Clarity on PLM - Latest Comments

Re: Social Business – What if Facebook Didn’t Fail for Product Development?

Sankar Narayanan — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 02:35:59 -0000

Excellent take Jim! Thank you

Re: A Maturity Model for Product Data Accessibility?

jim_techclarity — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:37:30 -0000

David,
I totally agree with you about search and feeding the right information into processes. That brings up the next level of integration - composite applications.

Now, once we have all of the data from different places and pull it into a common place to act on it - how do the actions get executed? For example if I have an ECO that impacts the design and inventory, I probably need to update PLM and ERP. What you suggest not only pulls the data together, but pulls the process together. Just the data would be nice for most people, but integrating processes with the data is a big value.

The next step (in my ideal world) would be that the ECO GUI is a composite application that could not only take the information and allow someone to make a decision, but also make the updates in one place and have those updated in the respective systems. Of course you could integrate the PLM ECO process to ERP - but the PLM ECO process typically doesn't have enough information on what to do with inventory, open orders, and all of the execution-oriented things ERP (and possibly MES in some environments) address.

But to be honest, if we can find a way to let people access all of their data it would be a huge step all by itself.

Thanks, I appreciate your perspective on this.

Re: A Maturity Model for Product Data Accessibility?

David G Sherburne — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 11:44:28 -0000

Jim yes I agree very much that SBA/PDA must be broader than just the data in the PDM/PLM and IF the suppliers get that point (Open vs Closed) then the industry will evolve. Its critical we farm the non-structured data and be able to quickly narrow down that data in the context of a process. SBA will really add value to the process if we can accomplish an advanced search function and then feed the PLM Engineering Change Process GUI as an example. This is much easier said than done.... but that was a point I was making.

Re: Social Business – What if Facebook Didn’t Fail for Product Development?

jim_techclarity — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:44:21 -0000

Mark,
Social computing has relevance to every aspect of product development. I agree with you and Evan that design and engineering can benefit greatly from social collaboration.

I guess the question is what happens to the collaboration after the fact. Is it design collaboration that results in a design decision, which is then reflected in the design deliverable itself (for example a CAD model)? That is a huge value of course. But what about capturing the discussion for future use? Where does that live? In it's own social layer perhaps? Is it part of, or tied back into PLM (if the company has one)?

I think integration is important, but the reality is that not everyone has PLM and the ability to collaborate is huge. I just like the idea that the conversation / collaboration is captured for future use. There is a social business collaboration layer that needs to be there, and I believe it is more valuable when it is context (product and project) aware. I think it is a valuable part of the PLM ecosystem, regardless of whether it becomes a part of what traditional "PLM" suites offer or not.

Keep me up to date on what you guys are doing with social in design and engineering. And good call not using the "social engineering term." ;-)

Re: A Maturity Model for Product Data Accessibility?

jim_techclarity — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:32:22 -0000

Thanks for weighing in on this David. I guess one of the criteria that you could use for determining whether a tool like this should be part of an application like PLM is whether it only acts on the data in that application. Your point about a concept design is great. How many times is that actually in PLM? Or how often do we need bits of information that are in ERP, or even in a spreadsheet somewhere? Or how often do people work in multiple PDMs?

PDA (or Search-Based Applications, SBA, as it is being called in a large LinkedIn conversation I am in) needs to have broader access than PDM/PLM. Of course that doesn't mean it can't come from a PLM vendor, but the value-add coming from the vendor is when it is tightly integrated into their own data model.

Thanks for commenting.

Re: Social Business – What if Facebook Didn’t Fail for Product Development?

burhop — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:42:06 -0000

"platform for companies to collaborate first..."
This is what is occupying my thoughts a lot lately too. Talking to Evan Yares a few months ago, he kind of hit on the phrase "Social Design and Engineering" (we started with "Social Engineering" but that has another meaning).

There is something substantial there and I would tend to agree than PLM is not a prerequisite. I'll be curious to see what Nuage is up to.

Mark

Re: A Maturity Model for Product Data Accessibility?

David G Sherburne — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:42:28 -0000

Coming from engineering I do see the a linkage between PDA and PLM/PDM, because the data is required in the context of getting your work done and it exists in many places in separate systems some structured some not. The data retrieval criteria for PDA in my opinion is a direct function of the process context. If your doing an engineering change then the search criteria is different than looking for concept during the concept phase. I think its going to evolve PLM/PDM, the standard process brings with it efficiency, consistency and good data retrieval adds even more efficiency and clarity because people can find what they need when they need it to make better decisions. This is a really good discussion and I look forward to seeing how this all evolves.

Re: Autodesk’s announces PLM Solution 360 Nexus – So What?

jim_techclarity — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:40:23 -0000

Chris,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, you did a great job articulating the pros and cons of configurability. Tools are easy to implement - but they aren't very configurable and may not provide the the needed capabilities in a way that leads to the right value. Applications (at least enterprise applications) are much more configurable - leading to (potentially) longer implementations.

I have been struggling with people describing enterprise "apps" like iPhone "apps." I am probably due for a larger post about this, but iPhone apps only have to work with iOS, the operating system. They don't have to work together, share data, and support a common business context. That is not true for enterprise applications. Quality applications should link to service should link to configuration management should link to ... (you get the picture). In short, the "apps" have to work together and not just fail to crash the OS. To me, the idea of "apps" for an integrated, complex set of data and processes like PLM is new territory. OK, clearly I need to blog about this. ;-)

Thanks again Chris, and thanks for bringing the people aspect into it as well. Excellent point.

Best,
Jim

Re: Autodesk’s announces PLM Solution 360 Nexus – So What?

Chris Blanchard — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:29:29 -0000

A highly configurable solution is a double-edged sword - while it can eliminate some of the potential disruption involved with having the client conforming to the tool and not the other way around - you can still wind up with large implementation costs because it takes a while to figure out how client really runs their business.

You can't put a price tag on the disruption, but you can on an implementation project that turns into "Apocalypse Now". How do you manage the risk? How do you justify the expense?

Likewise, if the cloud is supposed to lower the price of technology making it now within reach of the smaller and smaller organizations, isn't that also offset by the fact that a given functional customization needed for a company of 100 costs the same as it would for 10000 users.

You can't amortize all that cost in a smaller organization - ever.

It's the first copy of a software product that bears all of its development costs - all ones after that are free, right?

In my experience, the cost/success of a PLM implementation has more to do with who you have on your team - no so much the product being implemented. Until we can deliver these projects predictably and profitably the rest is noise.

It's the darned people involved that make this stuff challenging. Software is predicable and repeatable. Implementation, not so much.

Re: A Maturity Model for Product Data Accessibility?

Dick Bourke — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:07:39 -0000

Jim, Your Maturity Model is a step in the right direction to better understanding of Search Based Applications. We must be clear that an SBA is not PDM or PLM. There may be some confusion here. However, they certainly play in the PDM/PLM spaces, particularly when it comes to ready accessibility of product data. Generally speaking, PLM systems offer good search alternatives, but, they depend on properly structured and consistent data formats and they can only search within their own system.
Anything less than systems that meet the SBA criteria are undesirable and uneconomic, including systems that require re-purposing of data in some manner. Therefore, one criterion would be ability to forego the expense of re-purposing data into new structures.

Eventually, the Gartner Hype Cycle may come into play as a frame of reference regarding maturity. Unlike experiences with ERP and PLM, I predict (fearlessly, of course) that SBAs will not suffer the over-hyping, disillusionment and maturity that defines the Hype Cycle. It’s fair to say, nevertheless, that we need more definition of the criteria for SBAs.

In your SBA criteria, some alternatives are identified; others are gaining recognition and should be identified in the interest of fairness, for example, Alcove9 (www.alcove9.com).

I hope you will continue development of the Maturity Model and expand your report “Issue in Focus: Product Data Accessibility.”

Re: Accessing All of Your Product Data Regardless of Where and How it is Stored

jim_techclarity — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:13:50 -0000

OK, replying to my own reply. I may have mixed apples and oranges by bringing up Autodesk. I was thinking of the Nexus solution they are bringing to market from this post -tech-clarity.com/clarityonplm/... - but I noticed this comment was related to accessing product data. Sorry if I confused anyone!

Re: A Maturity Model for Product Data Accessibility?

jim_techclarity — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:12:10 -0000

Thanks for the thought Datia (or do you go by Srini?),
What would you consider basic and advanced keyword searches? Would you break that by the ability to save and share searches? Or the ability to do compound searching? Guided search? As I think more about this, the model probably has a few more sub-levels than I may have initially thought.

Thanks for your feedback!

Re: A Maturity Model for Product Data Accessibility?

jim_techclarity — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:09:16 -0000

Drew,
I do think it makes sense to think about managing data and retrieving it separately. In an ideal world, there would be a single, integrated solution that does both equally well. And perhaps those that didn't need to invest in the level of control that PDM can offer could focus on what they do need without the overhead of the rest. Today, however, the discussion clearly shows that product data accessibility is a big issue that is slowing companies down and making them inefficient. It looks like in the short term 3rd party data accessibility solutions (like ShapeSpace) will be a necessary element of a product data strategy.

Thanks for sharing.

Re: A Maturity Model for Product Data Accessibility?

jim_techclarity — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:05:48 -0000

Rick, I understand your point about outsourcing leading to a proliferation of data. There is also the issue in a complex supply chain like Boeing's as to who really owns the IP because the suppliers are not just manufacturing, they are engineering solutions. I think cloud solutions offer the ability to separate whose data center the data is in and let various people collaborate, but then who owns the data is a business (and legal) concern.

I am not sure I see the tie to obsolete parts. From what I heard from the recent congressional hearing the biggest culprit is actually electronic waste (old computers, monitors, etc.) being illegally re-purposed (breaking down boards, taking the chips, and relabeling them). Does outsourcing further complicate it?

Thanks!

Re: Accessing All of Your Product Data Regardless of Where and How it is Stored

jim_techclarity — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:01:34 -0000

Eric,
I think part of the challenge for software vendors is developing something simple and clean and then having customers ask for numerous enhancements to handle all of the exceptions. It seems like most companies have a hard time developing something simple that meets 80% of the needs without adding complexity to chip away at the 20% (that is different for different companies). The result is complex and (sometimes) brittle systems that hard to use and hard to develop.

So is there space for the simple solution that works well in most situations for most people, versus trying to meet a larger percentage of needs for certain communities? And if so, which is Autodesk building?

If Autodesk focuses on the infrastructure and allows industry experts and individual companies to template/configure the processes do they avoid this scenario and allow their solution to stay simple?

Good food for thought, it will be interesting to see what 2012 brings!

Re: A Maturity Model for Product Data Accessibility?

Datla Srini — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 21:57:53 -0000

Great start to a maturity model.

I think shape based searches are at a different level from basic and advanced searches. Geolus for example promotes reuse and classification of parts which have a similar shape.
I would consider level 2 as keyword based searches which includes both basic and advanced capabilities.

Re: A Maturity Model for Product Data Accessibility?

drewsherlock — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:48:37 -0000

Jim, it's great you got this conversation started.

The range of replies, I think, demonstrates that there are numerous tasks out there where the lack of appropriate tools to access and retrieve product data inhibits good decisions and process improvement - not just in engineering, but also (perhaps more so) in 'out-of-engineering' functions.

The key observation is “accessing product data and centralizing it are not absolutely linked.” The 'management' bit of PDM or PLM is vital in many instances (but not all), however it tends to be 'heavy' to set up and run. Indeed it may not be immediately possible as in the acquisition example. Once we recognise that product data access and retrieval is separate (though complementary) to product data 'management, then we can look for new technologies, most likely from other domains such as the web or semantic search, to solve these problems.

What those technologies are, and what the use-case sweet spots are, is up in the air at the moment. That's what has made this discussion so interesting...

Re: A Maturity Model for Product Data Accessibility?

Rick Franzosa — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:51:42 -0000

The added complication in the world of outsourcing is, where, oh where, is that data? Think about the supply chain that Boeing has set up for the 787 Dreamliner, and the problems that that has caused, or the recently discovered proliferation of counterfeit parts in DoD equipment. No wonder there is angst!

Re: Accessing All of Your Product Data Regardless of Where and How it is Stored

Eric — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:10:08 -0000

I have been thinking along similar terms, where it would be nice to have a system that at its core tracked items, BOMs, AML information, documents, etc. Also, revisions and changes. But the core itself is solid and lightweight, using a well designed web interface. To this you could add modular functionality, but the core itself is this solid data store with web APIs (SOAP, REST, whatever) for integrations. Arena has a nice UI from what I have seen, but myself I still see this as possible for internal hosting. Anyway, I see a need for a simple system to hit a certain segment of the market that has a need for this.

Re: Autodesk’s announces PLM Solution 360 Nexus – So What?

jim_techclarity — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:36:03 -0000

Andreas,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. The one aspect I would consider in this is who do you think Autodesk will be selling to? I think it's important to consider who their target market will be.

I don't think Autodesk will be taking away market share from the traditional PLM vendors with this solution in the next few years. I see Autodesk creating a new PLM opportunity for their existing customer base, and hopefully extending the reach of PLM to a broader market. In the near future, I think Autodesk will likely have as much growth as they can realistically handle in their ecosystem without going after any business outside of their own back yard.

Over time maybe Autodesk will branch out and go after SolidWorks users and others if the solution has enough of a competitive advantage. But there are plenty of fish in the Autodesk sea already, and PLM continues to grow. As to whether they have solutions to compete in a larger arena (pun intended, re: Arena Solutions) will be interesting, but won't limit their success in the near term in my opinion.

Thanks,
Jim

Re: Autodesk’s announces PLM Solution 360 Nexus – So What?

jim_techclarity — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:25:58 -0000

From Andreas Lindenthal on LinkedIn:

Good question, Jim.
So what? Autodesk is considerably late to the PLM game. And the delivery
model they are offering with Nexus is not really new either. Arena
Solutions has been offering a cloud-based/SaaS/on-demand PLM solution
for almost 10 years now, and others offer similar solutions based on
different technologies.

I think the only way Autodesk can make a difference is by offering a
more flexible, open and scalable solution. Companies want and need to be
able to configure a PLM system to enable, optimize and automate their
processes. Nobody wants to change their processes to accommodate or deal
with the limitations of a PLM system. Where would be the competitive
advantage? Easy to implement and use is one thing, but if this means
less functionality and flexibility, I don't think many companies will
want to bet their future on such a system. They might go for a limited
deployment in a work group or department, but not as an enterprise-wide
application.

Having said that, Salesforce demonstrated that if done well, a
cloud-based solution can disrupt markets. Siebel and other software
companies that offered on-premise CRM solutions did great until
Salesforce came along and offered an easy to implement and use CRM
solution that was also flexible, open and scalable. Customers could
configure the system based on their needs and requirements, and service
providers could add missing functionality.

If Autodesk can do something similar with Nexus, it could become a
disruptive technology and change the PLM landscape forever. If not, it
will be just another pebble in the ocean. We will see...

Re: Autodesk’s announces PLM Solution 360 Nexus – So What?

jim_techclarity — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 11:01:11 -0000

Thanks Allan,
And so much to learn.... I have more questions than answers so far.

Point taken on systems versus mechatronics.

Cheers,
Jim

Re: Accessing All of Your Product Data Regardless of Where and How it is Stored

jim_techclarity — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:13:00 -0000

Drew,
Thanks for pointing out Chad's post on engineers having a broad view of the business (http://www.engineering-matters..., well said. I commented there that products are the center of a manufacturer's world - meaning that Engineers are at the center of it all. Design for x,y,z,etc. means that companies want to get products right the first time in all aspects (cost, quality, serviceability, supply, environmental compliance, etc.). Engineers (and others in product development, hopefully we have cross-functional teams, right?) need lots of information to do this.

I love your example about costs. I was about to say that a lot of that cost information is not really in either ERP or PLM (ERP has historical costs which may not be relevant and PLM costing is typically poor, see "Did PLM Give up on Product Cost Management: http://tech-clarity.com/clarit.... As I kept reading, you mentioned documents and unstructured data. The ugly truth is that there is a lot of cost information in spreadsheets, particularly the kind of estimates that are useful for new components versus steady-state purchasing.

So the idea of pulling together all of this information is fascinating. Mashing up information from ERP, PLM, and other sources reminds me of the "composite applications" for product management I thought we would see more of by now (I have posted on ERP-PLM integration for some time, and there are some good examples of this). Your point about making poor decisions is exactly the issue - people can't find the right information so they do the best they can with the time they have available.

I love the idea of putting product data in the context of the 3D product, whether directly or simply providing both pieces of information.

Thanks for your post, I look forward to learning more about what you are working on soon.

Best,
Jim

Re: Autodesk’s announces PLM Solution 360 Nexus – So What?

Allan Behrens — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 08:00:07 -0000

I think you may be understating the complexity of some of
the elements and relationships here Jim. Easy to put a picture up - less so to
make it a reality!

On the specific point of mechatronics…. (Bye the bye, the
term is not synonymous with systems as some tend to proffer; interchanging the
terms at will). It does depend where Autodesk want to focus their efforts. It
may be that complex, multi-disciplinary development and manufacturing isn't
their current port of call; in which case topics such as ALM, EDA etc. will be
less of a requirement. Their (indicated) solutions stack to date suggests more focus
on small to mid-sized discrete mechanical manufacturers rather than to cars,
planes, satellites, high-tech goods etc.

As for womb-to-tomb and the real value of extended
enterprise PLM, I believe that the key is elegant simplicity. I think that
Autodesk has an opportunity to make a difference here. But the world as we know
it is multi-vendor; often to the chagrin of the vendors... This means that if
one truly wants to create a reality of the vision one must have deliverables
that scale the mountains of (often) proprietary interface...that'll be
interesting to follow. Having said this, this will provide some interesting business
opportunity for SIs, software developers and partners in general.Such a big topic and so much to say.......
Such a big topic and so much to say.......

Such a big topic and so much to say.......

Re: Accessing All of Your Product Data Regardless of Where and How it is Stored

drewsherlock — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:16:06 -0000

Posted this on LinkedIn, but thought I'd put it here as well....

Jim, interesting paper. Got lots of thoughts mostly echoing yours, but a few of my own as well ;-)

Retrieval tools are poor

Regardless of whether you have PDM/PLM or not, the current tools we have for retrieving data from stores of product data are pretty poor. Things are OK when you want to retrieve items in 'standard' ways through part names, descriptions or attributes or by browsing through product structure. But try to get your system to answer an engineering question like 'which of our stainless steel parts are overpriced - show me all stainless parts ranked by the ratio of price to volume'. The data's there in your PDM and ERP sytems but can you get at it that way?

There's almost never only a single source of information or single type of user.

Over the last few months I have spent several days sitting next to engineers, and others outside of engineering, being shown how they get at the information they need. It's fascinating watching them wade through multiple documents (often not electronic), then dive into CAD assemblies to find a particular part, search through PDM systems, cutting and pasting part numbers into ERP systems all in order to get at a particular piece of information. It's real swivel chair integration.

Of course, the nature of this journey through the data varies according to what data managament systems you have in place, but there is always a boundary to your PDM/PLM system and some data thats's not in it. Either it's unmanaged or handled in ERP, SCM or CRM sytems. As Chad Jackson points out on his blog, http://bit.ly/v4eUl1, engineers have a very broad reach across all the departments and systems in an organisation.

There's also not a single type of user. There's often real benefits to be had by having users in purchasing departments or sales departments, say, be able to access product data, but maybe the PLM and CAD systems don't reach there because of licensing costs or skill sets of those users. And so these users either have a much harder journey navigating through the data, or they don't bother and bad decisions are made.

Retrieve or manage or both

I have seen a number of companies whose product data (CAD files, document, spreadsheets) has grown quite large and it gets hard to find stuff. PDM is offered as a solution and PDM and/or PLM does a good job at 'managing' the data, revision control, ECOs, other workflows etc.. However, in at least some cases, it's probably not worth the effort and expense to migrate data into the system. But, as you point out, you don't necessarily have to centralize data in order to make it findable - just crawl and index the data and provide good retrieval tools and it may be good enough.

Scope for some interesting innovation

You've mentioned a couple of emerging solutions based on existing search technologies (semantic or not). I think these can take you good distance, but I'd argue that the nature of product data is different to the document and textual data most search is oriented towards. There's more structure and large amounts of data in CAD files describing the geometry of the product to an incredible level of detail which is opaque to these techniques.

Similarly, designing the UI specifically to display product data (especially where this is associated with 3D objects) can really enhance the effectiveness of the software. Dassualt and Siemens have done some interesting things here with 3D Live and HD-PLM.

Now the plug...

We at ShapeSpace have been working with Actify on the search in their new Centro product. Basically, Centro is intended as a way to do 3D product data mashups, pulling data from multiple sources and allowing it to be aggregated, searched and results displayed in a 3D context. See http://bit.ly/vYvwj8 and http://bit.ly/rVPJsu

Nice thought provoking paper! I think there's some interesting new ideas to come out of this area in the future.