Clarity on PLM

You have probably heard by now that Autodesk has announced that they are entering the PLM market with the announcement of Autodesk 360 Nexus. I had the opportunity to hear about this in a “behind the scenes” look a while back and attended Autodesk University this week to take in the launch. Autodesk put a lot of emphasis behind the announcement, with CEO Carl Bass bringing up his famous anti-PLM rap where he said the only companies with a PLM problem were Dassault (Sytemes), PTC, and UGS (now Siemens PLM). His message now is that “we did not want to do PLM until we could do it right” and that the time has come. So welcome to the PLM community Autodesk!

What’s the Big Deal? Who Cares?

Autodesk promised that “everything would change” in PLM when the announcement was made. You can read Evan Yares’ view on what has (or hasn’t) changed. I believe that Autodesk meant that everything changes because they offer PLM in the Cloud. It is a software as a service (SaaS) and will offer a different way to buy PLM. The other reason they say things will change is that, as Steve Bodnar says, the solution is “insanely configurable” so manufacturers will not need to change their existing business processes. Those are both very interesting and potential game changers. For more of my thoughts on those, see the questions section below.

Whether you believe that cloud and configurability will really change PLM, one fact it clear. Autodesk has one of the biggest engineering user bases on the planet, and this will change the PLM market. They are serious about PLM. Having another player with the size, user base, and ability to deliver that Autodesk has will have an impact on the market. Will it take away business from competitors? I am not sure how much of that will happen in the near term. But will it get more Autodesk customers started down the path with PLM (with a lower risk model and a vendor they already know)? You bet. Will there be responses by other vendors? Of course, and the response will be based on what kind of traction Nexus gets.

So What will they Offer?

First, the solution is not available yet. You can learn more from Autodesk’s official PLM press release. Second, I will tell you that the solution looks really good based on some limited views. The interface is clean and modern, there are some benefits from starting a design from the ground up for use on the cloud (and on different devices over time). Third, for some more details I don’t want to recreate what others have already posted, so for a nice overview (with screenshots and all!) take a look at Al Dean’s take on D3D. Note that viewing the AC/DC video at the end is entirely optional.

So with that backdrop, let me share my thoughts on Autodesk’s PLM entrance. They are taking a different approach. They believe PLM has been too difficult and too expensive (see Steve Bodnar’s PLM Non-Starter Picture) and believe that a cloud offering is the answer. Applications designed and built for the cloud are very different, although there are others (including their largest competitors) that are also figuring cloud out. Autodesk sees themselves more like Salesforce.com competing with PLM vendors that are more like Siebel.

Autodesk also believes that changing business processes is a big challenge for companies, and develop Nexus to be highly configurable. I believe this is a double-edged sword. On one hand a company that has well-defined processes can simply model their existing processes in Nexus’ workflow. That sounds great to me. The problem with a lot of companies is that they either don’t have processes, they have poor ones, or they have lots of them. The difficulty in standardizing on a process is an organizational change issue, not a software issue. In fact, from my experience too much flexibility can lead to some really hairy problems for vendors and customers alike. I am not going to get too far up on my soap box right now, but there is a lot more to be said here and I have some learning to do first. I have some follow up planned with Autodesk to understand how much Nexus is application and how much is infrastructure on which you can build a process. For now, let’s just say that Excel and SharePoint are highly configurable too – and what most companies end up with is a lot of non-integrated islands of information and process that don’t fit well together. Flexibility works well for those with very small companies or good information architects to oversee design. Wait, I thought I said I wasn’t getting up on my soapbox? OK, stepping off it now. I even delete another paragraph I wrote while I was up there.

Some Open Questions

The bottom line is that we all have a lot to learn about what Autodesk really delivering and how it will perform. The announcement will clearly have an impact, but also raises some interesting questions:

• Autodesk has a lot of architect and construction customers. The “AEC” industry (E for Engineering) is evolving to BIM (Building Information Modeling) – what are the positives and negatives of sharing ideas and capabilities between PLM and BIM users? It’s interesting to note that their link for lifecycle management solutions is the same but with two tabs – one for PLM and one for BIM. Of course their are other solutions in the suite than Nexus (Vault for one, which is the PDM solution), and those still appear differently. This is not a concern for me, in fact I think it opens up some interesting opportunities. It will be interesting to watch.
• Autodesk is known for shrink-wrapped tools, not enterprise applications. How will their business model and partner network adapt to this new paradigm? Clearly they will need some new partners with PLM expertise. These partners will also need to know how to implement enterprise change and not just tools.
• What will an integrated PDM system behind the firewall look like with a PLM system in the cloud? I think this opens up some interesting questions on its own. There are some advantages and disadvantages of this model, and it will be interesting to see how Vault evolves.
• Where is the support for software-driven (mechatronic) and systems-oriented products? Vault is primarily for mechanical designs, to my knowledge. Does an integrated (versus a single solution) PLM-PDM open up opportunities to add an application lifecycle management (ALM) tool to the suite to manage software development? Kinds of likes my model from Software and Systems Driven Innovation below. Hmmmmmmm.

This is the fun part, watching and wondering what comes next. From what I hear from Autodesk a big part of their plan is to watch how customers adopt the solution and use that to help guide direction and strategy. Autodesk realizes they are on a journey and that they (and their customers) have a lot to figure out. That recognition and a willingness to listen to customers gives me some comfort that Autodesk will be a real player in PLM. Time will tell.

So those are my thoughts. Agree? Disagree? Think I am just stating the obvious? Think I am an idiot? Let me know what you think. OK, but if you think I am an idiot please be gentle with your criticism. Stay tuned for more, the Autodesk PLM story is just beginning to unfold.

A quick peek into some research on … designing mechatronic products. The research, Tech-Clarity’s Issue in Focus: Systems and Software Driven Innovation: Complexity and Opportunity in the Mechatronic Era covers both sides of the software driven products coin – the complexity it places on engineering and product development teams and the opportunity it offers to drive more innovative products.

The Research Findings

The report first describes the trend toward more software in products. An increasing amount of product functionality is now driven by software algorithms rather than mechanics, even for mechanically-intensive products like transmissions and suspensions. In fact, many traditional manufacturers now have a lot more software engineers working on product development than they do in their IT departments, and more software engineers than mechanical engineers. Clearly, times are changing.

The report covers two aspects of mechatronics – complexity and opportunity:

• Complexity: As discussed in the Five Dimensions of Product Complexity with PLM, designing products that cross engineering disciplines adds complexity. For example, changes to mechanical designs might require changes in the control software. In fact, managing requirements, configurations, and change across disciplines are some of the more significant challenges companies face.

• Opportunity: The report also describes how software driven capabilities allow manufacturers to tailor products to customer or market needs, increase reuse, change products in the field, reduce product cost, and lower product development cost.

Implications for Manufacturers
The trend toward more software driven capabilities will likely continue and perhaps accelerate. The benefits are just too compelling, and traditional products will continue to have a hard time competing against “smarter” products. Mechatronics is here to stay, so Engineering and product development teams have to learn systems engineering approaches and how to manage the complexity of multi-discipline design. But while fighting the complexity, manufacturers shouldn’t lose sight of the potential benefits ranging from more innovative and flexible products to cost savings.

The key to success is integrating designs and product development processes into a systems view. I believe that systems engineering approaches hold the answer, and that PLM solutions will evolve to manage the full systems engineering process. PTC clearly believes this based on their acquisition of MKS as announced at PlanetPTC. Other PLM vendors are also actively at work trying to solve this problem (and create new opportunities for themselves and their customers).

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on innovating with software driven products, I hope you found it interesting. Does the research reflect your experiences? Are you including more software functionality in your products? 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.

I had the chance to talk with … the team at Siemens PLM about their recent release of Teamcenter 8. Siemens released this new version of their Teamcenter PLM software concurrently with the new release of their Digital Manufacturing solution, Tecnomatix. Given time and space in a blog, I am going to focus on Teamcenter today. The theme of the Teamcenter 8 is productivity – “individual productivity, application productivity and IT productivity.” From what I can see, let’s just say that Siemens has been pretty productive themselves, and has invested heavily in this new release. Early indications are that Siemens has done a very nice job moving their PLM solution forward for their customers.

A Major Step Forward for Siemens and Teamcenter

I posted last week about the themes of several major PLM releases being announced within a week in my post What I Learned: PLM, Please Take 3 Giant Steps Forward. In that post I mentioned that PLM was expanding in three primary areas – to more people in the product development process, to a broader perspective on the product itself, and to a greater amount of the product lifecycle. In that post, I said that PLM companies have taken some large strides in technology, including service oriented architectures (SOA), analytics, and Web 2.0 capabilities. Let’s discuss Teamcenter 8 from those perspectives:

Teamcenter 8 Extending PLM to More People

Teamcenter has been developed with a broad perspective on the people involved in product innovation, product development, and engineering. With this release, Siemens is making it easier for these teams to work with the information in Teamcenter. One key enhancement in this direction it Microsoft Outlook integration. This Teamcenter release reflects the “ribbon” look and feel of newer Microsoft applications, and integrates product data management functions directly into Office and Outlook. For example, users can save Outlook messages into Teamcenter to capture and share product conversations, and can synchronize tasks between the two applications. From Office, users have live, bi-directional integration between Teamcenter and Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. Some users may be able to work within Word or Excel without ever having to work directly with the Teamcenter interface, extending the ability to include non-technical users in PLM processes.

Teamcenter also has broad collaboration capabilities, including the JT file format (which Siemens has published) that allows companies to share 3D design representations without the need for the recipient to have the authoring CAD tool. With this release, Siemens adds a new “ultra-light precise” or “ULP” format that Siemens claims can share 3D graphics and related manufacturing data at about 1% of the size of the original CAD file.

Teamcenter 8 Support for a Fuller Product Definition

Siemens has also made progress in expanding the view of the product controlled within PLM. This has been accomplished though enhanced content and document management, which allows companies to include more non-engineering data in the PLM system. For the CPG industries, they have also added support for managing f

One of the most intriquing things that I see is the potential for Siemens to leverage their new relationship with IBM to better address mechatronics, or “smarter products.” In Teamcenter 8, manufacturers can now better manage application lifecycle management (ALM) data to support the embedded software that is becoming more common in todays smarter products (for more on mechatronics and IMB see my One-to-One: Big Blue’s Unprecedented Mechatronic Design Opportunity post) for more. Teamcenter 8 can now go beyond managing the software code file to managing the metadata from software development tools, specifically IBM Rational ClearCase for software configuration management. Teamcenter’s support for mechatronics also extends to electrical design automation (EDA), with embedded support within tools from Cadence, Mentor, Intercept, and Altim.

Greater Lifecycle Coverage

The team at Siemens was clearly busy. In addition to expanding support for the people and products in the product lifecycle, they have extended coverage for the product lifecycle itself. For example, Siemens has extended systems requirements and requirements management to cover the early phases of the product lifecycle. Teamcenter now offers the ability for companies to develop requirements using a template in Microsoft Word. Teamcenters content management enhancements should also provide significant opportunities to support processes and information from more phases of the product lifecycle.

Teamcenter is also reaching out to suppliers and Manufacturing. Teamcenter supplier relationship management (SRM) offers a new capability to exchange “suitcases” of information with suppliers. In addition, Siemens had integrated the manufacturing bill of process (BOP) from Tecnomatix and enhanced simulation process management with Siemens NX. Teamcenter 8 also includes new industry templates for aerosspace & defense and Softlines, Footwear,and Accessories and has updated templates for medical devices and high tech electronics.

Enhanced Teamcenter Technology

Siemens has invested heavily in their PLM architecture over the last several years. Siemens now claims to have 1,800 customers live on their unified architecture, a common four-tier, service-oriented architecture (SOA) for their Teamcenter solutions. Platform enhancements include new store and forward capabilities, faster searches, and easier solution extensibility without programming.

Siemens has also announced support for a number if IBM infrastructure solutions including DB2, Websphere and Tivoli, including a pre-configured option that includes IBM DB2 Information Manager and WebSphere Application Server (WAS).

So that’s what I hear from Siemens PLM, I hope you found it useful. What do you think? What else should I have asked them?

What I learned this week … came from the keynote and press conference at IBM‘s Rational Software Conference (RSC2009). IBM is talking about how to help companies develop and manage today’s smarter products. What was surprising to me is that the conference is focused on developing software – not physical products – but that a lot of the conversations focused on manufacturers and product development. Are we finally getting to the point where ALM (application lifecycle management) and PLM (product lifecycle management) can be discussed in the same sentence?

A Little about “Mechatronic” Products

According to IBM’s keynote, 70% of products have embedded control systems. This means that your next refrigerator may just be “smarter” than your first PC.  OK, that really depends on how old you are, but my first PC wasn’t all that smart. The point is that a traditional mechanical product has evolved to incorporate a significant amount of software. Engineering and product development has evolved from mechanical design to a combination of mechanical and electrical design (like a “dumb” refrigerator) to mechanical, electrical, and software design in more sophisticated products (like a smart, talking refrigerator that automatically adjusts itself based on usage, season, time of day, or other factors). Another statistic quoted was that 90% of all innovation in the automotive industry is in software. While I can’t validate the percentages, the sentiment is definitely true. Many products today would not be what they are without software.

So What’s the Problem with Mechatronic Design?

There are three very distinct worlds within product development:

• Mechanical Design – The physics of the product. For the refrigerator it is the body, the handles, the shelves, the compressor (or parts of it), and other physical aspects of the product.
• Electrical Design – The electronics in the product. This can be as simple as wiring, more complex like a printed circuit board (PCB), or maybe a fully programmable chip or processor (that in turn requires software).
• Software Design-The brains of the product. This can included software algorithms that are embedded on the chips of the product, or could include programmable functions of the product. Hint – ever notice that some of your products you didn’t expect to hook up to your computer have a USB port? It might just be an indicator that your product (perhaps your tv set today, but maybe a lot of other products in the future) is set up to get software updates from the Internet.

So why is this a problem when developing products? The fact that there are three distinct design elements of a product is not the problem. The problem is that each of these design elements has it’s own lifecycle, and each impacts the other. If the mechanics, electronics, and software were unrelated then they could all be nicely designed in parallel without issues. Unfortunately, what makes today’s products “smart” is exactly what makes them hard to design and manage – the software is a key part in controlling how the product’s electrical and mechanical elements function.

Implications for Manufacturers?

The implications for manufacturers today is that product design is getting more difficult (as if it wasn’t hard enough). Processes like change and configuration management that are already hard for one discipline (mechanical, electrical, or software) need to be elevated to the systems level to encompass the whole product. Teams working on individual aspects need to collaborate earlier in the design process.

This will not happen overnight, but the companies that get this right will have a tremendous advantage in bringing high quality products to market, and avoiding late conflicts between the different disciplines that drive high product development cost and product introduction delays.  This is the future of product development, and today’s disjointed processes will not be competitive when the leading companies figure this one out.

So that is what I learned this week, I hope you found it interesting. I will post later this week on what I hear from IBM in regards to addressing mechatronic design issues, and what their vision is for addressing ALM and PLM holistically. Let me know what you think.

NOTE:OK, this picture is not a real talking refrigerator, I admit it. This is a toy. But toys are just one more example of mechatronic products, and they will continue to get more sophisticated (incorporating physical motion, Internet connectivity, and “thinking” over time).