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This year started for me with a discussion related to federated PLM. A topic that I highlighted as one of the imminent trends of 2022. A topic relevant for PLM consultants and implementers. If you are working in a company struggling with PLM, this topic might be hard to introduce in your company.
Before going into the discussion’s topics and arguments, let’s first describe the historical context.
The traditional PLM frame.
Historically PLM has been framed first as a system for engineering to manage their product data. So you could call it PDM first. After that, PLM systems were introduced and used to provide access to product data, upstream and downstream. The most common usage was the relation with manufacturing, leading to EBOM and MBOM discussions.
The traditional ENOVIA PLM backbone
IT landscape simplification often led to an infrastructure of siloed solutions – PLM, ERP, CRM and later, MES. IT was driving the standardization of systems and defining interfaces between systems. System capabilities were leading, not the flow of information.
As many companies are still in this stage, I would call it PLM 1.0
PLM 1.0 systems serve mainly as a System of Record for the organization, where disciplines consolidate their data in a given context, the Bills of Information. The Bill of Information then is again the place to connect specification documents, i.e., CAD models, drawings and other documents, providing a Digital Thread.
Aras – Bills of Information creating the Digital Thread
The actual engineering work is done with specialized tools, MCAD/ECAD, CAE, Simulation, Planning tools and more. Therefore, each person could work in their discipline-specific environment and synchronize their data to the PLM system in a coordinated manner.
However, this interaction is not easy for some of the end-users. For example, the usability of CAD integrations with the PLM system is constantly debated.
Many of my implementation discussions with customers were in this context. For example, suppose your products are relatively simple, or your company is relatively small. In that case, the opinion is that the System or Record approach is overkill.
That’s why many small and medium enterprises do not see the value of a PLM backbone.
This could be true till recently. However, the threats to this approach are digitization and regulations.
Customers, partners, and regulators all expect more accurate and fast responses on specific issues, preferably instantly. In addition, sustainability regulations might push your company to implement a System of Record.
PLM as a business strategy
For the past fifteen years, we have discussed PLM more as a business strategy implemented with business systems and an infrastructure designed for sharing. Therefore, I choose these words carefully to avoid overhanging the expression: PLM as a business strategy.
The reason for this prudence is that, in reality, I have seen many PLM implementations fail due to the ambiguity of PLM as a system or strategy. Many enterprises have previously selected a preferred PLM Vendor solution as a starting point for their “PLM strategy”.
One of the most neglected best practices.
In reality, this means there was no strategy but a hope that with this impressive set of product demos, the company would find a way to support its business needs. Instead of people, process and then tools to implement the strategy, most of the time, it was starting with the tools trying to implement the processes and transform the people. That is not really the definition of business transformation.
In my opinion, this is happening because, at the management level, decisions are made based on financials.
Developing a PLM-related business strategy requires management understanding and involvement at all levels of the organization.
This is often not the case; the middle management has to solve the connection between the strategy and the execution. By design, however, the middle management will not restructure the organization. By design, they will collect the inputs van the end users.
And it is clear what end users want – no disruption in their comfortable way of working.
Halfway conclusion:
Rebranding PLM as a business strategy has not really changed the way companies work. PLM systems remain a System of Record mainly for governance and traceability.
To understand the situation in your company, look at who is responsible for PLM.
- If IT is responsible, then most likely, PLM is not considered a business strategy but more an infrastructure.
- If engineering is responsible for PLM, then you are still in the early days of PLM, the engineering tools to be consulted by others upstream or downstream.
Only when PLM accountability is at the upper management level, it might be a business strategy (assume the upper management understands the details)
Connected is the game changer
Connecting all stakeholders in an engagement has been a game changer in the world. With the introduction of platforms and the smartphone as a connected device, consumers could suddenly benefit from direct responses to desired service requests (Spotify, iTunes, Uber, Amazon, Airbnb, Booking, Netflix, …).
The business change: connecting real-time all stakeholders to deliver highly rapid results.
What would be the game changer in PLM was the question? The image below describes the 2014 Accenture description of digital PLM and its potential benefits.
Is connected PLM a utopia?
Marc Halpern from Gartner shared in 2015 the slide below that you might have seen many times before. Digital Transformation is really moving from a coordinated to a connected technology, it seems.
The image below gives an impression of an evolution.
I have been following this concept till I was triggered by a 2017 McKinsey publication: “our insights/toward an integrated technology operating model“.
This was the first notion for me that the future should be hybrid, a combination of traditional PLM (system of record) complemented with teams that work digitally connected; McKinsey called them pods that become product-centric (multidisciplinary team focusing on a product) instead of discipline-centric (marketing/engineering/manufacturing/service)
In 2019 I wrote the post: The PLM migration dilemma supporting the “shocking” conclusion “Don’t think about migration when moving to data-driven, connected ways of working. You need both environments.”
One of the main arguments behind this conclusion was that legacy product data and processes were not designed to ensure data accuracy and quality on such a level that it could become connected data. As a result, converting documents into reliable datasets would be a costly, impossible exercise with no real ROI.
The second argument was that the outside world, customers, regulatory bodies and other non-connected stakeholders still need documents as standardized deliverables.
The conclusion led to the image below.
Systems of Record (left) and Systems of Engagement (right)
Splitting PLM?
In 2021 these thoughts became more mature through various publications and players in the PLM domain.
We saw the upcoming of Systems of Engagement – I discussed OpenBOM, Colab and potentially Configit in the post: A new PLM paradigm. These systems can be characterized as connected solutions across the enterprise and value chain, focusing on a platform experience for the stakeholders.
These are all environments addressing the needs of a specific group of users as efficiently and as friendly as possible.
A System of Engagement will not fit naturally in a traditional PLM backbone; the System of Record.
Erik Herzog with SAAB Aerospace and Yousef Houshmand at that time with Daimler published that year papers related to “Federated PLM” or “The end of monolithic PLM.”. They acknowledged a company needs to focus on more than a single PLM solution. The presentation from Erik Herzog at the PLM Roadmap/PDT conference was interesting because Erik talked about the Systems of Engagement and the Systems of Record. He proposed using OSLC as the standard to connect these two types of PLM.
It was a clear example of an attempt to combine the two kinds of PLM.
And here comes my question: Do we need to split PLM?
When I look at PLM implementations in the field, almost all are implemented as a System of Record, an information backbone proved by a single vendor PLM. The various disciplines deliver their content through interfaces to the backbone (Coordinated approach).
However, there is low usability or support for multidisciplinary collaboration; the PLM backbone is not designed for that.
Due to concepts of Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and Model-Based Definition (MBD), there are now solutions on the market that allow different disciplines to work jointly related to connected datasets that can be manipulated using modeling software (1D, 2D, 3D, 4D,…).
These environments, often a mix of software and hardware tools, are the Systems of Engagement and provide speedy results with high quality in the virtual world. Digital Twins are running on Systems of Engagements, not on Systems of Records.
Systems of Engagement do not need to come from the same vendor, as they serve different purposes. But how to explain this to your management, who wants simplicity. I can imagine the IT organization has a better understanding of this concept as, at the end of 2015, Gartner introduced the concept of the bimodal approach.
Their definition:
Mode 1 is optimized for areas that are more well-understood. It focuses on exploiting what is known. This includes renovating the legacy environment so it is fit for a digital world. Mode 2 is exploratory, potentially experimenting to solve new problems. Mode 2 is optimized for areas of uncertainty. Mode 2 often works on initiatives that begin with a hypothesis that is tested and adapted during a process involving short iterations.
No Conclusion – but a question this time:
At the management level, unfortunately, there is most of the time still the “Single PLM”-mindset due to a lack of understanding of the business. Clearly splitting your PLM seems the way forward. IT could be ready for this, but will the business realize this opportunity?
What are your thoughts?
A 
month ago, I wrote: It is time for BLM – PLM is not dead, which created an anticipated discussion. It is practically impossible to change a framed acronym. Like CRM and ERP, the term PLM is there to stay.
However, it was also interesting to see that people acknowledge that PLM should have a business scope and deserves a place at the board level.
The importance of PLM at business level is well illustrated by the discussion related to this LinkedIn post from Matthias Ahrens referring to the CIMdata roadmap conference CEO discussion.
My favorite quote:
Now it’s ‘lifecycle management,’ not just EDM or PDM or whatever they call it. Lifecycle management is no longer just about coming up with new stuff. We’re seeing more excitement and passion in our customers, and I think this is why.”
But it is not that simple
This is a perfect message for PLM vendors to justify their broad portfolio. However, as they do not focus so much on new methodologies and organizational change, their messages remain at the marketing level.
In the field, there is more and more awareness that PLM has a dual role. Just when I planned to write a post on this topic, Adam Keating, CEO en founder of CoLab, wrote the post System of Record meet System of Engagement.
Read the post and the comments on LinkedIn. Adam points to PLM as a System of Engagement, meaning an environment where the actual work is done all the time. The challenge I see for CoLab, like other modern platforms, e.g., OpenBOM, is how it can become an established solution within an organization. Their challenge is they are positioned in the engineering scope.
I believe for these solutions to become established in a broader customer base, we must realize that there is a need for a System of Record AND System(s) of Engagement.
In my discussions related to digital transformation in the PLM domain, I addressed them as separate, incompatible environments.
See the image below:
Now let’s have a closer look at both of them
What is a System of Record?
For me, PLM has always been the System of Record for product information. In the coordinated manner, engineers were working in their own systems. At a certain moment in the process, they needed to publish shareable information, a document(e.g., PDF) or BOM-table (e.g., Excel). The PLM system would support New Product Introduction processes, Release and Change Processes and the PLM system would be the single point of reference for product data.
The reason I use the bin-image is that companies, most of the time, do not have an advanced information-sharing policy. If the information is in the bin, the experts will find it. Others might recreate the same information elsewhere, due to a lack of awareness.
Most of the time, engineers did not like PLM systems caused by integrations with their tools. Suddenly they were losing a lot of freedom due to check-in / check-out / naming conventions/attributes and more. Current PLM systems are good for a relatively stable product, but what happens when the product has a lot of parallel iterations (hardware & software, for example). How to deal with Work In Progress?
Last week I visited the startup company PAL-V in the context of the Dutch PDM Platform. As you can see from the image, PAL-V is working on the world’s first Flying Car Production Model. Their challenge is to be certified for flying (here, the focus is on the design) and to be certified for driving (here, the focus is on manufacturing reliability/quality).
During the PDM platform session, they showed their current Windchill implementation, which focused on managing and providing evidence for certification. For this type of company, the System of Record is crucial.
Their (mainly) SolidWorks users are trained to work in a controlled environment. The Aerospace and Automotive industries have started this way, which we can see reflected in current PLM systems.
Image: Aras impression of the digital thread
And to finish with a PLM buzzword: modern systems of record provide a digital thread.
What is a System of Engagement?
The characteristic of a system of engagement is that it supports the user in real-time. This could be an environment for work in progress. Still, more importantly, all future concepts from MBSE, Industry 4.0 and Digital Twins rely on connected and real-time data.
As I previously mentioned, Digital Twins do not run on documents; they run on reliable data.
A system of engagement is an environment where different disciplines work together, using models and datasets. I described such an environment in my series The road to model-based and connected PLM. The System of Engagement environment must be user-friendly enough for these experts to work.
Due to the different targets of a system engagement, I believe we have to talk about Systems of Engagement as there will be several engagement models on a connected (federated) set of data.
Yousef Hooshmand shared the Daimler paper: “From a Monolithic PLM Landscape to a Federated Domain and Data Mesh” in that context. Highly recommended to read if you are interested in a potential PLM future infrastructure.
Let’s look at two typical Systems of Engagement without going into depth.
The MBSE System of Engagement
In this environment, systems engineering is performed in a connected manner, building connected artifacts that should be available in real-time, allowing engineers to perform analysis and simulations to construct the optimal virtual solution before committing to physical solutions.
It is an iterative environment. Click on the image for an impression.
The MBSE space will also be the place where sustainability needs to start. Environmental impact, the planet as a stakeholder, should be added to the engineering process. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) defining the process and material choices will be fed by external data sources, for example, managed by ecoinvent, Higg and others to come. It is a new emergent market.
The Digital Twin
In any phase of the product lifecycle, we can consider a digital twin, a virtual data-driven environment to analyze, define and optimize a product or a process. For example, we can have a digital twin for manufacturing, fulfilling the Industry 4.0 dreams.
We can have a digital twin for operation, analyzing, monitoring and optimizing a physical product in the field. These digital twins will only work if they use connected and federated data from multiple sources. Otherwise, the operating costs for such a digital twin will be too high (due to the inefficiency of accurate data)
In the end, you would like to have these digital twins running in a connected manner. To visualize the high-level concept, I like Boeing’s diamond presented by Don Farr at the PDT conference in 2018 – Image below:
Combined with the Daimler paper “From a Monolithic PLM Landscape to a Federated Domain and Data Mesh.” or the latest post from Oleg Shilovistky How PLM Can Build Ontologies? we can start to imagine a Systems of Engagement infrastructure.
You need both
And now the unwanted message for companies – you need both: a system of record and potential one or more systems of engagement. A System of Record will remain as long as we are not all connected in a blockchain manner. So we will keep producing reports, certificates and baselines to share information with others.
It looks like the Gartner bimodal approach.
An example: If you manage your product requirements in your PLM system as connected objects to your product portfolio, you will and still can generate a product specification document to share with a supplier, a development partner or a certification company.
So do not throw away your current System of Record. Instead, imagine which types of Systems of Engagement your company needs. Most Systems of Engagement might look like a siloed solution; however, remember they are designed for the real-time collaboration of a certain community – designers, engineers, operators, etc.
The real challenge will be connecting them efficiently with your System of Record backbone, which is preferable to using standard interface protocols and standards.
The Hybrid Approach
For those of you following my digital transformation story related to PLM, this is the point where the McKinsey report from 2017 becomes actual again.
Conclusion
The concepts are evolving and maturing for a digital enterprise using a System of Record and one or more Systems of Engagement. Early adopters are now needed to demonstrate these concepts to agree on standards and solution-specific needs. It is time to experiment (fast). Where are you in this process of learning?
This is my concluding post related to the various aspects of the model-driven enterprise. We went through Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) where the focus was on using models (functional / logical / physical / simulations) to define complex product (systems). Next we discussed Model Based Definition / Model-Based Enterprise (MBD/MBE), where the focus was on data continuity between engineering and manufacturing by using the 3D Model as a master for design, manufacturing and eventually service information.
And last time we looked at the Digital Twin from its operational side, where the Digital Twin was applied for collecting and tuning physical assets in operation, which is not a typical PLM domain to my opinion.
Now we will focus on two areas where the Digital Twin touches aspects of PLM – the most challenging one and the most over-hyped areas I believe. These two areas are:
- The Digital Twin used to virtually define and optimize a new product/system or even a system of systems. For example, defining a new production line.
- The Digital Twin used to be the virtual replica of an asset in operation. For example, a turbine or engine.
Digital Twin to define a new Product/System
There might be some conceptual overlap if you compare the MBSE approach and the Digital Twin concept to define a new product or system to deliver. For me the differentiation would be that MBSE is used to master and define a complex system from the R&D point of view – unknown solution concepts – use hardware or software? Unknown constraints to be refined and optimized in an iterative manner.
In the Digital Twin concept, it is more about a defining a system that should work in the field. How to combine various systems into a working solution and each of the systems has already a pre-defined set of behavioral / operational parameters, which could be 3D related but also performance related.
You would define and analyze the new solution virtual to discover the ideal solution for performance, costs, feasibility and maintenance. Working in the context of a virtual model might take more time than traditional ways of working, however once the models are in place analyzing the solution and optimizing it takes hours instead of weeks, assuming the virtual model is based on a digital thread, not a sequential process of creating and passing documents/files. Virtual solutions allow a company to optimize the solution upfront instead of costly fixing during delivery, commissioning and maintenance.
Why aren’t we doing this already? It takes more skilled engineers instead of cheaper fixers downstream. The fact that we are used to fixing it later is also an inhibitor for change. Management needs to trust and understand the economic value instead of trying to reduce the number of engineers as they are expensive and hard to plan.
In the construction industry, companies are discovering the power of BIM (Building Information Model) , introduced to enhance the efficiency and productivity of all stakeholders involved. Massive benefits can be achieved if the construction of the building and its future behavior and maintenance can be optimized virtually compared to fixing it in an expensive way in reality when issues pop up.
The same concept applies to process plants or manufacturing plants where you could virtually run the (manufacturing) process. If the design is done with all the behavior defined (hardware-in-the-loop simulation and software-in-the-loop) a solution has been virtually tested and rapidly delivered with no late discoveries and costly fixes.
Of course it requires new ways of working. Working with digital connected models is not what engineering learn during their education time – we have just started this journey. Therefore organizations should explore on a smaller scale how to create a full Digital Twin based on connected data – this is the ultimate base for the next purpose.
Digital Twin to match a product/system in the field
When you are after the topic of a Digital Twin through the materials provided by the various software vendors, you see all kinds of previews what is possible. Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and more. All these presentations show that clicking somewhere in a 3D Model Space relevant information pops-up. Where does this relevant information come from?
Most of the time information is re-entered in a new environment, sometimes derived from CAD but all the metadata comes from people collecting and validating data. Not the type of work we promote for a modern digital enterprise. These inefficiencies are good for learning and demos but in a final stage a company cannot afford silos where data is collected and entered again disconnected from the source.
The main problem: Legacy PLM information is stored in documents (drawings / excels) and not intended to be shared downstream with full quality.
Read also: Why PLM is the forgotten domain in digital transformation.
If a company has already implemented an end-to-end Digital Twin to deliver the solution as described in the previous section, we can understand the data has been entered somewhere during the design and delivery process and thanks to a digital continuity it is there.
How many companies have done this already? For sure not the companies that are already a long time in business as their current silos and legacy processes do not cater for digital continuity. By appointing a Chief Digital Officer, the journey might start, the biggest risk the Chief Digital Officer will be running another silo in the organization.
So where does PLM support the concept of the Digital Twin operating in the field?
For me, the IoT part of the Digital Twin is not the core of a PLM. Defining the right sensors, controls and software are the first areas where IoT is used to define the measurable/controllable behavior of a Digital Twin. This topic has been discussed in the previous section.
The second part where PLM gets involved is twofold:
- Processing data from an individual twin
- Processing data from a collection of similar twins
Processing data from an individual twin
Data collected from an individual twin or collection of twins can be analyzed to extract or discover failure opportunities. An R&D organization is interested in learning what is happening in the field with their products. These analyses lead to better and more competitive solutions.
Predictive maintenance is not necessarily a part of that. When you know that certain parts will fail between 10.000 and 20.000 operating hours, you want to optimize the moment of providing service to reduce downtime of the process and you do not want to replace parts way too early.
The R&D part related to predictive maintenance could be that R&D develops sensors inside this serviceable part that signal the need for maintenance in a much smaller time from – maintenance needed within 100 hours instead of a bandwidth of 10.000 hours. Or R&D could develop new parts that need less service and guarantee a longer up-time.
For an R&D department the information from an individual Digital Twin might be only relevant if the Physical Twin is complex to repair and downtime for each individual too high. Imagine a jet engine, a turbine in a power plant or similar. Here a Digital Twin will allow service and R&D to prepare maintenance and simulate and optimize the actions for the physical world before.
The five potential platforms of a digital enterprise
The second part where R&D will be interested in, is in the behavior of similar products/systems in the field combined with their environmental conditions. In this way, R&D can discover improvement points for the whole range and give incremental innovation. The challenge for this R&D organization is to find a logical placeholder in their PLM environment to collect commonalities related to the individual modules or components. This is not an ERP or MES domain.
Concepts of a logical product structure are already known in the oil & gas, process or nuclear industry and in 2017 I wrote about PLM for Owners/Operators mentioning Bjorn Fidjeland has always been active in this domain, you can find his concepts at plmPartner here or as an eLearning course at SharePLM.
To conclude:
- This post is way too long (sorry)
- PLM is not dead – it evolves into one of the crucial platforms for the future – The Product Innovation Platform
- Current BOM-centric approach within PLM is blocking progress to a full digital thread
More to come after the holidays (a European habit) with additional topics related to the digital enterprise
Perhaps an ambiguous title this time as it can be interpreted in various ways. I think that all these interpretations are one of the most significant problems with PLM. Ambiguity everywhere. Its definition, its value and as you might have noticed from the past two blog posts the required skill-set for PLM consultants.
As I am fine-tuning my presentation for the upcoming PLMx 2018 Event in Hamburg, some things become clearer for me. This is one of the advantages of blogging, speaking at PLM conferences and discussing PLM with companies that are eager to choose to right track for PLM. You are forced to look in more depth to be consistent and need to have arguments to support your opinion about what is happening in the scope of PLM. And from these learnings I realize often that the WHY PLM remains a big challenge for various reasons.
Current PLM
In the past twenty years, companies have implemented PLM systems, where the primary focus was on the P (Product) only from Product Lifecycle Management. PLM systems have been implemented as an engineering tool, as an evolution of (Product Data Management).
PLM systems have never been designed from the start as an enterprise system. Their core capabilities are related to engineering processes and for that reason that is why most implementations start with engineering. Later more data-driven PLM-systems like Aras and Autodesk have begun from another angle, data connectivity between different disciplines as a foundation, avoiding to get involved with the difficulty of engineering first.
This week I saw the publication of the PLMPulse survey results by i42R / MarketKey where they claim:
The results from first industry-led survey on our status of Product Lifecycle Management and future priorities
The PLMPulse report is based on five different surveys as shown in the image above. Understanding the various aspects of PLM from usage, business value, organizational constraints, information value and future potential. More than 350 people from all around the world answered the various questions related to these survey. Unfortunate inputs from some Asian companies are missing. We are all curious what happens in China as there, companies do not struggle with the same legacy related to PLM as other countries. Are they more embracing PLM in a different way?
The results as the editors also confirm, are not shocking and confirming that PLM has the challenge to get out of the engineering domain. Still, I recommend downloading the survey as it has interesting details. After registration you can download the report from here.
What’s next
During the upcoming PLMx 2018 Hamburg conference there will be a panel discussion where the survey results will be discussed. I am afraid that this debate will result again in a discussion where we will talk about the beauty and necessity of PLM and we wonder why PLM is not considered crucial for the enterprise.
There are a few challenges I see for PLM and hopefully they will be addressed. Most discussions are about WHAT PLM should/could do and not WHY. If you want to get to the WHY of PLM, you need to be able to connect the value of PLM to business outcomes that resonate at C-level. Often PLM implementations are considered costly and ROI and business value are vague.
As the PLMPulse report also states, the ROI for PLM is most of the time based on efficiency and cost benefits related to the current way of working. These benefits usually do not offer significant ROI numbers. Major benefits come for working in a different way and focusing on working closer to your customer. Business value is hard to measure.
How do you measure the value of multidisciplinary collaboration or being more customer-centric? What is the value of being better connected to your customer and being able to react faster? These situations are hard to prove at the board level, as here people like to see numbers, not business transformations.
Focus on the WHY and HOW
A lot of the PLM messages that you can read through various marketing or social channels are related to futuristic concepts and high-level dreams that will come true in the next 10-20 years. Most companies however have a planning horizon of 2 years max 5 years. Peter Bilello from CIMdata presented one of their survey results at the PDT conference in 2014, shown below:
Technology and vision are way ahead of reality. Even the area where the leaders focusing the distance between technology and vision gets bigger. The PLM focus is more down-to-earth and should not be on what we are able to do, but the focus should be on what would be the next logical step for our company to progress to the future.
System of Record and System of Engagement
At the PLMx conference I will share my experiences related to PLM transformations with the audience. One and a half-year ago we started talking about the bi-modal approach. Now more and more I see companies adopting the concepts of bi-modal related to PLM. Still most organizations struggle with the fact that their PLM should be related to one PLM system or one PLM vendor, where I believe we should come to the conclusion that there are two PLM modes at this moment. And this does not imply there need to be only one or two systems – it will become a federated infrastructure.
Current modes could be an existing PLM backbone, focusing on capturing engineering data, the classical PLM system serving as a system of record. And a second, new growing PLM-related infrastructure which will be a digital, most likely federated, platform where modern customer-centric PLM processes will run. As the digital platform will provide real-time interaction it might be considered as a system of engagement, complementary to the system of record.
It will be the system of engagement that should excite the board members as here new ways of working can be introduced and mastered. As there are no precise blueprints for this approach, this is the domain where innovative thinking needs to take place.
That’s why I hope that neutral PLM conferences will less focus on WHAT can be done. Discussions like MBSE, Digital Thread, Digital Twin, Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality are all beautiful to watch. However, let’s focus first on WHY and HOW. For me besides the PLMx Hamburg conference, other upcoming events like PDT 2018 (this time in the US and Europe) are interesting events and currently PDT the call for papers is open and hopefully we find speakers that can teach and inspire.
CIMdata together with Eurostep are organizing these events in May (US) and October (Europe). The theme for the CIMdata roadmap conference will be “Charting the Course to PLM Value together – Expanding the value footprint of PLM and Tackling PLM’s Persistent Pain Points” where PDT will focus on Collaboration in the Engineering Supply Chain – the extended digital thread. These themes need to be addressed first before jumping into the future. Looking forward to meeting you there.
Conclusions
In the world of PLM, we are most of the time busy with explaining WHAT we (can/will) do. Like a cult group sometimes we do not understand why others do not see the value or beauty of our PLM concepts. PLM dialogues and conferences should therefore focus more on WHY and HOW. Don’t worry, the PLM vendors/implementers will always help you with WHAT they can do and WHY it is different.
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:
I am just back from the annual PDT conference (12th edition), this year hosted in Paris from 9 to 10 November, co-located with CIMdata’s PLM Road Map 2016 for Aerospace & Defense. The PDT conference, organized by EuroStep and CIMdata, is a relatively small conference with a little over a hundred attendees. The attractiveness of this conference is that the group of dedicated participants is very interactive with each other sharing honest opinions and situations, sometimes going very deep into the details, needed to get the full picture. The theme of the conference was: “Investing for the future while managing product data legacy and obsolescence.” Here are some of the impressions from these days, giving you food for thought to join next year.
Setting the scene
Almost traditionally Peter Bilello (CIMdata) started the conference followed by Marc Halpern (Gartner). Their two presentations had an excellent storyline together.
Pieter Bilello started and discussed Issues and Remedies for PLM Obsolescence. Peter did not address PLM obsolescence for the first time. It is a topic many early PLM adaptors are facing and in a way the imminent obsolescence of their current environments block them of taking advantage of new technologies and capabilities current PLM vendors offer. Having learned from the past CIMdata provides a PLM Obsolescence Management model, which should be on every companies agenda, in the same way as data quality (which I will address later). Being proactive in obsolescence can save critical situations and high costs. From the obsolescence theme, Peter looked forward to the future and the value product innovation platforms can offer, given the requirements that data should be able to flow through the organization, connecting to other platforms and applications, increasing the demand to adhere and push for standards.
Marc Halpern followed with his presentation, titled: More custom products demand new IT strategies and new PLM application where he focused on the new processes and methodology needed for future businesses with a high-focus on customer-specific deliveries, speed, and automation. Automation is always crucial to reducing production costs. In this delivery process 3D printing could bring benefits and Mark shared the plusses and minuses of 3D printing. Finally, when automation of a customer specific order would be possible, it requires a different IT-architecture, depicted by Mark. After proposing a roadmap for customizable products, Mark shared some examples of ROI benefits reported by successful transformation projects. Impressive !!
My summary of these two sessions is that both CIMdata and Gartner confirm the challenges companies have to change their old legacy processes and PLM environments which support the past, meanwhile moving to more, customer-driven processes and, modern data-driven PLM functionality. This process is not just an IT or Business change, it will also be a cultural change.
JT / STEP AP242 / PLCS
Next, we had three sessions related to standards, where Alfred Katzenbach told the success story of JT, the investment done to get this standard approved and performing based on an active community to get the most out of JT, beyond its initial purpose of viewing and exchanging data in a neutral format. Jean-Yves Delanaunay explained in Airbus Operation the STEP AP242 definition is used as the core standard for 3D Model Based Definition (MB) exchange, part of the STEP standards suite and as the cornerstone for Long Term Archiving and Retrieval of Aerospace & Defense 3D MBD.
There seems to be some rivalry between JT and STEP242 viewing capabilities, which go beyond my understanding as I am not an expert from the field here. Nigel Shaw ended the morning session positioning PLCS as a standard for interoperability of information along the whole lifecycle of a product. Having a standardized data model as Nigel showed would be a common good approach for PLM vendors to converge to a more interoperable standard.
My summary of standards is that there is a lot of thinking, evaluation, and testing done by an extensive community of committed people. It will be hard for a company to define a better foundation for a standard in their business domain. Vendors are focusing on performance inside their technology offering and therefore will never push for standards (unless you use their products as a standard). A force for adhering to standards should come from the user community.
Using standards
After lunch we had three end-users stories from:
- Eric Delaporte (Renault Group) talked about their NewPDM project and the usage of standards mainly for exchanges. Two interesting observations: Eric talks about New PDM – the usage of the words New (when does New become regular?) and PDM (not talking about PLM ?) and secondly as a user of standards he does not care about the JT/AP242 debate and uses both standards where applicable and performing.
- Sebastien Olivier (France Ministry of Defense) gave a bi-annual update of their PCLS-journey used in two projects, Pencil (Standardized Exchange platform and centralized source of logistical information) and MAPS (Managing procurement contracts for buying In-Service Support services) and the status of their S3000L implementation (International procedure for Logistic Support Analysis). A presentation for the real in-crowd of this domain.
- Juha Rautjarvi discussion how efficient use of knowledge for safety and security could be maintained and enhanced through collaboration. Here Juha talks about the Body of Knowledge which should be available for all stakeholders in the context of security and safety. And like a physical product this Body of Knowledge goes through a lifecycle, continuous adapting to what potentially arises from the outside world
My conclusion on this part was that if you are not really in these standards on a day-to-day base (and I am not), it is hard to pick the details. Still, the higher level thought processes behind these standard approaches allow you to see the benefits and impact of using standards, which is not the same as selecting a tool. It is a strategic choice.
Modular / Bimodular / not sexy ?
Jakob Asell from Modular Management gave an overview how modularity can connect the worlds of sales, engineering, and manufacturing by adding a modular structure as a governing structure to the various structures used by each discipline. This product architecture can be used for product planning and provides and end-to-end connectivity of information. Modular Management is assisting companies in moving towards this approach.
Next my presentation title: The importance of accurate data. Act now! addressed the topic of the switch from classical, linear, document-driven PLM towards a modern, more incremental and data-driven PLM approach. Here I explained the disadvantage of the old evolutionary approach (impossible – too slow/too costly) and an alternative method, inspired by Gartner’s bimodular IT-approach (read my blog post: Best Practices or Next Practices). No matter which option you are looking for correct and quality data is the oil for the future, so companies should consider allowing the flow of data as a health issue for the future.
The day was closed with a large panel, where the panelist first jumped on the topic bimodal (bipolar ?? / multimodal ??) talking about mode 1 (the strategic approach) and mode 2 (the tactical and fast approach based on Gartner’s definition). It was clear that the majority of the panel was in Mode 1 mode. Which fluently lead to the discussion of usage of standards (and PLM) as not being attractive for the young generations (not sexy). Besides the conclusion that it takes time to understand the whole picture and see the valuable befits a standard can bring and join this enthusiasm
Conclusion
I realize myself that this post is already too long according blogging guidelines. Therefore I will tell more about day 2 of the conference next week with Airbus going bimodal and more.
Stay tuned for next week !
The past half-year I have been intensively discussing potential PLM roadmaps with companies of different sizes and different maturity in PLM. Some companies are starting their PLM journey after many years of discussion and trying to identify the need and scope, others have an old PLM implementation (actually most of the time it is cPDM) where they discover that business paradigms from the previous century are no longer sufficient for the future.
The main changing paradigms are:
- From a linear product-driven delivery process towards an individual customer focused offering based on products and effective services, quickly -adapting to the market needs.
- From a document-driven, electronic files exchange based processes and systems towards data-driven platforms supporting information to flow in almost real-time through the whole enterprise.
Both changes are related and a result of digitization. New practices are under development as organizations are learning how to prepare and aim for the future. These new practices are currently dominating the agenda from all strategic consultancy firms as you cannot neglect the trend towards a digital enterprise. And these companies need next practices.
I wrote about it in recent posts: PLM what is next? and What is Digital PLM?
And what about my company?
It is interesting to see that most of the PLM implementers and vendors are promoting best practices, based on their many years of experience working having customers contributing to functionality in their portfolio.
And it is very tempting to make your customer feel comfortable by stating:
“We will implement our (industry) best practices and avoid customization – we have done that before!”
I am sure you have heard this statement before. But what about these best practices as they address the old paradigms from the past?
Do you want to implement the past to support the future?
Starting with PLM ? Use Best Practices !
If the company is implementing PLM for the first time and the implementation is bottom-up you should apply the old PLM approach. My main argument: This company is probably not capable/ready to work in an integrated way. It is not in the company´s DNA yet. Sharing data and working in a controlled environment is a big step to take. Often PLM implementations failed at this point as the cultural resistance was too big.
When starting with classical PLM, avoid customization and keep the scope limited. Horizontal implementations (processes across all departments) have more success than starting at engineering and trying to expand from there. An important decision to make at this stage is 2D leading (old) or the 3D Model leading (modern). Some future thoughts: How Model-based definition can fix your CAD models. By keeping the scope limited, you can always evolve to the next practices in 5 -10 years (if your company is still in business).
Note 1: remark between parenthesis is a little cynical and perhaps for the timeframe incorrect. Still, a company working bottom-up has challenges to stay in a modern competitive global environment.
Note 2: When writing this post I got notified about an eBook available with the tittle Putting PLM within reach written by Jim Brown. The focus is on cloud-based PLM solution that require less effort/investments on the IT-side and as side effect it discourages customization (my opinion) – therefore a good start.
Evolving in PLM – Next Practices
Enterprises that have already a PDM/PLM system in place for several years should not implement the best practices. They have reached the level that the inhibitors off a monolithic, document based environment are becoming clear.
They (must) have discovered that changing their product offering or their innovation strategy now with partners is adding complexity that cannot be supported easily. The good news, when you change your business model and product offering, there is C-level attention. This kind of changes do not happen bottom-up.
Unfortunate business changes are often discussed at the execution level of the organization without the understanding that the source of all products or offering data needs to be reorganized too. PLM should be a part of that strategic plan and do not confuse the old PLM with the PLM for the future.
The PLM for the future has to be built upon next practices. These next practices do not exists out of the box. They have to be matured and experienced by leading companies. The price you pay when being a leader Still being a leader bring market share and profit your company cannot meet when being a follower.
The Bi-modal approach
As management of a company, you do not want a disruption to switch from one existing environment to a new environment. Too much risk and too disruptive – people will resist – stress and bad performance everywhere. As the new data-driven approach is under development (we are learning), the end target is still moving.
Evolving using the old PLM system towards the new PLM approach is not recommended. This would be too expensive, slow and cumbersome. PLM would get a bad reputation as all the complexity of the past and the future are here. It is better to start the new PLM with a new business platform and customer-oriented processes for a limited offering and connect it to your legacy PLM.
Over the years the new PLM will become more clear and grow where the old PLM will become less and less relevant. Depending on the dynamics of your industry this might take a few years till decades.
Gartner calls this the bi-modal approach. A bi-model approach requires orchestration needs full management attention as the future is going to be shaped here.
It must and will be a business-driven learning path for new best practices
Conclusion
Best Practices and Next Practices are needed in parallel. Depending on the maturity and lack of sharing information in your company, you can choose. Consider the bi-modal approach to choose a realistic time path.
What do you think? Could this simplified way of thinking help your company?
The theme Best Practices or Next Practices is not new. Prof. Krusse talked about it already 9 years ago in a generic way. Unfortunate the recording is in German only
The past weeks I have discussed at various events two topics that appeared to be different:
- The change from an analogue, document-driven enterprise towards a digital, data-driven enterprise with all its effects. E.g. see From a linear world to fast and circular?
- The change in generations upcoming. The behavior and the attitude of the analogue generation(s) and the difference in behavior from the digital generation(s).
During PDT2015 (a review of the conference here), we discussed all the visible trends that business in exponential changing in some industries due to digitalization and every cheaper technology. The question not answered during that conference was: How are we going to make this happen in your company?
HOW ?
Last week I spoke at a PLM forum in Athens and shared with the audience the opportunities for Greece to catch-up and become a digital service economy like Singapore. Here I pictured an idealistic path how this could happen (based on an ideal world where people think long-term).
A mission impossible, perhaps.
The primary challenge to move from analogue towards digital is to my opinion the difference in behavior of the analogue and digital generations (and I am generalizing of course)
The analogue generation has been educated that knowledge is power. Store all you know in your head or keep it in books close to you. Your job was depending on people needing you. Those who migrated to the digital world most of the time continued the same behavior. Keep information on your hard disk or mailbox. A job was designed for life and do not plan to share as your job might come at risk. Continuous education was not part of their work pattern. And it is this generation that is in power in most of the traditional businesses.
The digital generation has been educated (I hope so – not sure for every country) to gather information, digest and process it and come with a result. There is no need to store information in your head as there is already an information overflow. Store in your head methodology and practices to find and interpret data. The digital generation for sure wants a stable work environment but they already grew up with the mindset that there is no job for life, having seen several crises. It is all about being flexible and keep your skills up-to-date.
So we have the dilemma here that business is moving from analogue towards digital, where the analogue business represents the linear processes that the old generation was used to. Digital business is much more an iterative approach, acting and adapting on what happens around you. A perfect match for the digital generations.
A dilemma ?
Currently the old generation is leading and they will not easy step aside due to their classical education and behavior. We cannot expect behavior to change, just because it is logically explained. In that case, everyone would stop smoking or adopt other healthy standards.
The dilemma reminded me of the Innovators Dilemma, a famous theory from Clayton Christensen, which also could apply to analogue and digital businesses. Read more about the Innovators Dilemma here in one of my older blog posts: The Innovator´s dilemma and PLM. You can replace the incumbent with the old analogue generation and the disruptive innovation comes from using digital platforms and information understood by the digital generation. If you follow this theory, it would mean old businesses would disappear and new businesses would pop-up and overtake the old companies. Interesting conclusion, however, will there be disruption everywhere?
Recently I saw Peter Sondergaard from Gartner presenting at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2015 in Orlando. In his keynote speech, he talked about the value of algorithms introducing first how companies should move from their traditional analogue business towards digital business in a bimodal approach. Have a read of the press release here.
If you have the chance to view his slick and impressive keynote video (approx. 30 minutes) you will understand it better. Great presentation. In the beginning Peter talks about the bimodal approach sustaining old, slowly dying analogue businesses and meanwhile building teams developing a digital business approach. The graph below says it all.
Interesting from this approach is that a company can evolve without being disrupted. Still my main question remains: Who will lead this change from the old analogue business towards modern digital business approach. Will it be the old generation coaching the new generation or will there be a natural evolution at the board level required before this process starts?
HOW ?
I have no conclusion this time as I am curious to your opinion. A shift in business is imminent, but HOW will companies / countries pick-up this shift?
Your thoughts or experiences ?
Jos Voskuil's Weblog 
Jos, one could take the approach that there is an engineering transformation strategy that can be realized by implementing PLM…
Jos, some more thoughts. It is already split; no company is just using one tool. Could be that the engagement…
Jos, I agree we should break out from the monolithic approach as this typically means lock-in, risk and frustration. The…
Jos, Thanks for these insights. I believe that the mature capabilities provided by advanced toolsets can also be of benefit…
Definitely… the digital mesh is here to stay !!!! Thanks for your confidence Jorge