You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Standards’ tag.
In the past two weeks, I had several discussions with peers in the PLM domain about their experiences.
Some of them I met after a long time again face-to-face at the LiveWorx 2023 event. See my review of the event here: The Weekend after LiveWorx 2023.
And there were several interactions on LinkedIn, leading to a more extended discussion thread (an example of a digital thread ?) or a Zoom discussion (a so-called 2D conversation).
To complete the story, I also participated in two PLM podcasts from Share PLM, where we interviewed Johan Mikkelä (currently working at FLSmidth) and, in the second episode Issam Darraj (presently working at ABB) about their PLM experiences. Less a discussion, more a dialogue, trying to grasp the non-documented aspects of PLM. We are looking for your feedback on these podcasts too.
All these discussions led to a reconfirmation that if you are a PLM practitioner, you need a broad skillset to address the business needs, translate them into people and process activities relevant to the industry and ultimately implement the proper collection of tools.
As a sneaky preview for the podcast sessions, we asked both Johan and Issam about the importance of the tools. I will not disclose their answers here; you have to listen.
Let’s look at some of the discussions.
NOTE: Just before pushing the Publish button, Oleg Shilovitsky published this blog article PLM Project Failures and Unstoppable PLM Playbook. I will comment on his points at the end of this post. It is all part of the extensive discussion.
PLM, LinkedIn and complexity
The most popular discussions on LinkedIn are often related to the various types of Bills of Materials (eBOM, mBOM, sBOM), Part numbering schemes (intelligent or not), version and revision management and the famous FFF discussions.
This post: PLM and Configuration Management Best Practices: Working with Revisions, from Andreas Lindenthal, was a recent example that triggered others to react.
I had some offline discussions on this topic last week, and I noticed Frédéric Zeller wrote his post with the title PLM, LinkedIn and complexity, starting his post with (quote):
I am stunned by the average level of posts on the PLM on LinkedIn.
I’m sorry, but in 2023 :
- Part Number management (significant, non-significant) should no longer be a problem.
- Revision management should no longer be a question.
- Configuration management theory should no longer be a question.
- Notions of EBOMs, MBOMs … should no longer be a question.
So why are there still problems on these topics?
You can see from the at least 40+ comments that this statement created a lot of reactions, including mine. Apparently, these topics are touching many people worldwide, and there is no simple, single answer to each of these topics. And there are so many other topics relevant to PLM.
Talking later with Frederic for one hour in a Zoom session, we discussed the importance of the right PLM data model.
I also wrote a series about the (traditional) PLM data model: The importance of a (PLM) data model.
Frederic is more of a PLM architect; we even discussed the wording related to the EBOM and the MBOM. A topic that I feel comfortable discussing after many years of experience seeing the attempts that failed and the dreams people had. And this was only one aspect of PLM.
You also find the discussion related to a PLM certification in the same thread. How would you certify a person as a PLM expert?
There are so many dimensions to PLM. Even more important, the PLM from 10-15 years ago (more of a system discussion) is no longer the PLM nowadays (a strategy and an infrastructure) –
This is a crucial difference. Learning to use a PLM tool and implement it is not the same as building a PLM strategy for your company. It is Tools, Process, People versus Process, People, Tools and Data.
Time for Methodology workshops?
I recently discussed with several peers what we could do to assist people looking for best practices discussion and lessons learned. There is a need, but how to organize them as we cannot expect this to be voluntary work.
In the past, I suggested MarketKey, the organizer of the PI DX events, extend its theme workshops. For example, instead of a 45-min Focus group with a short introduction to a theme (e.g., eBOM-mBOM, PLM-ERP interfaces), make these sessions last at least half a day and be independent of the PLM vendors.
Apparently, it did not fit in the PI DX programming; half a day would potentially stretch the duration of the conference and more and more, we see two days of meetings as the maximum. Longer becomes difficult to justify even if the content might have high value for the participants.
I observed a similar situation last year in combination with the PLM roadmap/PDT Europe conference in Gothenburg. Here we had a half-day workshop before the conference led by Erik Herzog(SAAB Aeronautics)/ Judith Crockford (Europstep) to discuss concepts related to federated PLM – read more in this post: The week after PLM Roadmap/PDT Europe 2022.
It reminded me of an MDM workshop before the 2015 Event, led by Marc Halpern from Gartner. Unfortunately, the federated PLM discussion remained a pretty Swedish initiative, and the follow-up did not reach a wider audience.
And then there are the Aerospace and Defense PLM action groups that discuss moderated by CIMdata. It is great that they published their findings (look here), although the best lessons learned are during the workshops.
However, I also believe the A&D industry cannot be compared to a mid-market machinery manufacturing company. Therefore, it is helpful for a smaller audience only.
And here, I inserted a paragraph dedicated to Oleg’s recent post, PLM Project Failures and Unstoppable PLM Playbook – starting with a quote:
How to learn to implement PLM? I wrote about it in my earlier article – PLM playbook: how to learn about PLM? While I’m still happy to share my knowledge and experience, I think there is a bigger need in helping manufacturing companies and, especially PLM professionals, with the methodology of how to achieve the right goal when implementing PLM. Which made me think about the Unstoppable PLM playbook ©.
I found a similar passion for helping companies to adopt PLM while talking to Helena Gutierrez. Over many conversations during the last few months, we talked about how to help manufacturing companies with PLM adoption. The unstoppable PLM playbook is still a work in progress, but we want to start talking about it to get your feedback and start the conversation.
It is an excellent confirmation of the fact that there is a need for education and that the education related to PLM on the Internet is not good enough.
As a former teacher in Physics, I do not believe in the Unstoppable PLM Playbook, even if it is a branded name. Many books are written by specific authors, giving their perspectives based on their (academic) knowledge.
Are they useful? I believe only in the context of a classroom discussion where the applicability can be discussed,
Therefore my questions to vendor-neutral global players, like CIMdata, Eurostep, Prostep, SharePLM, TCS and others, are you willing to pick up this request? Or are there other entities that I missed? Please leave your thoughts in the comments. I will be happy to assist in organizing them.
There are many more future topics to discuss and document too.
- What about the potential split of a PLM infrastructure between Systems of Record & Systems of Engagement?
- What about the Digital Thread, a more and more accepted theme in discussions, but what is the standard definition?
- Is it traceability as some vendors promote it, or is it the continuity of data, direct usable in various contexts – the DevOps approach?
Who likes to discuss methodology?
When asking myself this question, I see the analogy with standards. So let’s look at the various players in the PLM domain – sorry for the immense generalization.
Strategic consultants: standards are essential, but spare me the details.
Vendors: standards are limiting the unique capabilities of my products
Implementers: two types – Those who understand and use standards as they see the long-term benefits. Those who avoid standards as it introduces complexity.
Companies: they love standards if they can be implemented seamlessly.
Universities: they love to explore standards and help to set the standards even if they are not scalable
Just replace standards with methodology, and you see the analogy.
We like to discuss the methodology.
As I mentioned in the introduction, I started to work with Share PLM on a series of podcasts where we interview PLM experts in the field that have experience with the people, the process, the tools and the data side. Through these interviews, you will realize PLM is complex and has become even more complicated when you consider PLM a strategy instead of a tool.
We hope these podcasts might be a starting point for further discussion – either through direct interactions or through contributions to the podcast. If you have PLM experts in your network that can explain the complexity of PLM from various angles and have the experience. Please let us know – it is time to share.
Conclusion
By switching gears, I noticed that PLM has become complex. Too complex for a single person to master. With an aging traditional PLM workforce (like me), it is time to consolidate the best practices of the past and discuss the best practices for the future. There are no simple answers, as every industry is different. Help us to energize the PLM community – your thoughts/contributions?
Announcing PLM Road Map & PDT EMEA 2023
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.
In the last weeks, I had several discussions related to sustainability. What can companies do to become sustainable and prove it? But, unfortunately, there is so much greenwashing at this moment.
Look at this post: 10 Companies and Corporations Called Out For Greenwashing.
Therefore I thought about which practical steps a company should take to prepare for a sustainable future, as the change will not happen overnight. It reminds me of the path towards a digital, model-based enterprise (my other passion). In my post Why Model-Based definition is important for all, I mentioned that MBD (Model-Based Definition) could be considered the first stepping-stone toward a Model-Based enterprise.
The analogy for Material Compliance came after an Aras seminar I watched a month ago. The webinar How PLM Paves the Way for Sustainability with Insensia (an Aras implementer) demonstrates how material compliance is the first step toward sustainable product development.
Let’s understand why
The first steps
Companies that currently deliver solutions mostly only focus on economic gains. The projects or products they sell need to be profitable and competitive, which makes sense if you want a future.
And this would not have changed if the awareness of climate impact has not become apparent.
First, CFKs and hazardous materials lead to new regulations. Next global agreements to fight climate change – the Paris agreement and more to come – have led and will lead to regulations that will change how products will be developed. All companies will have to change their product development and delivery models when it becomes a global mandate.
A required change is likely going to happen. In Europe, the Green Deal is making stable progress. However, what will happen in the US will be a mystery as even their supreme court becomes a political entity against sustainability (money first).
Still, compliance with regulations will be required if a company wants to operate in a global market.
What is Material Compliance?
In 2002, the European Union published a directive to restrict hazardous substances in materials. The directive, known as RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances), was mainly related to electronic components. In the first directive, six hazardous materials were restricted.
The most infamous are Cadmium(Cd), Lead(Pb), and Mercury (Hg). In 2006 all products on the EU market must pass RoHS compliance, and in 2011 was now connected the CE marking of products sold in the European market was.
In 2015 four additional chemical substances were added, most softening PVC but also affecting the immune system. Meanwhile, other countries have introduced similar RoHS regulations; therefore, we can see it as a global restricting. Read more here: The RoHS guide.
Consumers buying RoHS-compliant products now can be assured that none of the threshold values of the substances is reached in the product. The challenge for the manufacturer is to go through each of the components of the MBOM. To understand if it contains one of the ten restricted substances and, if yes, in which quantity.
Therefore, they need to get that information from each relevant supplier a RoHS declaration.
Besides RoHS, additional regulations protect the environment and the consumer. For example, REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals) compliance deals with the regulations created to improve the environment and protect human health. In addition, REACH addresses the risks associated with chemicals and promotes alternative methods for the hazard assessment of substances.
The compliance process in four steps
Material compliance is most of all the job of engineers. Therefore around 2005, some of my customers started to add RoHS support to their PLM environment.
Step 1
The image below shows the simple implementation – the PDF-from from the supplier was linked to the (M)BOM part.
An employee had to manually add the substances into a table and ensure the threshold values were not reached. But, of course, there was already a selection of preferred manufacturer parts during the engineering phase. Therefore RoHS compliance was almost guaranteed when releasing the EBOM.
But this process could be done more cleverly.
Step 2
So the next step was that manufacturers started to extend their PLM data model with the additional attributes for RoHS compliance. Again, this could be done cleverly or extremely generic, adding the attributes to all parts.
So now, when receiving the material declaration, a person just has to add the substance values to the part attributes. Then, through either standard functionality or customization, a compliance report could be generated for the (M)BOM. So this already saves some work.
Step 3
The next step was to provide direct access to these attributes to the supplier and push the supplier to do the work.
Now the overhead for the manufacturer has been reduced again. This is because only the supplier needs to do the job for his customer.
Step 4
In step 4, we see a real connected environment, where information is stored only once, referenced by manufacturers, and kept actual by the part suppliers.
Who will host the RoHS databank? From some of my customer projects, I recall IHS as a data provider – it seems they are into this business when you look at their website HERE.
Where is your company at this moment?
Having seen the four stepping-stones leading towards efficient RoHS compliance, you see the challenge of moving from a document-driven approach to a data-driven approach.
Now let’s look into the future. Concepts like Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) or a Digital Product Passport (DPP) will require a fully connected approach.
Where is your company at this moment – have you reached RoHS compliance step 3 or 4? A first step to learn and work connected and data-driven.
Life Cycle Assessment – the ultimate target
A lifecycle assessment, or lifecycle analysis (two times LCA again), is a methodology to assess the environmental impact of a product (or solution) through its whole lifecycle. From materials sourcing, manufacturing, transportation, usage, service, and decommissioning. And by assessing, we mean a clear, verifiable, and shareable manner, not just guessing.
Traditional engineering education is not bringing these skills, although LCA is not new, as this 10-years old YouTube movie from Autodesk illustrates:
What is new is that due to global understanding, we are reaching the limits of what our planet can endure; we must act now. Upcoming international regulations will enforce life cycle analysis reporting for manufacturers or service providers. This will happen gradually.
Meanwhile, we all should work on a circular economy, the major framework for a sustainable planet- click on the image on the left.
In my post, I wrote about these combined topics: SYSTEMS THINKING – a must-have skill in the 21st century.
Life Cycle Analysis – Digital Twin – Digitization
The big elephant in the room is that when we talk about introducing LCA in your company, it has a lot to do with the digitization of your company. Assessment data in a document can require too much human effort to maintain the data at the right quality. The costs are not affordable if your competitor is more efficient.
When coming to the Analysis part, here, a model-based, data-driven infrastructure is the most efficient way to run virtual analysis, using digital twin concepts at each stage of the product lifecycle.
Virtual models for design, manufacturing and operations allow your company to make trade-off studies with low cost before committing to the physical world. 80 % of the environmental impact of a product comes from decisions in the virtual world.
Once you have your digital twins for each phase of the product lifecycle, you can benchmark your models with data reported from the physical world. All these interactions can be found in the beautiful Boeing diamond below, which I discussed before – Read A digital twin for everybody.
Conclusion
Efficient and sustainable life cycle assessment and analysis will come from connected information sources. The old document-driven paradigm is too costly and too slow to maintain. In particular, when the scope is not only a subset of your product, it is your full product and its full lifecycle with LCA. Another stepping stone towards the near future. Where are you?
Stepping-stone 1: From Model-Based Definition to an efficient Model-Based, Data-driven Enterprise
Stepping-stone 2: For RoHS compliance to an efficient and sustainable Model-Based, data-driven enterprise.
Last week I shared my first review of the PLM Roadmap / PDT Fall 2020 conference, organized by CIMdata and Eurostep. Having digested now most of the content in detail, I can state this was the best conference of 2020. In my first post, the topics I shared were mainly the consultant’s view of digital thread and digital twin concepts.
This time, I want to focus on the content presented by the various Aerospace & Defense working groups who shared their findings, lessons-learned (so far) on topics like the Multi-view BOM, Supply Chain Collaboration, MBSE Data interoperability.
These sessions were nicely wrapped with presentations from Alberto Ferrari (Raytheon), discussing the digital thread between PLM and Simulation Lifecycle Management and Jeff Plant (Boeing) sharing their Model-Based Engineering strategy.
I believe these insights are crucial, although there might be people in the field that will question if this research is essential. Is not there an easier way to achieve to have the same results?
Nicely formulated by Ilan Madjar as a comment to my first post:
Ilan makes a good point about simplifying the ideas to the masses to make it work. The majority of companies probably do not have the bandwidth to invest and understand the future benefits of a digital thread or digital twins.
This does not mean that these topics should not be studied. If your business is in a small, simple eco-system and wants to work in a connected mode, you can choose a vendor and a few custom interfaces.
However, suppose you work in a global industry with an extensive network of partners, suppliers, and customers.
In that case, you cannot rely on ad-hoc interfaces or a single vendor. You need to invest in standards; you need to study common best practices to drive methodology, standards, and vendors to align.
This process of standardization is so crucial if you want to have a sustainable, connected enterprise. In the end, the push from these companies will lead to standards, allowing the smaller companies to ad-here or connect to.
The future is about Connected through Standards, as discussed in part 1 and further in this post. Let’s go!
Global Collaboration – Defining a baseline for data exchange processes and standards
Katheryn Bell (Pratt & Whitney Canada) presented the progress of the A&D Global Collaboration workgroup. As you can see from the project timeline, they have reached the phase to look towards the future.
Katheryn mentioned the need to standardize terminology as the first point of attention. I am fully aligned with that point; without a standardized terminology framework, people will have a misunderstanding in communication.
This happens even more in the smaller businesses that just pick sometimes (buzz) terms without a full understanding.
Several years ago, I talked with a PLM-implementer telling me that their implementation focus was on systems engineering. After some more explanations, it appeared they were making an attempt for configuration management in reality. Here the confusion was massive. Still, a standard, common terminology is crucial in our domain, even if it seems academic.
The group has been analyzing interoperability standards, standards for long-time archival and retrieval (LOTAR), but also has been studying the ISO 44001 standard related to Collaborative business relationship management systems
In the Q&A session, Katheryn explained that the biggest problem to solve with collaboration was the risk of working with the wrong version of data between disciplines and suppliers.
Of course, such errors can lead to huge costs if they are discovered late (or too late). As some of the big OEMs work with thousands of suppliers, you can imagine it is not an issue easily discovered in a more ad-hoc environment.
The move to a standardized Technical Data Package based on a Model-Based Definition is one of these initiatives in this domain to reduce these types of errors.
You can find the proceedings from the Global Collaboration working group here.
Connect, Trace, and Manage Lifecycle of Models, Simulation and Linked Data: Is That Easy?
I loved Alberto Ferrari‘s (Raytheon) presentation how he described the value of a model-based digital thread, positioning it in a targeted enterprise.
Click on the image and discover how business objectives, processes and models go together supported by a federated infrastructure.
Alberto’s presentation was a kind of mind map from how I imagine the future, and it is a pity if you have not had the chance to see his session.
Alberto also focused on the importance of various simulation capabilities combined with simulation lifecycle management. For Alberto, they are essential to implement digital twins. Besides focusing on standards, Alberto pleas for a semantic integration, open service architecture with the importance of DevSecOps.
Enough food for thought; as Alberto mentioned, he presented the corporate vision, not the current state.
More A&D Action Groups
There were two more interesting specialized sessions where teams from the A&D action groups provided a status update.
Brandon Sapp (Boeing) and Ian Parent (Pratt & Whitney) shared the activities and progress on Minimum Model-Based Definition (MBD) for Type Design Certification.
As Brandon mentioned, MBD is already a widely used capability; however, MBD is still maturing and evolving. I believe that is also one of the reasons why MBD is not yet accepted in mainstream PLM. Smaller organizations will wait; however, can your company afford to wait?
More information about their progress can be found here.
Mark Williams (Boeing) reported from the A&D Model-Based Systems Engineering action group their first findings related to MBSE Data Interoperability, focusing on an Architecture Model Exchange Solution. A topic interesting to follow as the promise of MBSE is that it is about connected information shared in models. As Mark explained, data exchange standards for requirements and behavior models are mature, readily available in the tools, and easily adopted. Exchanging architecture models has proven to be very difficult. I will not dive into more details, respecting the audience of this blog.
For those interested in their progress, more information can be found here
Model-Based Engineering @ Boeing
In this conference, the participation of Boeing was significant through the various action groups. As the cherry on the cake, there was Jeff Plant‘s session, giving an overview of what is happening at Boeing. Jeff is Boeing’s director of engineering practices, processes, and tools.
In his introduction, Jeff mentioned that Boeing has more than 160.000 employees in over 65 countries. They are working with more than 12.000 suppliers globally. These suppliers can be manufacturing, service or technology partnerships. Therefore you can imagine, and as discussed by others during the conference, streamlined collaboration and traceability are crucial.
The now-famous MBE Diamond symbol illustrates the model-based information flows in the virtual world and the physical world based on the systems engineering approach. Like Katheryn Bell did in her session related to Global Collaboration, Jeff started explaining the importance of a common language and taxonomy needed if you want to standardize processes.
Zoom in on the Boeing MBE Taxonomy, you will discover the clarity it brings for the company.
I was not aware of the ISO 23247 standard concerning the Digital Twin framework for manufacturing, aiming to apply industry standards to the model-based definition of products and process planning. A standard certainly to follow as it brings standardization on top of existing standards.
As Jeff noted: A practical standard for implementation in a company of any size. In my opinion, mandatory for a sustainable, connected infrastructure.
Jeff presented the slide below, showing their standardization internally around federated platforms.
This slide resembles a lot the future platform vision I have been sharing since 2017 when discussing PLM’s future at PLM conferences, when explaining the differences between Coordinated and Connected – see also my presentation here on Slideshare.
You can zoom in on the picture to see the similarities. For me, the differences were interesting to observe. In Jeff’s diagram, the product lifecycle at the top indicates the platform of (central) interest during each lifecycle stage, suggesting a linear process again.
In reality, the flow of information through feedback loops will be there too.
The second exciting detail is that these federated architectures should be based on strong interoperability standards. Jeff is urging other companies, academics and vendors to invest and come to industry standards for Model-Based System Engineering practices. The time is now to act on this domain.
It reminded me again of Marc Halpern’s message mentioned in my previous post (part 1) that we should be worried about vendor alliances offering an integrated end-to-end data flow based on their solutions. This would lead to an immense vendor-lock in if these interfaces are not based on strong industry standards.
Therefore, don’t watch from the sideline; it is the voice (and effort) of the companies that can drive standards.
Finally, during the Q&A part, Jeff made an interesting point explaining Boeing is making a serious investment, as you can see from their participation in all the action groups. They have made the long-term business case.
The team is confident that the business case for such an investment is firm and stable, however in such long-term investment without direct results, these projects might come under pressure when the business is under pressure.
The virtual fireside chat
The conference ended with a virtual fireside chat from which I picked up an interesting point that Marc Halpern was bringing in. Marc mentioned a survey Gartner has done with companies in fast-moving industries related to the benefits of PLM. Companies reported improvements in accuracy and product development. They did not see so much a reduced time to market or cost reduction. After analysis, Gartner believes the real issue is related to collaboration processes and supply chain practices. Here lead times did not change, nor the number of changes.
Marc believes that this topic will be really showing benefits in the future with cloud and connected suppliers. This reminded me of an article published by McKinsey called The case for digital reinvention. In this article, the authors indicated that only 2 % of the companies interview were investing in a digital supply chain. At the same time, the expected benefits in this area would have the most significant ROI.
The good news, there is consistency, and we know where to focus for early results.
Conclusion
It was a great conference as here we could see digital transformation in action (groups). Where vendor solutions often provide a sneaky preview of the future, we saw people working on creating the right foundations based on standards. My appreciation goes to all the active members in the CIMdata A&D action groups as they provide the groundwork for all of us – sooner or later.
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.
For me, the joint conference from CIMdata and Eurostep is always a conference to look forward too. The conference is not as massive as PLM-Vendor conferences (slick presentations and happy faces); it is more a collection of PLM-practitioners (this time a 100+) with the intent to discuss and share their understanding and challenges, independent from specific vendor capabilities or features. And because of its size a great place to network with everyone.
Day 1 was more a business/methodology view on PLM and Day 2 more in-depth focusing on standards and BIM. In this post, the highlights from the first day.
The State of PLM
Peter Bilello, CIMdata’s president, kicked of with a review of the current state of the PLM industry. Peter mentioned the PLM-market grew by 9.4 % to $47.8 billion (more than the expected 7 %). Good for the PLM Vendors and implementers.
However, Peter also mentioned that despite higher spending, PLM is still considered as a solution for engineering, often implemented as PDM/CAD data management. Traditional organizational structures, marketing, engineering, manufacturing, quality were defined in the previous century and are measured as such.
This traditional approach blocks the roll-out of PLM across these disciplines. Who is the owner of PLM or where is the responsibility for a certain dataset are questions to solve. PLM needs to transform to deliver end-to-end support instead of remaining the engineering silo. Are we still talking about PLM in the future? See Peter’s takeaways below:
We do not want to open the discussion if the the name PLM should change – too many debates – however unfortunate too much framing in the past too.
The Multi View BOM
Fred Feru from Airbus presented a status the Aerospace & Defense PLM action group are working on: How to improve and standardize on a PLM solution for multi-view BOM management, in particular, the interaction between the EBOM and MBOM. See below:
You might think this is a topic already solved when you speak with your PLM-vendor. However, all existing solutions at the participant implementations rely on customizations and vary per company. The target is to come up with common requirements that need to be addressed in the standard methodology. Initial alignment on terminology was already a first required step as before you standardize, you need to have a common dictionary. Moreover, a typical situation in EVERY PLM implementation.
An initial version was shared with the PLM Editors for feedback and after iterations and agreement to come with a solution that can be implemented without customization. If you are interested in the details, you can read the current status here with Appendix A en Appendix B.
Enabling the Circular Economy for Long Term Prosperity
Graham Aid gave a fascinating presentation related to the potentials and flaws of creating a circular economy. Although Graham was not a PLM-expert (till he left this conference), as he is the Strategy and Innovation Coordinator for the Ragn-Sells Group, which performs environmental services and recycling across Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Estonia. Have a look at their website here.
Graham shared with us the fact that despite logical arguments for a circular economy – it is more profitable at the end – however, our short term thinking and bias block us from doing the right things for future generations.
Look at the missing link for a closed resource-lifecycle view below.
Graham shared weird examples where scarce materials for the future currently were getting cheaper, and therefore there is no desire for recycling them. A sound barrier with rubble could contain more copper than copper ore in a mine.
In the PLM-domain, there is also an opportunity for supporting and working on more sustainable products and services. It is a mindset and can be a profitable business model. In the PDT 2014 conference, there was a session on circular product development with Xerox as the best example. Circular product development but also Product As A Service can be activities that contribute to a more sustainable world. Graham’s presentation was inspiring for our PLM community and hopefully planted a few seeds for the future. As it is all about thinking long-term.
With the PLM Green Alliance, I hope we will be able to create a larger audience and participation for a sustainable future. More about the PLM Green Alliance next week.
The Fundamental Role of PLM in Data-driven Product Portfolio Management
Hannu Hannila (Polar) presented his study related to data-driven product portfolio management and why it should be connected to PLM. For many companies, it is a challenge to understand which products are performing well and where to invest. These choices are often supported by Data Damagement as Hannu called it.
An example below:
The result of this fragmented approach is that organizations make their decisions on subjective data and emotions. Where the assumption is that 20 % of the products a company is selling is related to 80 % of the revenue, Hannu found in his research companies where only 10 % of the products were contributing to the revenue. As PPM (Product Portfolio Management) often is based on big emotions – who shouts the loudest mentality, influenced by the company’s pet products and influence by the HIPPO (HIghest Paid Person in the Office). So how to get a better rationale?
Hannu explained a data-driven framework that would provide the right analytics on management level, depending on overall data governance from all disciplines and systems. See below:
I liked Hannu’s conclusions as it aligns with my findings:
- To be data-driven, you need Master Data Management and Data Governance
- Product Portfolio Management is the driving discipline for PLM, and in a modern digital enterprise, it should be connected.
Sponsor sessions
Sponsors are always needed to keep a conference affordable for the attendees. The sponsor sessions on day 1 were of good quality. Here a quick overview and a link if you want to invest further
Configit – explaining the value of a configurator that connects marketing, technical and sales, introducing CLM (Configuration Lifecycle Management) – a new TLA
Aras – explaining their view on what we consider the digital thread
Variantum – explaining their CPQ solution as part of a larger suite of cloud offerings
Quick Release – bringing common sense to PLM implementations, similar to what I am doing as PLM coach – focusing on the flow of information
SAP – explaining the change in focus when a company moves toward a product as a service model
SharePLM – A unique company addressing the importance of PLM training delivered through eLearning
Conclusion
The first day was an easy to digest conference with a good quality of presentations. I only shared 50 % of the session as we already reached 1000+ words. The evening I enjoyed the joint dinner, being able to network and discuss in depth with participants and finished with a social network event organized by SharePLM. Next week part 2.
The usage of standards has been a recurring topic the past 10 months, probably came back to the surface at PI PLMx Chicago during the PLM Leaders panel discussion. If you want to refresh the debate, Oleg Shilovitsky posted an overview: What vendors are thinking about PLM standards – Aras, Dassault Systemes, Onshape, Oracle PLM, Propel PLM, SAP, Siemens PLM.
It is clear for vendors when they would actively support standards they reduce their competitive advantage, after all, you are opening your systems to connect to other vendor solutions, reducing the chance to sell adjacent functionality. We call it vendor lock-in. If you think this approach only counts for PLM, I would suggest you open your Apple (iPhone) and think about vendor lock-in for a moment.
Vendors will only adhere to standards when pushed by their customers, and that is why we have a wide variety of standards in the engineering domain.
Take the example of JT as a standard viewing format, heavily pushed by Siemens for the German automotive industry to be able to work downstream with CATIA and NX models. There was a JT-version (v9.5) that reached ISO 1306 alignment, but after that, Siemens changed JT (v10) again to optimize their own exchange scenarios, and the standard was lost.
And as customers did not complain (too much), the divergence continued. So it clear vendors will not maintain standards out of charity as your business does not work for charity either (or do you ?). So I do not blame them is there is no push from their customers to maintain them.
What about standards?
The discussion related to standards flared up around the IpX ConX19 conference and a debate between Oleg & Hakan Kardan (EuroSTEP) where Hakan suggested that PLCS could be a standard data model for the digital thread – you can read Oleg’s view here: Do we need a standard like PLCS to build a digital thread.
Oleg’s opening sentence made me immediately stop reading further as more and more I am tired of this type of framing if you want to do a serious discussion based on arguments. Such a statement is called framing and in particular in politics we see the bad examples of framing.
Standards are like toothbrushes, a good idea, but no one wants to use anyone else’s. The history of engineering and manufacturing software is full of stories about standards.
This opening sentence says all about the mindset related to standards – it is a one-liner – not a fact. It could have been a tweet in this society of experts.
Still later,I read the blog post and learned Oleg has no arguments to depreciate PLCS, however as he does not know the details, he will probably not use it. The main challenge of standards: you need to spend time to understand and adhere to them and agree on following them. Otherwise, you get the same diversion of JT again or similar examples.
However, I might have been wrong in my conclusion as Oleg did some thinking on a Sunday and came with an excellent post: What would happen if PLM Vendors agree about data standards. Here Oleg is making the comparison with a standard in the digital world, established by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex : Schema.org: Evolution of Structured Data on the Web.
There is a need for semantic mapping and understanding in the day-to-day-world, and this understanding makes you realize the same is needed for PLM. That was one of the reasons why I wrote in the past (2015) a series of posts related to the importance of a PLM data model:
All these posts were aimed to help companies and implementers to make the right choices for an item-centric PLM implementation. At that time – 2015, item-centric was the current PLM best practice. I learned from my engagements in the past 15 years, in particular when you have a flexible modeling tool like SmarTeam or nowadays Aras, making the right data model decisions are crucial for future growth.
Who needs standards?
First of all, as long as you stay in your controlled environment, you do not need standards. In particular, in the Aerospace and Automotive industry, the OEMs defined the software versions to be used, and the supply chain had to adhere to their chosen formats. Even this narrow definition was not complete enough as a 3D CAD model needed to be exported for simulation or manufacturing purposes. There was not a single vendor working on a single CAD model definition at that time. So the need for standards emerged as there was a need to exchange data.
Data exchange is the driving force behind standards.
In a second stage also neutral format data storage became an important point – how to save for 75 years an aircraft definition.
Oil & Gas / Building – Construction
These two industries both had the need for standards. The Oil & Gas industry relies on EPC (Engineering / Procurement / Construction) companies that build plants or platforms. Then the owner/operator takes over the operation and needs a hand-over of all the relevant information. However if this information would be delivered in the application-specific formats the EPC companies have used, the owner/operator would require various software environments and skills, just to have access to the data.
Therefore if the data is delivered in a standard format (ISO 15926) and the exchange follows CFIHOS (Capital Facilities Information Hand Over Specification) this exchange can be done more automated between the EPC and Owner/Operator environment, leading to lower overall cost of delivering and maintaining the information combined with a higher quality. For that reason, the Oil & Gas industry has invested already for a long time in standards as their plants/platform have a long lifecycle.
And the same is happening in the construction industry. Initially Autodesk and Bentley were fighting to become the vendor-standard and ultimately the IFC-standard has taken a lot from the Autodesk-world, but has become a neutral standard for all parties involved in a construction project to share and exchange data. In particular for the construction industry, the cloud has been an accelerator for collaboration.
So standards are needed where companies/people exchange information
For the same reason in most global companies, English became the standard language. If you needed to learn all the languages spoken in a worldwide organization, you would not have time for business. Therefore everyone making some effort to communicate in one standard language is the best way to operate.
And this is the same for a future data-driven environment – we cannot afford for every exchange to go to the native format from the receiver or source – common neutral (or winning) standards will ultimately also come up in the world of manufacturing data exchange and IoT.
Companies need to push
This is probably the blocking issue for standards. Developing standards, using standards require an effort without immediate ROI. So why not use vendor-formats/models and create custom point-to-point interface as we only need one or two interfaces? Companies delivering products with a long lifecycle know that the current data formats are not guaranteed for the future, so they push for standards (aerospace/defense/ oil & gas/construction/ infrastructure).
3D PDF Model
Other companies are looking for short term results, and standards are slowing them down. However as soon as they need to exchange data with their Eco-system (suppliers/ customers) an existing standard will make their business more scalable. The lack of standards is one of the inhibitors for Model-Based Definition or the Model-Based Enterprise – see also my post on this topic: Model-Based – Connecting Engineering and Manufacturing
When we would imagine the Digital Enterprise of the future, information will be connected through data streams and models. In a digital enterprise file conversions and proprietary formats will impede the flow of data and create non-value added work. For example if we look to current “Digital Twin” concepts, the 3D-representation of the twin is recreated again instead of a neutral 3D-model continuity. This because companies currently work in a coordinated manner. In perhaps 10 years from now we will reach maturity of a model-based enterprise, which only can exist based on standards. If the standards are based on one dominating platform or based on a merger of standards will be the question.
To discuss this question and how to bridge from the past to the future I am looking forward meeting you at the upcoming PLM Roadmap & PDT 2019 EMEA conference on 13-14 November in Paris, France. Download the program here: PLM for Professionals – Product Lifecycle Innovation
Conclusion
I believe PLM Standards will emerge when building and optimizing a digital enterprise. We need to keep on pushing and actively working for meaningful standards as they are crucial to avoid a lock-in of your data. Potentially creating dead-ends and massive inefficiencies. The future is about connected Eco-systems, and the leanest companies will survive. Standards do not need to be extraordinarily well-defined and can start from a high-level alignment as we saw from schema.org. Keep on investing and contributing to standards and related discussion to create a shared learning path.
Thanks Oleg Shilovitsky to keep the topic alive.
p.s. I had not time to read and process your PLM Data Commodizitation post
This is the moment of the year, where at least in my region, most people take some time off to disconnect from their day-to-day business. For me, it is never a full disconnect as PLM became my passion, and you should never switch off your passion.
On August 1st, 1999, I started my company TacIT, the same year the acronym PLM was born. I wanted to focus on knowledge management, therefore the name TacIT. Being dragged into the SmarTeam world with a unique position interfacing between R&D, implementers and customers I found the unique sweet spot, helping me to see all aspects from PLM – the vendor position, the implementer’s view, the customer’s end-user, and management view.
It has been, and still, is 20 years of learning and have been sharing most in the past ten years through my blog. What I have learned is that the more you know, the more you understand that situations are not black and white. See one of my favorite blog pictures below.
So there is enough to overthink during the holidays. Some of my upcoming points:
From coordinated to connected
Instead of using the over-hyped term: Digital Transformation, I believe companies should learn to work in a connected mode, which has become the standard in our daily life. Connected means that information needs to be stored in databases somewhere, combined with openness and standards to make data accessible. For more transactional environments, like CRM, MES, and ERP, the connected mode is not new.
In the domain of product development and selling, we have still a long learning path to go as the majority of organizations is relying on documents, be it Excels, Drawings (PDF) and reports. The fact that they are stored in electronic file formats does not mean that they are accessible. There is still manpower needed to create these artifacts or to extract the required information from them.
The challenge for modern PLM is to establish new best practices around a model-based approach for systems engineering (MBSE), for engineering to manufacturing (MBD/MBE) and operations (Digital Twins). All these best practices should be generic and connected ultimately. I wrote about these topics in the past, have a look at:
PLM Vendors are showing pieces of the puzzle, but it is up to the implementers to establish the puzzle, without knowing in detail what the end result will be. This is the same journey of Columbus. He had a boat and a target towards the unknown. He discovered a country with a small population, nowadays a country full of immigrants who call themselves natives.
However, the result was an impressive transformation.
Reading about transformation
Last year I read several books to get more insight into what motivates us, and how can we motivate people to change. In one way, it is disappointing to learn that we civilized human beings most of the time to not make rational decisions but act based on our per-historic brain.
Thinking, Fast and Slow from Daniel Kahneman was one of the first books in that direction as a must-read to understand our personal thinking and decision processes.
I read Idiot Brain: What Your Head Is Really Up To from Dean Burnett, where he explains this how our brain appears to be sabotaging our life, and what on earth it is really up to. Interesting to read but could be a little more comprehensive
I got more excited from Dan Ariely”s book: Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions as it was structured around topics where we handle completely irrational but predictable. And this predictability is used by people (sales/politicians/ management) to drive your actions. Useful to realize when you recognize the situation
These three books also illustrate the flaws of our modern time – we communicate fast (preferable through tweets) – we decide fast based on our gut feelings – so you realize towards what kind of world we are heading. Going through a transformation should be considered as a slow, learning process. Like reading a book – it takes time to digest.
Once you are aiming at a business transformation for your company or supporting a company in its transformation, the following books were insightful:
Leading Digital: Turning Technology into Business Transformation by George Westerman, Didier Bonnet and Andrew McAfee is maybe not the most inspiring book, however as it stays close to what we experience in our day-to-day-life it is for sure a book to read to get a foundational understanding of business transformation.
The book I liked the most recent was Leading Transformation: How to Take Charge of Your Company’s Future by Nathan Furr, Kyle Nel, Thomas Zoega Ramsoy as it gives examples of transformation addressing parts of the irrational brain to get a transformation story. I believe in storytelling instead of business cases for transformation. I wrote about it in my blog post: PLM Measurable or a myth referring to Yuval Harari’s book Homo Sapiens
Note: I am starting my holidays now with a small basket of e-books. If you have any recommendations for books that I must read – please write them in the comments of this blog
Discussing transformation
After the summer holidays, I plan to have fruitful discussions around topics close to PLM. Working on a post and starting a conversation related to PLM, PIM, and Master Data Management. The borders between these domains are perhaps getting vaguer in a digital enterprise.
Further, I am looking forward to a discussion around the value of PLM assisting companies in developing sustainable products. A sustainable and probably circular economy is required to keep this earth a place to live for everybody. The whole discussion around climate change, however, is worrying as we should be Thinking – not fast and slow – but balanced.
A circular economy has been several times a topic during the joint CIMdata PLM Roadmap and PDT conferences, which bring me to the final point.
On 13th and 14th November this year I will participate again in the upcoming PLM Roadmap and PDT conference. This time in La Defense, Paris, France. I will share my experiences from working with companies trying to understand and implement pieces of a digital transformation related to PLM.
There will be inspiring presentations from other speakers, all working on some of the aspects of moving to facets of a connected enterprise. It is not a marketing event, it is done by professionals, serving professionals. Therefore I hope if you are passioned about the new aspects of PLM, no matter how you name label them, come and join, discuss and most of all, learn.
Conclusion
Modern life is about continuous learning – make it a habit. Even a holiday is again a way to learn to disconnect.
How disconnected I was you will see after the holidays.
I was happy to take part at the PI PLMx London event last week. It was here and in the same hotel that this conference saw the light in 2011 – you can see my blog post from that event here: PLM and Innovation @ PLMINNOVATION 2011.
At that time the first vendor-independent PLM conference after a long time and it brought a lot of new people together to discuss their experience with PLM. Looking at the audience that time, many of the companies that were there, came back during the years, confirming the value this conference has brought to their PLM journey.
Similar to the PDT conference(s) – just announced for this year last week – here – the number of participants is diminishing.
Main hypotheses:
- the PLM-definition has become too vague. Going to a PLM conference does not guarantee it is your type of PLM discussions you expect to see?
- the average person is now much better informed related to PLM thanks to the internet and social media (blogs/webinars/ etc.) Therefore, the value retrieved from the PLM conference is not big enough any more?
- Digital Transformation is absorbing all the budget and attention downstream the organization not creating the need and awareness of modern PLM to the attention of the management anymore. g., a digital twin is sexier to discuss than PLM?
What do you think about the above three hypotheses – 1,2 and/or 3?
Back to the conference. The discussion related to PLM has changed over the past nine years. As I presented at PI from the beginning in 2011, here are the nine titles from my sessions:
2011 PLM – The missing link
2012 Making the case for PLM
2013 PLM loves Innovation
2014 PLM is changing
2015 The challenge of PLM upgrades
2016 The PLM identity crisis
2017 Digital Transformation affects PLM
2018 PLM transformation alongside Digitization
2019 The challenges of a connected Ecosystem for PLM
Where the focus started with justifying PLM, as well as a supporting infrastructure, to bring Innovation to the market, the first changes became visible in 2014. PLM was changing as more data-driven vendors appeared with new and modern (metadata) concepts and cloud, creating the discussion about what would be the next upgrade challenge.
The identity crisis reflected the introduction of software development / management combined with traditional (mechanical) PLM – how to deal with systems? Where are the best practices?
Then from 2017 on until now Digital Transformation and the impact on PLM and an organization became the themes to discuss – and we are not ready yet!
Now some of the highlights from the conference. As there were parallel sessions, I had to divide my attention – you can see the full agenda here:
How to Build Critical Architecture Models for the New Digital Economy
The conference started with a refreshing presentation from David Sherburne (Carestream) explaining their journey towards a digital economy. According to David, the main reason behind digitization is to save time, as he quoted Harvey Mackay an American Businessman and Journalist,
Time is free, but it is priceless. You cannot own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you have lost it, you never can get it back
I tend to agree with this simplification as it makes the story easy to explain to everyone in your company. Probably I would add to that story that saving time also means less money spent on intermediate resources in a company, therefore, creating a two-sided competitive advantage.
David stated that today’s digital transformation is more about business change than technology and here I wholeheartedly agree. Once you can master the flow of data in your company, you can change and adapt your company’s business processes to be better connected to the customer and therefore deliver the value they expect (increases your competitive advantage).
Having new technology in place does not help you unless you change the way you work.
David introduced a new acronym ILM (Integrated Lifecycle Management) and I am sure some people will jump on this acronym.
David’s presentation contained an interesting view from the business-architectural point of view. An excellent start for the conference where various dimensions of digital transformation and PLM were explored.
Integrated PLM in the Chemical industry
Another interesting session was from Susanna Mäentausta (Kemira oy) with the title: “Increased speed to market, decreased risk of non-compliance through integrated PLM in Chemical industry.” I selected her session as from my past involvement with the process industry, I noticed that PLM adoption is very low in the process industry. Understanding Why and How they implemented PLM was interesting for me. Her PLM vision slide says it all:
There were two points that I liked a lot from her presentation, as I can confirm they are crucial.
- Although there was a justification for the implementation of PLM, there was no ROI calculation done upfront. I think this is crucial, you know as a company you need to invest in PLM to stay competitive. Making an ROI-story is just consoling the people with artificial number – success and numbers depend on the implementation and Susanna confirmed that step 1 delivered enough value to be confident.
- There were an end-to-end governance and a communication plan in place. Compared to PLM projects I know, this was done very extensive – full engagement of key users and on-going feedback – communicate, communicate, communicate. How often do we forget this in PLM projects?
Extracting More Value of PLM in an Engineer-to-Order Business
Sami Grönstrand & Helena Gutierrez presented as an experienced duo (they were active in PI P PLMx Hamburg/Berlin before) – their current status and mission for PLM @ Outotec. As the title suggests, it was about how to extract more value from PL M, in an Engineering to Order Business.
What I liked is how they simplified their PLM targets from a complex landscape into three story-lines.
If you jump into all the details where PLM is contributing to your business, it might get too complicated for the audience involved. Therefore, they aligned their work around three value messages:
- Boosting sales, by focusing on modularization and encouraging the use of a product configurator. This instead of developing every time a customer-specific solution
- Accelerating project deliverables, again reaping the benefits of modularization, creating libraries and training the workforce in using this new environment (otherwise no use of new capabilities). The results in reducing engineering hours was quite significant.
- Creating New Business Models, by connecting all data using a joint plant structure with related equipment. By linking these data elements, an end-to-end digital continuity was established to support advanced service and support business models.
My conclusion from this session was again that if you want to motivate people on a PLM-journey it is not about the technical details, it is about the business benefits that drive these new ways of working.
Managing Product Variation in a Configure-To-Order Business
In the context of the previous session from Outotec, Björn Wilhemsson’s session was also addressing somehow the same topic of How to create as much as possible variation in your customer offering, while internally keep the number of variants and parts manageable.
Björn, Alfa Laval’s OnePLM Programme Director, explained in detail the strategy they implemented to address these challenges. His presentation was very educational and could serve as a lesson for many of us related to product portfolio management and modularization.
Björn explained in detail the six measures to control variation, starting from a model-strategy / roadmap (thinking first) followed by building a modularized product architecture, controlling and limiting the number of variants during your New Product Development process. Next as Alfa Laval is in a Configure-To-Order business, Björn the implementation of order-based and automated addition of pre-approved variants (not every variant needs to exist in detail before selling it), followed by the controlled introduction of additional variants and continuous analysis of quoted and sold variant (the power of a digital portfolio) as his summary slides shows below:
There are some analogies to discover between his mission and a PLM implementation. It is all about having the total picture in mind. Plan and plan, prepare step-by-step in detail and rely on teamwork – it is not a solo journey – and it is about reaching a top (deliverable phase) in the most efficient way.
The differences: PLM does not need world records, you need to go with the pace an organization can digest and understand. Although the initial PLM climate during implementation might be chilling too, I do not believe you have to suffer temperatures below 50 degrees Celsius.
During the morning, I was involved in several meetings, therefore unfortunate unable to see some of the interesting sessions at that time. Hopefully later available on PI.TV for review as slides-only do not tell the full story. Although there are experts that can conclude and comment after seeing a single slide. You can read it here from my blog buddy Oleg Shilovitsky’s post : PLM Buzzword Detox. I think oversimplification is exactly creating the current problem we have in this world – people without knowledge become louder and sure about their opinion compared to knowledgeable people who have spent time to understand the matter.
Have a look at the Dunning-Kruger effect here (if you take the time to understand).
PLM: Enabling the Future of a Smart and Connected Ecosystem
Peter Bilello from CIMdata shared his observations and guidance related to the current ongoing digital business revolution that is taking place thanks to internet and IoT technologies. It will fundamentally transform how people will work and interact between themselves and with machines. Survival in business will depend on how companies create Smart and Connected Ecosystems. Peter showed a slide from the 2015 World Economic Forum (below) which is still relevant:
Probably depending on your business some of these waves might have touched your organization already. What is clear that the market leaders here will benefit the most – the ones owning a smart and connected ecosystem will be the winners shortly.
Next, Peter explained why PLM, and in particular the Product Innovation Platform, is crucial for a smart and connected enterprise. Shiny capabilities like a digital twin, the link between virtual and real, or virtual & augmented reality can only be achieved affordably and competitively if you invest in making the source digital connected. The scope of a product innovation platform is much broader than traditional PLM. Also, the way information is stored differs – moving from documents (files) towards data (elements in a database). I fully agree with Peter’s opinion here that PLM is conceptually the Killer App for a Smart & Connected Ecosystem and this notion is spreading.
A recent article from Forbes in the category Leadership: Is Your Company Ready For Digital Product Life Cycle Management? shows there is awareness. Still very basic and people are still confused to understand what is the difference with an electronic file (digital too ?) and a digital definition of information.
The main point to remember here: Digital information can be accessed directly through a programming interface (API/Service) without the need to open a container (document) and search for this piece of information.
Peter then zoomed in on some topics that companies need to investigate to reach a smart & connected ecosystem. Security (still a question hardly addressed in IoT/Digital Twin demos), Standards and Interoperability ( you cannot connect in all proprietary formats economically and sustainably) A lot of points to consider and I want to close with Peter’s slide illustrating where most companies are in reality
The Challenges of a Connected Ecosystem for PLM
You can already download my slides from SlideShare here: The Challenges of a Connected Ecosystem for PLM . I will explain my presentation in an upcoming blog post as slides without a story might lead to the wrong interpretation, and we already reached 2000 words. Few words to come.
How to Run a PLM Project Using the Agile Manifesto
Andrew Lodge, head of Engineering Systems at JCB explained how applying the agile mindset towards a PLM project can lead to faster and accurate results needed by the business. I am a full supporter for this approach as having worked in long and waterfall-type of PLM implementations there was always the big crash and user dissatisfaction at the final delivery. Keeping the business involved every step seems to be the solution. The issue I discovered here is that agile implementation requires a lot of people, in particular, business, to be involved heavily. Some companies do not understand this need and dropped /reduced business contribution to the least, killing the value of an agile approach
Concluding
For me coming back to London for the PI PLMx event was very motivational. Where the past two, three conferences before in Germany might have led to little progress per year, this year, thanks to new attendees and inspiration, it became for me a vivid event, hopefully growing shortly. Networking and listening to your peers in business remains crucial to digest it all.
I was planning to complete the model-based series with a post related to the digital twin. However, I did not find the time to structure my thoughts to write it up in a structured story. Therefore, this time some topics I am working on that I would like to share.
Executive days at CADCAM Group
Last week I supported the executive days organized by the CADCAM Group in Ljubljana and Zagreb. The CADCAM is a large PLM Solution and Services Provider (60+ employees) in the region of South-East Europe with offices in Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. They are operating in a challenging region, four relative young countries with historically more an inside focus than a global focus. Many of CADCAM Group customers are in the automotive supply chain and to stay significant for the future they need to understand and develop a strategy that will help them to move forward.
My presentation was related to the learning path each company has to go through to understand the power of digital combined with the observation that current and future ways of working are not compatible therefore requiring a scaled and bimodal approach (see also PDT Europe further down this post).
This presentation matched nicely with Oscar Torres’s presentation related to strategy. You need to decide on the new things you are going to do, what to keep and what to stop. Sounds easy and of course the challenge is to define the what to start, stop and keep. There you need good insights into your current and future business.
Pierre Aumont completed the inspiring session by explaining how the automotive industry is being disrupted and it is not only Tesla. So many other companies are challenging the current status quo for the big automotive OEMs. Croatia has their innovator for electrical vehicles too, i.e. Rimac. Have a look here.
The presentations were followed by a (long) panel discussion. The common theme in both discussions is that companies need to educate and organize themselves to become educated for the future. New technologies, new ways of working need time and resources which small and medium enterprises often do not have. Therefore, universities, governments and interest groups are crucial.
A real challenge for countries that do not have an industrial innovation culture (yet).
CADCAM Group as a catalyst for these countries understands this need by organizing these executive days. Now the challenge is after these inspiring days to find the people and energy to follow-up.
Note: CADCAM Group graciously covered my expenses associated with my participation in these events but did not in any way influence the content of this paragraph.
The MBD/MBE discussion
In my earlier post, Model-Based: Connecting Engineering and Manufacturing, I went deeper into the MBD/MBE topic and its potential benefits, closing with the request to readers to add their experiences and/or comments to MBD/MBE. Luckily there was one comment from Paul van der Ree, who had challenging experiences with MBD in the Netherlands. Together with Paul and a MBD-advocate (to be named) I will try to have discussion analyzing pro’s and con’s from all viewpoints and hopefully come to a common conclusion.
This to avoid that proponents and opponents of MBD just repeat their viewpoints without trying to converge. Joe Brouwer is famous for his opposition to MBD. Is he right or is he wrong I cannot say as there has never been a discussion. Click on the above image to see Joe’s latest post yourself. I plan to come back with a blog post related to the pro’s and con’s
The Death of PLM Consultancy
Early this year Oleg Shilovitsky and I had a blog debate related to the “Death of PLM Consultancy”. The discussion started here: The Death of PLM Consultancy ? and a follow-up post was PLM Consultants are still alive and have an exit strategy. It could have been an ongoing blog discussion for month where the value would be to get response from readers from our blogs.
Therefore I was very happy that MarketKey, the organizers behind the PLMx conferences in Europe and the US, agreed on a recorded discussion session during PLMx 2018 in Hamburg. Paul Empringham was the moderator of this discussion with approx. 10 – 12 participants in the room to join the discussion. You can view the discussion here through this link: PLMx Hamburg debate
I want to thank MarketKey for their support and look forward to participating in their upcoming PLMx European event and if you cannot wait till next year, there is the upcoming PLMx conference in North America on November 5th and 6th – click on the image on the left to see the details.
PDT Europe call for papers
As you might have noticed I am a big supporter of the joint CIMdata/PDT Europe conference. This year the conference will be in Stuttgart on October 24th (PLM Roadmap) and October 25th (PDT).
I believe that this conference has a more “geeky” audience and goes into topics of PLM that require a good base understanding of what’s happening in the field. Not a conference for a newcomer in the world of PLM, more a conference for an experienced PLM person (inside a company or from the outside) that has experience challenging topics, like changing business processes, deciding on new standards, how to move to a modern digital business platform.
It was at these events where concepts as Model-Based were discussed in-depth, the need for Master Data Management, Industry standards for data exchange and two years ago the bimodal approach, also valid for PLM.
I hope to elaborate on experiences related to this bimodal or phased approach during the conference. If you or your company wants to contribute to this conference, please let the program committee know. There is already a good set of content planned. However, one or two inspiring presentations from the field are always welcome.
Click on this link to apply for your contribution
Conclusion
There is a lot on-going related to PLM as you can see. As I mentioned in the first topic it is about education and engagement. Be engaged and I am looking forward to your response and contribution in one or more of the topics discussed.
Jos Voskuil's Weblog 
If it was easy, anyone could do it. It's hard. It's supposed to be hard. Quote inspired by Tom Hanks…
Jos, what a ride you have had! And looking at some of the spaghetti system architectures of even today's businesses,…
Congratulations, Jos! I'm very happy that you'll stay active in the PLM world and continue with your blogs - during…
Jos, welcome to the world of (part-time) retirement. Enjoy your AOW. Thanks Dick, you have the experience now - enjoy…
Thanks for all the valuable thoughts you have shared with us Jos, hope your 'new career' will bring you lots…