Clarity on PLM

I had a chance to talk with…the Dassault Systemes team about their recent V6 product release.  They reinforced their key messages during the conversation: SOA based on a single data model, powered by ENOVIA, leveraging 3D as a media.  They also continue to speak of PLM 2.0, referring to the maturation of PLM from an engineering workgroup application to a value chain wide new product development and launch platform. I agree with this assertion – PLM has evolved in recent years to include the front end of innovation, product portfolio management, and direct materials sourcing. I always believed these were aspects of the PLM footprint, but organizations still approached each aspect of the product lifecycle in a siloed fashion.  Now with this release, these tenets are accessible to the small to mid-sized businesses (SMB) as well.

What does V6 Offer?

The key focus of the V6R2010 (V6) announcement is SMB (V6 PLM Express), the current incarnation of the SMARTEAM/CATIA bundled offering. Much like Siemens PLM and PTC, Dassault saw great success in the mid-market in 2008 so hope to build on that momentum with this release.  Basically, the goal is to open up the V6 platform – and “key PLM 2.0 values” – to the mid-market.  So what are these values?  There are the six points they espouse:

• Global collaborative innovation
• 3D lifelike experience across the value chain
• One platform enabling the federation of knowledge
• Online creation and collaboration – product authoring and collaboration over the web
• Ready to use PLM processes, by role and industry
• Lower cost of ownership and operations support

Much like other PLM vendors (e.g. Oracle), Dassault has focused their current release on enhancing the user experience.  V6 provides design (CATIA LiveShape), collaboration (3DVia composer pro), and simulation (SIMULIA DesignSight) to non-technical users, and offers role-based consumption of product information. The company has also further developed their systems engineering capability, by enabling building of component libraries to enhance reuse, and enhancing modeling capabilities.  There are five role-specific interfaces within v6: shape design, mechanical engineering, equipment engineering, machine engineering, and project team members (i.e. non-engineers).  Appropriate capabilities are presented in the user interface depending on role: industrial designers may have access to modeling and basic simulation, mechanical engineers have access to detailed design functions, and manufacturing process planning, and other members of the product launch team could have collaboration, sourcing and review capabilities.  New product development information (whether from other CAD tools, or enterprise applications) is presented through 3DLive, Dassault‘s web collaboration application.

How Does V6 fit into the PLM Ecosystem?

The six values Dassault speaks of are pretty much the same messages all large PLM providers have with their most recent product releases, although Dassault does place more emphasis on leveraging 3D across PLM processes and roles.  The challenge with this is convincing manufacturers who just want to arm their engineers with PDM and CAD that there is indeed value in sharing 3D visuals with marketing, field service, and suppliers (as Dassault says, “3D for all”, or in Autodesk‘s words, “democratizing 3D”).  I absolutely think there is value in this, whether for a large or small company. Marketing would be able to create more compelling promotions, leading to increased revenue. Field service would be able to respond to product quality issues more effectively, leading to happier, more loyal customers. Suppliers would be able to collaborate on new product designs and provide the most effective parts or materials.

What Else Does V6 Offer?

Two other key areas which Dassault has made a conscious effort to address are making the transition of V4 and V5 customers to V6 easier (with multiple “transition scenarios” from version co-existence to complete migration), and ensuring V6 is open so existing investments in tools and other enterprise applications can be leveraged, and data can be federated across the value chain. These two points alone will be key to accelerating acceptance of V6.

So that’s what I hear from Dassault. What do you think?

What I learned this week… came from The Front End of Innovation event in Boston. One thing that stuck in my mind from the event, based on conversations with end users and from presentations, is the lack of connection between the front end of innovation and the rest of the product lifecycle. Customers seem content with their current, often manual process of collecting ideas, and collaborating with the team. And there are some very mature approaches to the front end of innovation – as exemplified in presentations from Fortune 500 companies in the CPG, life sciences, A&D, and high tech markets.

The Front End Should not be Gated
Let me be clear: I absolutely agree with the assertion that the front end of innovation, at the idea formulation and management phase, needs to be free-form, creative, and not constrained by a gated process. But at some point, doesn’t this whiteboarding/brainstorming phase need to be connected to a modeling tool (for virtual prototyping), a product roadmap (so you can launch new products at the right time), and a set of requirements? Without a good flow into portfolio management, product planning, and modeling/engineering/manufacturing, many game-changing ideas may never come to fruition. One vendor that sees this vision is product portfolio management company Sopheon, which last week announced an OEM partnership with Hype Software, provider of idea management and analytics software. Another vendor that understands that this bridge between the front end and the rest of the product lifecycle needs to be present, is Invention Machine; they have connected their semantic search engine, Goldfire, to other PLM systems via partnership, much as Endeca has. Microsoft, Oracle and SAP also have embarked on front end initiatives in the past year.

And although the big three CAD and PLM guys – Dassault, PTC, Siemens PLM – are not currently focused broadly in this area of PLM, by default, however, with their strength in product modeling and a requirements management solution, they do have an offering at the front end. In fact one of the keynotes, from National Instruments, touted the benefits of modeling and simulation as an innovation driver. The presentation discussed how the key to successful product development is iteration, and modeling provides the perfect platform to create, try designs out, and prove concepts before building the actual product. Absolutely!

Social Product Development in its Infancy
What about the connection to social networking? This was also discussed at the event. Is “social product development” a pipedream, or reality? We think it’s only a matter of time before manufacturers see the need to leverage this phenomenon (see Jim’s thoughts on social computing in product development for more ). At the event, there were a couple of tracks about leveraging social media to enhance the front end of innovation but surprisingly, many end users (a diverse cross section of CPG, medical device, food, industrial ) were not using social networks as much as I would have thought. Certainly there is dabbling in the medium as companies try to determine the value to product development; most examples exist on Facebook and Twitter, where the conversation about company or product is monitored, and discussion groups (or “fan of” groups) are formed which can be leveraged for PR purposes, and (at least theoretically) to get input on new product ideas.

FedEx has a team of people focused on innovation, and presented on their need to keep track of the conversation in the cloud; Lockheed Martin is piloting the usage of virtual worlds to collaborate across their engineering team. But examples of traditional voice of the customer and ethnographic methods of understanding customer behaviors being enhanced through leveraging social media is not a mainstream phenomenon – yet. At next year’s FEI event, I expect much progress will be made on this front, though.

Implications for Manufacturers
The front end of innovation cannot be constrained by gated processes – creative minds that help manufacturers to grow would simply revolt. This was noted by executives from P&G, to J&J, to HP. But once a portfolio of ideas and then products is formed, I believe there needs to be a connection with the broader PLM process. Designers and marketers could benefit greatly from a collaboration system that connects them with the downstream product development team – engineering, supply chain, and manufacturing.

This, combined with rich modeling functionality means many PLM vendors do in fact have an effective story to tell this “non-traditional” PLM audience. The very front end (idea capture, management, analytics) will be filled, at least in the short term, by best of breed vendors like Accept, Brightidea.com, Hype, Imaginatik, Mindmatters, Planview, and Sopheon, as well as consulting firms Maddock Douglas, NineSigma, and Sagentia. A little company in Redmond named Microsoft also has a large presence in this space, because manufacturers are looking to leverage their existing investments in Sharepoint, Performance Point (now integrated with Sharepoint), and other MS tools.

What do you think? Should this front end of innovation be connected tightly with the rest of the product lifecycle, or would this corrupt the creative process?

What I learned this week . . . came from The Front End of Innovation event in Boston. At day one of the event, Author Jim Collins (Good to Great, Built to Last, Why the Mighty Fall) gave a rousing presentation of findings from his latest research. According to his research, the reason mighty companies fail is not because of lack of innovation. In fact the ones that succeed in the harshest conditions, at “27,000 feet on Mount Everest,” are not necessarily ones who bring a lot of new products to market; it’s the companies that are disciplined in their innovation approach, and have the right people working on the right projects.

 I believe this speaks to the need to apply innovative thinking continuously at every point of the product lifecycle, not simply at the ideation stage. Innovation can take place in the design studio, the marketing office, the shop floor, and the supply chain and applied to the front end of innovation to make products and services better. In other words, don’t think of the “front end of innovation” as just “ideation”; it is much more than, as this humorous IBM video depicts, creative people lying on the floor meditating, coming up with cool ideas.

The “20 Mile Marchers” Win
The winners in the harshest of business conditions (like now) are also, perhaps most importantly, companies that stay the course on their mission and strive to make their product or service set better in support of that. One large CPG company was cited as a company that introduced too many new products too quickly, and within five years wasn’t a stand-alone company – this is “Packards Law” where a company is more likely to fail because of too many products and projects without the right people in the right seats. Disney, on the other hand, has a diverse product set that exists religiously in support of their mission: make people happy. They have survived multiple recessions, and the death of their charismatic founder. Innovation is a universally accepted “article of faith” as Collins put it – that’s how it’s assumed, in large part, we’re going to come out of this economic mess stronger, right? But what if innovation isn’t the only key to survive and thrive in the long run? This, as Collins says, is a “wonderfully delicious puzzle.”

Implications for Manufacturers
The takeaway is it’s all about balance: as multiple presenters and attendees at the event said - of course a company needs to innovate, but not at the expense of straying from its mission and certainly not without the supporting team to make the new product development and launch process a success. The companies that succeed in the long run, as Collins puts it, have the discipline “to stay the march” – in other words it’s a marathon, not a sprint, as they say.

Perhaps most importantly, I believe, innovation (especially at the metaphorical 27,000 feet on Mount Everest) is not just ideation; innovation can and should take place at any point on a product’s lifecycle. There is a wealth of information that could be a catalyst for innovation: customer feedback, manufacturing cycle time, product quality issues, environmental impact, supply chain efficiency, recycling and reuse… all should be data feeds to the front end of innovation, which support the goal of every company: make good products, make money, and keep the customer happy.

So tell me what you think – what does the “front end of innovation” mean to you?