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Last week I published a dialogue I had with Flip van der Linden, a fellow Dutchman and millennial, eager to get a grip on current PLM. You can read the initial post here: A PLM dialogue. In the comments, Flip continued the discussion (look here). I will elaborate om some parts of his comments and hope some others will chime in. It made me realize that in the early days of blogging and LinkedIn, there were a lot of discussions in the comments. Now it seems we become more and more consumers or senders of information, instead of having a dialogue. Do you agree? Let me know.
Point 1
(Flip) PLM is changing – where lies the new effort for (a new generation of) PLM experts. I believe a huge effort for PLM is successful change management towards ‘business Agility.’ Since a proper response to an ECR/ECO would evidently require design changes impacting manufacturing and even after-sales and/or legal. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
You are right, the main challenge for future PLM experts is to explain and support more agile processes, mainly because software has become a major part of the solution. The classical, linear product delivery approach does not match the agile, iterative approach for software deliveries. The ECR/ECO process has been established to control hardware changes, in particular because there was a big impact on the costs. Software changes are extremely cheap and possible fast, leading to different change procedures. The future of PLM is about managing these two layers (hardware/software) together in an agile way. The solution for this approach is that people have to work in multi-disciplinary teams with direct (social) collaboration and to be efficient this collaboration should be done in a digital way.
A good article to read in this context is Peter Bilello’s article: Digitalisation enabled by product lifecycle management.
(Flip) What seems to be missing is an ‘Archetype’ of the ideal transformed organization. Where do PLM experts want to go with these businesses in practice? Personally, I imagine a business where DevOps is the standard, unique products have generic meta-data, personal growth is an embedded business process and supply chain related risks are anticipated on and mitigated through automated analytics. Do you know of such an evolved archetypal enterprise model?
I believe the ideal archetype does not exist yet. We are all learning, and we see examples from existing companies and startups pitching their story for a future enterprise. Some vendors sell a solution based on their own product innovation platform, others on existing platforms and many new vendors are addressing a piece of the puzzle, to be connected through APIs or Microservices. I wrote about these challenges in Microservices, APIs, Platforms and PLM Services. Remember, it took us “old PLM experts” more than 10-15 years to evolve from PDM towards PLM, riding on an old linear trajectory, caught up by a new wave of iterative and agile processes. Now we need a new generation of PLM experts (or evolving experts) that can combine the new concepts and filter out the nonsense.
Point 2
(Flip) But then given point 2: ‘Model-based enterprise transformations,’ in my view, a key effort for a successful PLM expert would also be to embed this change mgt. as a business process in the actual Enterprise Architecture. So he/she would need to understand and work out a ‘business-ontology’ (Dietz, 2006) or similar construct which facilitates at least a. business processes, b. Change (mgt.) processes, c. emerging (Mfg.) technologies, d. Data structures- and flows, e. implementation trajectory and sourcing.
And then do this from the PLM domain throughout the organization per optimization. After all a product-oriented enterprise revolves around the success of its products, so eventually, all subsystems are affected by the makeup of the product lifecycle. Good PLM is a journey, not a trip. Or, does a PLM expert merely facilitates/controls this enterprise re-design process? And, what other enterprise ontologism tools and methods do you know of?
Only this question could be a next future blog post. Yes, it is crucial to define a business ontology to support the modern flow of information through an enterprise. Products become systems, depending on direct feedback from the market. Only this last sentence already requires a redefinition of change processes, responsibilities. Next, the change towards data-granularity introduces new ways of automation, which we will address in the upcoming years. Initiatives like Industry 4.0 / Smart Manufacturing / IIoT all contribute to that. And then there is the need to communicate around a model instead of following the old documents path. Read more about it in Digital PLM requires a Model-Based Enterprise. To close this point: I am not aware of anyone who has already worked and published experiences on this topic, in particular in the context of PLM.
Point 3
(Flip) Where to draw the PLM line in a digital enterprise? I personally think this barrier will vanish as Product Lifecycle Management (as a paradigm, not necessarily as a software) will provide companies with continuity, profitability and competitive advantage in the early 21st century. The PLM monolith might remain, but supported by an array of micro services inside and outside the company (next to IoT, hopefully also external data sets).
I believe there is no need to draw a PLM line. As Peter’s article: Digitalisation enabled by product lifecycle management already illustrated there is a need for a product information backbone along the whole (circular) lifecycle, where product information can interact with other enterprise platforms, like CRM, ERP and MES and BI services. Sometimes we will see overlapping functionality, sometimes we will see the need to bridge the information through Microservices. As long as these bridges are data-driven and do not need manual handling/transformation of data, they fit in the future, lean digital enterprise.
Conclusion:
This can be an ongoing dialogue, diving into detailed topics of a modern PLM approach. I am curious to learn from my readers, how engaged they are in this topic? Do you still take part in PLM dialogues or do you consume? Do you have “tips and tricks” for those who want to shape the future of PLM?
Let your voice be heard! (and give Flip a break)
![GettyImages-157335388[1]](https://josvoskuil.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/gettyimages-1573353881.jpg "GettyImages-157335388[1]")
Last week I shared my observation from day 1 of the PI Berlin 2017 conference. If you have not read this review look here: The weekend after PI Berlin 2017.
Day 1 was the most significant day for me. I used the second day more for networking and some selective sessions that I wanted to attend. The advantage for the reader, this post is not as long as the previous one. Some final observations from day 2
PLM: The Foundation for Enterprise Digitalization
Peter Bilello from CIMdata gave an educational speech about digitalization and the impact of digitalization on current businesses. Peter considers digitalization as a logic next step in the PLM evolution process. See picture below.
Although it is an evolution process, the implementation of this next step requires a revolution. Digitalization will create a disruption in companies as the digital approach will reshape business models, internal business processes, roles and responsibilities. Peter further elaborated on the product innovation platform and its required characteristics. Similar to what I presented on the first day Peter concluded that we are in a learning stage how to build new methodology/infrastructure for PLM. For example, a concept of creating and maintaining a digital twin needs a solid foundation.
His conclusion: Digitalization requires PLM:
Boosting the value of PLM through
Advanced Analytics Assessment
Paul Haesman from Autoliv introduced the challenges they have as a typical automotive company. Digitalization is reshaping the competitive landscape and the demands on more technology, still guaranteeing the highest safety levels of their products. In that context, they invited Tata Technologies to analyze their current PLM implementation and from there to provide feedback about their as-is readiness for the future.
Chris Hind from Tata Technologies presented their methodology where they provide benchmark information, a health check, impact and potential roadmap for PLM. A method that is providing great insights for both parties and I encourage companies that haven´t done such an assessment to investigate in such an activity. The major value of a PLM assessment is that it provides an agreed baseline for the company that allows management to connect the Why to the What and How. Often PLM implementations focus on What and How with not a real alignment to the Why, which results in unrealistic expectations or budgets due to the perceived value.
An interesting point address by Chris (see picture above) is that Document Management is considered as a trending priority !!!
It illustrates that digitalization in PLM has not taken off yet and companies still focusing on previous century capabilities 😦
The second highlight rating Manufacturing Process Management as the most immature PLM pillar can be considered in the same context. PLM systems are still considered engineering systems and manufacturing process management is in the gray area between PLM systems and ERP systems.
The last two bullets are clear. The roots of PLM are in managing quality and compliance and improving time to market.
Overcoming integration challenges –
Outotec´s Digital Journey
Helena Gutiérrez and Sami Grönstand explained in an entertaining manner the Outotec (providing technologies and services for the metal and mineral processing industries) company and their digital journey. Outotec has been working already for several years on simplifying their IT-landscape meanwhile trying to standardize in a modern, data-driven manner the flow of information.
Sami provided with great detail how the plant process definition is managed in PLM. The process definition is driven by the customer´s needs and largely defines the costs of a plant to build. Crucial for the quotation phase but also important if you want to create a digital continuity. Next, the process definition is further detailed with detailed steps, defining the key parameters characteristics of the main equipment.
And then the challenge starts. In the context of the plant structure, the right equipment needs to be selected. Here it is where plant meets product or as the Outotec team said where the elephant and ants do the tango.
In the end, as much as possible standardized products need to match the customer specific solution. The dream of most of these companies: combining Engineering To Order and Configure To Order and remember this in the context of digital continuity.
So far, a typical EPC (Engineering Procurement Construction) project, however, Outotec wants to extend the digital continuity to support also their customer´s installed plant. I remembered one of their quotes for the past: “Buy one (plant) and get two (a real one and a virtual one). “This concept managed in a digital continuity is something that will come up in many other industries – the digital twin.
Where companies like Outotec are learning to connect all data from the initiation of their customer specific solution through delivery and services, other product manufacturing companies are researching the same digital continuity for their product offerings to the field of consumers. Thanks to digitization these concepts become more and more similar. I wrote about this topic recently in my post PLM for Owner/Operators.
Final conclusion from PI Berlin 2017
It is evident participants and speakers are talking about the strategic value and role PLM can have an organization.
With digitalization, new possibilities arise where the need and value for end-to-end connectivity pop up in every industry.
We, the PLM community, are all learning and building new concepts. Keep sharing and meeting each other in blogs, forums, and conferences.
It is already the 6th consecutive year that MarketKey organized the Product Innovation conference with its primary roots in PLM. For me, the PI conferences have always been a checkpoint for changes and progress in the field.
This year about 100 companies participated in the event with the theme: Digital Transformation. From Hype to Value? Sessions were split into three major streams: digital transformation, extended PLM, and Business Enabled Innovation larded with general keynote speeches. I wanted to attend all sessions (and I will do virtually later through PI.TV), but in this post, my observations are from the event highlights from the extended PLM sessions.
From iCub to R1
Giorgio Metta gave an overview of the RobotCub project, where teams are working on developing a robot that can support human beings in our day-to-day live. Some of us are used to industrial robots and understand their constraints. A robot to interact with human beings is extreme more complex, and its development is still in the early stages. This type of robot needs to learn and interpret its environment while remaining accurate and safe for the persons interacting with the robot.
One of the interesting intermediate outcome from the project is that a human-like robot with legs and arms is far too expensive and complicated to handle. Excellent for science fiction movies, but in reality too difficult to control its balance and movements.
This was an issue with the iCUB robot. Now Giorgio and the teams are working on the new R1 robot, maybe not “as-human” as the iCUB robot, but more affordable. It is not only the mechanics that challenge the researchers. Also, the software supporting the artificial intelligence required for a self-learning and performing safe robot is still in the early days.
An inspiring keynote speech to start the conference.
Standardizing PLM Components
The first Extended PLM session was Guido Klette (Rheinmetall), describing the challenges the Rheinmetall group has related to develop and support PLM needs. The group has several PLD/PLM-like systems in place. Guido does not believe in one size fits all to help every business in the group. They have already several PLM “monsters” in their organization. For more adequate support, Rheinmetall has defined a framework with PLM components and dependencies to a more granular choice of functionality to meet individual businesses.
A challenge for this approach, identified by a question from the audience, is that it is a very scientific approach not addressing the difference in culture between countries. Guido agreed and mentioned that despite culture, companies joining the Rheinmetall group most of the time were happy to adhere to such a structured approach.
My takeaway: the component approach fits very well with the modern thinking that PLM should not be supported by a single “monster” system but can be addressed by components providing at the end the right business process support.
PLM as a business asset
Björn Axling gave an excellent presentation describing the PLM perspective from the Husqvarna group. He addressed the external and internal challenges and opportunities for the group in a structured and logical approach which probably apply for most manufacturing companies in a global market. Björn explained that in the Husqvarna group PLM is considered as a business approach, more than ever, Product Lifecycle Management needs to be viewed as the DNA of a company which was the title of one of his slides.
I like his eleven key imperatives (see the above picture) in particular key imperative #9 which is often forgotten:
Take definitions, nomenclature and data management very seriously – the devil is in the details.
This point will always fire back on you if you did not give it the needed attention from the start. Of course, the other ten points are also relevant. The challenge in every PLM project is to get these points addressed and understood in your company.
How to use PLM to enable Industry 4.0?
Martin Eigner´s presentation was building upon his consistent messages that PDM and PLM should be evolving into SysML with a growing need for Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) support.
The title of the presentation was related to Industry 4.0 more focusing on innovation in for Germany´s manufacturing industry. Germany has always been strong in manufacturing, not so strong in product innovation. Martin mentioned that later this year the German government will start another initiative, Engineering 4.0, which should be exciting for our PLM community.
Martin elaborated on the fact that end-to-end support for SysLM can be achieved through a backbone based on linked data. Do not try to solve all product information views in a single system is the lesson learned and preached.
For me, it was interesting to see that also Martin picked up on the bimodal approach for PLM, required to support a transition to a modern digital enterprise (see picture). We cannot continue to build upon our old PLM environments to support, future digital businesses.
PLM and Digital Transformation
In my afternoon session (Jos Voskuil), I shared the observations that companies invest a lot in digital transformation downstream by introducing digital platforms for ERP, CRM, MES and Operations. PLM is often the forgotten platform that needs to change to support a digital enterprise with all its benefits. You can see my presentation here on SlideShare. I addressed here the bimodal approach as discussed in a previous blog post, introduced in Best Practices or Next Practices.
In case your company is not ready yet for a digital transformation or bimodal approach I addressed the need to become model-driven instead of document-driven. And of course for a digital enterprise, the quality of the data counts. I wrote about these topics recently: Digital PLM requires a Model-Based Enterprise and The importance of accurate data: ACT NOW!
Closed-Loop PLM
The last extended PLM presentation from day 1 was given by Felix Nyffenegger, professor for PLM/CAx at HSR (University of Applied Science in Rapperswil (CH)). Felix shared his discovery journey into Industry 4.0, and IoT combined with experiences from the digitalLab@HSR, leading into the concept of closed-loop PLM.
I liked in particular how Felix brought the various views on the product together into one diagram, telling the full story of closed-loop PLM – necessary for a modern implementation framework.
A new age for airships
The last presentation of the day was from Chris Daniels describing the journey of Hybrid Air Vehicles with their Airlander 10 project. Where the classical airships, the most infamous perhaps the Hindenburg, have disappeared due to their flaws, the team of Hybrid Air Vehicles built upon the concept of airships in a defense project with the target to deliver a long endurance multi-intelligence vehicle. The advantage of airships is that they can stay in the air for several days, serving as communication hotspot, communication or rescue ship for places hard to reach with traditional aircraft or helicopter. The Airlander can be operation without going back to a base for 5 days, which is extremely long when you compare this to other aircraft.
The Airlander project is a typical example of incremental innovation used to optimize and extend the purpose of an airship. Combined with the fact that Chris was an excellent speaker made it a great closure of the day
Conclusion
This post is just an extract of one day and one stream of the conference. Already too large for a traditional blog post. Next week I will follow-up with day two and respond beyond 140 characters to the tweet below:
Two terms pass me every day: Digital Transformation appears in every business discussion, and IP Security, a topic also discussed in all parts of society. We realize it is easy to steal electronic data without being detected (immediately).
What is Digital Transformation?
Digital Transformation is reshaping business processes to enable new business models, create a closer relation with the market, and react faster while reducing the inefficiencies of collecting, converting and processing analog or disconnected information.
Digital Transformation became possible thanks to the lower costs of technology and global connectivity, allowing companies, devices, and customers to interact in almost real-time when they are connected to the internet.
IoT (Internet of Things) and IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) are terms closely related to Digital Transformation. Their focus is on creating connectivity with products (systems) in the field, providing a tighter relation with the customer and enabling new (upgrade) services to gain better performance. Every manufacturing company should be exploring IoT and IIoT possibilities now.
Digital Transformation is also happening in the back office of companies. The target is to create a digital data flow inside the company and with the outside stakeholders, e.g., customers, suppliers, authorities. The benefits are mainly improved efficiency, faster response and higher quality interaction with the outside world.
The part of Digital Transformation that concerns me the most is the domain of PLM. As I have stated in earlier posts (Best Practices or Next Practices ? / What is Digital PLM ?), the need is to replace the classical document-driven product to market approach by a modern data-driven interaction of products and services.
I am continually surprised that companies with an excellent Digital Transformation profile on their websites have no clue about Digital Transformation in their product innovation domain. Marketing is faster than reality.
I am happy to discuss this topic with many of my peers in the product innovation world @ PI Berlin 2017, three weeks from now. I am eagerly looking to look at how and why companies do not embrace the Digital Transformation sooner and faster. The theme of the conference, “Digital Transformation: From Hype to Value “ says it all. You can find the program here, and I will report about this conference the weekend after.
IP Security
The topic of IP protection has always been high on the agenda of manufacturing companies. Digital Transformation brings new challenges. Digital information will be stored somewhere on a server and probably through firewalls connected to the internet. Some industries have high-security policies, with separate networks for their operational environments. Still, many large enterprises are currently struggling with IP security policies as sharing data while protecting IP between various systems creates a lot of administration per system.
Cloud solutions for sharing data are still a huge security risk. Where is the data stored and who else have access to it? Dropbox came in the news recently as “deleted” data came back after five years, “due to a bug.” Cloud data sharing cannot be trusted for real sensitive information.
Cloud providers always claim that their solutions are safer due to their strict safety procedures compared to the improvident behavior of employees. And, this is true. For example, a company I worked with had implemented Digital Rights Management (DRM) for internal sharing of their IP, making sure that users could only read information on the screen, and not store it locally if they had an issue with the server. “No problem”, one of the employees said, “I have here a copy of the documents on my USB-drive.”
Cloud-based PLM systems are supposed to be safer. However, it still matters where the data is stored; security and hacking policies of countries vary. Assume your company´s IP is safe for hacking. Then the next question is “How about ownership of your data?”
Vendor lock-in and ownership of data are topics that always comes back at the PDT conferences (see my post on PDT2016). When a PLM cloud provider stores your product data in a proprietary data format, you will always be forced to have a costly data migration project when you decide to change from the provider.
Why not use standards for data storage? Hakan Kårdén triggered me on this topic again with his recent post: Data Is The New Oil So Make Sure You Ask For The Right Quality.
Conclusion:
Digital Transformation is happening everywhere but not always with the same pace and focus. New PLM practices still need to be implemented on a larger scale to become best practices. Digital information in the context of Intellectual Property creates extra challenges to be solved. Cloud providers do not offer yet solutions that are safe and avoiding vendor lock-in.
Be aware. To be continued…
Many thanks (again) to Dick Bourke for his editing suggestions
Three weeks ago there was the Product Innovation conference in Düsseldorf. In my earlier post (here) I described what I experienced during this event. Now, after all the information is somehow digested, here a more high-level post, describing the visible change in business and how it relates to PLM. Trying to describe this change in non-academic wording but in images. Therefore, I described the upcoming change in the title: from linear to circular and fast.
Let me explain this image step by step
In the middle of the previous century, we were thinking linear in education and in business. Everything had a predictable path and manufacturing companies were pushing their products to the market. First local, later in time, more global. Still the delivery process was pretty linear:
This linear approach is reflected in how organizations are structured, how they are aligned to the different steps of the product development and manufacturing process. Below a slide I used at the end of the nineties to describe the situation and the pain; lack of visibility what happens overall.
It is discouraging to see that this situation still exists in many companies.
At the end of the nineties, early 2000, PLM was introduced, conceptually managing the whole lifecycle. In reality, it was mainly a more tight connection between design and manufacturing preparation, pushing data into ERP. The main purpose was managing the collaboration between different design disciplines and dispersed teams.
Jim Brown (Tech-Clarity) wrote at that time a white paper, which is still valid for many businesses, describing the complementary roles of PLM and ERP. See the picture below:
Jim introduced the circle and the arrow. PLM: a circle with iterations, interacting with ERP: the arrow for execution. Here visual it became already clear an arrow does not have the same behavior as a circle. The 100 % linearity in business was gone.
Let´s have a closer look at the PLM circle
This is how PLM is deployed in most organizations:
Due to the implementation of siloed systems for PDM, ERP, SCM and more, the flow of information is disconnected when moving from the design domain to the execution domain.
Information is pushed in the ERP system as disconnected information, no longer managed and connected to its design intent.
Next, the ERP system is most of the time not well-equipped for managing after sales and services content. Another disconnect comes up.
Yes, spare parts could be ordered through ERP, but issues appearing at the customer base are not stored in ERP, often stored in a separate system again (if stored beyond email).
The result is that when working in the concept phase, there is no information available for R&D to have a good understanding of how the market or customers work with their product. So how good will it be? Check in your company how well your R&D is connected with the field?
And then the change started …
This could have stayed reality for a long time if there were not a huge business change upcoming. The world becomes digital and connected. As a result, local inefficiencies or regional underperformance will be replaced by better-performing companies. The Darwin principle. And most likely the better performing companies are coming from the emerging markets as there they do not suffer from the historical processes and “knowledge of the past”. They can step into the digital world much faster.
In parallel with these fast growing emerging markets, we discovered that we have to reconsider the ways we use our natural resources to guarantee a future for next generations. Instead of spilling resources to deliver our products, there is a need to reuse materials and resources, introducing a new circle: the circular economy.
The circular economy can have an impact on how companies bring products to the market. Instead of buying products (CAPEX) more and more organizations (and modern people) start using products or services in a rental model (OPEX). No capital investment anymore, pay as you go for usage or capacity.
This, however, has an impact how traditional companies are organized – you need to be connected to your customers or you are out of business – a commodity.
The digital and connected world can have a huge impact on the products or services available in the near future. You are probably familiar with the buzz around “The Internet of Things” or “Smart and Connected”.
No longer are products depending on mechanical behavior only, more and more products are relying on electrical components with adaptive behavior through software. Devices that connect with their environment report back information to the manufacturer. This allows companies to understand what happens with their products in the field and how to react on that.
Remember the first PLM circle?
Now we can create continuity of data !
Combine the circular economy, the digital and connected world and you will discover everything can go much faster. A crucial inhibitor is how companies can reorganize themselves around this faster changing, circular approach. Companies need to understand and react to market trends in the fastest and adequate way. The future will be probably about lower volumes of the same products, higher variability towards the market and most likely more and more combining products with services (the Experience Model). This requires a flexible organization and most likely a new business model which will differ from the sequential, hierarchical organizations that we know at this moment.
The future business model ?
The flexibility in products and services will more and more come from embedded software or supported by software services. Software services will be more and more cloud based, to avoid IT-complexity and give scalability.
Software development and integration with products and services are already a challenge for classical mechanical companies. They are struggling to transform their mechanical-oriented design process towards support for software. In the long-term, the software design process could become the primary process, which would mean a change from (sequential – streamlined) lean towards (iterative – SCRUM) agile.
Once again, we see the linear process becoming challenged by the circular iterations.
This might be the end of lean organizations, potentially having to mix with agile conepts..
If it was a coincidence or not, I cannot judge, however during the PI Conference I learned about W.L. Gore & Associates, with their unique business model supporting this more dynamic future. No need to have a massive organization re-org to align the business, as the business is all the time aligning itself through its employees.
Last weekend, I discovered Semco Partners in the newspaper and I am sure there are more companies organizing themselves to become reactive instead of linear – for sure in high-tech world.
Conclusion:
Linearity is disappearing in business, it is all about reactive, multidisciplinary teams within organizations in order to support customers and their fast changing demands.
Fast reactions need new business organizations models (flexible, non-hierarchical) and new IT-support models (business information platforms – no longer PLM/ERP system thinking)
What do you think ? The end of linear ?
I have talked enough about platforms recently. Still if you want to read more about it:
Cimdata: Business strategy and platformization position paper
Engineering.com: Prod. Innovation Platform PlugnPlay in next generation PLM
Gartner: Product Innovation Platforms
VirtualDutchman: Platform, Backbone, Service Bus or BI
This is the fifth year that marketkey organized their vendor-independent conference in Europe around Product Innovation, where PLM is the major cornerstone. Approximate 100 companies attended this conference coming from various industries. As there were most of the time two till four parallel tracks (program here), it will still take time for me to digest all the content. However here a first impression and a comparison to what has changed since the PI Conference in 2014 – you can read my review from that conference here.
First of all the keynote speeches for this conference were excellent and were a good foundation for attendees to discuss and open their mind. Secondly I felt that this conference was actually dealing with the imminent shift from classic, centralized businesses towards the data-centric approach to connectivity of information coming from anyone / anything connected. Naturally the Internet of Everything (IoE) and the Internet of Things (IoT) were part of the discussion combined with changing business models: moving from delivering products toward offering services (CAPEX versus OPEX).
Some of the highlights here:
The first keynote speaker was Carlo Rati Director, MIT Senseable Lab. He illustrated through various experiments and examples how being connected through devices we can change and improve our world: tagging waste, mobile phone activity in a city and the Copenhagen Wheel. His main conclusion (not a surprise): For innovation there is a need to change collaboration. Instead of staying within the company / discipline boundaries solving problems through collaboration between different disciplines will lead to different thinking. How is your company dealing with innovation?
The second session I attended was John Housego from W.L. Gore and Associates who explained the company’s model for continuous growth and innovation. The company’s future is not based on management but based on leadership of people working in teams in a flat organization. Every employee is an associate, directly involved and challenged to define the company’s future. Have a read about the company’s background here on Wikipedia.
Although the company is 50 years old, I realized that their cultural model is a perfect match with the future of many businesses. More and more companies need to be lean and flexible and support direct contact between the field, customers, market and experts inside the company. Implementing a modern PLM platform should be “a piece of cake” if the technology exists, as W.L. Gore’s associates will not block the change if they understand the value. No silos to break down.
My presentation “The Challenge of PLM Upgrades as We See the Rules of Business Change” was based around two themes (perpetual software ? / seamless upgrades ?) and from there look towards the future what to expect in business. When we look back, we see that every 10 years there is a major technology change, which makes the past incompatible to upgrade. Now we are dreaming that cloud-based solutions are the future to guarantee seamless upgrades (let’s wait 10 years). To my opinion companies should not consider a PLM upgrade at this moment.
The changes in business models, people behavior and skills plus technology change, will enable companies to move towards a data-centric approach. Companies need to break with the past (a linear, mechanical-design-based, product development approach) and redesign a platform for the future (a business-innovation platform based on the data). In my upcoming blog post(s) I will give more background on this statement.
Trond Zimmerman from the Volvo Group Truck explained the challenges and solution concept they experienced as they are currently implementing answering the challenge of working in a joint venture with Dongfeng Commercial Vehicles. As in a joined venture you want to optimize sharing of common parts, still you cannot expect a single PLM solution for the total joint venture. For that reason, Volvo Group Truck is implementing Share-A-Space from Eurostep to have a controlled collaboration layer between the two joint venture partners.
This is, to my opinion, one of the examples of future PLM practices, where data will not be stored in a single monolithic system, but data will be connected through information layers and services. The case is similar to what has been presented last year at Product Innovation 2014 where Eurostep and Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery implemented a similar layer on top of their PDM environment to enable controlled sharing with their suppliers.
David Rowan from wired.co.uk closed the day with his keynote: Understanding the New Rules of Product Innovation. He touched the same topic as John Housego from W.L. Gore somehow: it is all about democratization. Instead of hierarchy we are moving to network-based activities. And this approach has a huge impact on businesses. David’s message: Prepare for constant change. Where in the past we lived in a “linear” century, change according to Moore’s law, we are entering now an exponential century where change is going faster and faster. Besides examples of the Internet of Thing, David also gave some examples of the Internet of Stupid Things. He showed a quote from Steve Balmer stating that nobody would pay $ 500 for a phone (Apple). The risk he made is that by claiming some of these stupid inventions might lead to a quote in the future. I think the challenge is always to stay open-minded without judging as at the end the market will decide.
PLM and ERP
I spent the evening networking with a lot of people, most of them excited about the future capabilities that have been presented. In parallel, the discussion was also about the conservative behavior of many companies. Topics that are already for ten years under discussion – how to deal and connect PLM and ERP, where is the MBOM, what are the roles of PLM and ERP for an organization, are still thankful topics for a discussion, showing where most companies now are with their business understanding.
In parallel to a product innovation conference apparently there is still a need to agree on basic PLM concepts from the previous century.
The second day opened with an excellent keynote speech from Dirk Schlesinger from Cisco. He talked about the Internet of Everything and provided examples of the main components of IoE: Connectivity, Sensors, Platform, Analytics, and Mobility. In particular the example of Connectivity was demonstrating the future benefits modern PLM platforms can bring. Dirk talked about a project with Dundee Mining where everything in the mine was tagged with RFI devices (people, equipment, vehicles, and resources) and the whole mine was equipped with Wi-Fi.
Based on this approach the execution and planning of what happened was done in their HQ through a virtual environment, giving planners immediate visibility of what happens and allowing them to decide on real data. This is exactly the message I have posted in my recent blog posts.
The most fascinating part were the reported results. This project is ongoing now for 3 years and the first year they achieved a production increase of 30 %. Now they are aiming for this year for a 400 % production increase and a 250 % efficiency increase. These are the numbers to imagine when you implement a digital strategy. It is no longer any more about making our classical processes more efficient, it is about everyone connected and everyone collaborates.
Marc Halpern from Gartner gave an good presentation connecting the hype of the Internet of Things with the world of PLM again, talking about Product Innovation Platforms. Marc also touched on the (needed) upcoming change in engineering processes. More and more we will develop complex products, which need system thinking. Systems of Systems to handle this complexity, As Marc stated: “Product, process, culture is based on electro-mechanical products where the future trend is all about software.” We should reconsider our Bill of Materials (mechanical) and think probably more about a Bill of Features (software). Much of Marc’s presentation contained the same elements as I discussed in my PDT2014 blog post from October last year.
I was happy to see Jenni Ala-Mantila presenting the usage of PLM system for Skanska Oy. Skanska is one of the largest construction companies operating global. See one of their beautiful corporate videos here. I always have been an advocate to use PLM practices and PLM infrastructure to enhance, in particular, the data-continuity in a business where people work in silos with separate tools. There are so many benefits to gain by having an end-to-end visibility of the project and its related data. Jenni’s presentation was confirming this.
By implementing a PLM backbone with a focus on project management, supplier collaboration and risk management, she confirmed that PLM has contributed significant to their Five Zero – vision: Zero loss-making projects, Zero Environmental incidents, Zero Accidents, Zero Ethical breaches and Zero Defects. Skanska is really a visionary company although it was frustrating to learn that there was still a need to build a SharePoint connection with their PLM environment. The future of data-centric has not reached everyone in the organization yet.
The last two sessions of the conference, a panel discussion “Why is Process Innovation Challenging & What can be done about it” plus the final keynote “Sourcing Growth where Growth Takes Place” had some commonality which I expressed in some twitter quotes:
Conclusion
Where last year I had the impression that the PLM world was somehow in a static mode, not so much news in 2014. It became clear in this 2015 conference that the change towards new business paradigms is really happening and at a faster pace than expected. From mechanical development processes to software processes, from linear towards continuous changes. Moe to come this year
Currently, I am preparing my sessions for the upcoming Product Innovation conference in Düsseldorf. See: www.picongress.com. My first session will be about PLM upgrades and how to deal with them for the future. It is a challenging topic as some PLM vendors claim using their product, there will be no upgrade problems and cloud-based solutions also provide seamless upgrades in the future.
Don’t cheer to early when you see this kind of messages. I had the chance to look back the past twenty years what happened with PLM and tried to look forward to the upcoming ten years what might happen.
In addition, this lead to some interesting thoughts that I will share in detail during the conference. I will come back to this topic in this blog after the conference. Here some unstructured thoughts that passed my mind recently when preparing this session.
Not every upgrade is the same!
First there was an interesting blog post from Ed Lopategui from E(E) with the title There is No Upgrade, where he addresses the difference between consumer software and enterprise software. Where consumer software will be used by millions and tested through long Alfa and beta cycles, PLM software often comes to the market in what you could consider a beta stage with limited testing.
Most PLM vendors invest a lot of their revenue in providing new functionality and technology based on their high-end customer demands. They do not have the time and budget to invest in the details of the solution; for this reason PLM solutions will remain a kind of framework.
In addition, when a solution is not 100 % complete there will be an adaptation from the customer, making upgrades later, not 100 percent guaranteed or compatible. More details on PLM Upgrades after the conference, let’s look into the near future.
The Future of PLM resides in Brussels!
Some weeks ago I was positively amused by some messages coming from Roger Tempest (PLM Interest Group) related to the future of PLM. Roger claims the PLM industry is effectively rudderless. For that Roger announces the Launch Meeting for the PLM International Research Foundation,
“simple because such a platform does not yet exist.”
I checked if perhaps an ERP International Research Foundation existed, but I only found references to SAP, so what makes the PLM International Research Foundation unique ?
According to Roger, the reason behind this initiative is the lack of clear targets for PLM. I quote:
The lack of detailed thought means that many future possibilities for PLM are just not being considered; and the lack of collective thought means that even the current initiatives to improve PLM remain fragmented and ineffective
As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, PLM vendors are in a kind of rat race to keep up with market demands, rapidly changing business, meanwhile building on their core technology. Not an easy game, as they cannot start from scratch, but for sure, and here I agree, they do not optimize their portfolio.
Who can and will take part in such a research forum?
PLM vendors will lean back, as their mission is to be competitive in business, not necessarily constrained by PLM guidelines.
This is the same for companies implementing PLM systems. They are looking for solutions in the market that improve their businesses. This might be a PLM system, but perhaps other components bring even a higher value. Is ALM or SLM part of PLM, for example? This is a challenge as who defined what PLM is and where are the boundaries ?
This leaves the activity to the academics for sure they will have the most advanced and futuristic vision of what is possible conceptually. From my observations, the main challenges currently with PLM are that even the vendors are ten years ahead in their capabilities compared to what most companies are asking for. For the academic approach, I still have to think about Monty Python’s sketch related to soccer. See below
Sorry for the generalization, I believe we should not focus on what is PLM and how PLM should be defined. What we now call PLM is entirely different from what we called PLM 10 years ago, see my last year´s post PLM is changing. I think the future should focus how we are going to deal with business platforms, which contain PLM facets.
The PLM future
Interesting enough we are on the brink of a new business paradigm due to globalization and digitization as you might have read from my recent posts. There are analysts, consultancy firms and research foundations all describing this challenging future.
Have a look at this post from Verdi Ogewell’s article at Engineering.com: Product Innovation Platform: Plug’n’play next generation PLM. The post is a summary of the platform discussion during the PDT 2014 conference, which I consider as one of the best conferences if you want to go into the details. See also my post: The weekend after PDT 2014.
The future is about innovation and/or business platforms where data is available based on a federated approach, not necessary based on a single, monolithic PLM platform.
Focusing on standardization and openness of such a platform is for me the central mission we have.
Remember: Openness is a right, not a privilege.
Let PLM vendors and other application providers develop their optimized services for individual business scenarios that will remove the borders of system thinking. Academic support will be needed to solve interoperability and openness required for initiatives like Industry 4.0 and IDC´s third platform.
I am looking forward to interesting discussions at the upcoming
PI conference but also with peers in my network.
The future is challenging and will it still be named PLM?
Your thoughts?
Business is changing and becoming digital as you might have noticed. If you haven´t noticed it, you might be disconnected from the world or work in a stable silo. A little bit simplified and provocative otherwise you would not read further.
The change towards digital also has its effect on how PLM is evolving. Initially considered as an extension of PDM, managing engineering data, slowly evolving to an infrastructure to support the whole product lifecycle.
The benefits from a real PLM infrastructure are extremely high as it allows people to work smarter, identify issues earlier and change from being reactive towards proactive. In some industries, this change in working is they only way to stay in business. Others with still enough margin will not act.
Note: I am talking about a PLM infrastructure as I do not believe in a single PLM system anymore. For me PLM is supported through a collection of services across the whole product lifecycle, many potentially in one system or platform.
Changing from an engineering-centric system towards an infrastructure across the departmental silos is the biggest challenge for PLM. PLM vendors and ERP vendors with a PLM offering are trying provide this infrastructure and mainly fight against Excel. As an Excel file can easy pass the border from one department to the other. No vision needed for Excel.
A PLM infrastructure however requires a vision. A company has to look at its core business processes and decide on which information flows through the organization or even better their whole value chain.
Building this vision, understanding this vision and then being able to explain the vision is a challenge for all companies. Where sometime even management says
“Why do we need to have a vision, just fix the problem”
also people working in departments are not looking forward to change their daily routines because they need to share information. Here you here statements like
“Why people feel the need to look at the big picture. I want to have my work done.”
So if current businesses do not change, will there be a change?
Here I see the digital world combined with search-based applications coming up. Search based applications allow companies to index their silos and external sources and get an understanding of the amount of data there exists. And from these results learn that there is a lot of duplicated data or invalid information at different places.
This awareness might create the understanding that if instead of having hundred thousands of Excels in the organization, it would be better to have the data inside a database, uniquely stored and connected to other relevant information.
I have described this process in my past three posts and agreed the context remains complex if you are not involved or interested in it.
To grasp this concept first of all, you need to have the will to understand it. There is a lot of strategic information out there from companies like Accenture, Capgemini and more.
Next if you want to understand it in a more down-to-earth manner it is important to listen and talk with your peers from other companies, other industries. This is currently happening all around the world and I invite you to participate.
Here is a list of events that I am attending or planned to attend but too far away:
October 7th Stockholm – ENOVIA user conference
Here I will participate as a panel member in the discussion around the concept of zero files. Here we want to explain and discuss to the audience what a data-centric approach means for an organization. Also, customers will share their experiences. This conference is focusing on the ENOVIA community – you can still register here
October 14th-15th Paris – Product Data Technology 2014 conference
Here I will speak about the PLM future (based on data) and what PLM should deliver for the future generations. This conference is much broader and addresses all PLM related topics in a broader perspective
October 28 Product Innovation conference in San Diego
I have always enjoyed participating to this conference as like the PDT2014 it brings people together for networking and discussions. Mostly on business topics not on IT-issues.
November 26 Infuseit seminar in Copenhagen
Relative new in the Nordics Infuseit, a PLM consultancy company, is able to attract an audience that wants to work on understanding the PLM future. Instead of listening to presenters, here you are challenged to to discuss and contribute to build a common opinion. I will be there too.
Conclusion: It is time to prepare yourself for the change – it is happening and be educated an investment that will be rewarding for your company
What do you think – Is data-centric a dream ?
Last week I attended the PI Apparel conference in London. It was the second time this event was organized and approximate 100 participants were there for two full days of presentations and arranged network meetings. Last year I was extremely excited about this event as the different audience, compare to classical PLM events, and was much more business focused.
Read my review from last year here: The weekend after PI Apparel 2013
This year I had the feeling that the audience was somewhat smaller, missing some of the US representatives and perhaps there was a slightly more, visible influence from the sponsoring vendors. Still an enjoyable event and hopefully next year when this event will be hosted in New York, it will be as active as last year.
Here are some of my observations.
Again the event had several tracks in parallel beside the keynotes, and I look forward in the upcoming month to see the sessions I could not attend. Obvious where possible I followed the PLM focused sessions.
First keynote came from Micaela le Divelec Lemmi, Executive Vice President and Chief Corporate Operations Officer of Gucci. She talked us through the areas she is supervising and gave some great insights. She talked about how Gucci addresses sustainability through risk and cost control. Which raw materials to use, how to ensure the brands reputation is not at risk, price volatility and the war on talent. As Gucci is a brand in the high-end price segment, image and reputation are critical, and they have the margins to assure it is managed. Micaela spoke about the short-term financial goals that a company as Gucci has related to their investors. Topics she mentioned (I did not write them down as I was tweeting when I heard them) were certainly worthwhile to consider and discuss in detail with a PLM consultant.
Micaela further described Gucci´s cooperate social responsibility program with a focus on taking care of the people, environment and culture. Good to learn that human working conditions and rights are a priority even for their supply chain. Although it might be noted that 75 % of Gucci´s supply chain is in Italy. One of the few brands that still has the “Made in Italy” label.
My conclusion was that Micaela did an excellent PR job for Gucci, which you would expect for a brand with such a reputation. Later during the conference we had a discussion would other brands with less exclusivity and more operating in the mass consumer domain be able to come even close to such programs?
Next Göktug and Hakan gave us their insights deploying their first PLM system at the AYDINLI group.
The company is successful in manufacturing and selling licensed products from Pierre Cardin, Cacharel and US Polo Association mainly outside the US and Western Europe.
Their primary focus was to provide access to the most accurate and most updated information from one source. In parallel, standardization of codes and tech packs was a driver. Through standardization quality and (re)use could be improved, and people would better understand the details. Additional goals are typical PLM goals: following the product development stages during the timeline, notify relevant users about changes in the design, work on libraries and reuse and integrate with SAP.
Interesting Hakan mentioned that in their case SAP did not recommend to use their system for the PLM related part due to lack of knowledge of the apparel industry. A wise decision which would need followup for other industries.
In general the PLM implementation described by Göktug and Hakan was well phased and with a top-down push to secure there is no escape to making the change. As of all PLM implementations in apparel they went live in their first phase rather fast as the complex CAD integrations from classical PLM implementations were not needed here.
Next I attended the Infor session with the title: Work the Way you Live: PLM built for the User. A smooth marketing session with a function / feature demo demonstrating the flexibility and configuration capabilities of the interface. Ease of use is crucial in the apparel industry, where Excel is still the biggest competitor. Excel might satisfy the needs from the individual, it lacks the integration and collaboration aspect a PLM system can offer.
More interesting was the next session that I attended from Marcel Oosthuis, who was responsible as Process Re-Engineering Director (read PLM leader). Marcel described how they had implemented PLM at Tommy Hilfiger, and it was an excellent story (perhaps too good to be true).
I believe larger companies with the right focus and investment in PLM resources can achieve this kind of results. The target for Tommy Hilfiger´s PLM implementation was beyond 1000 users, therefore, a serious implementation.
Upfront the team defined first what the expected from the PLM system to select (excellent !!). As the fashion industry is fast, demanding and changing all the time, the PLM system needs to be Swift, Flexible and Prepared for Change. This was not a classical PLM requirement.
In addition, they were looking for a high-configurable system, providing best practices and a vendor with a roadmap they could influence. Here I got a little more worried as high-configurable and best practices not always match the prepared for change approach. A company might be tempted to automate the way they should work based on the past (best practices from the past)
It was good to hear that Marcel did not have to go into the classical ROI approach for the system. His statement, which I fully endorse that it is about the capability to implement new and better processes. They are often not comparable with the past (and nobody measured the past)
Marcel described how the PLM team (eight people + three external from the PLM vendor) made sure that the implementation was done with the involvement of the end users. End user adoption was crucial as also key user involvement when building and configuring the system.
It was one of the few PLM stories where I hear how all levels of the organization were connected and involved.
Next Sue Butler, director from Kurt Salmon, described how to maximize ROI from your PLM investment. It is clear that many PLM consultants are aligned, and Sue brought up all the relevant points and angles you needed to look at for successful PLM implementation.
Main points: PLM is about changing the organization and processes, not about implementing a tool. She made a point that piloting the software is necessary as part of the learning and validation process. I agree on that under the condition that it is an agile pilot which does not take months to define and perform. In that case, you might be already locked in into the tool vision too much – focus on the new processes you want to achieve.
Moreover, because Sue was talking about maximize ROI from a PLM implementation, the topics focus on business areas that support evolving business processes and measure (make sure you have performance metrics) came up.
The next session Staying Ahead of the Curve through PLM Roadmap Reinvention conducted by Austin Mallis, VP Operations, Fashion Avenue Sweater Knits, beautifully completed previous sessions related to PLM.
Austin nicely talked about setting the right expectations for the future (There is no perfect solution / Success does not mean stop / Keeping the PLM vision / No True End). In addition, he described the human side of the implementation. How to on-board everyone (if possible) and admitting you cannot get everyone on-board for the new way of working.
Next in row was my presentation with potential the longest title: “How to transform your Business to ensure you Benefit from the Value PLM can deliver”.
Luckily the speakers before me that day already addressed many of the relevant topics, and I could focus on three main thoughts completing the story:
1. Who decides on PLM and Why?
I published the results from a small survey I did a month ago via my blog (A quick PLM survey). See the main results below.
It was interesting to observe that both the management and the users in the field are the majority demanding for PLM. Consultants have some influence and PLM vendors even less. The big challenge for a company is that the management and consultants often talk about PLM from a strategic point of view, where the PLM vendor and the users in the field are more focused on the tool(s).
From the expectations you can see the majority of PLM implementations is about improving collaboration, next time to market, increase quality and centralizing and managing all related information.
2. Sharing data instead of owning data
(You might have read about it several times in my blog) and the trend that we move to platforms with connected data instead of file repositories. This should have an impact on your future PLM decisions.
3. Choosing the right people
The third and final thought was about choosing the right people and understanding the blocker. I elaborated on that topic already before in my recent blog post: PLM and Blockers
My conclusions for the day were:
A successful PLM implementation requires a connection in communication and explanation between all these levels. These to get a company aligned and have an anchored vision before even starting to implement a system (with the best partner)
The day was closed by the final keynote of the day from Lauren Bowker heading T H E U N S E E N. She and her team are exploring the combinations of chemistry and materials to create new fashion artifacts. Clothes and materials that change color based on air vent, air pollution or brain patterns. New and inspiring directions for the fashion lovers.
Have a look here: http://seetheunseen.co.uk/
The morning started with Suzanne Lee, heading BioCouture who is working on various innovative methodologies to create materials for the apparel industry by using all kind of live micro-organisms like bacteria, fungi and algae and using materials like cellulose, chitin and protein fibers, which all can provide new possibilities for sustainability, comfort, design, etc. Suzanne´s research is about exploring these directions perhaps shaping some new trends in the 5 – 10 years future ahead. Have a look into the future here:
Renate Eder took us into the journey of visualization within Adidas, with her session: Utilizing Virtualization to Create and Sell Products in a Sustainable Manner.
It was interesting to learn that ten years ago she started the process of having more 3D models in the sales catalogue. Where classical manufacturing companies nowadays start from a 3D design, here at Adidas at the end of the sales cycle 3D starts. Logical if you see the importance and value 3D can have for mass market products.
Adidas was able to get 16000 in their 3D catalogue thanks to the work from 60 of their key suppliers who were fully integrated in the catalogue process. The benefit from this 3D catalogue was that their customers, often the large stores, need lesser samples, and the savings are significant here (plus a digital process instead of transferring goods).
Interesting discussion during the Q&A part was that the virtual product might even look more perfect than the real product, demonstrating how lifelike virtual products can be.
And now Adidas is working further backwards from production patterns (using 3D) till at the end 3D design. Although a virtual 3D product cannot 100 % replace the fit and material feeling, Renate believes that also introducing 3D during design can reduce the work done during pilots.
Finally for those who stayed till the end there was something entirely different. Di Mainstone elaborating on her project: Merging Architecture & the Body in Transforming the Brooklyn Bridge into a Playable Harp. If you want something entirely different, watch here:
Conclusion
The apparel industry remains an exciting industry to follow. For some of the concepts – being data-centric, insane flexible, continuous change and rapid time to market are crucial here.
This might lead development of PLM vendors for the future, including using it based on cloud technology.
From the other side, the PLM markets in apparel is still very basic and learning, see this card that I picked up from one of the vendors. Focus on features and functions, not touching the value (yet)
The product innovation conference in February has become one of my favorite events, mainly for networking. Perhaps PLM vendors try to give you the impression that we are in a fast moving world. In reality, most companies are moving in a much slower pace than these vendors dream of. In general for an outsider, last year might have looked similar to what happened this year. In this post, I will describe the subtle differences that I noticed.
The event
The event was in the same location as last year with approximately. 400 participant including 60 speakers. The conference had three main streams: keynotes, PLM and design. The PLM and design sessions were most of the time parallel sessions. Great if you are interested in one domain only, a little more challenging for people who are enjoying to be in both domains. However the good news is that all participants will have access to the recorded sessions in a week or two. And from last years’ experience I can say the recordings are good, so I am looking forward to a virtual additional conference in two weeks from now.
The sessions
Some remarks about the sessions that I was able to attend
Going to Mars ?
Bas Lansdorp explained us about the Mars One mission, what was the drive and challenge behind establishing a permanent human settlement on Mars. It was an inspiring opening session to make you think out of the box. Several interesting topics came up.
1. First of all that most of the mission’s materials need to be basic, proven technology instead of modern, innovative concepts. As maintenance and risks for issues need to be minimized, it is better to keep it with proven technology.
2. The crew selection is a long process – the first crew will fly in 10 years from now, so who are those individuals that want to take up the challenge to stay forever with 3 others, and every few years some more people will come. But hard to escape, and there is no way back. Amazing!
3. Part of the funding can be done by media rights. Bas explained the revenues that are related, for example, with the Olympic Games are already stunning. Imagine to have “Live on Mars” as a reality soap available all around the world. Programs like Big Brother demonstrate that it is in our nature just to watch ordinary people see how the behave. Will they fight? Will they have sex? Public voyeurism and eternal fame.
Although the keynote had no relation to PLM, I felt energized by the entrepreneurial thinking of Bas, following his passion and wanting to realize it. As Mars does not need the first centuries entrepreneurs, it was clear Bas is not part of the first crew.
Managing complexity and volume
Next Peter Smith from VF International presented the huge challenge his group of companies had to manage the complexity of the various products and their seasonal deliveries, up to 12 collection models per year. The group with famous brands like The North Face, Lee, Wranglers, JanSport, Kipling and Timberland has the challenge to deliver 500 Mio units/year which means 16 units/second ! For sure an execution engine. So where does PLM fit?
For Peter PLM is part of the infrastructure, a glue for the innovation process, but not driving the innovation process. They try to standardize on a single PLM system, but some of the brands have such characteristics and history that this was not possible to realize. As the business must go on, a new PLM should not be disruptive for business.
The two main challenges Peter sees for current PLM are:
- The software models available for them as consumers. Changes go here too slow
- Organizational change implications. How to change when change is hard?
It was clear from Peter’s experience that many of his points were from the IT-perspective. During the networking break when I spoke with others, some of them mentioned that the business value for PLM was missing in Peter’s analysis – too much tool/infrastructure.
The digital value chain
An interesting session from Michael Bitzer (Accenture) and Sebastien Handschuh (Daimler). After an introduction about the German initiative Digital Industry 4.0 the remaining part of the session was around Daimler´s approach to use JT as a neutral, application independent format for their 3D data. At this time, Daimler has already over a 6 Mio JT-files and the format has been proven to fulfill their process needs.
Where possible Daimler aims to collaborate with suppliers in JT format for 3D. In this manner, their suppliers are not forced to use exclusively CATIA or NX. And the answer one question from the audience if Daimler was supporting the Siemens flavored JT or the real neutral JT format, it was clear that Daimler was aiming for the neutral format. I believe an interesting move to a more generic data approach in this case for 3D CAD data instead of original file formats. Hopefully more standardization to follow.
PLM selection: Do´s and Don’ts
I was moderating a discussion session for companies that were in the process of selecting a PLM system or that wanted to share their experience. Unfortunate the session was overpopulated with a lot of people not all necessary in the selection process. Due to the large audience not really an opportunity to have an in-depth discussion. Still it was amazing to see that there are still companies where the value of PLM is not clear at the management level and therefore the focus is on quick ROI.
In a one-to-one discussion afterwards I learned about a company where the shareholders/investors of a company forced the PLM project to fail by pushing unrealistic deadlines and not understanding the human and business change required. Unrealistic ROI expectations and lack of understanding where PLM really brings a competitive advantage is missing. Worst case due to their short-term focus the company will slowly be out of business as competitiveness and margins will reduce. For this type of situations, there is the excellent Dilbert cartoon below.
Source: Dilbert.com
Secure data sharing in the extended enterprise
An interesting session was organized by Häkan Kårdén (Eurostep) and Kristofer Thoresson (Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery). Siemens had chosen to use the Eurostep Share-A-space environment between their internal data (their PDM system and other data sources) and the external data from suppliers, customers and field services. A pragmatic concept and interesting to see Share-A-space Found-Its-place. PLM Vendors probably would claim that their system could organize this secure and remote access without the need for a system in between. But the fact that a Siemens company decides to use Share-A-space demonstrates there is still a gap between a potential safe, single PLM based implementation and a pragmatic separation approach.
PLM is changing
In my session that afternoon I focused on the visible change in PLM. From an IT infrastructure for file collaboration towards a more data-centric business driven approach. And from there looking into the future anticipate that moving towards a data-centric approach is crucial to be ready for advanced computer power and brain-matching algorithms. This will be the game changers I believe in the upcoming decade in line with the Industry 4.0 ideas. My past two post have been indicating this direction:
A Circular economy
Peter Bilello from CIMdata had a good presentation related to the change in business we see and must make. No longer can we afford an economy where we waste raw materials. The circular economy is about supporting the product lifecycle from cradle-to-cradle instead of the classical cradle-to-grave. This is what you could call the circular economy; This matches the trend that companies more and more will deliver services to their customers instead of selling products to them. Instead of buying a fridge you pay for cooling capacity and your supplier changes the current model with a new model after three years. The service or experience economy fitting very nicely with the new generations that seem to prefer more to live and share at the moment instead of owning property.
Your digital shadow
The closing keynote from Stephanie Hankey was like the starting keynote. No relation to PLM but interesting in the context of what the effects are from digitalization and mobility. She provided some insights about the data that is already collected from each individual (or device) and how this all can be combined in profiles – your digital shadow. And of course your shadow might give the wrong impression. You can imagine that with growing trend of smart devices and the Internet of Things it will be hard to stay out of it. Companies will sell and buy data sets from their potential customers (victims). Scary as it all happens in the background and you are not fully aware of it.
(At the point, I was writing this paragraph my computer crashed with a blue screen – coincidence?)
Cultured beef ?
After a good burger and discussion in the evening, the opening keynote on day two was from Mark Post with the title Cultured Beef – changing the way we eat and think about food forever. Another interesting keynote where Mark explained how we can feed the growing world population in a more sustainable way by creating animal products through cell culture and bio fabrication instead of farming. The process is still in the early days of discovery but by using cell culture you can assure you get the right meat, even without fat, and it is real meat. Currently still expensive. Mark estimates that with current technology and up scaling of the process a price of $ 65 per kilo can be reached. Too expensive for consumers at this time but a promising number for the future. Another (Dutch) keynote speaker that made us think differently for the rest of the day.
The engine
Next Bjarne Nørgaard from MAN Diesel & Turbo gave a good lecture for the audience, what it takes to design and build a ship. You build the engine and wrap the ship around it. The challenge for MAN is to follow, service and maintain the engine through is 30 year’s lifecycle and possibly longer. Next Bjarne went into the details of their information architecture, and it was surprising to learn that their PDM system was Siemens and that they used Aras on top of that for connecting data to the rest of the enterprise and lifecycle of the engine. You would assume two PLM systems in-house for one company is an overkill. Bjarne explained that they tried initially to achieve these goals with Teamcenter but failed due to lack of flexibility. Great marketing for Aras, bad for Siemens. Although I am sure the cultural aspect has played a role. No one likes their first PLM or ERP system, as the first implementation is this domain is the moment you have the biggest internal culture shock.
Using search and semantic technology
The presentation from Moises Martines-Ablanado (Configuration Management Airbus Group) and Thomas Kamps (Conweaver) was interesting as they demonstrated one of the upcoming concepts I foresee will have a great future. Conweaver connects to existing enterprise systems (PLM, ERP, CRM, and legacy) and create a semantic mapping and linking of the data indexed from these systems. And through this network of data provide apps with a particular purpose. For example identify directly changes in the current EBOM and MBOM and potentially from there update the MBOM based in EBOM changes. A concept I have seen with Exalead too, illustrating that once you are in a data-centric environment, combining data sources for particular purposes can be achieved fast. No need for the classical approach of a single database that stores all.
A new TLA ? CLM
Joy Batchelor gave a clear presentation why besides PLM and ERP Jaguar Landrover (JLR) needs a third system supporting the connectivity of product configurations and sales configurations. They are able to manage 58.000.000.000 combinations for 170 different markets, which means every person on this planet could have its unique Jaguar Landrover. Joy introduced CLM (Configuration Lifecycle Management) as the third domain needed to support these configurations. The system they are using is ConfigIT, and I assume all automotive vendors have their own toolsets to manage the product and marketing configurations. I hope to learn more on that area. Will CLM be a separate domain or will it be absorbed by PLM or ERP vendors in the future ? Time will tell/
A game changer ?
Henk Jan Pels from the Eindhoven University of Technology took us back in time and explained how ERP became visible on the CFO’s agenda eliminating the discussion on ROI. Where ERP is handling material flows, to develop and deliver products there is also a need for knowledge flows between requirements, functional and the physical definition of a product. Expanding these flows to a framework that covers the technology, the building blocks, the families and the individual products would be the ideal interaction Henk Jan is proposing. And a PLM system would be the environment to implement this concept. Henk Jan announced this as a game changer. I agree if management of companies spend times to understand the benefits, it will be a game changer. Somehow it remained an academic concept and I believe we are all eager to learn if companies will adapt this idea, knowing change to something that is not common or traditional is a cultural risk.
The German future ?
The final presentation I could attend was from Martin Eigner, who first explained in some detail what the Industry 4.0 approach was about. From there he took us into the world of model based systems engineering. You could say an integration of PLM with more virtual system modeling and analysis as the front end of the development process. Somehow similar to last year’s presentation, but understandable as the world of PLM does not evolve so fast.
Conclusion
This is somehow also my conclusion from this year’s event. I was hoping to see some new sparks. For sure the keynotes were inspiring although less related to PLM. The case from Airbus and Conweaver was inspiring as I believe search and semantic based applications are a logical extension for the challenges companies want to address with PLM. JLR’s presentation explaining the need for Configuration Lifecycle Management strengthened my thought that in the future PLM and ERP will disappear. It is about a business platform with combined services, which might fall in one of the classical categories. I believe for many people the German Innovation 4.0 should be studied and replicated as it acknowledges exactly the future trend to remain competitive.
It was a pity for the public that Siemens PLM, Dassault Systèmes and Autodesk were not there. As the two largest PLM vendors and one of the largest PLM challengers, you would expect them be there and allow prospects and PLM consultants to compare where each of the PLM companies is different. Still it was a good conference. Well organized and as mentioned in the introduction, all presentations are recorded, giving everyone the opportunity to digest and review content again.
I am looking forward to the next Product Innovation conference with perhaps some more PLM related keynotes and big data practices.
Jos Voskuil's Weblog 
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