How can social computing solve product lifecycle management (PLM) problems? Here’s a peek into some research, Issue in Focus: Social Business Collaboration and the Product Lifecycle: Combining the Power of Social Media with PLM, that helps clarify things a bit. I’ll start with some of my thoughts on the value of social computing for product innovation and product development and then poke some fun at myself for totally missing something in regards to social computing in PLM (again).

Some Thoughts on Social Computing in PLM

First, let me step back. For those of you that follow my blog, have seen me present, had a drink with me, or passed me in a hallway you have probably heard me wax on about how Facebook fails for product development. I have probably overused it, but it was a powerful moment when a COFES attendee in my presentation on social computing and PLM said “We will not design an airplane on Facebook!” It was a passionate, and brilliant, statement. What that led to was the basis for my views on social computing and PLM. In short – the concepts behind social media sites like Facebook can provide a lot of value for product development, but sites like Facebook, twitter, Dropbox, and others are not the right approach.

There are major gaps that would need to be filled, but one of the primary issues is that social media sites don’t have any connection with the context of product development – the product. They also have no domain expertise (or interest) in PLM. See the post for more details, including a clever (if I don’t say so myself) chart on the differences in using social media for personal use versus product development.

A Bit of Mythbusting – Why I Might be Wrong

So I had my ideas set. I believed that the only possible way that companies could get to a socially enabled PLM solution was by integrating social computing techniques into PLM. In fact, vendors like Siemens PLM, Dassault Systemes, and PTC have been hard at work doing just that. But something happened recently that made me ask the question. What if I was wrong!? Now I have been wrong before, and I like to confess to it. In fact, to be fair, I missed the impact that social computing would have on product innovation processes in my 2010 Predictions for PLM. My crystal ball failed me, I didn’t even ask the question in my 2009 survey. I just didn’t think it would happen so quickly. But I am a firm believer that the use of social computing in PLM is both highly valuable, and entirely inevitable. It just makes too much sense.

A new company came along that made me think differently. No, it’s not Facebook or anyone like that. It is a new company called Nuage. They have a lot of PLM and product development expertise, and decided to come at the problem differently. They are building a platform for companies to collaborate first, and then adding in proven PLM capabilities. I have to admit I was surprised that they would do that, and I promise to follow up more on them over time. What they convinced me was the a social computing platform could be socially enabled as opposed to an existing PLM solution “going social.” My myth that the only path was for PLM solutions to add social capabilities was busted. There is a bit more to the story, but that is for a different time. For now, back to the research.

The Research Findings

The research reiterates findings from previous Tech-Clarity research, including Tech-Clarity Insight: Going Social with Product Development and Tech-Clarity Insight: Product Collaboration 2.0 – Using Social Computing Techniques to Create Corporate Social Networks in regards to the value that social computing in PLM can offer. In addition, it defines what a social business collaboration platform requires to become a socially capable PLM solution, including the ability to:

• Manage business processes
• Put conversation in the context of products and projects
• Integrate effectively with underlying data and documents
• Provide security for IP
• Allow people to easily share and discuss product development information
• Understand the complex relationships between product data
• Provide the right level of control

Of course the main finding from the research was that there are two potential paths to achieve socially capable PLM, not just one. In fact, there are probably three:

• Add social computing capabilities to existing PLM solutions (or wait for your vendor to do it)
• Implement social business collaboration solution and implement PLM capabilities into it (or find a vendor doing it, now an option)
• Some combination of the two

This is a pretty interesting development, for sure.

Implications for Manufacturers

So what does this mean to product developers? The concept of adding PLM capabilities to a social business collaboration platform is worth investigating. There are four things to remember from the report that I believe are important for manufacturers to take away from the research (but go ahead and read it yourself, you might find more):

1. New product development is an inherently social, team-oriented, collaborative process that can be significantly improved with social computing.

2. The greatest benefit will come from combining the collaborative power of social computing with the control provided by PLM.

3. To realize the potential business value of social product development, the next generation of solutions will need to combine both social computing techniques and proven PLM best practices in a seamless way.
4. New market entrants lead to the possibility that social business collaboration software can be enabled with best practice PLM capabilities.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on social business computing and PLM, I hope you found it interesting. Does the research reflect your experiences? Do you see it differently? Let us know what it looks like from your perspective. Please feel free to review more free research and white papers about PLM and other enterprise software for manufacturers from Tech-Clarity.

Note for frequent readers: I typically do not mix research results with mentions of specific vendors, however without mentioning a credible new market entrant I didn’t think the post would make sense. If it weren’t for somebody willing to take this new approach, I would still be sitting back believing that PLM would have to go social and that the other option wasn’t viable (due to lack of focus and interest by the social media sites, for the most part).

Thank you to Siemens PLM for making iPads available to a few lucky survey respondents!

The winners are ………………… (that is a drumroll, if you can’t tell) ……………………….

• Brian Halter, High Steel Structures, USA 
• Mary Castille, Whataburger Restaurants Property & Facilities, USA 
• Lijun Li, Ningbo Saikesi Hydraulic Company, China 
• Xuehui Zhang, Ninghai Saiping Mould Company, China 
• Fernanda Cardinaly de Araújo Silva, Art Forms, Brazi

Official announcement on Siemens site.

Thanks!

Jim

A quick peek into some research on … the importance of accessing all product-related information, whether it is stored in a formal system such as Product Data Management (PDM) or not. The report, Issue in Focus: Product Data Accessibility: Getting Value from All of your Product Data, explains the importance for manufacturers to readily retrieve product data and points out that there are emerging technologies that can help.

The Research Findings

I have reported on the importance of product data many times, including Tech-Clarity’s The Business Value of Product Data Management: Achieving Rapid and Extendible Benefits and Managing Engineering Data – The Role of Product Data Management in Improving Engineering Efficiency. In the PDM report, I talked about three fundamentals of PDM:

• Control and secure product-related data
• Improve the ability to quickly find and reuse information
• Share product knowledge with other departments

But the report discusses the reality that, as the report says, “Many companies don’t have centralized product data, and even those that do typically have a lot of product-related data spread out across the business that isn’t centralized.” Manufactures have to live with the following realities:

• Not all companies have been able to control their product data in this way (due to software or implementations costs or other factors like acquisitions that leave companies with multiple processes and solutions)
• Many companies are handling the control of their data manually
• Most companies have product data that will probably never be under control of a formal system, including documents and spreadsheets that reference parts and products
• Most manufacturers have important information in their ERP, SCM, CRM, and other systems that can be valuable

The report also makes an important conclusion that “accessing product data and centralizing it are not absolutely linked, and there are emerging technologies that help engineers access data without having to consolidate it in a central location.” These new technologies can help engineers stop wasting time looking for data. In addition, they can intelligently aggregate (‘mash up”) if you will, data from different sources to see the big picture and make better decisions.

Implications for Manufacturers

I am not coming out against PDM. PDM offers valuable functions that allow companies to control their product data. Capabilities like revision control, check-in/out, and approval cycles are important. For companies that need to manage complex relationships between files, including 3D CAD assemblies, there are important features in PDM. But if you find yourself facing one or more of the realities above (I would bet that includes 90% or more manufacturers) then you have to live in your current reality. And realize that your reality may change in the blink of an acquisition.

Manufacturers should check out the new class of technologies that is evolving aimed at allowing companies to quickly assemble their information in much the same way that a search engine like Google. These technologies are absolutely worth a look. Should we call the “PDA” for Product Data Accessibility? Or product data search? But both seem to fall short when you consider what they can do to not only find but assemble and act on the data. Time will tell. Will they replace the need for PDM? Will they augment an existing PDM implementation (or multiple implementations, as some companies have)? It really depends on your business, but I envision it serving all of these needs. But the simple truth is that companies need to access all of their product data and put it into context in order to make good decisions. A product data accessibility approach allows them to access their information quickly, regardless of the reality they live in.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on product data accessibility, I hope you found it interesting. Does the research reflect your experiences? Do you see it differently? Let us know what it looks like from your perspective. Please feel free to review more free research and white papers about product data and other enterprise software for manufacturers from Tech-Clarity.

A quick peek into some research on … how companies can take a practical path to improve PPM decision-making. I won’t keep you guessing (if you were), there are some VERY good best practices that have been developed by the new product development (NPD) community. The research consists of interviews with three distinguished manufacturers in different industries, and  they all concurred that the best approach is to start small with PPM and grow over time. The report, Improving Portfolio Decision-Making: Marrying PPM Best Practice Processes and Technology to Drive ROI, provides an overview on the value of PPM in addition to laying out a practical plan to leverage best practices tools and techniques to driver better portfolio decision-making and drive up company profitability.

The Research

During the research I had the pleasure of talking to several very knowledgeable PPM practitioners:

• Don Kingsberry, Enterprise PMO, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (the man should really write a book, I told him I thought so)
• Ian McKenna, IT Business Partner, Infineum (a joint venture between ExxonMobil and Shell)
• The Manager of Quality Management, R&D, and Legal Applications for a medical device company (who unfortunately was not permitted to share his company name in the report, but I promise you I didn’t make him up!)

The Value of Improving PPM

The first thing I discussed with them was why they invested in PPM in the first place. I had done some past research in this area, including Issue in Focus: The ROI of Product Portfolio Management, and thought it was important to start with the business in mind. I was very impressed with a statement from the participant from the medical device company. He saw PPM as his responsibility to be a steward for his company. How many companies would love to have that form of dedication, work ethic, and contribution from their employees? He offered that “PPM processes and tools help us be good stewards of our business. It costs a lot of money to develop products and we should do what we can to select them right and do them right – because then we have more money to invest.”

Mr. Kingsberry of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) has implemented PPM multiple times, and shared experiences from GMCR as well as past experiences where he says PPM has a “profound effect” and “each time I have found the return to exceed our expectations.” He shared the history from one of his past experiences in a very large, well respected company saying “we cut millions of dollars of projects that were wasting time and we shouldn’t have been working on. We got clarity on that immediately and had a huge multi-million dollar return in 6 months. PPM software and process help bring visibility to those things.” What more can I say when people that have “been there and done that” are so positive on the value they received?

Taking the Practical Approach

One of the other key findings of the report is that too many companies overthink their PPM implementation. For some of you that know me, you might be falling out of your chairs! I am always a proponent of a well planned, well thought out implementation. And my PPM benchmark research at Aberdeen Group showed that business processes and metrics were even more crucial to best in class PPM performance than in any other enterprise technology I have researched. So what gives? People need to understand that the goal of PPM is to provide better information, in a standard way, so people can make better decisions about product investments. Too often, even in my own experience when I ran product management for a software company, I have had people want a scoring algorithm to magically spit out an answer. Don’t get me wrong, the metrics and analysis are very important. But they are just one input into a decision making process. As such, it’s important to find out what information and metrics the decision-makers will actually use and trust (think simple versus black box voodoo) to make decisions.

In fact, the companies interviewed used some really straight-forward metrics that helped them make decisions. ” We implemented fairly standard calculations, NPV (net present value) being an example,” explained Mr. McKenna of Infineum. Don Kingsberry also suggested that based on his experience companies need to strive for simplicity, particularly as organizations get bigger.

The other aspect of simplification was to start small and grow. I heard this from every company I spoke with, they all agreed that you shouldn’t do too much at once and go “big bang” with your PPM implementation. This is particularly true because companies are now integrating and extending PPM processes further into the front end of innovation and trying to develop a more integrated, streamlined innovation process. Now this is where I get back up on my soapbox about planning ahead. Just like with my “PLM Program Approach,” you can start small and build – but you had better have a plan for the bigger picture you are trying to achieve. You should also partner with a software company that can help provide the path to your larger objectives as you mature and improve. Don’t paint yourself into a corner, you want to make sure your initial investments and learnings serve as a foundation for even move value over time.

Implications for Manufacturers

So what does this mean to manufacturers? First, there is a lot of value to be had from PPM. Second, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There are very good methodologies and metrics available, and software solutions that encompass and enable them. Third, don’t spend months trying to invent a process or algorithm that automatically makes portfolio decisions. That is not realistic and likely won’t be used. Take the time to provide good, trusted, simple information in a consistent way so decision-makers can compare “apples to apples” when reviewing portfolios.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on product portfolio management, I hope you found it interesting. Does the research reflect your experiences? Do you see it differently? Let us know what it looks like from your perspective. And please feel free to review more free research and white papers about PPM, PLM, and other enterprise software for manufacturers from Tech-Clarity.

What is the real story about PDM? Tell me what you think by taking this Design Data Management  survey and then I’ll send you the full report when we publish the results. No strings attached, no follow up marketing calls, I just want to know what is really happening out there with data management. Fair enough?

Oh, and if my free report isn’t enough to entice you (it should be, it will be very fascinating!), Siemens PLM has offered up two iPad 2 for a random drawing of the respondents and you could win one! *

Please take our data management survey now!

* *Two (2) respondents who complete the survey and provide contact information will be selected at random to receive an Apple Inc. iPad 2 from Siemens PLM Software. The drawing will take place on November 16, 2011, and the lucky participants will be contacted directly by e-mail. Click here for complete rules.

I would like to give you a quick peek into some blog posts by Evan Yares on social product innovation that I think are worth sharing, and that bring up a good question. Where will social solutions for engineering and product development actually come from? For those of you that know me, I have been fascinated by the intersection of product innovation and social computing. And if you know me, you probably know that I have some opinions… but let’s start with what Evan has to say. And in the interest of not musing too long, let’s start with his first post which brings up an interesting metaphor for social product development – the humble pencil.

Evan’s Thoughts

First, it is great to see such great work and a refreshing approach. Evan is wicked smart and has a unique way of seeing things (Don’t worry, I blocked Evan’s IP address so this doesn’t go to his head). Evan’s musing on I, pencil really made me think. People have been collaborating on developing products for years. The point from the essay was that no one person knows how to make a pencil. It is the work of many with different skills and purposes (think supply chain, not final production). Evan’s takeaway from it is “How do we give people better tools to help them work together, and make better products?” – which is exactly the point, isn’t it?

Implications for Manufacturers – My Thoughts

My thoughts you ask? You didn’t? Sorry, I will share them anyway. To me, the idea of social product development offers the ability for a supply chain to collaborate in parallel. Perhaps before they are even a supply chain, but more of a collection of capabilities and know-how. As I,pencil points out – not many in the supply chain knew (or cared) about the pencil – they just played their role as a means to their own end. It took someone else to pull all of the pieces together. But what if we get all of the right skills together in a (virtual) room to invent a better pencil? What if the materials experts, the mechanical experts, and those that are looking for a writing solution (and perhaps a marketing visionary to represent voice of the customer as well) shared ideas interactively without filtering in between levels based on what one person thinks is possible or a good idea? To me, that is the promise. Of course there will be lots of very tactical (but important and valuable) uses that simply mimic an engineer walking down the hall to talk to another engineer – but the promise of co-creation and co-innovation is even more exciting! I firmly believe that social computing will expand the possibilities of what humans can invent by connecting more minds and allowing people access to more of the world’s collective knowledge. And now that we have an iPad 2 with a camera, maybe we just do have a better pencil (and paper, and …). But even with a great visionary (thanks Steve Jobs), products like the iPad relied on an innovative supply chain to pull it all together.

So how do we capture this opportunity? Evan’s next post was on the future infrastructure for social product development. I will follow shortly with some thoughts there as well, starting with what Evan has to say. It’s great to have Evan’s voice exploring these topics, we are all better when we share and expand on each other’s ideas.

So that was a quick peek into some recent reflection on social innovation, I hope you found it interesting. Does the research reflect your experiences? Do you see it differently? Let us know what it looks like from your perspective. And feel free to join Kalypso and others in the upcoming Spike Summit to hear me share some research on trends in how companies are using social innovation. It should be a great discussion. And I think what you hear will surprise you.

I am currently investigating how companies design and develop embedded software for their products. My Mechatronics: Driving Product Innovation with Embedded Software report discusses how embedded software adds complexity but also presents some compelling opportunities for innovation. You have heard my opinion, now it’s time for you to share your experience!

Please share your perspective. Take the survey today. It should only take about 10 minutes and I will send you a free copy of the results as my personal thank you for participating. I am also including interviews with some very interesting companies to share their perspective along with the survey results, you won’t want to miss them.

The link to the survey (on Survey Monkey) is http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DJJYG57, and it shouldn’t take you long to fill it out. I really appreciate your willingness to share your experience so we can all learn how to address this growing challenge/opportunity.

Thank you,

Jim

This is an invitation to speak your mind on the use of social computing in product innovation, product development, and engineering. I have the honor of helping one of my favorite innovation and PLM consulting firms, Kalypso, with some new research. Please take our survey on using social media for product innovation now.

My Thoughts

I have been a clear proponent of the use of social computing to improve innovation, for some history see:

• Mythbusting “Facebook and Business Don’t Necessarily Mix”
• Social Software and PLM – Gap Filler or Intelligent Network?
• Why does Facebook Fail for Product Development? (and how to fix it)
• Connecting Social Interaction with Product Information (Interview)

My Predictions

One of my favorite things to do is “mythbust” analyst and research predictions. It’s great fun to go back and see what people predict and compare it to what actually happened. I particularly like to poke fun at myself when I was wrong (and maybe brag a little on the occasion that I am right). Of course I cheat and use research to fuel my predictions, so I stack the deck a little bit. So here is what I posted in 2011 – The Year Social Computing Explodes in NPD and PLM?:

• Collaboration – “will happen sooner rather than later“
• Discovery – “is coming“
• Product Knowledge – “will take a little longer“

Your Chance to Make it Real

Way more important than my thoughts and predictions are what companies (like yours) are actually doing. Am I spot on? Did I blow it? This is where you come in.

Please take the survey now!

(It shouldn’t take more than about 10 minutes or so. And if you like, we will send you a copy of the results.)

So that’s what I believe is happening in the world of social computing and product innovation, I hope you found it interesting. More importantly, tell us what you think by taking the survey! One last time, the link is: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CQ37WKP

A quick peek into some research on … optimizing product portfolios using value optimization to improve decision making. Basic PPM offers the ability to balance, resource enable, and track new product development (NPD) projects. To make better portfolio decisions, the report overviews advanced PPM techniques that help companies choose projects with the highest potential financial return and shows them which risks and uncertainties they should address first in their plan. For more information, please download the report, Issue in Focus: Optimizing Product Portfolios with Advanced PLM – Applying Value Optimization to Portfolio Decision Making.

The Research Findings

Companies have achieved important business value from implementing the basic functions of PPM and the associated best practices. These tools help drive higher levels of profitability, as discussed in Tech-Clarity’s Issue in Focus: The ROI of Product Portfolio Management. But there is more value to be gained by extending those tools to encompass a deeper understanding of the financial value available from the project. Basic PPM offers the following important capabilities (knowledge well established by specialists in this field like Doctors Edgett and Cooper (among others):

• Develop and track to realistic timelines, tasks, and costs
• Identify and correct bottlenecks
• Uncover and address skills gaps
• Document and mitigate project issues and risk
• Provide enterprise visibility to project health and status

Advanced PPM goes further. The primary enhancements Advanced PPM offers include:

• Analyze a variety of potential outcomes for a project (resulting in a range of potential financial returns)
• Develop a common understanding of the factors that influence the value (uncertainties and risk, as described in a Value Map)
• Allow companies to focus on the biggest areas of uncertainty earlier in the project plans (allowing them to get a better understanding of the actual value they will achieve, and helping them make better portfolio decisions as the company learns from the project)

Combining Basic and Advanced PPM allows companies to develop a more comprehensive, valuable portfolio management process. As Tech-Clarity’s PPM Framework (below) points out, it is important to determine and monitor product value. Advanced PPM adds this capability to current best practice PPM solutions to help them achieve higher return on product portfolio investments.

Implications for Manufacturers

Whether a manufacturer already has PPM best practices in place or not, there are significant benefits available from adopting advanced PPM concepts.  Companies have the opportunity focus their decisions and product development efforts on realizing the highest potential for the product portfolio, and moving risk and uncertainty management form a passive approach (just managing the risk) to a proactive approach (using a tornado diagram to identify and focus on highest value uncertainties early in the project in order to better understand the achievable value of the product). The basics of PPM are still incredibly important, of course, and can be implemented first, in parallel, or following advanced PPM and value management techniques.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on PPM, I hope you found it interesting. Does the research reflect your experiences? Do you see it differently? Let us know what it looks like from your perspective. And please feel free to review more free research and white papers about PPM, PLM and other enterprise software for manufacturers from Tech-Clarity.

A quick peek into some research on … how companies design their products to meet product environmental compliance, sustainability, and product cost targets. The report, Understanding Product Development Trade-offs: Designing Products for Compliance, Cost, and Sustainability, discusses how engineers and product developers can address these important aspects of their products early in the product lifecycle when designs are still flexible. Survey results and interviews show that while the market understanding of compliance and sustainability has matured, manufacturers are still facing the same challenges – and it has not gotten any easier.

The Research Findings

The report first talks about the challenges and the impacts that manufacturers face. By comparing to results in our 2009 report on Product Environmental Compliance, we were able to characterize some trends. From a compliance perspective, the regulations facing companies are relatively unchanged. The EU’s REACH and RoHS still top the list. To be clear, the regulations that companies are focusing on are the same regulations – but the regulations themselves have grown more challenging as they grow in scope and cover more substances.

One interesting finding is that more companies reported significant business impacts from these requirements. The table below, in fact, is a clear indication that more companies are suffering. One of the most interesting facts is that the only category that shows fewer people in it is “None” – which is down by 70%. Not a good sign!

So what is making this challenging for manufacturers? I will try to summarize the findings here:

• About one-half (51%) have difficulty understanding design tradeoffs
• Companies have a hard time collecting information on compliance, sustainability, and cost
• Survey respondents had difficulty making the right information available to decision makers in a timely manner

There is more detail on each of the individual areas in the report, it is worth a read (or at least a skim to look at the charts and callouts).

Implications for Manufacturers

So what does this mean for today’s manufacturer? The job is getting more difficult, and gathering and sharing information so people can make good design decisions is a huge challenge. But there is hope. As the report says, only 11% of the companies surveyed have information on cost, compliance, and sustainability in a single system. In fact, 41% have disconnected systems for each. No wonder companies have difficulty making tradeoffs. As you have heard me say before, there is a significant opportunity for manufacturers to address compliance as a part of their PLM implementation. This is also true for other product analytics and “design for” processes such as cost and sustainability that rely on good product data.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on designing products for compliance, cost, and sustainability. I hope you found it interesting. Does the research reflect your experiences? Do you see it differently? Let us know what it looks like from your perspective. Please feel free to review more free research and white papers about PLM and other enterprise software for manufacturers from Tech-Clarity. In particular, you might be interested in my views on designing for product cost and product cost management (PCM) or my post on the need to reduce the compliance tax on product innovation.