Mid-market deadlocks for PLM

May 17, 2010 in Change, Observations, PDM, PLM | Tags: , , , , , | 2 comments

observation Last weeks have been busy weeks and I have seen various PLM candidates all around Europe. As these companies were mid-market companies, I noticed again how difficult it is for these companies to follow the ideal path towards PLM.

For those reading my blog frequently they might remember my definition of mid-market and PLM. For newer readers I will give my definitions again, as everyone has their own definition.

Mid market company: For me the definition of a mid-market company does not have to do with revenue or the amount of people working for this company. I characterize a mid-market company as a company, where everyone has a focus on the company’s primary process. There is no strategic layer of people, who are analyzing the current business and defining new strategies for the future. In addition, the IT-staff is minimal, more seen as an overhead than as strategic. Mid-market companies have their strength in being flexible and reacting fast on changes, which might contradict with a long term strategic approach.

frog

As what happens if you are only in a reactive mode – it can be too late.

(the boiling frog)

PLM: For me PLM is not a product but a vision or business approach based on a collection of best practices (per industry). Main characteristics of PLM are centralizing all product knowledge (IP) throughout all the lifecycle stages and a focus on best practices and immediate visibility on all lifecycle stages.  Combining concept, planning, development, production planning and after sales / service into one integrated process. It is more than concurrent engineering, it is about sharing data and ownership of data through different departments. And this means business transformation, breaking through traditional barriers. Of course PLM vendors have a slight different definition in order to differentiate themselves from other vendors. For example more focus on a virtual product definition (CAD PLM vendors) or a focus on efficiency and one single platform (ERP PLM vendors)

myplm

Who will initiate this change ?

And these two definitions already raise the questions I want to reflect here as I experienced again in two recent visits that the pain to move to PLM is here.

First what is the result of a reactive mode, even when it is a quick reaction ?

jugleA reactive mode leads to a situation where a company will never be able to differentiate rapidly from their competition. As every change takes time to implement, it is logically that a real business change will not be implemented as a quick reaction. The company needs to have a long term vision. And this is one of the things I noticed talking with mid-market companies. Ask these questions: “Where do you want to be in five years from now” and “How do you make sure you achieve these goals (if goals exist)” and often you find the company is depending on the business instinct of the founder(s) and has no real answers for the long term future.

god_comp This is of course a result of the typical mid-market company, they have no internal people who will step outside the daily hectic and work on a change. And being reactive always means you are (a little) behind. And this was the situation in one of the companies that I have met recently. There was an initial understanding of the values that PLM could bring, but when talking about some of the basic principles of PLM, the answers was: In our company ERP is God. This means real PLM has no chance – you do not want to fight against God.

 

 

And now the discussion who can initiate the change towards PLM

wise Now another example of a mid-market company that had a long term PLM vision but got trapped in their own approach. The company has been growing fast and like many European companies, production is done in China. And this causes collaboration issues around communication and quality between Europe and China as the company only knows CAD data management and ERP. The engineering manager was assigned to solve these issues.He did not get a full strategic assignment to look at the complete picture, but the management pushes him to solve the current pains, having the PLM wishes still in mind.

And solving the current pains lead again to function / feature comparison with a short term justification, believing that in the future all will fit in the PLM vision, as the potential resellers for the new solution said: “Yes we can”. Have you ever heard a reseller say “No we cannot”

The result, the engineering manager has to make a decision based on the ‘blue eyes’ of the reseller as he does not get the mandate and power from his management to analyze and decide on a PLM strategy for the long term. For one of the resellers talking about the details of PLM was even more a disadvantage as it creates an impression that PLM is complex. It is easier to sell a dream. A similar situation as I described in my posts: Who decides for PLM in a mid-market company

My conclusion

Although I am aware that many mid-market companies implement basics of PLM, it is frustrating to see that lack of priority and understanding of the management in mid-market companies blocks the growth to full benefits for PLM. The management is not to blame, as most PLM messages either come from the high-end PLM vendors or from product resellers both not packaged for the mid-market. See PLM for the mid-market – a mission impossible ?

PLM is a cross-departmental solution and the management should look for partners who can explain the business values and share best practices for mid-market companies business  wise.
The partner is 50 % of the success for a PLM implementation.

Do you recoginize similar situations ? How would you address them ?

plm_cloud

My PLM blog cloud based on Wordie – see the virtualdutchman blog cloud

How to get users excited or more committed to a new PLM system?

April 17, 2010 in CAD data management, Change, PLM, ROI on PLM, SMB | Tags: , , , , | 4 comments

observation Two weeks ago I received through the PLM group on LinkedIn, the following question from Nathalie: “Do you know any specific examples of what some companies have done to get their users ready, excited or more committed to the new PLM system?”

When digging in my mind and planning to give a quick answer, I realized it was an interesting question with a contradiction embedded: users and excitement for a new PLM system.

This week I was attending the SmarTeam User Group meeting in the Netherlands, where an excellent presentation was given by Simon and Hessel from a Dutch company called  Meyn (Poultry processing) about their PLM implementation. They shared their excitement !

Combined with an interesting discussion on Oleg’s blog with Frank, I believe I have the ingredients to answer the above question more complete.

PLM is not exiting for users

myplm I think this is fact number one. When you go to tradeshows or PLM exhibitions, you see usually only 3D CAD demos, nobody tries to demonstrate PLM functions and features in detail. As a side step, I believe the best PLM system should be almost invisible for the user. Users want to work in their own environment with applications like CAD, Excel (BOM handling apps), Office, FEA tools, Simulation tools and more.

ERP has a more clear value proposal, if you want to define and schedule your manufacturing and manage the financial transactions, everyone has accepted that you need ERP. User acceptance is not relevant, users have to work with the provided interface as otherwise production or accounting will fail, there is no alternative.

In contrary, the clear value and definition of PLM are not clear to user. For that reason these users do not get excited when confronted with PLM. They have been surviving without implementing PLM, so they believe there is an alternative.

 

But we know there are PLM benefits?

My previous post – PLM in the mid-market a mission impossible? – lead to a discussion with Oleg and Frank coming with anew and interesting view point. Frank mentioned that in the German area, many mid-market companies do PLM without purchasing an enterprise PLM system from the known vendors.

coopThe discussion focused on granularity, as all of us believed that a set-by-step approach towards PLM best practices, driven by people who understand the company very well, is the key to success. For this approach you need people inside the customer’s organization who can formulate the vision assisted by consultants working very dedicated in that industry. It requires a different type of consultant as those active in the big enterprise projects.

Instead of implementing PLM as a standard process, in this approach the customer drives and leads the activities where they see benefits in their overall business process. To achieve this, the company must have has a clear vision, where they want to be in the next 5 – 10 years.

Next implementations steps should fit in this strategy and prioritized based on different parameters and these steps are not always with a focus on PLM.

And here lies the key for successful PLM implementations.

my_way The implementation might be based on an academic approach around a core PLM data model and best practices. Mid-market offerings are around an OOTB (Out-Of-The-Box) quick implementation –  the PLM system/implementer leads.

Something the management of likes to hear; quick and with little customization, which would translate in lower costs of implementation and disruption of the organization. But then, the end-users start to complain. There is too much change their standard way of working and they do not see the advantages – keying in more data in a system does not help them.

No_roi The introduction of PLM brings more complexity and as the new system has to prove itself, there is not big enthusiasm from the average user. The management can push, like in the ERP situation, but in general also the management is anxious to learn if this OOTB-approach brings the benefits and when it fails they ask the vendor where the estimated ROI can be found.

Concluding you will be lucky if users get excited form the OOTB approach.

sel_a In the second and granular approach, the company defines their strategy and vision, not necessary a 100 % PLM vision. This strategy need to be clear and shared with the employees in the company, especially for those who are affected by changes.

Next together with implementation partners, who bring in the know-how and possible software tools, a part of the company’s process is addressed and improved. It can be in any area, changing the CAD engine, automate BOM handling, connect sales to engineering or connect after sales/service to engineering.

Many of these areas of interest have different solutions, some are extensions of the CAD environment, some of them are extensions of the ERP environment and some of them are extensions of the IT-platform used in the company.

This approach is not sold by the PLM vendors, as they want to introduce their system as the IT-platform, wrap around the CAD and even capture the definition of the MBOM and initiation of the Item master.

A step-by-step approach based on different granular components, every time in the direction of the company’s strategy, plus all the time feed-back to the end-users on the positive impact of the change, is for me the key to success. In my previous post I was looking for a global provider for these required components.
With the step by step approach with granular solutions, we get users involved and excited.

 

And this brings me the to the presentation from Meyn

meyn The first time I got involved with Meyn was in October 2004. At that time they had chosen to move from their BaaN-2D CAD infrastructure to a new environment with BaaN – 3D CAD (CATIA). Simon presented their target strategy and vision: moving away from being an Engineering To Order company to become primarily a Configure To Order company.

ENOVIA SmarTeam was chosen to manage the 3D CAD and to connect the information to BaaN. Initially Meyn started in the classical PLM approach, but already after a few months, the understanding was there, they need have step-by-step approach, focused on results for the new CATIA users, without communicating around a complete PLM focused project.

So they followed a stepped approach, they called them waves.

Moving from Engineering to Order to Configure to Order is not software implementation. It requires rationalization of your products; convert them into modular, configurable parts. For this you need to be an engineering expert, not a software expert.

But when it comes to implementation of this concept in the software, you need both experts. And through this collaboration, a methodology for skeleton design was established which was driven by Meyn. And the reason the users were excited was, that they were doing real engineering, the benefits were significant visible.

roi Customer project related engineering time (typical ETO), which was in the beginning their core activity, became around 30 % of the time. More time could be spent on developing new machines in a modular way. With almost the same amount of engineers the turn-over of the company had more than doubled. A win-win environment which makes also the end-users excited.

Still the backend with ERP at Meyn remained almost the same similar to the time they were working in the 2D environment. And the most interesting conclusion at the end of the presentation was, they are still using the same slide with the vision and they can explain why each step was taken and justify it by measurable benefits.

And this brings me to the answer of the question

“Do you know any specific examples of what some companies have done to get their users ready, excited or more committed to the new PLM system”?

  • The management needs to have a clear vision where they want to be as a company in the future. This is not an IT-vision, but a business vision which explain why changes are needed. This vision should be clear to the employees. Communicate!
  • Where possible provide metrics!
  • Do not talk about a PLM system; it can be also in other tools. Talk about improvement steps in the business processes contributing to the vision. The PLM system is the information backbone, not the front-end. Management and implementers should talk business functionality not IT functions and features. Do not talk in applications!
  • Build step by step user scenarios with focus on methodology and user understanding. Implementations with a function-feature focus are hard to accept by the users. Talk business!
  • The management should present their vision again and again, supported by metrics what has been accomplished and what has been learned for the future – repeat!

Conclusion

There are thousands of mid-market companies that have a vision to improve their business. The PLM system should never be the topic of discussion with the end users; it is the change in working methods that is important, supported by various systems -CAD/ERP/CRM – and almost invisible …….. PLM

The company Meyn is an example of this approach. Simon and Hessel are working for Meyn as engineers improving their company’s business. Unfortunate it is not their business to explain all around the world, how PLM supports business change in a mid-market company. I was glad to attend their session last week.

PLM for the mid-market – mission impossible?

April 4, 2010 in ERP, PLM, SMB | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 comments

eb In 2008 and 2009 several analysts predicted that the mid-market was now ready for PLM and that most of the PLM vendors were building a targeted offering for the mid-market. I was, and still am, a believer that mid-market companies will benefit from PLM in case ………… they implement it.
When you review my observations in my blog from the past two years, apparently this does not seem to happen. Therefore in the past months, I have been analyzing posts and discussions around the ‘old’ and ‘new’ PLM, I have been talking with representatives from various PLM and PDM vendors, and last but not least analyzed what was the implementation process of a PLM system in companies, where I could get these insights.

This all lead to this post, perhaps too big for a blog, too small for a report.

First the definitions

Before giving my opinion, first my definitions of PLM and mid-market (as everyone has their own definition):

plm PLM means for me the management of all product related data and processes, from the initial concept phase, through planning, development, production planning and after sales/service. When talking about PLM, I have always a circular process in mind. Experiences from products in the market are again inputs for new product development. Instead of a linear process where every department manages their own data, the challenge is that every discipline contributes and collaborates around the product data. This implies that a PLM implementation always requires a business change process for a customer

mid-market Mid-market companies are for those companies where there is no strategic layer available plus a minimized investment in IT-resources. This leads to organizations where most changes are happening inside departments and cross-departmental changes are hard to implement. The IT-department might be a facilitator here but usually IT people focus on architecture and infrastructure instead of business change. This implies that a PLM changed should come from external people.

 

And who are doing PLM?

On the enterprise level, there is a battle between the big three (Dassault Systems, Siemens and PTC) and they are challenged mostly by the two big ERP vendors (SAP and Oracle) and on the PLM front by Aras, competing through its Open Source model. Of course there are many other vendors. These observations come from the area where I am active.

cad_txt There are various ways to group these PLM vendors; one is from the CAD engine point of view: DS-CATIA / Siemens-NX / PTC-Pro/E. Although all claim to support a multi-CAD environment, the main focus in these companies is around the PLM integration with their primary CAD engine.

Where in the past, CAD independent PDM systems existed (Metaphase, MatrixOne), they could only survive in the major PLM industries by being integrated with CAD tools and were acquired for that reason. It will be interesting to see if Aras can play a major role in the PLM only domain, where others failed in the past due to lack of integration capabilities.

erp_txt SAP and Oracle took a different path; they have understood that PLM cannot be neglected in an enterprise, so they need to address it. SAP did this by developing a PLM module as a logical extension on their infrastructure. Oracle has chosen to add PLM to their portfolio by the acquisition of two different PLM vendors. Where SAP does not have the challenge to explain to customers a full integrated story, Oracle has to spend more time on marketing to make it look like a single platform, which will come in the future. Big question however for both companies: do they really understand PLM? Is it in their veins and core strategy or does it remain an extension to gain market share, especially as you have no connections to the design world? (Try to find PLM on their corporate website).

plm_txt Interesting to see how Aras will evolve. In their business model, the initial purchase of software is not needed, but once working with Aras you pay also for maintenance like with other PLM vendors. Their advantage is that switching from an existing legacy PLM vendor is less painful, as there are no initial software costs, which can be huge for an enterprise. I believe they have a good chance to succeed in industries where there is less a dependency on the CAD engine.So on the enterprise level the need for PLM is justified. Resources exist and are budgeted both at the customer level as at the supplier level. The PLM suppliers are either the PLM vendors themselves with service teams, or big, global service providers specialized in implementing the PLM software. They can do strategic PLM projects and support the required business change.

So why does it look like a mission impossible in the mid-market ?

The big enterprise vendors (PLM/ERP) believe that you can just strip down your enterprise software in a kind of prepackaged mode – PLM Out of the Box is a common heard expression. Also the analysts praise in their reports the mid-market approach from some of these vendors.

But do they really address the mid-market or only the high-end mid-market? Again it is all about the definition of where is the mid-market and in this post I stay with my definition of mid-market.

There are two main characteristics for this mid-market:

  1. Sales and implementation of software is done through Value Added Resellers and not through the vendors or big service companies. The software revenue per customer does not justify high expenses for global consultants with additional high expenses due to travel costs (and sometimes the local language issue). The local VAR is supposed to be the point of contact.
  2. Mid-market companies do not change their main company processes. Depending on the type of core process, let’s assume ETO or BTO, they have sales and engineering working close together on product/solution definition and they have manufacturing planning and production working close together on product/solution delivery. In term of functionality a PDM focus for sales/engineering and an ERP focus for manufacturing.

A mid-market company can be characterized as a two pillar company :

Who are successful in the mid-market ?

There are two software vendors, touching our PLM prospects , that really understand the mid-market, Autodesk and Microsoft.

Autodesk has a huge range of products and when we focus on the area of manufacturing, Autodesk does not talk about PLM. And I believe for several reasons.

ad Autodesk has never been a front-runner in making new technology and concepts available for the mainstream. They are more a company providing functionality for mainstream concepts, as compared to a company pushing new concepts and technology for premium pricing.
And this is what their customers like, as they also do not have internal strategic resources to push the company to new directions and surely no one wants to take the risk.

Thus risk avoidance and understandable concepts are key targets for mid-market companies.
Autodesk tries to avoid reaching beyond their engineering domain, the maximum they cover is presented in their Digital Prototyping solution. With their Vault product range they stay close to PDM, but do not go into the concepts of PLM, like mBOM handling. PLM is not established enough in the mid-market, so a no-go area for Autodesk.

Microsoft addresses the mid-market more from the IT-infrastructure. Slowly SharePoint has reached a certain status of an infrastructure component for content management – so why not for all the engineering data? SharePoint is the most relevant component related to PDM or PLM in my review and what I observed here is that the IT-manager often is the person who supports and enables a cross-departmental implementation of SharePoint. So not pushed from a strategic business level but from a strategic IT architecture approach.

md PLM providers and implementers jumped on this opening in the mid-market by providing PLM capabilities on top of SharePoint. This to get their software used in the mid-market. It does not mean they do PLM, it means they expand the visibility of engineering data across the organization. Microsoft apparently does not want to enter the area of managing CAD or engineering data. You see mainly investments in the Microsoft Dynamics software, where ERP and CRM are targeted. Again PLM is not established enough in the mid-market to provide common functionality, so a no-go area for Microsoft.

And the impact of a indirect sales channel….

CADVARs are the next challenge for PLM in the mid-market. The PLM Vendors, who work with VARs, expect that these VARs are an extension of their sales organization. And sales means here selling software . PLM means however also selling services and I learned in the hard way in my past that companies selling products and services within the same group of people are constant in internal conflict how to balance software and service budgets

Selling and implementing PLM software is also difficult in mid-market companies as these companies buy software because they want to solve a pain in one of their departments. It is not common that they have a holistic approach. So VARs trying to sell PLM are engineering centric – often with their roots in CAD Selling. And as their nature comes from product selling, they feel comfortable in selling data management and PDM as this remains close to product features easy to justify. PLM requires different people, who can guide a business change across departments at the customer.

varIt is very rare for VARs to have these skilled people in place due to lack of scale. You need to act local to be cost efficient and close to your customer. As a VAR has only visibility of a limited group of implementations, the consultancy practices often are not based on global experience and best practices, but defined on their own best practices, sometimes bring their ‘magic’ to be even more different than required, to differentiate from other VARs.

The companies implementing PLM for enterprises can afford to share global knowledge; VARs need to build up the knowledge locally, which leads to an extreme dependency on the person who is available. And to be affordable on the payroll a VAR, the consultant often is an experienced application engineer, who knows to satisfy his customer by providing services on top of the product.

And as PLM is not established enough in the mid-market, they will not invest and push for PLM which requires a long term experience build-up, so almost a no-go area for VARs

So no PLM in the mid-market?

I believe real PLM in my mid-market will be a rarity, based on a lucky coincidence of the right people, the right company and the right product at a certain time. It will not become a main stream solution in the mid-market as there is the design world and the ERP world.

PLM SaaS (Software As A Service) delivered by Arena or PLMplus will not bring the solution either for the mid-market. You might remove the IT complexity, but you are missing the resources (internal and external) for business change – who will be there to initiate and guide the change . PLM SaaS probably will be implemented as a PDM environment.

gw I give more credits for Social PLM (Facebook alike collaboration, Google Wave). This approach might bypass the classical way of working in companies and lead to new concepts, which probably will not be tagged PLM – will the new trigram be SPC (Social Product Collaboration) ?

Still it will not happen fast I believe. It requires a change of the management in mid-market companies. Most of the managers are representative of the older generation, not wanting to take the risk to jump on a new hype they haven’t made themselves familiar yet

 

Conclusion: PLM in the mid-market seems like a mission impossible and although PLM concepts are valuable for the mid-market as analysts report, the typical mid-market characteristics block PLM to become a common practice there.

I am looking forward to learn from your comments

BOM for Dummies: BOM and CAD

March 23, 2010 in CAD data management, CTO, EBOM, ERP, MBOM, PDM, PLM, SMB | Tags: , , , , , , , | 2 comments

observation In my previous post, BOM for Dummies related to Configure To Order, I promised to come back on the special relation between the items in the BOM and the CAD data. I noticed from several posts in PLM and PDM groups that also the importance of CAD data is perceived in a different manner, depending on the background of the people or the systems they are experienced with.

So I would like to start with some general statements based on these observations.

planning People who are talking about the importance of CAD data and product structures are usually coming from a background in PDM. In an environment where products are designed, the focus is around data creation, mostly CAD data. The language around parts in the BOM is mostly targeting design parts. So in a PDM environment CAD data is an important topic – therefore PDM people and companies will talk about CAD data and vaults as the center of information.

erp_bom

When you are working in a PLM environment, you need a way to communicate around a product, through its whole lifecycle, not only the design phase but also supporting manufacturing phases, the possible changes of an existing product through engineering changes, the traceability of as-built data and more. In a PLM environment, people have the physical part (often called the ERP part) in mind, when they talk about a part number.

As PLM covers product information across various departments and disciplines, the information carrier for product information cannot be the CAD data. The BOM, usually the mBOM, is the main structure used to represent and produce the product. Most parts in the mBOM have a relation to a CAD document (in many companies still the 2D drawing). Therefore PLM people and companies understanding PLM will talk about items and products and their lifecycle as their center of information.

CAD data in relation to Engineering to Order

The above generalizations have to be combined with the different main business processes. In a strict Engineering To Order environment, where you design and build a solution only once for a specific customer, there is no big benefit of going through an eBOM and mBOM transition.

During the design process the engineer already has manufacturing in mind, which will be reflected in the CAD structure they build – sometime hybrid representing both engineering and manufacturing items. In such an environment CAD data is leading to build a BOM structure.

And in cases where engineering is done in one single 3D CAD system, the company might use the PDM system from this vendor to manage their Bill of Materials. The advantage of this approach is that PDM is smoothly integrated with the design environment. However it restricts in a certain matter the future as we will see in further reading.

pointNot everyone needs the Engineering to Order process !

Moving to an integrated, multi-disciplinary engineering process or changing the main process from Engineering To Order to Built To Order / Configure To Order will cause major challenges in the company.

I have seen in the recent past, several companies that would like to change their way of working from a CAD centric Engineering To Order process towards a more Built to Order or Configure To Order process. The bottle neck of making this switch was every time that engineering people think in CAD structures and all knowledge is embedded in the CAD data. They now want to configure their products in the CAD system.

For Configure to Order you have to look at a different way to your CAD data:

Questions to ask yourself as a company are:

  • When I configure my products around a CAD structure, what should I do with data from other disciplines (Electrical/Tooling/Supplier data) ?
  • When I upgrade my 3D CAD system to a new version, do I need to convert all old CAD data to the newest versions in order to keep my configurations alive?
  • When configuring a new customer solution, do I need to build my whole product in CAD in order to assure it is complete?
  • In Configure to Order the engineering BOM and manufacturing BOM are different. Does this mean that when I go through a new customer order, all CAD data need to be handled, going through eBOM and mBOM transition again?

For me it is obvious that only in an Engineering to Order environment the CAD data are leading for order fulfillment. In all other typical processes, BTO (Built to Order), CTO (Configure to Order) and MTS (Make to Stock),  product configuration and definition is done around items and the CAD data is important associated data for the product definition and manufacturing

In the case of order fulfillment in a Configure to Order process, the CAD structure is not touched as configuration of the product is available based on items. Each item in the mBOM has it relations to CAD data or other specifying information.

In the case of Built To Order, a huge part of the product is already configured, like in Configure To Order. Only new interfaces or functionality will go through a CAD design process. This new design might be released through a process with an eBOM to mBOM transition. In cases where the impact or the amount of data created in engineering is not huge, it is even possible to configure the changes immediately in an mBOM environment.

old_process A second point, which is also under a lot of discussion in the field ( PLM interest groups), is that PDM is easily to introduce as a departmental solution. The engineering BOM is forwarded to manufacturing and there further (disconnected) processed.  The step from PDM to PLM is always a business change.

When PDM vendors talk about ERP integration, they often mean the technical solution of connecting the two systems, not integrating the processes around the BOM (eBOM/mBOM transition) 0r an integrated engineering change (ECR/ECO). See how easy it is according to some PDM vendors:

or
PLM requires an adaptation of all departments to work different and together around a single product definition. Especially in a mid-market company, this is a big issue, as all product knowledge is stored in the CAD data and the knowledge how to produce the product is stored in the mBOM on the ERP side. These environments are often disconnected.
Conclusion: In the context of PDM the importance of CAD data is clear and for companies following a strict Engineering To Order process the main source of product knowledge. Companies following the Built To Order / Configure To Order process should configure their products around items to keep flexibility towards the future.

Companies with the intention to move to Built To Order or Configure To Order should not invest too much in CAD data configuration as it creates a roadblock for the future.

In my next post I will address the question that comes up from many directions, addressed by Jim Brown and others, as discussed  in one of his recent posts around a PLM standard definition and more ….

Asset Lifecycle Management using a PLM system

March 1, 2010 in Asset Lifecycle Management, ISO 15926, MRO, Observations, PLM, Tag numbering | Tags: , , , , | 7 comments

observation Although I am still active most of my time in ‘classical’ PLM, some of the projects I am involved with also deal with Asset Lifecycle Management. In general PLM focuses on a product development process, starting from a conceptual phase, going through planning, development and production. The PLM system serves as a collaboration and information backbone for all product IP (Intellectual Property). One of the main capabilities a PLM system provides is a ‘single version of the truth’.

And it is this capability, which makes a PLM system an excellent choice for Asset Lifecycle Management

Who practices Asset Lifecycle Management ?

alm Asset Lifecycle Management can be found at any location, where a company is maintaining a process – we call these companies Owners/ Operators. Best known industry for Asset Lifecycle Management is the Process & Power industry, where a company produces oil, energy or chemicals. However the same concept is also valid for water companies (water distribution process), food processing and infrastructure companies (railways, airports, roads)

All these companies have in common that they support a certain process and the challenge is, while being in operation, to optimize the process. During operation, maintenance and improvement activities should be as little as disruptive as possible.

A maintenance stop is very costly for Owner/Operators. Imagine a plant not producing fuel for two weeks (millions of liters) or a nuclear reactor not producing electricity for a month (millions of kilowatts) – no income. And no maintenance will lead to unexpected problems and in the worse case, disasters. So it is also about balancing these activities.

Let’s look at a definition of Asset Lifecycle Management

Asset Lifecycle Management is a balanced and active management of assets over the lifecycle, coupled with business objectives.

Simply said it translates into an approach, where based on business objectives (process stability, safety, margin) a company tries to optimize the usage of their assets (a reactor, a pump, a rail track, a road) through their individual lifecycles. This means perform preventive maintenance; renovate a part of the process and perform more parallel activities with a focus on improving the lifecycle of the process

So why not use a MRO system?

mro An MRO (Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul) system can be compared with an ERP system for manufacturing companies. The MRO system manages and schedules activities and resources on the plant, keeping track of maintenance activities done on inventory. But can it serve as the system providing the single version of the truth for all plant information? No!

So why not use an ERP system?

erp An ERP system is mostly used by owner/operators to control all financial transactions (contracts, purchasing, suppliers, projects/resources accounting). Some ERP vendors provide MRO functionality in a single system; still can this system provide the single version of truth for all plant information? Again I am sure it is not the case.

So why not use a document management system?

doc As most of the process information is stored in various types of documents, is seems to be appropriate to store all information in a document management system. And actually this is what owner/operators try to do, however they maintain inside their company different document management systems (paper archives, office documents in a specific system, engineering documents in another system, etc, etc). Each of the systems can provide a single version of the truth for specific content, however there is a consolidated single entry point for all asset data. Often the documents also do not reflect the status of an asset. Is the asset running in, is it active, is it demolished?

The tag number does not show it, and changing the status of an asset forces people to go through the various document systems to change the status there. An inefficient and costly procedure, not reliable and often not done.

So why not an integrated plant engineering system?

plant_eng Engineering plant software is designed to support the design collaboration and is mostly used by EPC contractors. These engineering companies are hired by the owner/operator to design and construct the plant or make major modifications of the plant. EPC contractors need to work as efficient as possible (to get the job), which means for them work as intelligent as possible in an integrated manner with tag numbers, P&IDs, 3D Equipment, Piping, ISOs. This intelligence leads to an application specific format and infrastructure.

During the hand-over of the plant or modification, this intelligence disappears as the owner/operator does not use the engineering plant software. They do not want to be dependent on a single software provider or version of the data. As data has to live for many years, sometimes 30 years or more, application specific data is hard to maintain. So as part of the hand-over data will be provided in neutral formats, worst case paper, but often in PDFs, TIFFs or other publishing format, losing all the intelligence.

15926 There is an intelligent, neutral format based on ISO 15926. This requires an investment from the EPC contractor and an investment from the owner/operator to manage all information in this format. For complex and long-lasting environments, like a nuclear plant, this approach surely pays off; however what you see is that on both sides (EPC and Owner/Operator) they try to minimize the costs on data handling/conversion. This leads in the long term to much more labor time internal at the owner/operator to manage and assure the data is accurate. But these costs somehow come later and are more hidden. And the question remains: can this system serve as the single version of truth for all plant information? No, plant engineering systems are too application specific

In addition, plant engineering software environments are not targeted to work integrated in an owner/operator environment, managing parallel projects and resources, quality processes and inventory statuses related to a certain asset and project.

So why not use a project management software system?

proj As in a plant many projects can run in parallel, it happens that they run on the same assets or locations in the plant. For engineers and maintenance it is important to have visibility on which projects have impact on each other. Project management software is not targeted to make data visible related to a collection of assets or locations. No, project management software can not be the system to serve as the single version of truth for all plant information.

So either we give up for looking a single version of the truth and pay the price for multiple software systems to maintain in the company and take the extra efforts for configuration management for granted, or we look at PLM ?

The PLM based solution

In the past 15 years I have done several projects with ENOVIA and projects where Asset Lifecycle Management was done with ENOVIA. For sure, other flexible PLM systems can do the same, as the solution lies in an adapted data model for ALM.

This picture shows what a PLM system can do:

alm_data_model

It can provide all related information (documents, inventory, locations, and projects) to an asset with one click from within single system. In addition it can also give the actual status of the asset. Assets are often identified by tag numbers, and the lifecycle of an asset can be managed by default in a PLM system, combined with Asset Change processes.

Best Practices coming from the PLM world can be used here too. The major challenge for PLM vendors is to reduce the complexity for data handling, as ALM users will not be engineers experienced to complex CAD environments. They are information workers, who need with a short learning curve, direct access to the data they require (and they should be sure the data is reliable)

Note: the PLM system will need to interface with the MRO and ERP system. Like in the classical PLM concept, MRO and ERP are the transactional systems, controlling the day to day activities, where the PLM system provides the accurate plant information (IP) required for an activity.

Also the PLM system will manage the non-standard activities through projects, change processes and will rely on accurate information from ERP.

The major benefits reported from implementations based on a PLM system are: roi

  • Reduced down-time for the plant, due to better planning and accurate information when preparing a maintenance stop. Less surprises with unforeseen delays of production.
  • More reliable and less effort to be complaint to safety, health, environment and governmental regulations as all information is available in a single, controlled and traceable environment
  • Lower cost of ownership for ALM. Instead of maintaining various silos of information and provide access to certain users, a single system with a common interface is available for most of the users.

 

Conclusion: Owner/Operators should look into the benefits a PLM system can bring for them. Interesting the benefits are not based on the integration of product development, but on providing accurate information from different entry points for different roles

 I am curious to learn who has seen a similar approach – feel free to comment

BOM for Dummies – CTO

February 14, 2010 in CTO, EBOM, MBOM, PLM | Tags: , , , , , | 6 comments

sleep This is the third post on Bill of Material handling for different types of companies, this time the focus on Configure To Order (CTO). In the CTO process, products are assembled and configured based on customer requirements. This means there is no more engineering needed when customer requirements are known. CTO examples are, the ordering process of a car with all its options, or ordering a personal computer over the internet.

So what has Configure To Order to do with PLM as there is no engineering?

The main PLM activity takes places when designing the configurable product. Designing a product that is configurable, requires a complete different approach as compared to Engineering to Order or Build to Order. Although we see a similar Configure to Order activity in the R&D departments of companies that follow the Build to Order process. They are also designing products or modules that can be used as-is in customer specific orders as part of the solution.

dashboard The challenge of CTO is to design products that are modular, and where options and variants are designed on a common platform with common interfaces. If you look to the dashboard of a car you will see placeholders for additional options (in case you have the minimal car version) and also you might see that for example the radio display in a basic car version differs from the complete board computer in the luxury version. The common platform is one dashboard, fitting to numerous options.

An engineering department will not focus on designing and defining each of the possible combinations of options as this would be impossible to manage. What can be managed is the common platform (the baseline) and all different options on top of this baseline.

So what happens with the BOM?

The initial design of configurable products goes through similar steps as the BTO process, which means starting from a conceptual BOM, moving to an Engineering BOM (eBOM) and finally produce a BOM for manufacturing (mBOM). The difference is that in the CTO process the mBOM is not developed for just one product, but contains all definitions for all possible products. In this situation we talk about a generic mBOM.

Only when a customer order exists, the generic mBOM is resolved into a specific mBOM for this customer order, which then can be sent to the ERP system for execution.

filter In a generic BOM the relations are managed by filters. These filters define the effectivity of the link, in simple words if the relation between two parts in the BOM is valid (and shown) or not. There are various ways to define effectivity – with again a differentiation in usage

  • revision based effectivity – which means the relation between two items is valid in case the revisions match
  • date effectivity – which means the relation is valid during a certain time interval

Both methods are used most of the time for non-configurable products. The revision and date effectivity are used to be able to track the product history through time and therefore to have full traceability. But this does not work if you want to configure every time a customer specific order.

In that case we use unit or option based filtering.

  • unit effectivity – which means the relation between two items is valid for a unit (or a range of units) produced. For example a batch of products or a unique product with a serial number
  • option effectivity – which means the relation between two items is valid in case a certain condition is valid. Which condition depends on the configuration rules for this option. Example of options are: color, version, country

It is clear that unit and option based filtering of a BOM can lead to a conceptual complex product definition which goes beyond the BOM for Dummies target.  Below an illustration of the various filter concepts (oops the animated gif does not work – i will investigate):

CTO

The benefit of this filtering approach is that there is a minimum of redundancy of data to manage. This makes it a common practice in the aerospace and automotive industry. An example describing all the complexity can be found for example here, but I am sure on this level there are enough publications and studies available.

And what about the CAD ?

I will write a separate post on this topic, as all the possible interactions and use cases with CAD are a topic on its own. You can imagine, having the 3D virtual world combined with a configurable BOM brings a lot of benefits

What PLM functions are required to support Configure to Order ?

  • Project management – not so much focus here as the delivery project for a customer does not require much customer interaction. Of course, the product development processes requires advanced capabilities which I will address later in a future post.
  • Document management – same approach as for project management. The product related documentation needs to exist and secured. Customer specific documentation can be generated often automatically.
  • Product Management – managing all released and available components for a solution, related to their Bill of Materials. Often part of product management is the classification of product families and its related modules
  • Item management – The main activities here are in the mBOM area. Capabilities for BOM generation (eBOM/mBOM), baseline and compare using filtering (unit based / option based) in order to support the definition if the manufactured product
  • Workflow processes – As we are dealing with standardized components in the BOM, the Engineering Change Request (ECR) and Engineering Change Order (ECO) processes will be the core for changes. And as we want to manage controlled manufacturing definition, the Manufacturer Change Order process and Standard Item Approval process are often implemented

Optional:

  • Requirements Management – specially for complex products, tracking of individual requirements and their implementation, can save time and costs during delivery to understand and handle the complex platform
  • Service Management – as an extension of item management. When a customer specific order has been delivered it might be still interesting for the company that delivered the product to keep traceability of the customer configuration for service options – managing the Service and As-Built BOM
  • Product Configurator – the reason I write it as optional, is because the target is order execution, which is not a PLM role anymore. The ERP system should be able to resolve the full mBOM for an order. The PLM product configuration definition is done through Product and Item management. Depending on the customer environment the role of configurator might be found in PLM in case ERP does not have the adequate tools.

Conclusion:

It is hard to describe the Configure To Order process in the scope of BOM for Dummies. As various detailed concepts exist per industry there is no generic standard. This is often the area where the PLM system, the PLM users and implementers are challenged the most: to make it workable, understandable and maintainable

Next time some industry specific observations for a change

BOM for Dummies – BTO

February 2, 2010 in EBOM, ERP, MBOM, PLM | Tags: , , , | 3 comments

sleep Continuing the posts on Bill of Material handling for different types of companies, this time the focus on BOM handling in a Build to Order process. When we are talking about Build to Order process, we mean that the company is delivering solutions for its customers, based on existing components or modules. A typical example is the food processing industry. In order to deliver a solution, a range of machinery (ingredient manipulation) and transporting systems are required. The engineering tasks are focused on integrating these existing components. In many cases new or adjusted components are required to complete the solution.

Research and Development in a BTO company

In a typical BTO company you see actually two processes.

  • The main BTO process, fulfilling the needs for the customers based on existing components
  • An R&D department, which explores new technologies and develops new components or modules, which will become available for selling to new customers.

idea This is the innovation engine of the company and often can be found in a complete isolated environment – extra security – no visibility for other departments till release. The task for this R&D department is to develop machinery or modules based on new, competitive technologies, which are rapidly configurable and can be used in various customer solutions. The more these machines or modules are configurable, the better the company can respond to demands from customers, assuming a generic machine and interfaces does not degrade performance, compared to optimal tuned machinery.

I will describe the BOM handling for this department in a future post, as also here you will see particular differences with the ETO and BTO BOM handling.

Back to the core of BTO

I found a nice picture from 2003 published by Dassault Systems describing the BTO process:

BTOprocess

We see here the Bidding phase where a conceptual BOM is going to be defined for costing. Different from the ETO process, the bidding company will try to use as much as possible known components or technology. The reason is clear: it reduces the risk and uncertainties, which allow the bidding company to make a more accurate and competitive cost estimate for these parts. When a company becomes mature in this area, a product configurator can be used to quantify the estimated costs.

The result from the bidding phase is a conceptual BOM, where hopefully 60 % or more is already resolved. Now depending on the amount of reuse, the discussion comes up: Should modifications being initiated from the eBOM or from the mBOM?

In case of 60 % reuse, it is likely that engineering will start working around the eBOM and from there complete the mBOM. Depending on the type of solution, the company might decide to handle the remaining 40 % engineering work as project unique and treat it the same way as in an ETO process. This means no big focus on the mBOM as we are going to produce it only once.

I have worked with companies, which tried to analyze the 40 % customer specific engineering per order and from there worked towards more generic solutions for future orders. This would mean that a year later the same type of order would now be defined for perhaps 80 %. Many companies try to change themselves from a project centric company towards a product centric company, delivering configured products through projects.

Of course when solutions become 100 % configurable, we do not speak from BTO anymore, but from Configure to Order (CTO). No engineering is needed; all components and interfaces are designed to work together in certain conditions without further engineering. As an example, when you buy a car or you order a PC through the internet – it is done without sales engineering – it is clearly defined which options are available and in which relation.

See below:

customer_delivery

However the higher the amount of reuse, the more important it becomes to work towards an mBOM, which we will than push the order to ERP.

And this is the area where most of the discussions are in a PLM implementation.

  • Are we going to work based on the mBOM and handle all required engineering modifications from there?

Or

  • Do we first work on a complete eBOM and once completed, we will complete the mBOM?

The reuse from existing components and modules (hardware) is one of the main characteristics of BTO. Compare this to ETO where the reuse of knowledge is the target no reuse of components.

The animation shows the high level process that I discussed in this post.

What PLM functions are required to support Build to Order ?

  • Project management – the ability to handle data in the context of project. Depending on the type of industry extended with advanced security rules for project access
  • Document management – where possible integrated with the authoring applications to avoid data be managed outside the PLM system and double data entry
  • Product Management – managing all released and available components for a solution, related to their Bill of Materials. Often part of product management is the classification of product families and its related modules
  • Item management – The main activities here are in the mBOM area. As items in a BTO environment are reused, it is important to provide relevant ERP information in the PLM environment. Relevant ERP information is mostly actual costs, usage information (when was it used for the last time) and availability parameters (throughput time / warehouse info).

As historically most of the mBOM handling is done in ERP, companies might not be aware of this need. However they will battle with the connection between the eBOM in PLM and the mBOM (see many of my previous posts).
As part of the BTO process is around engineering, an EBOM environment with connections to specifying documents is needed. This requires that the PLM system has eBOM/mBOM compare capabilities and an easy way to integrate engineering changes in an existing mBOM.

  • Workflow processes – As we are dealing with standardized components in the BOM, the Engineering Change Request (ECR) and Engineering Change Order (ECO) processes will be the core for changes. In addition you will find a Bidding Process, a Release process for the customer order, Manufacturer Change Order process and a Standard Item Approval process.

Optional:

  • A Sales Configurator allowing the sales engineering people to quickly build the first BOM for costing. Working with a Sales Configurator requires a mature product rationalization.
  • Supplier Exchange data management – as many BTO companies work with partners and suppliers
  • Service Management – as an extension of item management. Often in this industry the company who Builds the solutions provides maintenance services and for that reason requires another Bill of Material, the service BOM, containing all components needed when revising a part of the machine
  • Issues Management – handling issues in the context of PLM gives a much better environment for a learning organization
  • Requirements Management – specially for complex products, tracking of individual requirements and their implementation, can save time and costs during delivery

Conclusion (so far):

When you compare these PLM requirements with the previous post around ETO, you will discover a lot of similarities. The big difference however is HOW you use them. Here consultancy might be required as I do not believe that by having just functionality a company in the mid-market will have time to learn and understand the special tweaks for their business processes.

Next post more on configurable products

Bill of Materials for Dummies – ETO

January 19, 2010 in EBOM, ERP, MBOM, PLM | Tags: , , , | 9 comments

sleep This time a few theoretical posts about BOM handling, how the BOM is used in different processes as Engineering To Order (ETO), Make To Order (MTO) and Build To Order (BTO) organizations and finally which PLM functions you would expect to support these best practices.

I noticed from various lectures I gave, from the search hits to my blog and from discussions in forums that there is a need for this theoretical base. I will try to stay away from too many academic terminologies, so let’s call it BOM for Dummies.

Note: All information is highly generalized to keep is simple. I am sure in most of the companies where the described processes take place more complexity exists.

What is a BOM?

A BOM, abbreviation for Bill of Materials, is a structured, often multi-level list of entities and sub-entities used to define a product

I keep the terminology vague as it all depends to who is your audience. In general when you speak with people in a company that does engineering and manufacturing, you have two major groups:

  • The majority will talk about the manufacturing BOM (mBOM), which is a structure that contains the materials needed to manufacture a product in a certain order.
    We will go more in depth into the mBOM later.
  • When you speak with the designers in a company they will talk about the eBOM, which is a structure that contains the components needed to define a product.

Both audiences will talk about ‘the BOM’ and ‘parts’ in the BOM, without specifying the context (engineering or manufacturing). So it is up to you to understand their context.

Beside these two major types of BOMs you will find some other types, like Conceptual BOM, Customer Specific BOM, Service BOM, Purchase BOM, Shipping BOM.

Each BOM is representing the same product only from a different usage point of view

The BOM in an Engineering To Order company

In an Engineering to Order company, a product is going to be developed based on requirements and specifications. These requirements lead to functions and systems to be implemented. For complex products companies are using systems engineering as a discipline, which is a very structured approach that guarantees the system you develop is matching all requirements and these requirements have been validated.

In less complex and less automated environments, you will see that the systems engineering is done in the head of the experienced engineers. Based on the requirements, they recognize solutions that have been done before and they build a first conceptual structure to describe the product. This is a conceptual BOM, often only a few levels deep, and this BOM is mainly used for costing and planning the work to be done.

A conceptual BOM could like this (open the picture in a separate window to see the animation)

CBOM

Depending of the type of engineering company, they are looking for the reuse of functions or systems. The reuse of functions means that you manage your company’s Intellectual Property (IP) where the reuse of systems can be considered as the reuse of standard building blocks (modules) to build a product. The advantage of system reuse of course is the lower risk, as the system has been designed and built and tested before.

From the conceptual BOM different disciplines start to work and design the systems and their interfaces. This structure could be named the eBOM as it represents the engineering point of view from the product. In Engineering to Order companies there is a big variation on how to follow up after engineering. Some companies only specify how the product should be made, which materials to use and how to assemble them. The real manufacturing of the product is in that case done somewhere else, for example at the customer site. Other companies still do the full process from engineering and manufacturing.

As there is usually no reuse of the designed products, there is also no investment in standardizing items and optimizing the manufacturing of the product. The eBOM is entered in the ERP system and there further processed to manufacture the product. A best practice in this type of environments is the approach that the eBOM is not a 100 % pure the eBOM, also items and steps needed for manufacturing might be added by the engineers as it is their responsibility to specify everything for manufacturing without actually making the product.

This animation shows on high level the process that I described (open the link in a separate window to see the animation)

ETO_EBOM

What PLM functions are required to support Engineering To Order

The following core functions apply to this process:

  • Project management – the ability to handle data in the context of project. Depending on the type of industry extended with advanced security rules for project access
  • Document management – where possible integrated with the authoring applications to avoid data be managed outside the PLM system and double data entry
  • Classification of functions and/or systems in order to have an overview of existing IP (what have we done) and to promote reuse of it
  • Item management – to support the eBOM and its related documentation. Also the items go through a lifecycle representing its maturity:
    – The eBOM might be derived from the mechanical 3D CAD structure and further extended from there.
    – For design reviews it would be useful to have the capability to create baselines of the eBOM including its specifying documents and have the option to compare baselines to analyze progress
    – The completed eBOM would be transferred to the ERP system(s). In case of a loose ERP connection a generic XML export would be useful (or export to Excel as most companies do)
  • Workflow processes – to guarantee a repeatable, measurable throughput of information – both approval and change processes

Optional:

  • Supplier Exchange data management – as many ETO companies work with partners and suppliers
  • Issues Management – handling issues in the context of PLM gives a much better environment for a learning organization
  • Requirements Management – specially for complex products, tracking of individual requirements and their implementation, can save time and costs during delivery
  • A configurator allowing the sales engineering people to quickly build the first conceptual BOM based on know modules combined with engineering estimates. This is the base for a better controlled bidding / costing

Let me know if this kind of posts make sense for you …..

Next time we will look at the BOM in a Build To Order process

The communality between PLM and the Echternach procession

January 11, 2010 in PLM | Tags: , , | 1 comment

observation This strange title came to my mind when I made an overview of my PLM posts in this blog so far. As I am working in the PLM space already for many years, I noticed by reviewing the topics below, that progress in PLM is slow. Yes, technology changes every 5 years, business models can change due to that, but most of the underlying concepts haven’t changed much.

At the implementation level, especially in traditional manufacturing companies, you notice a slow progress, although closely related to PLM, I believe 3D CAD has become a common practice, which could be one of the drivers for further change towards more PLM.

And this brought me to the Echternach procession, which currently is a dancing procession, where the pilgrims dance slowly to the church ( 1 mile / 1.6 km – dancing from left to right). In the Netherlands, we learned in primary school, that in the past the pilgrims made three steps forward and then two steps backward, which became an expression for a slow forward moving process in our idiom.

And if you look back to the topics overview underneath the movie , you see PLM adaptation is a slow process in the mid-market, still a way to go – perhaps dancing like the pilgrims this year ?

 

PLM and ERP

PLM and ERP – the culture change , continued, conclusion

Connecting PLM and ERP , continued

Can ERP vendors do PLM ?

 

PLM and change

PLM for the SMB – a process of culture change

Culture Change in a mid-sized company a management responsibility

The gap between mid-market companies and PLM – 15 year ?

What not to do in a bottom-up PLM implementation approach

Implementing PLM requires a vision

What if SMB as vision for PLM and PLM vendors do not understand it

Can Chaos become order through PLM

What have PLM and Capitalism in common ?

Some users do not like the single version of the truth

PLM concepts

Where is the MBOM ?

Working file based in the supply chain – manager have two options (actually one)

Classification

Where does PLM start beyond document management ?

PLM and ROI

5 reasons not to implement PLM

1. PLM is too costly

2. PLM implementations take too long

3. We already have an ERP system

4. Isn’t PLM the same as CAD data management ?

5. We are too busy

To PLM or not to PLM – start measuring

Measuring the concept phase

Measuring the planning phase

Measuring the development phase

Free PLM software does not help companies

PLM On Demand

Where is my PLM Return On Investment

A PLM success story with ROI

Who decides for PLM in a mid-market company ? continued academic conclusion

Economical crisis and PLM – Yes we can

Mid-market PLM – what did I learn in 2009 ?

December 31, 2009 in Green Development, Innovation, Observations, On Demand, open source, PLM, SMB | Tags: , | 1 comment

globe

Like many people, the meditation of the dark Christmas days and the various 2009 reviews give you a push to look back and reflect.  What happened and what did not happen in 2009?

And what might happen in 2010?

Here my thoughts related to:

 

ERP-related PLM vendors

Here I think mainly about Oracle and SAP. They have already identified PLM as an important component for a full enterprise solution. They are further pushing their one-shop-stop approach . Where Oracle’s offering is based on a set of acquired and to-be-integrated systems, SAP has been extending their offering by more focus on their own development.

vision If you are one of those companies that require PLM, and believe all software should come from one vendor (beside Microsoft), it is hard to decide.

As there might be real PLM knowledge in the Oracle organization as an effect of the acquisitions, but is it easily accessible for you? Is it reflected in the company’s strategy ?
With SAP I am even more in doubt; here you might find more people with ERP blood having learned the PLM talk. Maybe for that reason, I saw mostly Oracle as a PLM option in my environment and very few SAP opportunities for real PLM.

I assume in 2010 Oracle will push stronger and SAP try harder.

 

CAD-related PLM vendors

In this group you find as the major players PTC, Siemens and Dassault Systems. Autodesk could be there too, but they refuse to do PLM and remain focused around design collaboration. All these PLM vendors are striving to get the PLM message towards the mid-market. They have solutions for the enterprise, but to my feeling, most of the enterprises in the traditional well-know PLM markets, like Automotive and Aerospace, are in a kind of stand-still due to economical and upcoming environmental crisis.

It is sure business will not be as usual anymore, but where will the sustainable future go? Here I believe answers will come from innovation and small mid-market companies. The bigger enterprises need time to react so before we see new PLM activities in this area it will take time.

search Therefore all PLM vendors move in directions outside engineering, like apparel, life sciences, and consumer packaged goods. These industries do not rely on the 3D CAD, but still can benefit from the key building blocks of PLM, like lifecycle management, program and portfolio management and quality/compliancy management.  The challenge I believe for the PLM vendors is: Will these CAD-focused organizations be able to learn and adapt other industries fast enough? Where does 3D fit – although Dassault has a unique vision here.

For the mid-market, the PLM vendors offer more OOTB (Out Of The Box) solutions, mostly based on limited capabilities or more common available Microsoft components like SharePoint and SQL Server. This is not so strange as according to my observation, most smaller mid-market companies have not really made or understood the difference internally between document management and product data management, including Bill Of Materials not to be managed in Excel.

I assume 2010 the CAD related PLM vendors initially will focus on the bigger enterprises and new industries, the smaller mid-market companies require a different approach

 

PLM-only vendors

This is an area which I expect to disappear in the future, although this is also the area where interesting developments start to happen. We see open source PLM software coming up with Aras leading and we see companies coming up with PLM on-demand software, Arena as the first company to sell this concept.

fish

The fact that the traditional PLM-only vendors disappeared in this area  (Eigner bought by Agile, Agile bought by Oracle, MatrixOne bought by Dassault Systems) indicates that the classical way of selling PLM-only was not profitable enough.

Either PLM needs to be integrated in companywide business processes (which I believe), or there will be PLM-only vendors that find a business model to stay alive.

Here I hope to see more clarity in 2010

 

Smaller mid-market companies

planning What I have seen in the past year is, that despite the economical crisis, PLM investments by these companies remained active. Maybe not in purchasing much more licenses or implementing new PLM features. Main investments here were around optimizing or slightly extending the PLM base. Maybe because there was time to sit still and analyze what could be changed, or maybe it was planned but due to work pressure, it was never executed. Anyway there was a lot of activity in this area not less than in 2008.

An interesting challenge for these mid-market companies will be to remain attractive for the new generation. They are not used to the classical ways of structured work as most of the current workforce is used to.
Social networking, social PLM, I have seen the thoughts, discussions and benefits, still trying to see where it will become reality.

2010 is another chance.

 

Sustainability and going green

frog This is an area where I am a little disappointed and this is perhaps not justified. I would expect with the lessons learned around energy and the upcoming shortage of natural resources, companies would take the crisis as a reason to change.

To my observation most of the companies I have seen are still trying to continue as usual, hoping that the traditional growth will come back. The climate conference in Copenhagen also showed that, we as human beings, do not feel pressured enough to adapt, by nature we are optimists (or boiling frogs).

Still there are interesting developments – I assume in the next few years we will see innovation coming – probably first from smaller companies as they have the flexibility to react. During the European Customer Conference in Paris, I heard Bernard Charles talking about the concept of a Bill Of Energy (The energy needed to create, maintain and demolish a product) As PLM consultants we already have a hard time explaining to our customers the various views on a BOM, still I like the concept, as a Bill Of Energy makes products comparable.

2010 the acceptance of Bill Of Energy

Here I want to conclude my post for this year. Thank you all for reading and sharing your thoughts and comments with this community. My ultimate conclusion for 2009 is, that is was a good PLM year for the mid-market, better as expected but the changes are going slow. Too slow – we will see next year.

2010

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  2. Unknown's avatar
  3. Håkan Kårdén's avatar

    Jos, all interesting and relevant. There are additional elements to be mentioned and Ontologies seem to be one of the…

  4. Lewis Kennebrew's avatar

    Jos, as usual, you've provided a buffet of "food for thought". Where do you see AI being trained by a…

  5. Håkan Kårdén's avatar