering/innovation is not an ERP process
- People and culture have so much impact on the results – how do you measure your company’s capability to adapt to new ways of working?
Meanwhile, we continue our journey…
Is PLM a never-ending journey?
In the context of the discussion related to the PLM journey, I assume Chad Jackson from Lifecycle Insights added his 3 minutes of thoughts. You can watch the video here:
Vlogging seems to become more prevalent in the US. The issue for me is that vlogs only touch the surface, and they are hard to scan for interesting reusable content. Something you miss when you are an experienced speed-reader. I like written content as it is easier to pick and share relevant pieces, like what I am doing now in this post.
Chad states that as long as PLM delivers quantified value, PLM could be expanding. This sounds like a journey, and I could align here. The only additional thought I would like to add to this point is that it is not necessary expanding all the time, it is also about a continuous change in the world and therefore your organization. So instead of expanding, there might be a need to do things differently: Have you noticed PLM is changing.
Next Chad mentions organizational fatigue. I understand the point – our society and business are currently changing extremely fast, which causes people to long for the past. A typical behavior I observe everywhere: in the past, everything was better. However, if companies would go back and operate like in the past, they would be out of business. We moved from the paper drawing board to 3D CAD, managing it through PDM and PLM to remain significant. So there is always a journey.
Fatigue comes from choosing the wrong directions, having a reactive culture – instead of being inspired and motivated to reach the next stage, the current stage is causing already so much stress. Due to the reactive culture, people cannot imagine a better future – they are too busy. I believe it is about culture and inspiration that makes companies successful – not by just measuring. For avoiding change, think about the boiling frog metaphor, and you see what I mean
Upgrading to PLM when PDM falls short
At the same time, Jim Brown from Tech-Clarity published a PTC-sponsored eBook: Upgrading to PLM when PDM fall short, in which as he states:
This eBook explains how to recognize that you’ve outgrown PDM and offers several options to find the data and process management capabilities your company needs, whether it’s time to find a more capable PDM or upgrade to PLM. It also provides practical advice on what to look for in a PLM solution, to ensure a successful implementation, and in a software partner.
Jim is mentioning various business drivers that can drive this upgrade path. Enlarge the image to the left. I challenge all the believers in measurable digital results to imagine which KPIs they would use and how they can be related to pure PLM.
Here the upgrade process is aiming at replacing PDM by PLM something PLM vendors like. Immediate a significant numbers of licenses for the same basic PDM functionality – for your company hard to justify there is no additional value.
In many situations, I have seen that this type of PDM upgrade projects became advanced PDM projects – not PLM. The new PLM system was introduced in the engineering department and became an even bigger silo than before as other disciplines/departments were not willing to work with this new “monster” and preferred their own system. They believe that PLM is a system to be purchased and implemented, which is killing for a real PLM strategy.
Still, if you are interested and have time for a puzzle, follow this discussion and add your thoughts
Conclusion
During my holidays, there was a vivid discussion related to the PLM value and journey. Looking back, it is clear we are part of a PLM journey. Some do not take part in the journey and keep on hanging to the past, those who understand the journey are all seeing different Points Of Interests – the characteristics of a journey
Jos Voskuil's Weblog 
[…] (The following post from PLM Green Global Alliance cofounder Jos Voskuil first appeared in his European PLM-focused blog HERE.) […]
[…] recent discussions in the PLM ecosystem, including PSC Transition Technologies (EcoPLM), CIMPA PLM services (LCA), and the Design for…
Jos, all interesting and relevant. There are additional elements to be mentioned and Ontologies seem to be one of the…
Jos, as usual, you've provided a buffet of "food for thought". Where do you see AI being trained by a…
Hi Jos. Thanks for getting back to posting! Is is an interesting and ongoing struggle, federation vs one vendor approach.…