Kudos for the reflective nature of this post. It’s great to see your open assesment of a past report.

Re: PPM and the importance of socialness, you seem right on. Economic softness continues to shine a spotlight on product/portfolio resource allocation to ensure limited funds are spent most wisely. As John said, biz intelligence will be valuable. I’d expect much more to come here.

Also, re: Web 2.0, the game changes so quickly that a 2008 to 2010 retrospective is being tough on yourself . Each day, it seems brings new ways to corral the collective wisdom of the masses and bring that to product innovation. I’d expect companies to make progress in the way of making practical connections that span product teams by building “communities of interest” of common skills/expertise/background.

You discussion reminds me of the peculiar yet pervasive way the world views decisions made in absense of all data. In football for example, the same coach who goes for it and makes in on 4th and 2 deep in his own territory is a hero. Yet, in most cases, that’s a horrible percentage play.

Oh well, my Eagles are out of it.

Come on baseball season!

Tom

“Talking to People” – Perhaps I understated the research I have conducted in this are. I have published several reports on this topic. For the reports at Tech-Clarity, I interviewed a number of manufacturers for each on their current and planned integration. I also spoke with a systems integrator that works closely with SAP and PLM vendors, and has done a significant amount of integration work. While at Aberdeen, I conducted one survey specifically on integrating these two systems, and included questions on integrating them in at least two benchmark studies that I can think of. I have also had many more informal conversations with manufacturers, and I am in the process of writing another paper for which I conducted several more interviews. Maybe I should be more careful not to underplay the credibility of my source research.

“Stretching the Limits” – I am seeing the basics (release to manufacturing, engineering change) as givens (although not phase 1 of the implementation) and starting to hear about integrating a bill or process (to drive routings in addition to BOMs) and starting to develop more composite-type applications where they either pull ERP data into PLM, pull PLM data into ERP, or pull data from both into a portal or small web application. Who is doing this? Primarily larger companies. The paper referenced above has once such example, which I enjoyed because even within their (very large) company, they have different levels of maturity. Who is doing this? Today, it is primarily larger companies, although the challenge of integration has decreased dramatically with current technologies.

Thanks for your question, and for the opportunity to clarify.

Best,
Jim

As far as ERP-PLM integration, I think we must be talking to different people. I am seeing ERP-PLM integration becoming much more common, and I am seeing people really trying to stretch the limits. There is more in my paper on The Evolving Roles of ERP and PLM, including interviews with manufacturers of different levels of maturity in their ERP-PLM integration. http://tech-clarity.com/overviews/erp_plm.htm

Thanks as always for your comments,
Jim

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts and the video.

Best,
Jim