Clarity on PLM

What I learned this week … came after reflecting on this video on social computing in PLM I ran across on PTC’s website. I spent a significant amount of my time and energy last year trying to understand the implications of the social networking explosion on product innovation, product development, and engineering. It was interesting to listen to the podcast with the benefit of time moving on a bit to reassess the situation and see what will likely happen in 2011. So what happens next?

Brief Background and Views

Take a look at the video, but my viewpoint in a nutshell is:

• Social networking and social media have ramped up significantly in our personal lives (Facebook, YouTube, etc.)
• Social computing is continuing to gain ground in work environments and applications (LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.)
• Product innovation is a team sport (inherently requiring collaboration and cross-functional participation)
• Facebook and similar tools aren’t appropriate for new product development (NPD), but the concepts are (see Facebook fail post)
• The content for the social interaction around product development and engineering is the product (making it a natural to integrate it with PLM)
• Early adopters are on the move and gaining benefits (see early results from the Spike research I worked on with Kalypso)

My Crystal Ball Says 2011 Will Bring…

First, I don’t have a crystal ball and I can’t see the future. All I can do is tell you that this is one of the most obvious directions companies will take. This is as close to a “no-brainer” as they come. I do believe that social computing is happening in product innovation and NPD and will continue to expand. The tie to product data is also intuitive to me, although it will take more time and work. So here are my thoughts:

• Collaboration – This will happen sooner rather than later, it is the proverbial “low hanging fruit.” Companies will leverage generalized applications like Microsoft SharePoint, as well as specialty applications like Vuuch. The PLM vendors are actively working here as well, including PTC with SocialLink and Dassault Systemes with SwYm, and Siemens PLM. Integration to product data and existing PLM process will take longer, but the direction has been set. With so many companies still trying to get the basics in place (let’s face it, there are a lot of product data management (PDM) projects still in the works to put the foundation in place) I don’t think that this will cross into the majority this year, but there will be a lot of projects going on.
• Discovery - Finding ideas, people, and information internally is coming. While collaboration is typically within the known product development or engineering team, discovery extends this to a broader group. I think we will see progress on this in 2011. This can start relatively easy with discussion groups and innovation portals. I see a lot of companies experimenting with this. I believe a lot of this will be internally focused, however, which doesn’t stretch business models or existing processes but enhances them.
• Product Knowledge Management -This is an interesting one, and I think it will take longer. The promise here is not only to collaborate and discover, but to capture that interaction for future reference. This requires integrating the interactions back into the product record and storing them. The value is there, but it has to be done in a coordinated, integrated fashion so will take longer (in my opinion).
• Community, VOC, New IP -Developing external communities and gathering ideas from the outside is something I have always said will take longer. I am rethinking that. It requires people to think differently and develop new business models. But I have seen innovative companies get behind this.  For example, Kimberly-Clark talks about an innovative program in this interview. My opinion has changed as I view this as a standalone initiative. Full integration to innovation processes and NPD (and particularly engineering) will likely take longer, but a good idea that doesn’t require a huge investment is not going to wait in an innovative company. I see vendors like Brightidea, Congistreamer, Imaginatik, Spigit, and a host of others making an impact here in addition to the traditional companies.

Implications for Manufacturers

Things are happening. The world is changing the way we communicate, and the leaders will find a way to be more innovative and drive higher levels of profitability. Innovation has started and will continue. When? That is the big question. My crystal ball only works backwards (researching what has already happened). But I think we will see a lot of progress this year. Check back with me in 2012 when my crystal ball (aka rearview mirror) is working.

So those are my thoughts for 2011, I hope you found it interesting. Let me know what you think, or more importantly what you are planning to do about it!

I had the chance to talk with … SAP and their customer Colgate in June, and learned that they have been hard at work improving the way manufacturers innovate. I was attending an SAP customer event on PLM to get updated on the progress of SAP’s PLM efforts. SAP continued to showcase their new PLM interfaces (now including Recipe Management for the process industries). But the thing that caught my attention most was a presentation on a newly co-developed solution for product innovation codenamed “Edison.” While this isn’t a formal SAP product as of yet, it shows some real promise on how companies can use social computing to drive innovation.

Note: Hopefully this wasn’t the only thing I learned in June, but things have certainly busy and I am behind in sharing!

What they are Doing

The solution, presented jointly by SAP and Colgate, is labeled as an “idea management” solution. To me that description falls a bit short of what they have developed. The solution handles a broad range of the innovation process, including:

• Idea Solicitation – to help target innovation as opposed to an all purpose suggestion box
• Idea Submission – to capture ideas from participants, including any supporting media they choose to submit
• Review and Processing – to help companies find the ideas they want to focus on, including search, filtering, sorting, tagging, and commenting
• Evaluation – allowing companies to score innovation and promote the good ones
• Execution – although this was a little less clear to me, this is the idea that the promoted ideas would flow into SAP’s PPM solution to turn into product development projects

The first thing that stood out to me as evidence that this was based on practical experience was that they didn’t assume that getting more ideas was better. I run into vendors all the time who like to talk about helping their manufacturing customers get more ideas. All of my research and interviews end up with the same conclusion from manufacturers: “I don’t need more ideas, I need help sorting through all of the junk to find the good ones!” Manufacturers want better ideas, and they want a way to make sense of the volumes of input they get. Kudos to Colgate and SAP for getting this right, which I have to imagine came from Colgate’s real-world experience in innovation.

Another thing I was impressed with was the objectives of the project. They set out to build something “simple, usable, flexible, and extendable.” As well thought out as the solution seems, it doesn’t appear that they over-designed it. The solution does not look or feel like SAP, but instead is a light, web-based experience. While this might not be appropriate for the highly transactional world of traditional SAP solutions, it is ideal for this application where broad use by untrained participants is a key to success. After all, you don’t want all of your innovation coming from a few trained insiders!

One final point that Colgate made which I think is important to consider, is that the solution is not only valuable in the front end of innovation but throughout the new product development process. In fact, early use of the tool at Colgate has helped solve supply chain issues like cost reduction.

Implications for Manufacturers

The use of social computing techniques to drive innovation is beginning to take shape. SAP is clearly interested in providing this capability, as are standalone innovation management solutions such as Brightidea, Imaginatik, Ideajam, and others.  Some upcoming research I will publish soon with Kalypso shows that many manufacturers are getting started in the use of social media in innovation, and those that did are going to increase usage next year. Times are changing, and it will be interesting to see who can best take advantage of this new opportunity.

So that is what I heard from SAP and Colgate, I hope you found it interesting. Who knew? I didn’t, if you did let us know about it. Who else should I be paying attention to in this space?