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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)
I am writing this post as i come across this question on a regular base, and as a response on a recent post from Jim Brown. I addressed this topic already in previous posts in the past, for your convenience i have put all relevant links I considered at the bottom of this post.
I believe the question is hard to answers if asked this way. It all depends on where is your point of gravity. You can divide the PLM providers in different groups.
- PLM vendors with a focus pure on PLM – their major business is in providing the majority of the PLM related tasks, independent of a certain CAD or ERP package, but interfaces usually through a generic approach with these applications. Matrix One (now integrated in Dassault’s ENOVIA offering), Aras (Open Source), Arena (On-line) are examples of this type of PLM providers.
- PLM vendors coming from their CAD environment, initially manage their 3D CAD data and extending these capabilities to other authoring tools. ENOVIA VPLM and SmarTeam (main CAD system managed CATIA) are Dassault’s solutions, Siemens UGS (main CAD system managed NX) and PTC (main CAD system managed Pro/E) are examples of this type of providers
- ERP vendors who extended their offering with PLM functionality – either by developing PLM functionality themselves (SAP) or by acquisitions of PLM functionality (Oracle / BaaN)
- and there is still a vendor that does not do PLM, but calls it digital prototyping
As each of these PLM providers has their customers and market share – interesting to read is CIMDATA’s overview of the PLM market. What you see there is that it is hard for the independent PLM vendors to be ranked in the top 5. Also the biggest independent PLM vendor in the past, Matrix One, had a hard time to compete against the CAD or ERP based vendors. Why ??
I believe because the major reason lies in the fact that companies want to keep their IT-infrastructure as simple as possible. Buying a PLM system from the current major CAD vendor or from the current major ERP vendor keeps their situation manageable. Why deal with a third vendor that has to integrate with their CAD and ERP software ?
This would lead to a statement that there are only two type of major PLM providers: CAD based or ERP based. And here I am back to the initial question: Can ERP vendors provide PLM ?
Here I believe there is a major difference in the approach of PLM. Yes, both types of companies can provide PLM functionality but they offer it in a different way. It is like Ferrari and Volkswagen provide cars, but are they addressing the same audience ?
Some years ago I had a conversation with a SAP country manager about PLM. It was in the time that SAP did not recognize PLM yet as a business approach required in addition to ERP. He told me that SAP was managing all the company’s data and processes and that it was just a matter of time before also companies would recognize that engineers working with their CAD systems are nothing else but resources in the whole process. “Designers believe they are artists and cannot be managed but we will show them we can” . Here you see the focus is not on creating the environment for innovation or new products, but on managing existing processes as efficient in a certain way.
To generalize ERP vendors talk PLM but practice efficiency and neglect the fact that innovation and creativity are not manageable (sorry for the generalization but it make things more clear)
CAD based PLM vendors focus a lot on the product creation process. Supporting companies to design and develop new products, mainly in the virtual world. They do not try to manage the development process like a production process but work with mile stones to assure progress and managing quality and risk (NPI – new product introduction). Only when the product definition is mature and complete it will be handed over to ERP to produce the products where needed. Did you ever wonder why CAD based PLM vendors do not expand into ERP ?
And here lies the the difference I believe. If you choose for a CAD based PLM vendor, your company is focusing on innovation, creating new products, when you choose for an ERP based PLM system you will focus on efficiency and process management. Ask the ERP vendor to which level PLM is integrated in their company – is there a person responsible for PLM in the top management ? Technically you can integrate a full portfolio of products, but understanding and making PLM a part of the strategy is the decisive question for the future.
Conclusion
Yes, ERP vendors can provide PLM functionality and as a company you should decide where is your business focus.
If your focus on efficiency and not on innovation ERP providers can offer a total solution.
If your company focuses on new and better products, I believe that your focus should be on CAD based PLM vendors as they offer the best environment for innovation support and capturing design knowledge.
And be critical – as before you know the front falls off
PLM and ERP previous posts:
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)
I am writing this week’s post on my way to a customer to finalize an implementation and in parallel describing the Return On Investment of this project. But before that, I would like to have a short note about my previous post ‘Free PLM software does not help companies“.
The reason I wrote this post was because I wanted to assure that companies do not believe that ROI for implementing PLM is based on the software costs. PLM implementations are a combination of software, business skills and the company culture. Specially in the current economical situation, I wanted to make clear that these factors are not overlooked. Also I did not want to say Open Source PLM is bad, I made my points on the messaging, however in functionality and usage I do not see a big difference between other types of PLM systems. I got some interesting comments on this post and I advise all of you, who have read the post to go through the comments to get a broader perspective. Once I have had some more opportunity to investigate this area deeper, I will come with a more in-depth post on this topic.
To PLM or Not To PLM
But now back to: To PLM or Not To PLM, where I wrote in a first post on this topic that before judging the costs and ROI of PLM, we should start analyzing our current processes and situation and use this as a baseline to guesstimate the PLM benefits.
The first PLM phase to analyze is the concept phase, where new ideas are picked up (or not). Actually this is the phase where we define the future of the company. The economical recession in a way forces companies to rethink their strategy and fortunately all of the competition is in a similar position. downturn means less activities, the company might be in the position to allocate time to address these analysis for PLM ROI. Instead of making people redundant, use these people to work on a new and optimized product strategy.
Existential questions to ask yourself as a company
The basic questions to ask about the concept phase:
- Do we know where our products are currently in their lifecycle ?
Measure: quantity, sales trends, margin
Analyze: is our portfolio healthy ? - How do customer rate our products ?
Measure: market share, market awareness, customer satisfaction, quality, field issues
Analyze: will customers keep on buying from us ? - Where are we different from the competition ?
Measure: where do we win/ where do we loose and compare per quarter ?
Analyze: how can we improve the success ratio ? - In case of bidding
Measure: how many bids do we handle per quarter and with which effort
Analyze: What is the win percentage and how to influence this ? - Who are our customers ?
Measure: does the 80-20 rule apply – does 80 % of the revenue come from 20 % of the customers ?
Analyze: What is the trend specially in relation to the current market situation - Where does innovation come from ?
Measure: the amount of new ideas, the source (people, customers) and the ones that reach it to the portfolio
Analyze: Do we have a guarantee for innovation ?
Additional questions to be asked due to current financial and global situation: 
- How do we strive for climate neutral products – sustainable development ?
Measure: the amount of energy used to build the products but also to recycle and what remains
Analyze: How can we change our products and production process ? - How do we capture our company’s IP due to the aging workforce in most of the countries
Measure: How many people with the specific knowledge will retire in 5 – 10 years ?
Analyze: Where and how can I assure this knowledge remains in the company ?
For many of the above questions you might say that you know how to conduct your business as you are doing most of these activities and even more. However the question you should ask yourself also is: How long does it take to answer these questions and to react on these trends ?
Because all the above topics are positively influenced by PLM – here it the PLM ROI !
Project and Portfolio Management, company wide workflow process allow the company to measure, to run analysis and to have information within hours (or worse case in days), where in a company where every department and discipline has their own environment, the effort to collect this information becomes huge and not natural. And as it will take a lot of time to collect the information, people tend to react on their guts or intuition, which might be wrong if you are among the wrong people or if the world changes in a way never seen before.
Additional capturing product and process knowledge allows companies to contain their IP. And just to make this point clear: Product knowledge is not only CAD and Bills of Materials. It is all collected information: issues during design, during production, coming from field services, best practices used and more. The challenge anyway for every PLM system is to provide an environment, user-friendly enough for all users, to start managing their total product IP in a single environment.
Conclusion
PLM as a total approach brings a lot of value and control in the concept phase, the phase where the company’s future is merely defined. And it is obvious that the future should be green and sustainable. Use the current downturn to shape the future – the questions in this post and your analysis should be the base.
Last week I saw once more a post, where free PLM software was offered and combined with the open source aura it should be THE solution for companies that want to implement PLM during this economical downturn. I believe this is a big mistake and for the following reasons:
WYPIWYG (What You Pay Is What You Get)
I learned that the WYPIWYG rule usually applies in the software world. Free software is nice, but does not guarantee that in case some functionality is missing or corrupt, that it will be fixed. So in case a company wants to implement the free PLM software, what to do if you feel something important for your business is missing ? You can ask the software provider to implement it for you – but will this be done ? Probably only when it is easy to achieve it will be done, but no commitment as the software is for free.
To assure it can be done, the software vendor will say it is open source software, so it can be changed if you want it. But who is going to make the change ? The mid-market company that thought to have selected an economical solution is not an IT-company – so who to hire? The open source software development company ? And this is what their business model is based on – they have the expertise with their software, so probably they are the best to adapt the open source software – not for free of course – and they learn from that but the customer pays.
Conclusion: there is no such thing as a free lunch.
It does not mean that all open source software is bad. Linux has shown that for an operating system it makes sense. Operating systems are 100 % in the scope of IT. PLM is something different. PLM systems indeed need to provide an IT backbone to assure data collaboration and replication globally. However PLM is probably more focused on business process changes and NOT on IT.
PLM requires people with business skills and not software developers
From my experience, PLM projects fail in case there are no business knowledgeable people available. It did not only happen with free PLM software or open source software. Some years ago, ERP vendors started to provide free PLM software to their customers to keep PLM companies on a distance. Like free PLM software it looked nice business wise, the software is free when you buy their ERP system. But who is going to implement it ?
This free PLM software availability has changed in the past years for ERP vendors. Also ERP vendors see PLM as a growth market for their business, so they started also to invest in PLM, providing PLM consultancy and no longer for free PLM functionality. However in one of the projects I was involved, it is clear that PLM and ERP are complementary approaches. Interesting is that none of the PLM vendors focus on ERP, apparently ERP vendors believe they can master PLM. I won’t say it is impossible however I believe if there is no real PLM vision on the top level of an ERP company, you cannot expect the competitive focus to exist.
Are CAD vendors providing PLM ?
Some CAD vendors have an embedded data management solution to manage their own data. This is usually more a PDM system and often the word PDM (Product Data Management) is too much for that. These systems manage their own CAD data but have no foundation for a multi-discipline Engineering BOM. For me, this is the base for PDM, as most companies have several disciplines working with different tools all around the same product. So CAD data management for me is not a the base for PDM, so for sure not for PLM.
PLM vendors bring real PLM value !
For me it is clear having worked with different vendors in the past: an ERP vendor, several PDM and PLM vendors, it is clear for me in order to bring committed value to a customer, you need first of all people with PLM skills – the ones that can differentiate between business process adaptation and software development. In order to implement PLM successful companies need to change the way they were working (read many of my previous posts about this – in particular this one). Software developers tend not to take this approach, but they adapt or extend the software to support the old way of working.
Finally paying for PLM software guarantees that the development of this software has a continuation based on business drivers and best practices. A PLM software vendor has the drive to improve to stay in business, both by software capabilities but even more by providing industry best practices.
Therefor my conclusion is that free PLM software does not help mid-market companies.
Feel free to react as I believe it is an important topic in this market.
It is already a month ago that I published a post. You might have been thinking: “Has the Virtual Dutchman gone, due to the credit crisis ?”
On the contrary, this month January has been an extremely busy month with a lot of activities mainly in Europe. Except from all the discussions with customers, I also had lot of interaction with some of my peers in the field all around the topic of PLM.
Part of these discussions were around:
“How would the best PLM system look-like in the context of the mid-market ?”
And
“If this PLM system exists, would it be implemented by mid-market companies?”
However first, as an interlude, I would like to show you two interesting links from the past month.
- Martin Ohly on his web site Global PLM trying to share his experiences and view on PLM. Certainly when you would like to get an impression of all the topics around global PLM, you should go there. You will find topics there for discussion and like Martin, I am trying to do it in a similar way through my blog, although I focus more on sharing the experiences with customers and leave the architectural details in the background.
- Oleg Shilovitsky has been bombarding us since a few months with thoughts around PLM his Daily PLM Think Tank. It is interesting to see how Oleg combines concepts, trends from other disciplines with PLM. As they are all air balloons, some of them explode, others get a lot of attention as somewhere around the globe other people had similar thoughts. A nice example of global brainstorming – still everyone keeps their own IP
Now back to the question: To PLM or not to PLM ?
This is the question I hear the most from the companies I have been visiting. They learn from the PLM vendors and analysts that they should do PLM. However every vendor has its own PLM definition, technology or solution. So who to choose ?
Here I tend to say, that the selection of the right PLM product is the last step of moving towards PLM. Yes, you can start with a PLM product and then learning on the job what is the best fit/ Not recommended. In a later post I will focus on what are the questions that a customer should consider when selecting a PLM system, the first question remains: To PLM or Not to PLM ?
Before selecting a PLM system, I would like to discuss and assist companies with their internal discussion in the company: To PLM or Not PLM ? In order to justify PLM, you need to have a justification for your company.
What will PLM bring us ?
The decision for Yes or No PLM will depend on ROI (Return On Investment) and long term strategy. Of course there is a connection between the long term strategy and the ROI. But how do you determine the ROI ? Often I hear the question: “What will be the ROI for my company ?” The only answers I can give without more details are commonalties, like: Reducing the time engineers use for searching with 50 % or more . Based on the costs of your engineers you can estimated the value for this time saving, etc, etc
However, immediately one of the customers said, we already have an efficient search. Yes a lot is stored in directories, but we feel we manage it well, so the benefits are perhaps only 5 % ?
And here started the discussion. In general the files in their directories were reliable, the problem only appeared when suddenly someone else needed quickly the data used for a design and unfortunate found something in the directory of a wrong project. The result was that the wrong spare parts were used, which led to a production stand-still at the customer which led to a claim. But this happened only once the manager said.
Here you see that an incident, which most employees of the company do not want to take into consideration (it was an incident), lead to losing a good relation with a customer (and probably no future customer anymore) and the costs of an incidental claim. It is not only counting efficiency.
This is where the long term strategy comes. How do you as a company make sure that you will have customers in the future ? And for this question, there are many parameters, like:
- Do we still have the right products ?
- What do customers expect from us in the future?
- What is the competition doing ?
- What are trends we must follow ?
- Where can we innovate (differentiate)?
- How efficient do we bring a product or order to delivery ?
- Can we be more efficient ?
- Can we do the process different and become more flexible ?
- Can we lower the risk by standardizing ?
Measuring is needed
These questions are not easy to answer unless you have a clear sight on what is happening in your core business and primary processes. And it is here where mid-market companies often differ from the big enterprises. Everyone is busy to do their job and tasks and there is no strategic department that looks from a distance to the company to analyze and describe it and plan the strategy. The management in the company has it as a secondary job often left apart due to the primary tasks.
The current economical down-turn makes it even more important how to survive and in a shorter time frame.
But although the economical down-turn creates a threat it also is an opportunity. Companies might have currently less work to do, so they have the chance to look to what there are usually doing as a first baseline.
In my upcoming posts, I want to focus on these type of questions for benchmarking – knowing that per industry they might be a little different. The reward at the end might be two-fold: you know as a company where you are and secondly now you can start really calculating the ROI of a PLM implementation. The last part can be done with an external consultant experienced in PLM as he/she can estimate benefits from other implementations. The ROI will justify and guarantee that your company is better tuned when all lights from the economy go to green.
Conclusion: Start thinking and measuring now you have the time. The result will create the base for a good justification for PLM when and where needed with a correct ROI. And it is not only about doing thing more efficient, this will not kill the competition, it is about doing things different
Success with your analysis – and feel free to ask your questions through the comments – you can indicate if you want to treat them private or public
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.
This post is a reply on a post from YML, with whom I have been working in the past. At that time we had interesting discussions on various topics around PLM and I am happy to continue this discussion in blog space. Please read his post in order to understand the full reasoning below.
First I want to make a statement to avoid misconception. I am a PLM evangelist and perhaps my definition of PLM is wider than what PLM vendors currently offer. For me PLM focuses not only on storing and managing the product data (PDM), but also on the whole process of how new products or improved products are created, designed, produced and supported.
From the Dassault Systemes and Autodesk (read Jim Brown’s comments on them) perspective, there is a lot of focus on the collaboration around the virtual product, however for me personally, when working with mid-market customers, I am mainly focusing on capturing design knowledge and IP plus creating visibility of knowledge inside a company, without being dependent on knowledge stored in people brains.
Interesting development in that area I am observing recently is in www.vuuch.com. An initiative to empower design discussions.
Now back to the reply on YML’s post:
So when Yann writes:
However I disagree with the statement that you use as foundation : Software vendor are proposing excellent product with a good ROI and SMB customer don’t understand it because they do not have a vision.
I must say: read my statement above – there is still work to be done. When I am talking about the lack of vision in the mid-market companies, I will provide an update based on some experiences I had the past few weeks, where lack of vision is blocking process improvements.
Next Yann is mentioning all the propriety formats of all vendors, PLM vendors, vendors of authoring tools (CAD, Content,…) and even limited version support. Yann makes a point for open-source solutions, which are part of the WEB 2.0 evolution. Interesting to see that at the same time Kurt Chen writes an interesting post on What Can PLM Offer for SMBs? in the same context.
My main comment on this topic is that I understand the beauty of open source, however I also believe that if you want to work with open source solutions, you need to have a 100 % clear concept of what the product should do (that is why Linux is successful – I believe PLM is not there yet) or you need companies that have strong IT-knowledge/support to adapt the software to their needs.However, this contradicts the fact that mid-market companies usually do not have these resources to invest in this kind of activity. So what would they do ? Hire consultancy firms or software companies (sometimes the original developer of the open source software) to adapt the software to their needs. This creates almost the same dependency as what customers would have with traditional PLM vendors – they rely on their software provider as the resource to drive PLM.
Then the question comes up:
Who would I trust to assist my mid-market company to evolve towards PLM ?
A company developing software or a company that has experience in my industry and perhaps does not deliver the best in class product (yet).I have met a company that decided to discontinue PLM software as the provider only brought programmers into the game, they tried to solve requests from the users and at the end – after 1.5 year of programming the system became so complex but crucial details were missing. An industry knowledgeable person with PLM knowledge would approach it different – first focusing on the process and then analyze where automation would bring benefits.Also Yann mentions:
It is interesting to note that nobody is blaming Ford, GM, … of not being able to see that they have good chance to go bankrupt in some month from now. It is interesting that many people blame now these companies of not being able re-invent/adapt their products to their market. when all of them where using PLM systems and had huge PLM projects on going
and additional:
In order to develop this agility SMB need to put very high in the list of capabilities for their information system the following features : Agility, re-configuration, continuous evolution / transformation, openness, ease of integration with unknown system, overall strategy of the PLM vendor
Here I disagree with the first quote. Ford and GM have no PLM implementations, they built a dinosaur type of implementation with focus on product development – yes provided by PLM vendors, but so rigid implemented that they lost the capabilities to be connected to the market.And I fully agree with the second quote – nothing to add. PLM should be implemented in such a way that it does not restrict a company in its flexibility – as innovation does not come from doing a process more efficient – it comes from doing things different
So to conclude for today:
- Yes, current PLM vendors are not perfect and there is a challenge to reach the mid-market
- Open Source solutions make only sense if combined with industry knowledge
- Agility, re-configuration, continuous evolution / transformation, openness, ease of integration with unknown systems should be the overall strategy of the PLM vendor (not only mid-market)
Thanks Yann, and enjoy your fishing, take notice of what could happen:
Jos Voskuil's Weblog 
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