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I usually write a post after participating in a PLM conference. Last week, I participated in TECHNIA’s PLM Innovation Forum, which was a 100 % virtual event with over 1500 registered participants from 58 countries. These numbers show the power of a virtual conference during these difficult times. It is an excellent option for a sustainable future – less travel to be there.
The additional beauty of this event is that, although the live sessions are over, all the content will be available until May 31st. You can still join!
It was (and is) a well-organized and massive event with over 70 sessions; the majority pre-recorded. As you can imagine 70 live sessions in two days would be too massive to grasp. Today the Friday after the event, I have been watching other sessions that have my interest, and it felt like another conference day.
TECHNIA, globally the largest Dassault Systèmes (DS) implementer after DS themselves as Jonas Geyer, Technia’s CEO, mentioned in his introduction speech, illustrated the breadth of their industry and technology skills complementary or based on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
TECHNIA was supported by Dassault Systèmes Execs and subject experts. In addition, a larger group of companies and interest groups supported the conference, even our humble PLM Green Alliance as you can see in the image above.
I followed the full two live days in real-time, meanwhile man sitting in my virtual booth to chat with virtual visitors. To my surprise, the anxiety during the conference felt like a physical conference – you get energized.
The positive point for me, no finger food or a standing lunch and decent coffee when needed. The point to enhance and learn for this type of event, is to make the booth a little more human – perhaps supported by video?
At the end, a great event, and if you are interested in the Dassault Systèmes/TECHNIA combined offering, supported by customer stories, take the chance till the end of May to register and browse the rich content.
Now I will share some of my picks from the live event. Another post will come based on my additional discoveries and networking discussions.
The B.CONNECT project
Fabien Hoefer and Philip Haller both from B.Braun, a medical device, and pharmaceutical company, with a wide range of products. Their massive PLM-project, approx. sixty persons involved was driven by the fact that every product has a lot of related data stored in different silos that it becomes impossible to have the correct understanding and status and to maintain it for the product and service lifecycle, on average, 10 – 15 years.
Their target is a real PLM-platform implementation connecting the people, the processes, data, and systems. Their aim is really about the “connected” approach, a characteristic of a digital company.
As you can still watch the presentation, look at the following topics discussed:
- focus on product archetypes instead of division (portfolio management)
- data templates based on classification, global and specific data sets (data governance)
- the need to have a Master Data Management in place (data governance)
- the unique product identifier (remember the FFF-discussion in my blog)
- data-driven documentation (a perfect example of a digital PLM implementation)
- platform strategy (one application for one capability in a heterogeneous systems environment)
- Ownership of the PLM implementation at board level (it is not an engineering tool)
- in the Q&A – the mix of waterfall & agile – the hybrid approach (as in the medical world the validation of the system is required – a point we missed in the SmarTeam FDA toolkit – validation of a system is needed when the system/processes change)
In the Q&A session, it was clear that the big elephant in the room, the migration, has been identified, but no answers yet. See my presentation to understand the reference to the elephant. I am curious about B. Braun’s approach, given my experience with PLM digital transformations. Will it be entirely digital or hybrid.
Looking forward to learning more from Fabien or Philip.
Business drivers for Sustainable Manufacturing
This session, presented by Hannes Lindfred from TECHNIA, was one of my favorite presentations, as it links tightly to what we want to achieve with the PLM Green Alliance.
The subtitle of the presentation says it all: “How PLM can support Supply chain transparency, Circular economy, and System oriented product development”.
In a relaxed and entertaining manner, he explained the concepts and the needs of a circular economy, combined with examples from reality. In particular, I liked his closing statement linking the potential of digitization, modern PLM, and the circular economy. We have to learn to think and act circular. Highly recommended to watch!
Leading PLM Trends & Potential Disruptors
A PLM conference would not be a PLM-conference if Peter Bilello from CIMdata would not be speaking. We share a lot of insights related to digital transformation and the understanding it requires the involvement of PLM. However, it is not the traditional PLM that is needed.
PLM needs to be rethought, think about the concept of a Product Innovation Platform. A digital platform is required if we want end-to-end digitalization; otherwise, we keep working in optimized silos.
Peter shared some survey results (see below) from early this year. It illustrates that most companies currently invest in traditional PDM aspects. Restating the need for our PLM communities to learn and educate and rethink aspects of PLM and learn to communicate them.
Remarkably similar to some of the aspects I explained in my: From Coordinated to Connected presentations. Changing to data, changing workforce, changing processes meaning systems thinking. Another plea for everyone to invest in learning. See his concluding remarks:
The closing Q&A session was interesting, addressing additive manufacturing, the graph database, and potential PLM disruptors coming from outside the traditional PLM space.
I recommend, pay attention to the closing questions – so many good points to put PLM in perspective.
From Coordinated to Connected & Sustainable
Of course, I recommend you watch my presentation. It is one of the few opportunities to hear in a short time all the thoughts and concepts that I developed over the past 5 – 6 years. It saves you reading all my blog posts, which are less structured than this presentation.
I recommend you to watch this presentation in the context of Peter Bilello’s presentation as there are a lot of similarities, told in different words.
After my presentation, I appreciated the Q&A part, as it allowed me to point to some more of the related topics: Legacy CAD-issues – the incompatibility of the past and future data, Management vision and the Perception of ROI.
Professional PLM
Raise your standards and your horizons
An interesting presentation to watch, after seeing Peter Bilello’s presentation and my presentation, is the one given by Roger Tempest. Roger is another veteran in the PLM-world and co-founder of the PLM Interest group. For many years Roger is striving to get the PLM professional recognized and certified. We both share the experience that being a PLM consultant is not a profession to become wealthy.
One of the reasons might be that the scope of PLM and what is the required skill level is not precise. PLM considered as an engineering tool and PLM having so many diverse definitions.
The challenge of Roger’s approach is that it tries to capture people within a standardized PLM framework, which becomes apparent in the Q&A session. Currently, he is in the stage of building a steering group, “looking for companies that are fairly committed to PLM”. So which companies are the ones interested in PLM to commit time and resources to build a professional PLM body? This can be only academic people and PLM Vendors/Implementers. The last group will probably not likely agree on standardization.
Also related to the question about the different industries and maturity levels for companies came with an unsatisfactory answer. He talks about “absolute” PLM and no need to compare PLM with other industries. Here I believe there is such a fundamental difference in the meaning of PLM when talking to the traditional manufacturing companies as compared to high-tech/software-driven industries. I inserted here Marc Halpern’s maturity/technology diagram that I have been referencing in my presentation too.
The final question about vendors joining the PLM standardization group seems to be a utopia. As I expressed in my presentation, referring to Marc Halpern’s business maturity diagram, the vendors show us the vision of various business aspects related to PLM.
Marc already indicated this is the phase of the Product Innovation Platform.
As long as the professional PLM organization is focusing on defining the standard, I foresee the outside world will move faster and be more diverse than a single PLM expert can handle. A typical issue with many other standards as you can see below.
What’s Next
I hope to see and participate more in virtual PLM conferences as it allows much larger audiences to connect compared to traditional conferences. However, there are things to improve, and therefore I want to propose some enhancements:
Make sure during the “live” sessions, there is the experience of “being live and connected”. Even when streaming a pre-recorded lecture, always follow-up immediately with a live Q&A session. I found the Q&A sessions very educative as they clarify or put the presentation in a broader context.
The current virtual booth as only a chat room is too primitive – it reminded me of the early days of internet communication – discussion groups in ASCII-terminal mode through Compuserve (remember). A booth could become a virtual meeting space on its own – all, of course, depending on the amount of bandwidth available. The feeling of “The Doctor is in”
It is great that the content is available for 30 days, and I agree there is a need for a time limit on the content; otherwise, the conference becomes more a library. What I would like to see after the “live” days to still have a kind of place for sharing. What are your favorite presentations, and why should others look at it?
Conclusion
A great event and learning experience for me. Virtual conferences are the future for sure, and I encourage others to develop this type of conferences related to PLM further. It is a way to share knowledge and discuss topics in a sustainable manner. In the upcoming 30 days, I will come back to the conference one more time, based on interesting topics discovered or discussion related to the content.
Meanwhile, I encourage you too – if you are still in lockdown and if there is time to study – this is one of these unique opportunities.
Two years ago I wrote a post called PLM in 2050 as the concluding post for 2008. Now two years later it is time to see what has changed my landscape during this period. Are we going to a predictable future or are new trends arising ?
These were the points I raised at that time:
1. “Data is not replicated any more – every piece of information that exists will have a Universal Unique ID, some people might call it the UUID. In 2020 this initiative became mature, thanks to the merger of some big PLM and ERP vendors, who brought this initiative to reality. This initiative reduced the exchange costs in supply chains dramatically and lead to bankruptcy for many companies providing translators and exchange software.”
I believe this trend is still happening only the big risk here is that it requires an open standard definition of this UUID. I am sure that before my retirement (see later below), there will be no global standard. There will be platform-vendor specific UUIDs and the challenge will be to operate in a heterogeneous platform-heterogeneous vendor environment. I feel less discussion on this topic in my environment, therefore the downward arrow.
2.”Companies store their data in ‘the cloud’ based on the previous concept. Only some old-fashioned companies still have their own data storage and exchange issues, as they are afraid someone will touch their data. Analysts compare this behavior with the situation in the year 1950, when people kept their money under a mattress, not trusting banks (and they were not always wrong)”
For sure this is the most important trend and I would rank it now as the number one trend for 2010. I just read an interesting article about Cloud Computing Predictions which addresses all dimensions of a cloud strategy and execution – very much worth reading.
What you see in that article and also around you, is that there is going to be a battle between legacy vendors, who will try to transform the cloud definition to a private cloud into a way it suits their platform, and the new cloud solution vendors which also require a platform and from there build and extend their services. It relates to one of the other trends I also mentioned in the 2008 post:
3. “Then with a shock, I noticed PLM did not longer exist. Companies were focusing on their core business processes. Systems/terms like PLM, ERP and CRM did not longer exist. Some older people still remembered the battle between those systems to own the data and the political discomfort this gave inside companies”
Combined with the new battle around the services platform it will be clear that in this approach dominant business systems, like CRM, ERP and PLM will no longer exist, as the focus will be to build business processes based on services and apps on a platform. Here I see PLM as the last hurdle to take. CRM already is understood by the market that it can be replaced by a cloud based solution, the first ERP attempts are already there too, but as PLM is a more, diverse and wide set of non-standardized functions, you will see that in this area the challenge to offer the required PLM capabilities will be the biggest. Another rising trend PLM vendors will move more towards the manufacturing execution, where ERP vendors will provide more PLM services.
The battle will be around, who owns the intellectual property of the company and where it is stored and managed.
4. “After 3D, a complete virtual world, based on holography, became the next step for product development and understanding of products. Thanks to the revolutionary quantum-3D technology, this concept could be even applied to life sciences. Before ordering a product, customers could first experience and describe their needs in a virtual environment”
This trend will also continue I believe and combined with different types of user-interfaces, mainly from the gaming world; the virtual reality will be the space where we do the most of our engineering work, shopping experience and entertainment. Big question will be, especially for the Matrix fans, will the real world stop to exist? So also here a growing trend – 3D television, 3D communication narrow the gap between the real and virtual world and understanding.
A trend I did not pick up at that time was the issue of social media and their influence on the existing business processes. At that time I wrote:
5. “As people were working so efficient, there was no need to work all week. There were community time slots, when everyone was active, but 50 per cent of the time, people had the time to recreate (to re-create or recreate was the question). Some older French and German designers remembered the days when they had only 10 weeks holiday per year, unimaginable nowadays.”
And I have to say I was completely wrong there. Thanks to social communities, I am spending now more time per day to jump from community to community, from blog post to blog post (I admire my colleagues who have time to produce blog posts). Meanwhile I try to follow all my Twitter and Facebook friends and meanwhile processing the messages coming from everywhere, without having time to really dig into a problem I want to solve.
So quickly I post a question in various forums to see if someone has the answer, as I have not time to solve it anymore – hopefully somewhere in the world there will be a person who has the answer or time. Where to position this new trend into the relation of PLM is still a question for me. Yes, collaboration becomes easier, less boundaries, but also less structure to store data. Intelligent search engines which also understand the context of the information become more and more important, as we cannot structure upfront all information as we did in the classical past.
Due to the economical crisis another trend came clear. There is no retirement money left for the older workforce that should retire in the next 20 years. So companies will have a new generation of people asking the questions and if the older workforce adapts the new social media capabillities, they can be the ones that provide the answers.
In 2050 I will just be retired at the age of 90, and according to statistics, I have still another 20 years to enjoy my bionic life.
I wish you all a happy and successful new year and that the good dreams may come true.
Keep innovation and sustainability on your agenda
Virtual Dutchman
Why Virtual ? This is my first post and in the future, I will update you about my experiences in the world of PLM. Those of you not familiar with PLM I suggest searching for the definition on the web and you will find many almost similar definitions – a neutral one you can find on Wikipedia. The main goal behind PLM is that by managing all steps of the product lifecycle from concept through development until even destruction, the company will be able to optimize and integrate all steps and information. This combined with best practices on how to develop, release and benefit from customer feedback will lead to higher revenues and a more competitive position for such a company.
Most of the PLM software companies provide their solutions around a 3D CAD system, as the 3D CAD model is the understandable representation of a product. Here we see the virtual products and with analysis and simulation software we can test these products even before they are produced. Mobile phones undergo virtual crash tests; cars crash virtually and as I learned, even diapers are tested virtually.
Some PLM companies like Dassault Systèmes and Siemens UGS go even beyond the 3D CAD and integrate the whole manufacturing process initially through software to provide a virtual production process. This allows companies to fix (virtual) errors in the production process and the prototype even before a single product is manufactured in the real world. The time and costs savings of this virtualization allow companies to respond faster and better than their competitors. This change to define a complete virtual product and production process is costly and only affordable by the big enterprise but for sure this trend will continue.
With the introduction of PLM 2.0 Dassault Systèmes even introduced another extension to PLM, the involvement of the customer, experiencing the virtual product before it even exists. The 2.0 version is a reference to WEB 2.0 bringing WEB content to be influenced by the consumer. In the same analogy PLM 2.0 brings the world of product design to be influenced immediately by the customer, wherein the past customers only could review and select from existing products.
Look at the See What You Mean movie.
A virtual world seems to be a future trend, with possible virtual consumers. Currently the trend to virtualization can be compared with teenage sex; they all talk about but …….
As a Dutchman working in the real world, I am targeting to become a virtual Dutchman. This allows me to experience things I have never done and dared before. But before reaching this goal I will entertain you with my observations around PLM and look forward to real discussions.
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