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Last week I enjoyed visiting LiveWorx 2023 on behalf of the PLM Global Green Alliance. PTC had invited us to understand their sustainability ambitions and meet with the relevant people from PTC, partners, customers and several of my analyst friends. It felt like a reunion.
In addition, I used the opportunity to understand better their Velocity SaaS offering with OnShape and Arena. The almost 4-days event, with approximately 5000 attendees, was massive and well-organized.
So many people were excited that this was again an in-person event after four years.
With PTC’s broad product portfolio, you could easily have a full agenda for the whole event, depending on your interests.
I was personally motivated that I had a relatively full schedule focusing purely on Sustainability, leaving all these other beautiful end-to-end concepts for another time.
Here are some of my observations
Jim Heppelman’s keynote
The primary presentation of such an event is the keynote from PTC’s CEO. This session allows you to understand the company’s key focus areas.
My takeaways:
- Need for Speed: Software-driven innovation, or as Jim said, Software is eating the BOM, reminding me of my recent blog post: The Rise and Fall of the BOM. Here Jim was referring to the integration with ALM (CodeBeamer) and IoT to have full traceability of products. However, including Software also requires agile ways of working.
- Need for Speed: Agile ways of working – the OnShape and Arena offerings are examples of agile working methods. A SaaS solution is easy to extend with suppliers or other stakeholders. PTC calls this their Velocity offering, typical Systems of Engagement, and I spoke later with people working on this topic. More in the future.
- Need for Speed: Model-based digital continuity – a theme I have discussed in my blog post too. Here Jim explains the interaction between Windchill and ServiceMax, both Systems of Record for product definition and Operation.
- Environmental Sustainability: introducing Catherine Kniker, PTC’s Chief Strategy and Sustainability Officer, announcing that PTC has committed to Science Based Targets, pledging near-term emissions reductions and long-term net-zero targets – see image below and more on Sustainability in the next section.
- A further investment in a SaaS architecture, announcing CREO+ as a SaaS solution supporting dynamic multi-user collaboration (a System of Engagement)
- A further investment in the partnership with Ansys fits the needs of a model-based future where modeling and simulation go hand in hand.
You can watch the full session Path to the Future: Products in the Age of Transformation here.
Sustainability
The PGGA spoke with Dave Duncan and James Norman last year about PTC’s sustainability initiatives. Remember: PLM and Sustainability: talking with PTC. Therefore, Klaus Brettschneider and I were happy to meet Dave and James in person just before the event and align on understanding what’s coming at PTC.
We agreed there is no “sustainability super app”; it is more about providing an open, digital infrastructure to connect data sources at any time of the product lifecycle, supporting decision-making and analysis. It is all about reliable data.
Product Sustainability 101
On Tuesday, Dave Duncan gave a great introductory session, Product Sustainability 101, addressing Business Drivers and Technical Opportunities. Dave started by explaining the business context aiming at greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction based on science-based targets, describing the content of Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions.
The image above, which came back in several presentations later that week, nicely describes the mapping of lifecycle decisions and operations in the context of the GHG protocol.
Design for Sustainability (DfS)
On Wednesday, I started with a session moderated by James Norman titled Design for Sustainability: Harnessing Innovation for a Resilient Future. The panel consisted of Neil D’Souza (CEO Makersite), Tim Greiner (MD Pure Strategies), Francois Lamy (SVP Product Management PTC) and Asheen Phansey (Director ESG & Sustainability at PagerDuty). You can find the topic discussed below:
Some of the notes I took:
- No specific PLM modules are needed, LCA needs to become an additional practice for companies, and they rely on a connected infrastructure.
- Where to start? First, understand the current baseline based on data collection – what is your environmental impact? Next, decide where to start
- The importance of Design for Service – many companies design products for easy delivery, not for service. Being able to service products better will extend their lifetime, therefore reducing their environmental impact (manufacturing/decommissioning)
- There Is a value chain for carbon data. In addition, suppliers significantly impact reaching net zero, as many OEMs have an Assembly To Order process, and most of the emissions are done during part manufacturing.
DfS: an example from Cummins
Next, on Wednesday, I attended the session from David Genter from Cummins, who presented their Design for Sustainability (DfS) project.
Dave started by sharing their 2030 sustainability goals:
- On Facilities and Operations: A reduction of 50 % of GHG emissions, reducing water usage by 30 %, reducing waste by 25 % and reducing organic compound emissions by 50%
- Reducing Scope 3 emissions for new products by 25%
- In general, reducing Scope 3 emissions by 55M metric tons.
The benefits for products were documented using a standardized scorecard (example below) to ensure the benefits are real and not based on wishful thinking.
Many motivated people wanted to participate in the project, and the ultimate result demonstrated that DfS has both business value for Cummins and the environment.
The project has been very well described in this whitepaper: How Cummins Made Changes to Optimize Product Designs for the Environment – a recommended case study to read.
Tangible Strategies for Improving Product Sustainability
The session was a dialogue between Catherine Kniker and Dave Duncan, discussing the strategies to move forward with Sustainability.
They reiterated the three areas where we as a PLM community can improve: Material choice and usage, Addressing Energy Emissions and Reducing Waste. And it is worth addressing them all, as you can see below – it is not only about carbon reduction.
It was an informative dialogue going through the different aspects of where we, as an engineering/ PLM community, can contribute. You can watch their full dialog here: Tangible Strategies for Improving Product Sustainability.
Conclusion
It was encouraging to see that at such an event as LiveWorx, you could learn about Sustainability and discuss Sustainability with the audience and PTC partners. And as I mentioned before, we need to learn to measure (data-driven / reliable data), and we need to be able to work in a connected infrastructure (digital thread) to allow design, simulation, validation and feedback to go hand in hand. It requires adapting a business strategy, not just a tactical solution. With the PLM Global Green Alliance, we are looking forward to following up on these.
NOTE: PTC covered the expenses associated with my participation in this event but did not in any way influence the content of this post – I made my tour fully independent through the conference and got encouraged by all the conversations I had.
Happy New Year to all of you, and may this year be a year of progress in understanding and addressing the challenges ahead of us.
To help us focus, I selected three major domains I will explore further this year. These domains are connected – of course – as nothing is isolated in a world of System Thinking. Also, I wrote about these domains in the past, as usually, noting happens out of the blue.
Meanwhile, there are a lot of discussions related to Artificial Intelligence (AI), in particular ChatGPT (openAI). But can AI provide the answers? I believe not, as AI is mainly about explicit knowledge, the knowledge you can define by (learning) algorithms.
Expert knowledge, often called Tacit knowledge, is the knowledge of the expert, combining information from different domains into innovative solutions.
I started my company, TacIT, in 1999 because I thought (and still think) that Tacit knowledge is the holy grail for companies.
Let’s see with openAI how far we get ……
Digitization of the PLM domain
The PLM domain is suffering from its legacy data (documents), legacy processes (linear – mechanical focus) and legacy people (siloed). The statement is a generalization.
More details can be found in my blog series: The road to model-based and connected PLM.
So why should companies move to a model-based and connected approach for their PLM infrastructure?
There are several reasons why companies may want to move to a model-based and connected approach for their Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) infrastructure:
- Increased efficiency: A model-based approach allows for creating a digital twin of the product, which can be used to simulate and test various design scenarios, reducing the need for physical prototypes and testing. This can lead to faster and more efficient product development.
- Improved collaboration: A connected PLM infrastructure allows for better collaboration between different teams and departments, as all product-related information is stored in a central location and can be accessed by authorized personnel. This can improve communication and decision-making within the organization.
- Enhanced visibility: A model-based PLM system provides a single source of truth for all product-related data, giving management a clear and comprehensive view of the product development process. This can help identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement.
- Reduced risk: By keeping all product-related information in a centralized location, the risk of data loss or inconsistencies is reduced. This can help ensure that the product is developed in accordance with regulatory requirements and company standards.
- Increased competitiveness: A model-based and connected PLM infrastructure can help companies bring new products to market faster and with fewer errors, giving them a competitive advantage in their industry.
The text in italics was created by ChatGPT. After three learning cycles, this was the best answer I got. What we are missing in this answer is the innovative and transformative part that modern PLM can bring. Where is the concept of different ways of working, and new business models, both drivers for digitalization in many businesses?
Expert knowledge related to Federated PLM (or Killing the PLM Monolith) are topics you will not find through AI. This is, for me, the most interesting part to explore.
We see the need but lack a common understanding of the HOW.
Algorithms will not innovate; for that, you need Tacit intelligence & Curiosity instead of Artificial Intelligence. More exploration of Federated PLM this year.
PLM and Sustainability
Last year as part of the PLM Global Green Alliance, we spoke with six different PLM solution providers to understand their sustainability goals, targets, and planned support for Sustainability. All of them confirmed Sustainability has become an important issue for their customers in 2022. Sustainability is on everyone’s agenda.
Why is PLM important for Sustainability?
PLM is important for Sustainability because a PLM helps organizations manage the entire lifecycle of a product, from its conception and design to its manufacture, distribution, use, and disposal. PLM can be important for Sustainability because it can help organizations make more informed decisions about the environmental impacts of their products and take steps to minimize those impacts throughout the product’s lifecycle.
For example, using PLM, an organization can consider the environmental impacts of the materials that are used in a product, the energy consumption of the manufacturing process, the product’s end-of-life disposal, and other factors that may affect its overall Sustainability. By considering these factors early in the design process, organizations can make more sustainable choices that reduce the environmental impact of their products over their lifecycle.
In addition, PLM can help organizations track and measure the Sustainability of their products over time, allowing them to continuously improve and optimize their products for Sustainability. This can be particularly important for organizations that are looking to meet regulatory requirements or consumer demand for more sustainable products.
Again not a wrong answer, but there is no mention of supporting the concepts of the circular economy, the potential of using digital twins at the various lifecycle stages of the products to perform trade-off studies in the virtual world, or to analyze the product behavior from the physical world in the virtual world for optimization.
This is (again), for me, the most interesting part to explore.
We see the need but lack the sense of urgency on the NOW.
More on Sustainability this year.
PLM Education at all levels
Historically PLM was framed as an “engineering thing” or a system needed for R&D/Engineering. Modern PLM is much broader and, unfortunately, more hard to grasp. I support the CIMdata definition:
CIMdata defines PLM as:
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A strategic business approach that applies a consistent set of business solutions that support the collaborative creation, management, dissemination, and use of product definition information
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Supporting the extended enterprise (customers, design and supply partners, etc.)
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Spanning from concept to end of life of a product or plant
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Integrating people, processes, business systems, and information
And even here, I would say this definition is challenging as the scope is extensive and could touch a lot of activities inside an enterprise. As I wrote last year in my series of posts related to PLM and Education, there is:
Strategy education (what are the trends/potential of digital transformation in the business domain related to the company’s products)
Methodology/ Academic Education (independent from tools, what are the best practices, where they reside, potential lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid)
Organisational Change Management (the Education and support needed to enable a business transformation – modern PLM is a transformation enabler)
By asking ChatGPT for their opinion, we learn the following:
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) education refers to training and development programs that focus on teaching individuals how to effectively manage the lifecycle of a product within an organization. This can include a wide range of topics, such as product design, development, and engineering; supply chain management; quality control and assurance; and product retirement and disposal.
Some specific types of PLM education that a company may need to provide to its employees include:
- Introduction to PLM: This type of training is designed to provide a general overview of PLM concepts and practices and may be suitable for employees who are new to the field or who have limited experience with PLM.
- PLM software training: Many companies use specialized PLM software to manage their product lifecycle processes. Employees who will be using this software will need training on how to use it effectively.
- Industry-specific PLM training: Depending on the industry in which a company operates, there may be specific PLM practices and regulations that employees need to be familiar with. For example, a company in the aerospace industry may need to provide training on PLM practices that are specific to the aerospace industry.
- Leadership and management training: For employees who are responsible for leading and managing PLM projects or teams, additional training in leadership and project management may be necessary.
Overall, the types of PLM education that a company needs will depend on the specific needs and goals of the organization, as well as the roles and responsibilities of its employees.
In general, we see from the answer that strategy and organizational change management beyond the tool are not considered.
This is precisely the area where a PLM Expert can help.
We see the need for Education, but we lack the willingness to invest in it.
Conclusion
It was an exciting exercise to combine my blogging thoughts with the answers from OpenAI. I am impressed by the given answers, knowing that the topics discussed about PLM are not obvious. On the other hand, I am not worried that AI will take over the job of the PLM consultant. As I mentioned before, the difference between Explicit Knowledge and Tacit Knowledge is clear, and business transformations will largely depend on the usage of Tacit knowledge.
I am curious about your experiences and will follow the topics mentioned in this post and write about them with great interest.
With great pleasure, I am writing this post, part of a tradition that started for me in 2014. Posts starting with “The weekend after …. “describing what happened during a PDT conference, later the event merged with CIMdata becoming THE PLM event for discussions beyond marketing.
For many of us, this conference was the first time after COVID-19 in 2020. It was a 3D (In person) conference instead of a 2D (digital) conference. With approximately 160 participants, this conference showed that we wanted to meet and network in person and the enthusiasm and interaction were great.
The conference’s theme, Digital Transformation and PLM – a call for PLM Professionals to redefine and re-position the benefits and value of PLM, was quite open.
There are many areas where digitization affects the way to implement a modern PLM Strategy.
Now some of my highlights from day one. I needed to filter to remain around max 1500 words. As all the other sessions, including the sponsor vignettes, were informative, they increased the value of this conference.
Digital Skills Transformation -Often Forgotten Critical Element of Digital Transformation
Day 1 started traditionally with the keynote from Peter Bilello, CIMdata’s president and CEO. In previous conferences, Peter has recently focused on explaining the CIMdata’s critical dozen (image below). If you are unfamiliar with them, there is a webinar on November 10 where you can learn more about them.
All twelve are equally important; it is not a sequence of priorities. This time Peter spent more time on Organisational Change management (OCM), number 12 of the critical dozen – or, as stated, the Digital Transformation’s Achilles heel. Although we always mention people are important, in our implementation projects, they often seem to be the topic that gets the less focus.
We all agree on the statement: People, Process, Tools & Data. Often the reality is that we start with the tools, try to build the processes and push the people in these processes. Is it a coincidence that even CIMdata puts Digital Skills transformation as number 12? An unconscious bias?
This time, the people’s focus got full attention. Peter explained the need for a digital skills transformation framework to educate, guide and support people during a transformation. The concluding slide below says it all.
Transformation Journey and PLM & PDM Modernization to the Digital Future
The second keynote of the day was from Josef Schiöler, Head of Core Platform Area PLM/PDM from the Volvo Group. Josef and his team have a huge challenge as they are working on a foundation for the future of the Volvo Group.
The challenge is that it will provide the foundation for new business processes and the various group members, as the image shows below:
As Josef said, it is really the heart of the heart, crucial for the future. Peter Bilello referred to this project as open-heart surgery while the person is still active, as the current business must go on too.
The picture below gives an impression of the size of the operation.
And like any big transformation project also, the Volvo Group has many questions to explore as there is no existing blueprint to use.
To give you an impression:
- How to manage complex documentation with existing and new technology and solution co-existing?
(My take: the hybrid approach) - How to realize benefits and user adoption with user experience principles in mind?
(My take: Understand the difference between a system of engagement and a system of record) - How to avoid seeing modernization as pure an IT initiative and secure that end-user value creation is visible while still keeping a focus on finalizing the technology transformation?
(My take: think hybrid and focus first on the new systems of engagement that can grow) - How to efficiently partner with software vendors to ensure vendor solutions fit well in the overall PLM/PDM enterprise landscape without heavy customization?
(My take: push for standards and collaboration with other similar companies – they can influence a vendor)
Note: My takes are just a starting point of the conversation. There is a discussion in the PLM domain, which I described in my blog post: A new PLM paradigm.
The day before the conference, we had a ½ day workshop initiated by SAAB and Eurostep where we discussed the various angles of the so-called Federated PLM.
I will return to that topic soon after some consolidation with the key members of that workshop.
Steering future Engineering Processes with System Lifecycle Management
Patrick Schäfer‘s presentation was different than the title would expect. Patrick is the IT Architect Engineering IT from ThyssenKrupp Presta AG. The company provides steering systems for the automotive industry, which is transforming from mechanical to autonomous driving, e-mobility, car-to-car connectivity, stricter safety, and environmental requirements.
The steering system becomes a system depending on hardware and software. And as current users of Agile PLM, the old Eigner PLM software, you can feel Martin Eigner’s spirit in the project.
I briefly discussed Martin’s latest book on System Lifecycle Management in my blog post, The road to model-based and connected PLM (part 5).
Martin has always been fighting for a new term for modern PLM, and you can see how conservative we are – for sometimes good reasons.
Still, ThyssenKrupp Presta has the vision to implement a new environment to support systems instead of hardware products. And in addition, they had to work fast to upgrade their current almost obsolete PLM environment to a new supported environment.
The wise path they chose was first focusing on a traditional upgrade, meaning making sure their PLM legacy data became part of a modern (Teamcenter) PLM backbone. Meanwhile, they started exploring the connection between requirements management for products and software, as shown below.
From my perspective, I would characterize this implementation as the coordinated approach creating a future option for the connected approach when the organization and future processes are more mature and known.
A good example of a pragmatic approach.
Digital Transformation in the Domain of Products and Plants at Siemens Energy
Per Soderberg, Head of Digital PLM at Siemens Energy, talked about their digital transformation project that started 6 – 7 years ago. Knowing the world of gas- and steam turbines, it is a domain where a lot of design and manufacturing information is managed in drawings.
The ultimate vision from Siemens Energy is to create an Industrial Metaverse for its solutions as the benefits are significant.
Is this target too ambitious, like GE’s 2014 Industrial Transformation with Predix? Time will tell. And I am sure you will soon hear more from Siemens Energy; therefore, I will keep it short. An interesting and ambitious program to follow. Sure you will read about them in the near future.
Accelerating Digitalization at Stora Enso
Stora Enso is a Finish company, a leading global provider of renewable solutions in packaging, biomaterials, wooden construction and paper. Their director of Innovation Services, Kaisa Suutari, shared Stora Enso’s digital transformation program that started six years ago with a 10 million/year budget (some people started dreaming too). Great to have a budget but then where to start?
In a very systematic manner using an ideas funnel and always starting from the business need, they spend the budget in two paths, shown in the image below.
Their interesting approach was in the upper path, which Kaisa focused on. Instead of starting with an analysis of how the problem could be addressed, they start by doing and then analyze the outcome and improve.
I am a great fan of this approach as it will significantly reduce the time to maturity. However, how much time is often wasted in conducting the perfect analysis?
Their Digi Fund process is a fast process to quickly go from idea to concept, to POC and to pilot, the left side of the funnel. After a successful pilot, an implementation process starts small and scales up.
There were so many positive takeaways from this session. Start with an MVP (Minimal Viable Product) to create value from the start. Next, celebrate failure when it happens, as this is the moment you learn. Finally, continue to create measurable value created by people – the picture below says it all.
It was the second time I was impressed by Stora Enso’s innovative approach. During the PI PLMX 2020 London, Samuli Savo, Chief Digital Officer at Stora Enso, gave us insights into their innovation process. At that time, the focus was a little bit more on open innovation with startups. See my post: The weekend after PI PLMx London 2020. An interesting approach for other businesses to make their digital transformation business-driven and fun for the people
A day-one summary
There was Kyle Hall, who talked about MoSSEC and the importance of this standard in a connected enterprise. MoSSEC (Modelling and Simulation information in a collaborative Systems Engineering Context) is the published ISO standard (ISO 10303-243) for improving the decision-making process for complex products. Standards are a regular topic for this conference, more about MoSSEC here.
There was Robert Rencher, Sr. Systems Engineer, Associate Technical Fellow at Boeing, talking about the progress that the A&D action group is making related to Digital Thread, Digital Twins. Sometimes asking more questions than answers as they try to make sense of the marketing definition and what it means for their businesses. You can find their latest report here.
There was Samrat Chatterjee, Business Process Manager PLM at the ABB Process Automation division. Their businesses are already quite data-driven; however, by embedding PLM into the organization’s fabric, they aim to improve effectiveness, manage a broad portfolio, and be more modular and efficient.
The day was closed with a CEO Spotlight, Peter Bilello. This time the CEOs were not coming from the big PLM vendors but from complementary companies with their unique value in the PLM domain. Henrik Reif Andersen, co-founder of Configit; Dr. Mattias Johansson, CEO of Eurostep; Helena Gutierrez, co-founder of Share PLM; Javier Garcia, CEO of The Reuse Company and Karl Wachtel, CEO, XPLM discussed their various perspectives on the PLM domain.
Conclusion
Already so much to say; sorry, I reached the 1500 words target; you should have been there. Combined with the networking dinner after day one, it was a great start to the conference. Are you curious about day 2 – stay tuned, and your curiosity will be rewarded.
Thanks to Ewa Hutmacher, Sumanth Madala and Ashish Kulkarni, who shared their pictures of the event on LinkedIn. Clicking on their names will lead you to the relevant posts.
One of my favorite conferences is the PLM Road Map & PDT conference. Probably because in the pre-COVID days, it was the best PLM conference to network with peers focusing on PLM practices, standards, and sustainability topics. Now the conference is virtual, and hopefully, after the pandemic, we will meet again in the conference space to elaborate on our experiences further.
Last year’s fall conference was special because we had three days filled with a generic PLM update and several A&D (Aerospace & Defense) working groups updates, reporting their progress and findings. Sessions related to the Multiview BOM research, Global Collaboration, and several aspects of Model-Based practices: Model-Based Definition, Model-Based Engineering & Model-Based Systems engineering.
All topics that I will elaborate on soon. You can refresh your memory through these two links:
- The weekend after PLM Roadmap / PDT 2020 – part 1
- The next weekend after PLM Roadmap / PDT 2020 – part 2
This year, it was a two-day conference with approximately 200 attendees discussing how emerging technologies can disrupt the current PLM landscape and reshape the PLM Value Equation. During the first day of the conference, we focused on technology.
On the second day, we looked in addition to the impact new technology has on people and organizations.
Today’s Emerging Trends & Disrupters
Peter Bilello, CIMdata’s President & CEO, kicked off the conference by providing CIMdata observations of the market. An increasing number of technology capabilities, like cloud, additive manufacturing, platforms, digital thread, and digital twin, all with the potential of realizing a connected vision. Meanwhile, companies evolve at their own pace, illustrating that the gap between the leaders and followers becomes bigger and bigger.
Where is your company? Can you afford to be a follower? Is your PLM ready for the future? Probably not, Peter states.
Next, Peter walked us through some technology trends and their applicability for a future PLM, like topological data analytics (TDA), the Graph Database, Low-Code/No-Code platforms, Additive Manufacturing, DevOps, and Agile ways of working during product development. All capabilities should be related to new ways of working and updated individual skills.
I fully agreed with Peter’s final slide – we have to actively rethink and reshape PLM – not by calling it different but by learning, experimenting, and discussing in the field.
Digital Transformation Supporting Army Modernization
An interesting viewpoint related to modern PLM came from Dr. Raj Iyer, Chief Information Officer for IT Reform from the US Army. Rai walked us through some of the US Army’s challenges, and he gave us some fantastic statements to think about. Although an Army cannot be compared with a commercial business, its target remains to be always ahead of the competition and be aware of the competition.
Where we would say “data is the new oil”, Rai Iyer said: “Data is the ammunition of the future fight – as fights will more and more take place in cyberspace.”
The US Army is using a lot of modern technology – as the image below shows. The big difference here with regular businesses is that it is not about ROI but about winning fights.
Also, for the US Army, the cloud becomes the platform of the future. Due to the wide range of assets, the US Army has to manage, the importance of product data standards is evident. – Rai mentioned their contribution and adherence to the ISO 10303 STEP standard crucial for interoperability. It was an exciting insight into the US Army’s current and future challenges. Their primary mission remains to stay ahead of the competition.
Joining up Engineering Data without losing the M in PLM
Nigel Shaw’s (Eurostep) presentation was somehow philosophical but precisely to the point what is the current dilemma in the PLM domain. Through an analogy of the internet, explaining that we live in a world of HTTP(s) linking, we create new ways of connecting information. The link becomes an essential artifact in our information model.
Where it is apparent links are crucial for managing engineering data, Nigel pointed out some of the significant challenges of this approach, as you can see from his (compiled) image below.
I will not discuss this topic further here as I am planning to come back to this topic when explaining the challenges of the future of PLM.
As Nigel said, they have a debate with one of their customers to replace the existing PLM tools or enhance the existing PLM tools. The challenge of moving from coordinated information towards connected data is a topic that we as a community should study.
Integration is about more than Model Format.
This was the presentation I have been waiting for. Mark Williams from Boeing had built the story together with Adrian Burton from Airbus. Nigel Shaw, in the previous session, already pointed to the challenge of managing linked information. Mark elaborated further about the model-based approach for system definition.
All content was related to the understanding that we need a model-based information infrastructure for the future because storing information in documents (the coordinated approach) is no longer viable for complex systems. Mark ‘slide below says it all.
Mark stressed the importance of managing model information in context, and it has become a challenge.
Mark mentioned that 20 years ago, the IDC (International Data Corporation) measured Boeing’s performance and estimated that each employee spent 2 ½ hours per day. In 2018, the IDC estimated that this number has grown to 30 % of the employee’s time and could go up to 50 % when adding the effort of reusing and duplicating data.
The consequence of this would be that a full-service enterprise, having engineering, manufacturing and services connected, probably loses 70 % of its information because they cannot find it—an impressive number asking for “clever” ways to find the correct information in context.
It is not about just a full indexed search of the data, as some technology geeks might think. It is also about describing and standardizing metadata that describes the models. In that context, Mark walked through a list of existing standards, all with their pros and cons, ending up with the recommendation to use the ISO 10303-243 – MoSSEC standard.
MoSSEC standing for Modelling and Simulation information in a collaborative Systems Engineering Context to manage and connect the relationships between models.
MoSSEC and its implication for future digital enterprises are interesting, considering the importance of a model-based future. I am curious how PLM Vendors and tools will support and enable the standard for future interoperability and collaboration.
Additive Manufacturing
– not as simple as paper printing – yet
Andreas Graichen from Siemens Energy closed the day, coming back to the new technologies’ topic: Additive Manufacturing or in common language 3D Printing. Andreas shared their Additive Manufacturing experiences, matching the famous Gartner Hype Cycle. His image shows that real work needs to be done to understand the technology and its use cases after the first excitement of the hype is over.
Material knowledge was one of the important topics to study when applying additive manufacturing. It is probably a new area for most companies to understand the material behaviors and properties in an Additive Manufacturing process.
The ultimate goal for Siemens Energy is to reach an “autonomous” workshop anywhere in the world where gas turbines could order their spare parts by themselves through digital warehouses. It is a grand vision, and Andreas confirmed that the scalability of Additive Manufacturing is still a challenge.
For rapid prototyping or small series of spare parts, Additive Manufacturing might be the right solution. The success of your Additive Manufacturing process depends a lot on how your company’s management has realistic expectations and the budget available to explore this direction.
Conclusion
Day 1 was enjoyable and educational, starting and ending with a focus on disruptive technologies. The middle part related to data the data management concepts needed for a digital enterprise were the most exciting topics to follow up in my opinion.
Next week I will follow up with reviewing day 2 and share my conclusions. The PLM Road Map & PDT Spring 2021 conference confirmed that there is work to do to understand the future (of PLM).
This time in the series of complementary practices to PLM, I am happy to discuss product modularity. In my previous post related to Virtual Events, I mentioned I had finished reading the book “The Modular Way”, written by Björn Eriksson & Daniel Strandhammar, founders of the consulting company Brick Strategy.
The first time I got aware of Brick Strategy was precisely a year ago during the Technia Innovation Forum, the first virtual event I attended since COVID-19. Daniel’s presentation at that event was one of the four highlights that I shared about the conference. See My four picks from PLMIF.
As I wrote in my last post:
Modularity is a popular topic in many board meetings. How often have you heard: “We want to move from Engineering To Order (ETO) to more Configure To Order (CTO)”? Or another related incentive: “We need to be cleverer with our product offering and reduced the number of different parts”.
Next, the company buys a product that supports modularity, and management believes the work has been done. Of course, not. Modularity requires a thoughtful strategy.
I am now happy to have a dialogue with Daniel to learn and understand Brick Strategy’s view on PLM and Modularization. Are these topics connected? Can one live without the other? Stay tuned till the end if you still have questions for a pleasant surprise.
The Modular Way
Daniel, first of all, can you give us some background and intentions of the book “The Modular Way”?
Let me start by putting the book in perspective. In today’s globalized business, competition among industrial companies has become increasingly challenging with rapidly evolving technology, quickly changing customer behavior, and accelerated product lifecycles. Many companies struggle with low profitability.
To survive, companies need to master product customizations, launch great products quickly, and be cost-efficient – all at the same time. Modularization is a good solution for industrial companies with ambitions to improve their competitiveness significantly.
The aim of modularization is to create a module system. It is a collection of pre-defined modules with standardized interfaces. From this, you can build products to cater to individual customer needs while keeping costs low. The main difference from traditional product development is that you develop a set of building blocks or modules rather than specific products.
The Modular Way explains the concept of modularization and the ”how-to.” It is a comprehensive and practical guidebook, providing you with inspiration, a framework, and essential details to succeed with your journey. The book is based on our experience and insights from some of the world’s leading companies.
Björn and I have long thought about writing a book to share our combined modularization experience and learnings. Until recently, we have been fully busy supporting our client companies, but the halted activities during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic gave us the perfect opportunity.
PLM and Modularity
Did you have PLM in mind when writing the book?
Yes, definitely. We believe that modularization and a modular way of working make product lifecycle management more efficient. Then we talk foremost about the processes, roles, product structure, decision making etc. Companies often need minor adjustments to their IT systems to support and sustain the new way of working.
Companies benefit the most from modularization when the contents, or foremost the products, are well structured for configuration in streamlined processes.
Many times, this means “thinking ahead” and preparing your products for more configuration and less engineering in the sales process, i.e., go from ETO to CTO.
Modularity for Everybody?
It seems like the modularity concept is prevalent in the Scandinavian countries, with famous examples of Scania, LEGO, IKEA, and Electrolux mentioned in your book. These examples come from different industries. Does it mean that all companies could pursue modularity, or are there some constraints?
We believe that companies designing and manufacturing products fulfilling different customer needs within a defined scope could benefit from modularization. Off-the-shelf content, commonality and reuse increase efficiency. However, the focus, approach and benefits are different among different types of companies.
We have, for example, seen low-volume companies expecting the same benefits as high-volume consumer companies. This is unfortunately not the case.
Companies can improve their ability and reduce the efforts to configure products to individual needs, i.e., customization. And when it comes to cost and efficiency improvements, high-volume companies can reduce product and operational costs.
Image:
Low-volume companies can shorten lead time and increase efficiency in R&D and product maintenance. Project solution companies can shorten the delivery time through reduced engineering efforts.
As an example, Electrolux managed to reduce part costs by 20 percent. Half of the reduction came from volume effects and the rest from design for manufacturing and assembly.
All in all, Electrolux has estimated its operating cost savings at approximately SEK 4bn per year with full effect, or around 3.5 percentage points of total costs, compared to doing nothing from 2010–2017. Note: SEK 4 bn is approximate Euro 400 Mio
Where to start?
Thanks to your answer, I understand my company will benefit from modularity. To whom should I talk in my company to get started? And if you would recommend an executive sponsor in my company, who would recommend leading this initiative.
Defining a modular system, and implementing a modular way of working, is a business-strategic undertaking. It is complex and has enterprise-wide implications that will affect most parts of the organization. Therefore, your management team needs to be aligned, engaged, and prioritize the initiative.
The implementation requires a cross-functional team to ensure that you do it from a market and value chain perspective. Modularization is not something that your engineering or IT organization can solve on its own.
We recommend that the CTO or CEO owns the initiative as it requires horizontal coordination and agreement.
Modularity and Digital Transformation
The experiences you are sharing started before digital transformation became a buzzword and practice in many companies. In particular, in the PLM domain, companies are still implementing past practices. Is modularization applicable for the current (coordinated) and for the (connected) future? And if yes, is there a difference?
Modularization means that your products have a uniform design based on common concepts and standardized interfaces. To the market, the end products are unique, and your processes are consistent. Thus, modularization plays a role independently of where you are on the digital transformation journey.
Digital transformation will continue for quite some time. Costs can be driven down even further through digitalization, enabling companies to address the connection of all value chain elements to streamline processes and accelerate speed to market. Digitalization will enhance the customer experience by connecting all relevant parts of the value chain and provide seamless interactions.
Industry 4.0 is an essential part of digitalization, and many companies are planning further investments. However, before considering investing in robotics and digital equipment for the production system, your products need to be well prepared.
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The more complex products you have, the less efficient and costlier the production is, even with advanced production lines. Applying modularization means that your products have a uniform design based on common concepts and standardized interfaces. To the market, the end products are unique, and your production process is consistent. Thus, modularization increases the value of Industry 4.0.
Want to learn more?
First of all, I recommend people who are new to modularity to read the book as a starting point as it is written for a broad audience. Now I want to learn more. What can you recommend?
As you say, we also encourage you to read the book, reflect on it, and adapt the knowledge to your unique situation. We know that it could be challenging to take the next steps, so you are welcome to contact us for advice.
Please visit our website www.brickstrategy.com for more.
For readers of the book, we plan to organize a virtual meeting in May 2021 -the date and time to be confirmed with the audience. Duration approx. 1 hour.
Björn Eriksson and Daniel Strandhammar will answer questions from participants in the meeting. Also, we are curious about your comments/feedback.
To allow time for a proper discussion, we will invite a maximum of 4 guests. Therefore be fast to apply for this virtual meeting by sending an email to tacit@planet.nl or info@brickstrategy.com with your contact details
before May 7th.
I will moderate and record the meeting. We will publish the recording in a short post, allowing everyone to benefit from the discussion. Stay tuned if you are interested, and be fast to apply if you have a question to ask.
What I learned
- Modularization is a strategy that applies to almost every business and increases the competitiveness of a company.
- Modularization is not a technical decision to be executed by R&D and Engineering. It requires an effort from all stakeholders in the company. Therefore, it should be led by a CEO or CTO.
- For future products, modularization is even more important to fulfill one of the promises of Industry 4.0: batch-size 1 (manufacturing a unique product for a single customer with the cost and effort as if it were done in a serial production mode)
- Although we talk a lot about modularization in PLM implementations, it is a people and processes first activity. Then the PLM infrastructure has to support modularization. Do not buy a PLM system to start modularization. Think first!
Conclusion
Modularization is a popular topic at board meetings as it is easy to explain the business benefits. People in engineering and marketing often miss the time and skills to translate modularization into a framework that aligns all stakeholders. After reading the book “The Modular Way,” you will not have solved this issue. There are many, more academic books related to modularization. With this book, you will be better aware of where to start and how to focus.
There is another interesting virtual event in May: the CIMdata PLM Road Map & PDT Spring 2021conference. The theme:
DISRUPTION—the PLM Professionals’ Exploration of Emerging Technologies that Will Reshape the PLM Value Equation.
I look forward to seeing you at this conference and discuss and learn together the changes we have to make – DISRUPTION or EXTINCTION or EVOLUTION. More on this topic soon.
First of all, thank you for the overwhelming response to the survey that I promoted last week: PLM 2021– your goals? It gave me enough inspiration and content to fill the upcoming months.
The first question of the survey was dealing with complementary practices or systems related to a traditional PLM-infrastructure.
As you can see, most of you are curious about Digital Twin management 68 % (it is hype). Second best are Configuration Management, Product Configuration Management and Supplier Collaboration Management, all with 58% of the votes. Click on the image to see the details. Note: you could vote for more than one topic.
Product Configuration Management
Therefore, I am happy to share this blog space with Configit’s CTO, Henrik Hulgaard. Configit is a company specialized in Product Configuration Management, or as they call it, Configuration Lifecycle Management (CLM).
Recently Henrik wrote an interesting article on LinkedIn: How to achieve End-To-End Configuration. A question that I heard several times from my clients. How to align the selling and delivery of configurable products, including sales, engineering and manufacturing?
Configit – the company / the mission
Henrik, thanks for helping me explaining the complementary value of end-to-end Product Configuration Management to traditional PLM systems. First of all, can you give a short introduction to Configit as a company and the unique value you are offering to your clients?
Hi Jos, thank you for having me. Configit has worked with configuration challenges for the last 20 years. We are approximately 200 people and have offices in Denmark, Germany, India, and in the US (Atlanta and Detroit) and work with some of the world’s largest manufacturing companies.
We are founded on patented technology, called Virtual Tabulation. The YouTube movie below explains the term Virtual Tabulation.
Virtual Tabulation compiles EVERY possible configuration scenario and then compresses that data into a very small file so that it can be used by everyone in your team.
Virtual Tabulations enables important capabilities such as:
- Consolidation of all configuration data, both Engineering and Sales related, into single-source-of-truth.
- Effortless maintenance of complicated rule data.
- Fast and error-free configuration engine that provides perfect guidance to the customer across multiple platforms and channels..
As the only vendor, Configit provides a configuration platform that fully supports end-to-end configuration processes, from early design and engineering, over sales and manufacturing to support and service configurable products.
This is what we understand by Configuration Lifecycle Management (CLM).
Why Configuration Lifecycle Management?
You have introduced the term Configuration Lifecycle Management – another TLA (Three Letter Acronym) and easy pronounce. However, why would a company being interested to implement Configuration Lifecycle Management (CLM)?
CLM is a way to break down the siloed systems traditionally found in manufacturing companies where products are defined in a PLM system, sold using a CRM/CPQ system, manufactured using an ERP system and serviced by typically ad-hoc and home-grown systems. A CLM system feeds these existing systems with an aligned and consistent view of what variants of a configurable product is available.
Organizations obtain several benefits when aligning across functions on what product variants it offers:
- Engineering: faster time-to-market, optimized variability, and the assurance to only engineer products that are sold
- Sales: reducing errors, making sure that what gets quoted is accurate, and reducing the time to close the deal. The configurator provides current, up-to-date, and accurate information.
- Manufacturing: reducing errors and production stoppages due to miss-builds
- Service: accurate information about the product’s configuration. The service technician knows precisely what capabilities to expect on the particular product to be serviced.
For example, one of our customers experienced a 95% reduction in the time – from a year to two weeks – it took them to create the configuration models needed to build and sell their products. This reduction meant a significant reduction in time to market and allowed additional product lines to be introduced.
CLM for everybody?
I can imagine that companies with products that are organized for mass-production still wanting to have the mindset of being as flexible as possible on the sales side. What type of companies would benefit the most from a CLM approach?
Any company that offers customized or configurable products or services will need to ensure that what is engineered is aligned with what is sold and serviced. Our customers typically have relatively high complexity with hundreds to thousands of configuration parameters.
CLM is not just for automotive companies that have high volume and high complexity. Many of our customers are in industrial components and machinery, offering complex systems and services. A couple of examples:
Philips Healthcare sells advanced scanners to hospitals and uses CLM to ensure that what is sold is aligned with what can be offered. They also would like to move to sell scanners as a service where the hospital may pay per MR scan.
Thyssenkrupp Elevators sell elevators that are highly customizable based on the needs and environment. The engineering rules start in the CAD environment. They are combined with commercial rules to provide guidance to the customer about valid options.
CLM and Digital Transformation
For me, CLM is an excellent example of what modern, digital enterprises need to do. Having product data available along the whole lifecycle to make real-time decisions. CLM is a connecting layer that allows companies to break the siloes between marketing, sales, engineering and operations. At C-level get excited by that idea as I can see the business value.
Now, what would you recommend realizing this idea?
- The first step is to move away from talking about parts and instead talk about features when communicating about product capabilities.
This requires that an organization establishes a common feature “language” (sometimes this is called a master feature dictionary) that is shared across the different functions.
As the feature codes are essential in the communication between the functions, the creation and updating of the feature language must be carefully managed by putting people and processes in place to manage them.
- The next step is typically to make information about valid configurations available in a central place, sometimes referred to as the single source of truth for configuration.
We offer services to expose this information and integrate it into existing enterprise systems such as PLM, ERP and CRM/CPQ. The configuration models may still be maintained in legacy systems. Still, they are imported and brought together in the CLM system.
Once consuming systems all share a single configuration engine, the organization may move on to improve on the rule authoring and replace the existing legacy rule authoring applications found in PLM and ERP systems with more modern applications such as Configit Ace.
Customer Example: Connecting Sales, R&D and ERP
As can be seen from above, these steps all go across the functional silos. Thus, it is essential that the CLM journey has top-level management support, typically from the CIO.
COVID-19?
Related to COVID-19, I believe companies realized that they had to reconsider their supply chains due to limiting dependencies on critical suppliers. Is this an area where Configit would contribute too?
The digital transformation that many manufacturing companies have worked on for years clearly has been accelerated by the COVID-19 situation, and indeed they might now start to encode information about the critical suppliers in the rules.
We have seen this happening in 2011 with the tsunami in Japan when suddenly supplier could not provide certain parts anymore. The organization then has to quickly adapt the rules so that the options requiring those parts are no longer available to order.
Therefore, the CLM vision also includes suppliers as configuration knowledge has to be shared across organizations to ensure that what is ordered also can be delivered.
Learning more?
It is clear that CLM is a complementary layer to standard PLM-infrastructures and complementary to CRM and ERP. A great example of what is possible in a modern, digital enterprise. Where can readers find more information?
Configit offers several resources on Configuration Lifecycle Management on our website, including our blog, webinars and YouTube videos, e.g., Tech Chat on Manufacturing and Configuration Lifecycle Management (CLM)
Besides these continuous growing resources, there is the whitepaper “Accelerating Digital Transformation in Manufacturing with Configuration Lifecycle Management (CLM)” available here among other whitepapers.
What I have learned
- Configuration Lifecycle Management is relevant for companies that want to streamline their business functions, i.e., sales, engineering, manufacturing, and service. CLM will reduce the number of iterations in the process, reduce costly fixing when trying to align to customer demands, and ultimately create more service offerings by knowing customer existing configurations.
- The technology to implement CLM is there. Configit has shown in various industries, it is possible. It is an example of adding value on top of a digital information infrastructure (CRM, PLM, and ERP)
- The challenge will be on aligning the different functions to agree and align on one standard configuration authority. Therefore, responsibility should lie at the top-level of an organization, likely the modern CIO or CDO.
- I was glad to learn that Henrik stated:
“The first step is to move away from talking about parts and instead talk about features when communicating about product capabilities”.
A topic I will discuss soon when talking about Product & Portfolio Management with PLM.
Conclusion
It was a pleasure to work with Configit, in particular, Henrik Hulgaard, learning more about Configuration Lifecycle Management or whatever you may name it. More important, I hope you find this post insightful for your understanding if and where it applies to your business.
Always feel free to ask more questions related to the complimentary value of PLM and Product Configuration Management(CLM)
I usually write a post after participating in a PLM conference. Last week, I participated in TECHNIA’s PLM Innovation Forum, which was a 100 % virtual event with over 1500 registered participants from 58 countries. These numbers show the power of a virtual conference during these difficult times. It is an excellent option for a sustainable future – less travel to be there.
The additional beauty of this event is that, although the live sessions are over, all the content will be available until May 31st. You can still join!
It was (and is) a well-organized and massive event with over 70 sessions; the majority pre-recorded. As you can imagine 70 live sessions in two days would be too massive to grasp. Today the Friday after the event, I have been watching other sessions that have my interest, and it felt like another conference day.
TECHNIA, globally the largest Dassault Systèmes (DS) implementer after DS themselves as Jonas Geyer, Technia’s CEO, mentioned in his introduction speech, illustrated the breadth of their industry and technology skills complementary or based on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
TECHNIA was supported by Dassault Systèmes Execs and subject experts. In addition, a larger group of companies and interest groups supported the conference, even our humble PLM Green Alliance as you can see in the image above.
I followed the full two live days in real-time, meanwhile man sitting in my virtual booth to chat with virtual visitors. To my surprise, the anxiety during the conference felt like a physical conference – you get energized.
The positive point for me, no finger food or a standing lunch and decent coffee when needed. The point to enhance and learn for this type of event, is to make the booth a little more human – perhaps supported by video?
At the end, a great event, and if you are interested in the Dassault Systèmes/TECHNIA combined offering, supported by customer stories, take the chance till the end of May to register and browse the rich content.
Now I will share some of my picks from the live event. Another post will come based on my additional discoveries and networking discussions.
The B.CONNECT project
Fabien Hoefer and Philip Haller both from B.Braun, a medical device, and pharmaceutical company, with a wide range of products. Their massive PLM-project, approx. sixty persons involved was driven by the fact that every product has a lot of related data stored in different silos that it becomes impossible to have the correct understanding and status and to maintain it for the product and service lifecycle, on average, 10 – 15 years.
Their target is a real PLM-platform implementation connecting the people, the processes, data, and systems. Their aim is really about the “connected” approach, a characteristic of a digital company.
As you can still watch the presentation, look at the following topics discussed:
- focus on product archetypes instead of division (portfolio management)
- data templates based on classification, global and specific data sets (data governance)
- the need to have a Master Data Management in place (data governance)
- the unique product identifier (remember the FFF-discussion in my blog)
- data-driven documentation (a perfect example of a digital PLM implementation)
- platform strategy (one application for one capability in a heterogeneous systems environment)
- Ownership of the PLM implementation at board level (it is not an engineering tool)
- in the Q&A – the mix of waterfall & agile – the hybrid approach (as in the medical world the validation of the system is required – a point we missed in the SmarTeam FDA toolkit – validation of a system is needed when the system/processes change)
In the Q&A session, it was clear that the big elephant in the room, the migration, has been identified, but no answers yet. See my presentation to understand the reference to the elephant. I am curious about B. Braun’s approach, given my experience with PLM digital transformations. Will it be entirely digital or hybrid.
Looking forward to learning more from Fabien or Philip.
Business drivers for Sustainable Manufacturing
This session, presented by Hannes Lindfred from TECHNIA, was one of my favorite presentations, as it links tightly to what we want to achieve with the PLM Green Alliance.
The subtitle of the presentation says it all: “How PLM can support Supply chain transparency, Circular economy, and System oriented product development”.
In a relaxed and entertaining manner, he explained the concepts and the needs of a circular economy, combined with examples from reality. In particular, I liked his closing statement linking the potential of digitization, modern PLM, and the circular economy. We have to learn to think and act circular. Highly recommended to watch!
Leading PLM Trends & Potential Disruptors
A PLM conference would not be a PLM-conference if Peter Bilello from CIMdata would not be speaking. We share a lot of insights related to digital transformation and the understanding it requires the involvement of PLM. However, it is not the traditional PLM that is needed.
PLM needs to be rethought, think about the concept of a Product Innovation Platform. A digital platform is required if we want end-to-end digitalization; otherwise, we keep working in optimized silos.
Peter shared some survey results (see below) from early this year. It illustrates that most companies currently invest in traditional PDM aspects. Restating the need for our PLM communities to learn and educate and rethink aspects of PLM and learn to communicate them.
Remarkably similar to some of the aspects I explained in my: From Coordinated to Connected presentations. Changing to data, changing workforce, changing processes meaning systems thinking. Another plea for everyone to invest in learning. See his concluding remarks:
The closing Q&A session was interesting, addressing additive manufacturing, the graph database, and potential PLM disruptors coming from outside the traditional PLM space.
I recommend, pay attention to the closing questions – so many good points to put PLM in perspective.
From Coordinated to Connected & Sustainable
Of course, I recommend you watch my presentation. It is one of the few opportunities to hear in a short time all the thoughts and concepts that I developed over the past 5 – 6 years. It saves you reading all my blog posts, which are less structured than this presentation.
I recommend you to watch this presentation in the context of Peter Bilello’s presentation as there are a lot of similarities, told in different words.
After my presentation, I appreciated the Q&A part, as it allowed me to point to some more of the related topics: Legacy CAD-issues – the incompatibility of the past and future data, Management vision and the Perception of ROI.
Professional PLM
Raise your standards and your horizons
An interesting presentation to watch, after seeing Peter Bilello’s presentation and my presentation, is the one given by Roger Tempest. Roger is another veteran in the PLM-world and co-founder of the PLM Interest group. For many years Roger is striving to get the PLM professional recognized and certified. We both share the experience that being a PLM consultant is not a profession to become wealthy.
One of the reasons might be that the scope of PLM and what is the required skill level is not precise. PLM considered as an engineering tool and PLM having so many diverse definitions.
The challenge of Roger’s approach is that it tries to capture people within a standardized PLM framework, which becomes apparent in the Q&A session. Currently, he is in the stage of building a steering group, “looking for companies that are fairly committed to PLM”. So which companies are the ones interested in PLM to commit time and resources to build a professional PLM body? This can be only academic people and PLM Vendors/Implementers. The last group will probably not likely agree on standardization.
Also related to the question about the different industries and maturity levels for companies came with an unsatisfactory answer. He talks about “absolute” PLM and no need to compare PLM with other industries. Here I believe there is such a fundamental difference in the meaning of PLM when talking to the traditional manufacturing companies as compared to high-tech/software-driven industries. I inserted here Marc Halpern’s maturity/technology diagram that I have been referencing in my presentation too.
The final question about vendors joining the PLM standardization group seems to be a utopia. As I expressed in my presentation, referring to Marc Halpern’s business maturity diagram, the vendors show us the vision of various business aspects related to PLM.
Marc already indicated this is the phase of the Product Innovation Platform.
As long as the professional PLM organization is focusing on defining the standard, I foresee the outside world will move faster and be more diverse than a single PLM expert can handle. A typical issue with many other standards as you can see below.
What’s Next
I hope to see and participate more in virtual PLM conferences as it allows much larger audiences to connect compared to traditional conferences. However, there are things to improve, and therefore I want to propose some enhancements:
Make sure during the “live” sessions, there is the experience of “being live and connected”. Even when streaming a pre-recorded lecture, always follow-up immediately with a live Q&A session. I found the Q&A sessions very educative as they clarify or put the presentation in a broader context.
The current virtual booth as only a chat room is too primitive – it reminded me of the early days of internet communication – discussion groups in ASCII-terminal mode through Compuserve (remember). A booth could become a virtual meeting space on its own – all, of course, depending on the amount of bandwidth available. The feeling of “The Doctor is in”
It is great that the content is available for 30 days, and I agree there is a need for a time limit on the content; otherwise, the conference becomes more a library. What I would like to see after the “live” days to still have a kind of place for sharing. What are your favorite presentations, and why should others look at it?
Conclusion
A great event and learning experience for me. Virtual conferences are the future for sure, and I encourage others to develop this type of conferences related to PLM further. It is a way to share knowledge and discuss topics in a sustainable manner. In the upcoming 30 days, I will come back to the conference one more time, based on interesting topics discovered or discussion related to the content.
Meanwhile, I encourage you too – if you are still in lockdown and if there is time to study – this is one of these unique opportunities.
This post is based on a mix of interactions I had the last two weeks in my network, mainly on LinkedIn. First, I enjoyed the discussion that started around Yoann Maingon post: Thoughts about PLM Business models. Yoann is quite seasoned in PLM, as you can see from his LinkedIn profile, and we have had interesting discussions in the past, and recently about a new PLM-system, he is developing Ganister PLM, based on a flexible Graph database.
Perhaps in that context, Yoann was exploring the various business models. Do you pay for the software (and maintenance), do you pay through subscription, what about a modular approach or a full license for all the functionality? All these questions made me think about the various business models that I encountered and how hard it is for a customer to choose the optimal solution. And is the space for a new type of PLM? Is there space for free PLM? Some of my thoughts here:
PLM vendors need to be profitable
One of the most essential points to consider is that whatever PLM solution you are aiming to buy, make sure that your PLM vendor has a profitable business model. As once you started with a PLM solution, it is your company’s IP that will be stored in this environment, and you do not want to change every few years your PLM system. Switching PLM systems would be affordable if the PLM system would store their data in a standard format – I will share a more in-depth link under PLM and standards.
For the moment, you cannot state PLM vendors endorse standards. None of the real PLM vendors have a standardized data model, perhaps closest to standards are Eurostep, who have based that ShareAspace solution on top of the PLCS (ISO 10303) standard. However, ShareAspace is more positioned as a type of middleware, connecting between OEMs/Owner/Operators and their suppliers to benefit for standardized connectivity.
Coming back to the statement, PLM Vendors need to be profitable to provide a guarantee for the future of your company’s data is the first step. The major PLM Vendors are now profitable as during a consolidation phase starting 15 years ago, a lot of non-profitable PLM Vendors disappeared. Matrix One, Agile, Eigner & Partner PLM are the best-known companies that were bought for either their technology or market share. In that context, you might also look at OnShape.
Would they be profitable as a separate company, or would investors give up? To survive, you need to be profitable, so giving software away for free is not a good sign (see the software for free paragraph) as a company needs continuity.
PLM startups
In the past 10 years, I have seen and evaluated several new PLM companies. All of them did not really change the PLM paradigm, most of them were still focusing on being an engineering collaboration tools. Several of these companies have in their visionary statement that they are going to be the “Excel killer.” We all know Excel has the best user interface and capabilities to manipulate a collection of metadata.
Very popular is the BOM in Excel, extracted from the CAD-system (no need for an “expensive” PDM or PLM) or BOM used to share with suppliers and stakeholders (ERP is too rigid, purchasing does not work with PDM).
The challenge I see here is that these startups do not bring real new value. The cost of manipulating Excels is a hidden cost, and companies relying on Excel communication are the type of companies that do not have a strategic point of view. This is typical for Small and Medium businesses where execution (“let’s do it”) gets all the attention.
PLM startups often collect investor’s money because they promise to kill Excel, but is Excel the real problem? Modern PLM is about data sharing, which is an attitude change, not necessarily a technology change from Excel tables to (cloud) shared tables. However, will one of these “new Excel killers” PLMs be disruptive? I don’t think so.
PLM disruption?
A week ago, I read an interview with Clayton Christensen (thanks Hakan Karden), which I shared on LinkedIn a week ago. Clayton Christensen is the father of the Disruptive Innovation theory, and I have cited him several times in my blogs. His theory is, in my opinion, fundamental to understand how traditional businesses can be disrupted. The interview took place shortly before he died at the age of 67. He died due to complications caused by leukemia.
A favorite part of this interview is, where he restates what is really Disruptive Innovation as we often talk about disruption without understanding the context, just echoing other people:
Christensen: Disruptive innovation describes a process by which a product or service powered by a technology enabler initially takes root in simple applications at the low end of a market — typically by being less expensive and more accessible — and then relentlessly moves upmarket, eventually displacing established competitors. Disruptive innovations are not breakthrough innovations or “ambitious upstarts” that dramatically alter how business is done but, rather, consist of products and services that are simple, accessible, and affordable. These products and services often appear modest at their outset but over time have the potential to transform an industry.
Many of the PLM startups dream and position themselves as the new disruptor. Will they succeed? I do not believe so if they only focus on replacing Excel, there is a different paradigm needed. Voice control and analysis perhaps (“Hey PLM if I change Part XYZ what will be affected”)?
This would be disruptive and open new options. I think PLM startups should focus here if they want my investment money.
PLM for free?
There are some voices that PLM should be free in an analogy to software management and collaboration tools. There are so many open-source software management tools, why not using them for PLM? I think there are two issues here:
- PLM data is not like software data. A lot of PLM data is based on design models (3D CAD / Simulation), which is different from software. Designs are often not that modular as software for various reasons. Companies want to be modular in their products, but do they have the time and resources to reinvent their existing product. For software, these costs are so much lower as it is only a brain exercise. For hardware, the impact is significant. Bringing me to the second point.
- The cost of change for hardware is entirely different compared to software. Changing software does not have an impact on existing stock or suppliers and, therefore, can be implemented once tested for its purpose. A hardware change impacts the existing production process. First, use the old parts before introducing the change, or do we accept the (costs) of scrap. Is our supply chain, or are our production tools ready to deliver continuity for the new version? Hardware changes are costly, and you want to avoid them. Software changes are cheap, therefore design your products to be configurable based on software (For example Tesla’s software controlling the features to be allowed)
Now imagine, with enough funding, you could provide a PLM for free. Because of ease of deployment, this would be very likely a cloud offering, easy and scalable. However, all your IP is in that cloud too, and let’s imagine that the cloud is safer than on-premise, so it does not matter in which country your data is hosted (does it ?).
Next, the “free” PLM provider starts asking a small service fee after five years, as the promised ROI on the model hasn’t delivered enough value for the shareholders, they become anxious. Of course, you do not like to pay the fee. However, where is your data, and what happens when you do not pay?
If the PLM provider switches you off, you are without your IP. If you ask the PLM provider to provide your data, what will you get? A blob of XML-files, anything you can use?
In general, this is a challenge for all cloud solutions.
- What if you want to stop your subscription?
- What is the allowed Exit-strategy?
Here I believe customers should ask for clarity, and perhaps these questions will lead to a renewed understanding that we need standards.
PLM and standards
We had a vivid discussion in the blogging community in September last year. You can read more related to this topic in my post: PLM and the need for standards which describes the aspects of lock-in and needs for openness.
Finally, a remark related to the PLM-acronym. Another interesting discussion started around Joe Barkai’s post: Why I do not do PLM . Read the comments and the various viewpoint on PLM here. It is clear that the word PLM unites us all; however, the interpretation is different.
If someone in the street asks me what is your profession, I never mention I do PLM. I say: “I assist mainly manufacturing companies in redesigning their business processes using best practices and modern digital technologies”. The focus is on the business value, not on the ultimate definition of PLM
Conclusion
There are many business aspects related to PLM to consider. Yoann Maingon’s post started the thinking process, and we ended up with the PLM-definition. It all illustrates that being involved in PLM is never a boring journey. I am curious to learn about your journey and where we meet.
At the beginning of this week, I was attending the 9th edition of the PI conference in London. Where it started as a popular conference with 300 – 400 attendees at its best, we were now back to a smaller number of approximately 100 attendees.
It illustrates that PLM as a standalone topic is no longer attracts a broad audience as Marketkey (the organization of the conference) confirms. The intention is that future conferences will be focusing on the broader scope of PLM, where business transformation will be one of the main streams.
In this post, I will share my highlights of the conference, knowing that other sessions might have been valuable too, but I had to make a choice.
It is about people
Armin Prommersberger, CTO from DIRAC and the chairman of the conference, made a great point: “What we will discuss in the upcoming two days, it is all about people not about technology.”
I am not sure if this opening has influenced the mood of the conference, as when I look back to what was the central theme: It is all about how we deal with people when explaining, implementing and justifying PLM.
AI at the Forefront of a Digital Transformation
Muhannad Alomari from R2 Data Labs as a separate unit within Rolls Royce to explore and provide data innovation started with his keynote speech sharing the AI initiatives within his team.
He talked about several projects where AI will become crucial.
For example, the EHM program related to engine behavior. How to detect anomalies, how to establish predictive maintenance and maximize the time an airplane engine is in operation. Interesting to mention is that Muhannad explained that most simulation models are based on simplified simulation models, not accurate enough to discover anomalies.
Modeling in the PLM world with feedback from reality
Machine learning and feedback loops are crucial to optimize the models both for the discovery of irregularities and, of course, to improve understanding of the engine behavior and predict maintenance. Currently, maintenance is defined based on the worst-case scenario for the engine, which in reality, of course, will not be the case for most engines. There is a lot (millions) to gain here for a company.
Interesting to mention is that Muhannad gave a realistic view of the current status of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI is currently still dumb – it is a set of algorithms that need to be adapted whenever new patterns are discovered. Deep learning is still not there – currently, we still need human beings for that.
This was in contrast with the session from Kalypso later with the title: Supercharge your PLM with advanced analytics. It was a typical example of where a realistic story (R2 Data Labs) shows such a big difference with what is sold by PLM vendors or implementers. Kalypso introduced Product Lifecycle Intelligence (PLI) – you can see the dream on the left (click on the image to enlarge).
Combine PLM with Analytics, and you have Intelligence. My main comment is, knowing from the field the first three phases in most companies have a lack of data quality and consistency. Therefore any “Intelligence” probably will be based on unreliable sources. Not an issue if you are working in the domain of politics, however when it comes to direct cost and quality implications, it can be a significant risk. We still have a way to go before we have a reliable PLM data backbone for analytics.
Keeping PLM Momentum after a Successful Campaign
Susanna Mäentausta from Kemira in Finland gave an exciting update of their PLM project. Where in 2019, she shared with us their PLM roadmap (see my 2019 post: The weekend after PI PLMx London 2019); this time, Susanna shared with us how they are keeping the PLM momentum.
Often PLM implementations are started based on a hypothetical business case (I talked about this in my post The PLM ROI Myth). But then, when you implement PLM, you need to take care you provide proof points to motivate the management. And this is exactly what the PLM team in Kemira has been doing. Often management believes that after the first investment, the project is done (“We bought the software – so we are done”) however the business and process change that will deliver the value is not reported.
Susanna shared with us how they defined measurable KPIs for two reasons. First, to motivate the management that there are business progress and benefits, however, it is a journey. And secondary the facts are used to kill the legends that “Before PLM we were much faster or efficient.” These types of legends are often expressed loudly by persons who consider PLM as an overhead (killing their freedom) instead of a way to be more efficient in business. In the end, for a company, the business is more important than the person’s belief.
On the question for Susanna, what she would have done better with hindsight, she answered: “Communicate, communicate, communicate.” A response I fully support as often PLM teams are too busy completing their day-to-day work, that there is no spare time for communication. Crucial to achieving a business change.
My agreement: PLM needs facts based during implementation and support combined with the understanding we are dealing with people and their emotions too. Both need full attention.
Acceleration Digitalization at Stora Enso
Samuli Savo, Chief Digital Officer at Stora Enso, explained the principles of innovation, related to digitalization at his company. Stora Enso, a Swedish/Finish company, historically one of the largest forestry companies in the world as well as one of the most significant paper and packaging producers, is working on a transformation to become the renewable materials company. For me, he made two vital points on how Stora Enso’s digitalization’s journey is organized.
He pleads for experimentation funded by corporate as in the experimental stage, as it does not make sense to have a business case. First DO and then ANALYZE, where many companies have to policy first to ANALYZE and then DO, killing innovative thinking.
The second point was the active process to challenge startups to solve business challenges they foresee and, combined with a governance process for startups, allow these companies to be supported and become embedded within member companies of the Combient Foundry, like Stora Enso. By doing such in a structured way, the outcome must lead to innovation.
I was thinking about the hybrid enterprise model that I have been explaining in the past. Great story.
Cyber-security and Future Mobility
Out of interest, I followed the session from Madeline Cheah, Cybersecurity Innovation Lead at HORIBA MIRA. She gave an excellent and well-structured overview. Madeline leads the cybersecurity research program. Part of this job is investigating ways to prevent vehicles from being attacked. In particular, when it comes to connected and autonomous vehicles. How to keep them secure.
She discussed the known gaps are and the cybersecurity implications of future mobility so extensive that I even doubted will there ever be an autonomous vehicle on the road. So much to define and explore. She looked at it from the perspective of the Internet of Everything, where Everything is divided into Things, Data, Processes, and People. Still, a lot of work to do, see image below
Good Times Ahead: Delay Mitigation Through a Plan for Every Part
Ian Quest, director at Quick Release, gave an overview of what their company aims to be. You could translate it as the plumbers of the automotive industry Where in the ideal world information should be flowing from design to release, there are many bottlenecks, leakages, hiccups that need to be resolved as the image shows.
Where their customers often do not have the time and expertise to fix these issues, Quick Release brings in various skillsets and common sense. For example, how to deal with the Bill of Materials, Configuration Management, and many other areas that you need to address with methodology first instead of (vendor-based) technology. I believe there is a significant need for this type of company in the PLM-domain.
The second part, presented by Nick Solly, with a focus on their QRonos tool, was perhaps a little too much a focus on the capabilities of the tool. Ian Quest, in his introduction, already made the correct statement:
The QRonos tool, which is more or less a reporting tool, illustrates again that when people care about reliable data (planning, tasks, parts, deliverables, …..), you can improve your business significantly by creating visibility to delays or bottlenecks. The value lies in measurable activities and from there, learn to predict or enhance – see R2 Labs, Kemira and the PLI dream.
Conclusion
It is clear that a typical PLM conference is no longer a technology festival – it is about people. People are trying to change or improve their business. Trying to learn from each other, knowing that the technical concepts and technology are there.
I am looking forward to the upcoming PI events where this change will become more apparent.
It is the holiday season many groups, religions have their celebrations in this period, mostly due to the return of the light on the Northern hemisphere – Christmas, Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Santa Lucia are a few of them. Combined with a new decade upcoming, also a time for me to reflect on what have we learned and what can we imagine in the next ten years.
Looking back the last decade
Globalization is probably one of the most significant changes we have seen. Almost the whole world is connected now through all kinds of social and digital media. Information is instantly available and influences our behavior dramatically. The amount of information coming to us is so huge that we only filter the information that touches us emotionally. The disadvantage of that, opinions become facts and different opinions become enemies. A colorful society becomes more black and white.
These trends have not reached us, in the same manner, the domain of PLM. There have been several startups in the past ten years, explaining that PLM should be as easy as social communication with Facebook. Most of these startups focused on integrations with MCAD-systems, as-if PLM is about developing mechanical products.
In my opinion, the past decade has shown that mechanical design is no longer a unique part of product development. Products have become systems, full of electronics and driven by software. Systems Engineering became more and more important, defining the overall concept of a product, moving the focus to the earlier stages of the product design – see image below.
During Ideation and system definition, we need “social” collaboration between all stakeholders. To get a grip on this collaboration, we use models (SysML, UML, Logical, 2D, 3D) to have an unambiguous representation, simulation and validation of the product already in the virtual world.
Actually, there is nothing social about that collaboration. It is a company-driven demand to deliver competitive products to remain in business. If our company does not improve multidisciplinary collaboration, global competitors with less nostalgic thoughts to the past will conquer the market space.
Currently in most companies there are two worlds, hardware and software, almost 100 %-separated managed by either PLM or ALM (Application Lifecycle Management). It is clear that “old” PLM – item-driven with related documents cannot match the approach required for ALM – data-elements (code) based on software models (and modules).
In the hardware world a change can have a huge effect on the cost (or waste) of the product, however, implementing a hardware change can take months. Think about new machinery, tooling in the worst case. In the software domain, a change can be executed almost immediately. However here testing the impact of the change can have serious effects. The software fix for the Boeing 737 Max is not yet proven and delivered.
Therefore, I would like to conclude that in the past decade we learned in the PLM-domain to work in a Coordinated manner – leaving silos mostly in place.
Next week I will look forward to our challenging upcoming decade. Topics on my list for the next decade are:
- From Coordinated to Connected – Generation Change
- Sustainability of our Earth (and how PLM can help)
- Understanding our human behavior to understand how to explain PLM to your execs- PI PLMx London 2020
- All combined with restoring trust in science
I wish you all a happy and healthy New Year – take time to listen and learn as we need dialogue for the future, not opinions.
See you in 2020
Jos Voskuil's Weblog 
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