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.

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 … 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.

What I learned this week … was that there is still innovation in innovation-focused events! Last year, I heard from two separate friends about a new event they participated in that they thought was fantastic. Instead of the usual physical conference, they attended a virtual event. This wasn’t the first virtual event I had heard of (I have attended a few and present over the web frequently) – but this was the first one that I heard get high praise.

<Updated to correct my glaring typo – thanks Jenna>

The Event

The event from last year was called Pipeline. It included a series of speakers that rivaled any you would find at an onsite conference. In addition, it had virtual booths that allowed you to get information and interact with speakers and sponsors. Why was this event so much more interesting than others? I have to admit, I don’t know the answer. But they did a few things right:

• The platform for the event was built for this purpose
• The speakers were educational, not giving product pitches
• There is an opportunity to chat with the speakers, perhaps better access than at a physical conference where they have another session to attend
• The sponsors were there to educate as well
• The organizers focus on putting on a great event, not trying to steal the limelight
• They had over 1,000 people attend

In general, it wasn’t a sales pitch wrapped up like a conference. In fact, I wasn’t sure who organized it before looking into it a little bit deeper. Well done. I usually don’t get those kind of unsolicited, positive comments on anything related to a conference.

My Opportunity to Participate (and Yours)

This year, I was surprised to get a phone call from Planview (a portfolio management vendor, a Pipeline sponsor, and also the company that organizes the event). I told them how impressed I was with the conference and was surprised to find out they were asking me to participate. I am happy to say I will be presenting on Social Computing and the Product Lifecycle at Pipeline2011! I plan to attend as well, there are some great speakers. You can register for Pipeline2011 here, it is free to attend and you don’t have to leave the comfort of your office (no travel expenses, and no hangover from staying out to late at the conference).

So I am looking forward to speaking, and also attending. This is a pretty unique event. Who knew that there were such well received virtual events? I didn’t, if you did let us know about it.

I had the chance to talk with … CogniStreamer about their innovation portal as a part of some front end of innovation (FEI) research I did in preparation for Aberdeen’s Leadership in Product Development Summit. Cognistreamer is one of a number of vendors that I believe can play a role in helping manufacturers leverage social computing technologies for innovation. I am still formulating my views on the rapidly evolving landscape of software for product innovation, I hope you find my perspective useful (and I look forward to hearing yours).

What do they Do? (OK, this is really more on “Idea Management,” skip ahead for what Cognistreamer does)

Cognistreamer is one of a number of vendors I have looked into that fall into the “idea management” space. I was talking with a friend today about the need for a framework to represent idea and innovation-oriented software. It seems to me that I should start segmenting the space into different categories such as: Ideation, Incentives/Rewards Management, Scoring/Filtering, Concept Collaboration, and Business Case Development (which would then tie into Product Portfolio Management (PPM) and Value Management). Of course then I would have to add in segments for IP Management and Innovation Process Management. No matter how I segment it, I am sure there will be dissenting views (please share yours if you have one, I am open to ideas). See more of my views on idea management software in my post on software vendor Brightidea. OK, it seems like I can’t start a post on this topic without a diatribe, thanks for bearing with me.

What do they Do (post diatribe)?

So back to the point. Cognistreamer does not call themselves idea management, but instead offers “innovation through collaboration.” The solution is designed to harness and mature collaborative ideas. In my conversation with Ron Shulkin, VP North America, it was clear that they understand the issue that manufacturers don’t just need more ideas – they need to get to the better ideas quickly. Cognistreamer provides the ability to start with challenges that offer strategic guidance to innovation efforts. The guidance helps companies focus innovation effort on specific topics (if desired) through challenges. Then, they leverage social computing technologies to “collaboratively filter” ideas through algorithmic social science that scores ideas based on a combination of votes and participation to allow the good ideas to move to the top.

Beyond the idea stage, Cognistreamer progresses ideas through a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis and further to a feasibility study. In this way, ideas can be advanced and promoted from step to step in the innovation lifecycle. What’s interesting is that Cognistreamer bases these promotions on the social scoring algorithm, again to allow the best ideas to move forward. The process steps and the scoring mechanisms are user-defined and can change based on campaign, a very unique approach. Throughout the innovation process, Cognistreamer employs expert reviews and collaborative assessments – an interesting use of social computing that leverages the community to help mature the idea into a concept that is ready to be reviewed in a portfolio.

What do they Offer?

The Cognistreamer product is the Cognistreamer Innovation Portal. The solution offers some interesting features including tag clouds, similarity search, and collaborative filtering based on votes, participation, and activity. The solution also provides the ability to follow ideas, and receive alerts for new activity and comments. The portal is integrated with e-mail so that users can interact with the system in their own environment. This also allows remote use, providing links to smaller web pages that can be viewed and acted on effectively using a smart phone. Some other unique features pointed out by the Cognistreamer team include “persuasive design” features that engage portal visitors on the most important topics and support for deployment in multiple languages. There is also a module called “Listener” that polls the web (including social media sites like Facebook and Twitter) for key words and automatically brings related information in as new ideas. Pretty interesting approach, and one I haven’t seen elsewhere.

Who do they Work With?

Ron explains that the solution can be used in many industries, but that about 75% are international manufacturers. Cytec Industries (specialty chemicals and engineered materials) and Case New Holland (agriculture and construction equipment) are listed on the website. Additionally the company says that Bakeart (metals and materials) has over 40,000 users, in addition to other manufacturers like Vestas (wind power). Cognistreamer is a Belgian company, and has mostly a European customer base.  The company is focused on the US market, however, and has six pilots started in the US this year.

So that’s what I hear from Cognistreamer, I hope you found it useful. What do you think? What else should I have asked them? I have talked with others about this as well, including Brightidea and a view into the idea management application Colgate partnered on with SAP. This is a very fragmented market, who else should I talk to in this space? I found this article that Ron wrote (before he joined Cognistreamer) that ambitiously set out to list every innovation, collaboration, idea management, and content management (CMS) on the market. Who are the key players in this type of software? Who else is interested in this space?

I had the chance to talk with … the team at Brightidea about their products to generate, manage, track, and prioritize innovative ideas. Brightidea is helping companies leverage social computing technologies for innovation with a suite of solutions to drive innovation and foster the resulting ideas through the innovation pipeline. I was impressed with a number of aspects of the solution, but perhaps the most surprising observation was the solution is “enterprise aware.” That is my term, not theirs, and not something that they specifically pointed out. But in an area where I see a lot of light-weight “solutions” being built internally or quickly rushed to market, it was refreshing to see that Brightidea developed their solution to address the complexities of the enterprise. It was also nice to see that they spent quite a bit of time understanding the process by which ideas turn into winning products instead of just developing a portal and a database.

My Views on “Idea Management” Software

Put simply, Brightidea is one of a number of “idea management” vendors. I am not a big fan of that term because I think it understates the importance of what some of these companies are doing. They are not simply “managing” information or acting as an online suggestion box. They are helping companies drive innovation in targeted areas and nurture the ideas in a social setting to help them mature. That, in  my opinion, is much more than “idea management.” Moreover, the solutions that I think are adding the most value are not just ones that help gather ideas, but those that help companies determine which ones to pursue. As one manufacturer I spoke with explained getting a lot of ideas isn’t the problem, it’s filtering through all of the ideas to find the good ones. Managing ideas is boring (although it has to be done). On the other hand, using social and collaborative technologies to incubate  ideas and drive further discussion to help raise the best ideas to the top and give them a jump start in product development is compelling.

What Does Brightidea Do?

OK, with my diatribe over, let’s turn back to Brightidea specifically. I particularly liked the analogy that Vincent Carbone, Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Brightidea, offered me. He explained that what they do is similar to what Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems do to manages leads. But instead of leads, they manage ideas. He points out that a sales lead isn’t worth much at first but could turn into a multi-million dollar deal. CRM systems offer lots of management capabilities, pipeline reports, etc. for leads. He says that Brightidea gives executives what they have for leads in CRM but for their ideas, including dashboards to observe/optimize innovation. I like the analogy because one of the big challenges companies face with sales leads isn’t getting a lot of them, it’s picking out the good ones to pursue through a process of lead qualification. CRM also recognizes that leads go through a lifecycle, starting small and gaining value over time as they are nurtured – or fizzling out and becoming a part of the historical record for later use. I may be taking his analogy too far, but to me it speaks volumes about their understanding of the nature of ideas.

What do they Offer?

The offering from Brightidea is the Brightidea Innovation Suite. The solution consists of three primary parts:

• Webstorm is an online solution used to collect and drive innovation. It offers capabilities to prompt, post, and discuss innovation ideas.
• Switchboard is used to prioritize, collaborate, and score ideas. It provides the ability to turn ideas into product proposals to take to the next step.
• Pipeline is the execution piece. It includes “social project management” and helps track milestones, stages, gates, and provides visibility to projects.

The suite provides a broad array of capabilities, although I am sure that some companies choose to integrate to existing tools for some of the processes covered. Brightidea demonstrated a lot of ability to customize the Webstorm sites. Each individual site can be set up appropriately to fit the social environment and match the company culture. As they explained, each Webstorm can look completely different. The innovation sessions can be directed by some upfront ideas to get them started in the right direction. They can also support ad-hoc webstorms using a button that says “run your own webstorm.” All of the ideas stay in the database, and people can search on them.

What surprised me most, as I mentioned earlier, is the ability to fit into the enterprise. The software can have multiple sites by location or can be shared across business units, geographies, product lines, business units, or functional areas. Those sites can be rolled up to higher levels based on permissions. To me, it looks like a model that is ready for the enterprise.

Who do they Work With?

So who should consider Brightidea? The solution supports multiple industries and is in use by companies both large and small. The Brightidea website lists a host of companies across industries. It doesn’t appear to have any limitations. Some examples they gave in our discussion included:

• R&D people using it
• A pharmaceutical company using it for chemical reactions
• A consumer packaged goods company putting in new names for products

In fact, I used the solution when I acted as master of ceremonies for Aberdeen Group‘s Leadership in Product Development Summit and the solution fit our process well. Unfortunately, I have to admit, we didn’t put enough of our own effort into it to get the most value out of the solution. But the potential was clear, the site was nicely developed, and it was easy enough to work with.

Brightidea also has a partner strategy. For example, HP is a global reseller. They are also including Brightidea inside other software solutions. The examples we discussed were Planview (Product Portfolio Management, PPM) and Rally Software (Application Lifecycle Management, ALM, Agile). In addition, they discussed a strategy to partner with specialty consulting firms to tailor the solution to specific industries.

So that’s what I hear from Brightidea, I hope you found it useful. What do you think? What else should I have asked them? I have talked with others about this as well, including a view into the idea management application Colgate partnered on with SAP. Who else should I talk to in this space?

I had the chance to talk with … Kalypso‘s managing partner Bill Poston and new Kalypso partner Andreas Lindenthal about the recent merger of their companies. PLM implementation experts are in high demand, with most many “big name” consulting firms carrying small teams. In this case, two smaller specialists in product innovation and PLM are coming together to make an even stronger team.

What do they Do?

Kalypso is an innovation consulting firm. They help companies set the right strategies, develop the right business processes, and implement the right software to improve their product innovation performance. Kalypso specialized in a number of aspects of innovation including:

• Business & Innovation Strategy
• Front End of Innovation
• Portfolio & Pipeline Management (PPM)
• Development & NPI (new product introduction)
• Value Management
• PLM Technology
• Leadership & Learning
• Intellectual Property Management

Metafore is an very experienced PLM implementation consulting firm. Both firms have rich backgrounds in management consulting, systems integration, and PLM.

Benefits of the Merger

What is the value of the combined team? As I mentioned earlier, PLM consultants are in high demand. More importantly, it is often difficult to find good business consulting in this area. The largest consulting firms typically provide a large breadth of services (strategy, process definition, implementation, development) but lack depth in PLM resources. The smaller firms often have very deep PLM systems skills (although frequently in a single vendor’s system) but lack a breadth of consulting services. Kalypso offered both depth and breadth, even before the acquisition. So although Kalypso is a “smaller” consulting firm, they already had one of the largest independent PLM teams in the industry. The addition of Metafore extends that advantage.

But the new, combined entity is not just a bigger version of Kalypso. Instead, Metafore adds deeper skills in Siemens PLM solutions (namely Teamcenter) as well as more experience with smaller vendors including Aras, Arena Solutions, and Omnify Software. This complements Kalypso’s traditional strength in Oracle (Agile), Dassault Systemes (Enovia / MatrixOne) and PTC (Windchill). The merger also gives Kalypso more programming power, including access to offshore developers.

Who do they Work With?

Kalypso works with manufacturers of all industries, and has done some interesting innovation work in the service industries as well. The first time I met Kalypso in fact, was due to their unique expertise in PLM for CPG (consumer packaged goods) and the food industry. The addition of Metafore’s team provides Kalypso with more breadth in industries such as automotive, A&D, and industrial manufacturing.

Implications for Manufacturers

For existing Kalypso or Metafore clients, the merger will mean access to extended resources and a more capable partner. For those looking for product innovation or PLM expertise, the combined offering provides a compelling alternative to the big consultants that may not have the deep skills you need, or the small firs that may not have the breadth of services (or the top-tier talent) that Kalypso offers.

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

Note: In the interest of full disclosure, I am a paid member of Kalypso’s Board of Advisors. I don’t feel that I would have written the article in any different way if that weren’t the case, but I felt that disclosing this information was the proper thing to do.

What I learned this week … is that manufacturers (and others) are as passionate and focused on new product development and innovation as ever. I had the opportunity to act as master of ceremonies (emcee JB in the house!) for Aberdeen Group‘s Leadership in Product Development Summit. We had a great lineup of speakers from some great companies that shared their experience in developing new products.

The Discussion

The topic ranged from how to generate new product ideas to how companies can use simulation to validate designs in the digital stages before product development and engineering decisions are locked in. Cindy Jutras, perhaps the most senior analyst at Aberdeen being one of only two research fellows, kicked it off. Cindy gave great insight from Aberdeen’s research that helped companies understand the urgency and priority of improving product development. The research showed that developing new products is a top-of-mind concern for companies across industries.

I followed Cindy’s talk by explaining that in addition to innovative products, early findings from my new upcoming research on NPD (I am publishing the report as an adjunct research fellow of Aberdeen) indicate that companies are aiming to improve the timeliness of product launch and addressing increased price competition. The research I presented turned the corner from the challenges to the actions companies are taking to address them. The early findings from my upcoming Aberdeen benchmark indicate that Best-in-Class companies are targeting improvements to product development across the product development cycle. Leading companies are planning to improve processes starting from generating new ideas, through detailed design and regulatory compliance, all the way to releasing products to manufacturing. The presentations from manufacturers such as Ingersoll Rand, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, iRobot and service companies including Nielson and Wachovia (on product development focus, interestingly enough) reinforced the breadth of product development areas that can be improved, and gave practical examples of how to improve them.

The Group – Diverse and Engaged

One of the things that I enjoyed most was that although the conference was focused primarily on manufacturing companies (who develop physical products), we had speakers and attendees from software and service companies as well. It was great to see the ideas crossing back and forth between industries! The conference was kicked off by Doug Williams of zipcar. For those that don’t know, zipcar is an innovative company that provides cars on demand for their members. Just like Apple, zipcar’s business includes a service component (the cars), a software component (the website and reservation systems), and hardware (the devices in the car). Doug is the executive responsible for engineering for the company, and discussed how they had transitioned from traditional “waterfall” development processes to an agile product development process. What I found fascinating is that even manufacturers that don’t have software in their products (those are getting fewer by the day, it seems with the level of “smart” products with embedded software) could relate to the concept of agile. In fact, the concepts are similar and can help promote a lean product development process. In the same way, Doug Post (it was also the conference of the “three Dougs”) from the DoD talk about validating products early in the lifecycle using simulation technology had the attention of many that had much simpler products than jet fighters or naval vessels.

Implications for Manufacturers

What are my takeaways for manufacturers? First, focus on improving product development across all phases of the lifecycle. Second, take the time to learn from others. It was great to see people getting new ideas and insights from their peers across industries. Thank you to Aberdeen Group for including me in your event! And thank you to sponsors Accept, Ansys, Brightidea, Microsoft, PTC, Adobe, Cognistreamer, and Kalypso for your support of the event (and your participation, too).

So those are some of my thoughts from the conference, I hope you found them interesting. It is clearly not a summary of the whole conference, but instead a couple of my key takeaways. There will be a more comprehensive webcast to wrap things up, keep an eye on the Tech-Clarity events page for new product development, innovation, and PLM-related topics.

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?

A quick peek into some research on … closing the loop on product innovation through an integrated ERP-PLM strategy. This paper furthers past research on The Complementary Roles of ERP and PLM and earlier research on how integration between these two enterprise systems is maturing in the Evolving Roles of ERP and PLM. The topic of how manufacturers can best leverage ERP and PLM systems is one that I continue to get questions on, and I hope that this paper, Issue in Focus: The Integrated ERP-PLM Strategy, helps further the conversation. I should also point to a good discussion on Oleg’s PLM Twine generated by my last research on ERP and PLM, there are some good comments made there.

The Research Findings

At the risk of being redundant, the paper reconfirms the primary roles of ERP and PLM:

• PLM – PLM focuses on product innovation, and is designed to help manufacturers design, develop, and launch profitable products.
• ERP - ERP’s role is executing the business of manufacturing, supporting the business of planning and managing the execution cycle.

To many these may seem to be an obvious statements, but I still hear confusion in the manufacturing community. This is particularly true as ERP companies introduce PLM solutions. That is why I clearly “Busted“ the myth that PLM is a module of ERP in my Mythbusting ERP-PLM Integration post.

So what is new in this report? A focus on closed loop innovation. Here are the key points that I hope people will take away from the research:

• Innovation is not limited to Engineering – Manufacturing, Service, and other departments innovate too. They change processes and make minor product changes for service or manufacturability to keep things working smoothly. These smaller, day-to-day innovations are frequently not communicated back to Engineering, and are therefore implemented inconsistently and not designed into the next generation of products. I recognize that this is not as prevalent in all industries (due to regulation), but the result is a disconnect between what was designed and what is built and in the field.
• Companies are not Confident Enough to Introduce Changes Rapidly – Many companies do not have a change management process that allows them to rapidly improve their product. Engineering changes are held up into batches or delayed because manufacturers lack the ability to clearly communicate changes to Manufacturing and the supply chain without disruption. The result here is delayed time to market for cost reduction, quality improvements, and minor product enhancements. Or, companies push forward anyway and end up with scrap, rework, and unhappy customers.

A well integrated manufacturing systems environment can help companies overcome these two issues. Closing the loop (through integration) allows companies to rapidly introduce continuous improvements, and keep designs in sync across departments and the product lifecycle.

Implications for Manufacturers
For manufacturers, integrating ERP and PLM is becoming more commonplace. This is good news. Of course, not everybody has PLM in place yet, although most have an ERP (or more than one in many cases, but that is a different story). Unfortunately, I continue to see companies make ERP and PLM choices tactically instead of strategically. I discussed one example of this in Choosing an ERP to fit PLM. This leads to two other points that I hope manufacturers will take away from this research:

• ERP and PLM strategies are too important to be technology-led decisions, and should be addressed in a process-centric approach.
• Recognizing that both ERP and PLM are critical to product profitability, manufacturers must be uncompromising on the needs of these two systems.

As I say in the final recommendations, “Choose the right ERP and PLM solutions, making sure they meet your company, industry, and manufacturing model requirements.” Get the right ERP and PLM systems first. Focus first on getting software that meets the innovation and execution needs of your business. It is better if those solutions are “integration-capable” through current technologies (SOA, XML, API, etc.). Ideally, the solutions come pre-integrated by the vendors. But integration has to be a secondary set of requirements behind functional capability.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on integrating ERP and PLM to close the loop on product 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.

Please feel free to review more free research and white papers about PLM and other enterprise software for manufacturers from Tech-Clarity.