Clarity on PLM

What I learned this week … was a retrospective look at an article analyzing how industry-specific PLM application are. The review was in response to a comment on my post In Search of a Common PLM Definition. I had a little bit of fun with the review, and I thought I would share it here. In fairness to Oleg, I decided to use my “mythbusting” technique that I used on him earlier in the year in Mythbusing ERP-PLM Integration.

Responses and Reactions

Need to Document and Prioritize PLM Requirements (Confirmed) - I start by saying companies should document and prioritize requirements. I believe that holds as true today as ever. And I think that you might agree, so let’s confirm that as a statement that holds up today.

Inegrating PLM to Manufacturing (Plausible) - I use “technology transfer” as an example of a very industry-specific part of PLM. For those that aren’t as familiar with the term, it is effectively translating the product as defined in engineering / R&D (and PLM) into a product that can be produced, up to and including instructions for automated plant equipment. This is an area that really hasn’t come to be in most PLM solutions. The example holds trues as industry specific, but despite efforts in Digital Manufacturing (DM) and Manufacturing Process Management (MPM) - most manufacturers are still not yet integrating PLM to plant solutions like Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) or Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM). The opportunity is still compelling, but I thought we would be further ahead. Hats off to my old friends at Sequencia for being ahead of the curve.

Product Portfolio Management in PLM (Confirmed) - I use Product Portfolio Management as an example for a general solution. I think this one still stands true, and is a hot topic in product innovation and product development today.

My Bio (BUSTED, big time) - Most importantly, what was I thinking with that bio picture? I think I thought it made me look like a serious analyst. Instead, I just look like I have a stomach ache (and seriously need a haircut). Yikes. Busted. Definately.

So that is a brief look at some old research with the benefits of hindsight, I hope you found it interesting. Who knew? I didn’t, if you did let us know about it. I look forward to additional commentary (although not on the picture, the glasses, or the haircut please).

NOTE: I use the “mythbusting” concept out of pure admiration and respect for such a brilliant concept, that helps kids (and adults) learn about how cool engineering can be while entertaining them.

A quick peek into some research on … product compliance for formula-based companies in a report titled Issue in Focus: Product Compliance – The Hidden Tax on Innovation: Enhancing Innovation in Formula-Based Companies through Real-time, Automated Compliance Monitoring. One of the predictions that came true in Mythbusing Product Innovation and PLM 2010 Predictions was that PLM would expand to address product compliance. My past reports, such as the report on Making Product Compliance Sustainable, focused primarily on regulations like RoHS and REACH that impact product people that make discrete items like electronic or mechanical devices. But formula- and recipe-based product developers face their own set of compliance challenges. This report focused on their needs, and how PLM systems can help reduce the manual workload burden placed on them by product compliance. 

The Research Findings

The research included interviews with consumer goods companies including Revlon, Zotos International (a division of Shiseido Co,. Ltd.) and made a few key observations:

•  Early compliance checking helps avoid rework and speed time to market in product formulation and testing by ensuring product contents are acceptable early in the product development process
• Manual product compliance processes are slow, inneficient, and inhibits innovation by forcing key innovators to spend inordinate amounts of time looking up information and making it difficult for them to try new, innovative ideas quickly and with confidence

Given the need for early compliance checking and the potential for these checks to grind product innovation to a halt, companies appear to be between a rock and a hard place. The report goes on to discuss how real-time, automated compliance monitoring can help relieve the innovator of this compliance burden so they can focus on developing great products. This requires an infrastructure that:

• Provides knowledge of global compliance requirements
• Recognizes the full composition of their raw materials
• Understands the product formula as it is being designed
• Checks compliance real-time as the developer innovates
• Provides full, electronic documentation of compliance

There is more detail on each of these requirements in the report.

Implications for (Formula-Based) Manufacturers

For companies that develop and manufacture formula-based products, the compliance challenge will only grow. Government regulations and consumer sentiment will continue to push companies with greater scrutiny of their product contents, and restricted material lists will continue to grow. On the other hand, consumers will continue to reward innovate new products. In order to meet both demands, product developers must have the right tools to innovate rapidly, but with the comfort that there is a system behind them that will keep them out of compliance trouble.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on making product compliance more efficient for product developrs in formula-based industries, 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.

A quick peek into some research on … the use of social computing and “Web 2.0″ techniques to enhance product collaboration. The report, Issue in Focus: Product Collaboration 2.0 - Using Social Computing Techniques to Create Corporate Social Networks not only discusses how social media and Internet-based technologies can improve product collaboration in corporate social networks, but also how manufacturers’ use of social computing allows them to capture and leverage the interactions as a new source of corporate product knowledge.

The Research Findings

One of the key messages of the report is that companies are starting to embrace social computing and “Web 2.0” capabilities to take advantage of social media for business purposes, creating “corporate social networks.” It is important for many companies to make a clear distinction between personal use of social media (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, etc.) and “real work” using social computing. While many large companies have shut down access to social media sites, these same concepts offer the ability for engineers, product developers, marketers, manufacturing resources, sourcing, and others in the product innovation process to share and contribute.

There are two primary threads to the research:

• Improving Collaboration – As reported in my previous post and research Going Social with Product Development, capabilities like presence detection and interactive file sharing help make existing collaborative processes better. This is particularly important to replace the day-to-day “water cooler” conversations that have disappeared in today’s globally dispersed, virtual organizations and support processes such as concurrent engineering. For example, manufacturers can create a virtual “community space” to give team members a central location for information. This collaboration extends beyond Engineering as well, and helps product developers include downstream considerations from Manufacturing, Purchasing, Quality, Service, and other departments early in the design process.
• Capturing Product Knowledge – Another key finding of the research is that as manufacturers adopt social computing in PLM, they are developing a digital record of the product development process. Decisions, discussions, false starts, brainstorms, and other interactions can now be captured and stored electronically. Using PLM, they can also be associated to the product and the project to form a permanent record of the process. By integrating this social interaction with search capabilities in PLM (see Unlock My Product Data! Business Intelligence in PLM), the potential to turn collaboration into a corporate asset is tremendous. Beyond capturing internal knowledge, corporate social networks can also be used to collaborate with suppliers and customers to gain better insights into the “voice of the customer,” capture requirements, and generate new product ideas - developing new knowledge and intellectual property (IP).

Implications for Manufacturers

There are significant business benefits to be unlocked by applying social computing techniques to product development. Manufacturers have an opportunity to improve collaboration inside and outside of the enterprise by leveraging these new techniques. After all, social computing is about sharing content within a community. Isn’t that what collaboration is all about? Sharing and getting feedback? And while the thought of using Facebook or Twitter to share your intellectual property may not sound that appealing (as we discussed in Flogging the Facebook for Product Development Horse), the same concepts are being applied to (and integrated with) PLM.  I believe that these capabilities will be a big part of product innovation moving forward, and that companies that get started sooner will have a big advantage over their peers. This is a new and exciting frontier, and we all need to explore and learn so we can tap the new potential ahead of the competition.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on social computing and collaboration, I hope you found it interesting. Does the research reflect your experiences? Do you see it differently? What are your plans? Let us know what it looks like from your perspective.

And as always, please feel free to review more free research and white papers about PLM and other enterprise software for manufacturers from Tech-Clarity.

A quick peek into some research on … the recovery of the software and hardware industry in this AP piece Analyst firm says tech sector to recover in 2010. The data has me thinking about what state the PLM market will be in this year. From all signs I can see, things are looking much better. I am looking forward to hearing from some of my peers in the analyst community that cover PLM directly, but for now here are some thoughts and – as always – my thoughts on how this will impact manufacturers.

The Research Findings

Here are some snipits from the AP release:

• Forrester Research Inc. … expects global spending on technology products and services to grow 8.1 percent in 2010, to more than $1.6 trillion
• Forrester also said U.S. spending is expected to rise 6.6 percent, to $568 billion
• Last fall Gartner Inc. forecast 3.3 percent growth in global technology spending
• IDC, said in December that worldwide tech spending would grow 3.2 percent in 2010

These are very good numbers. The fact that they don’t agree doesn’t bother me because it is not clear that the big gorillas in the analyst community have any standard definition of the market, they use different data sources, and as all manufacturers know a forecast by definition is wrong. But if you look at each of these, they are trending positive. With that in mind, we know several things:

• The software market is expected to recover
• PLM was growing rapidly (double digit growth) prior to the downturn
• The PLM value proposition is stronger than ever, and more companies have proven the value

I am not an economist, but I like the way this looks for 2010. I have also had the opportunity to talk to a number of manufacturers, and they are still very excited about PLM. I expect demand will be for core PLM, but also for other product innovation, product development, and engineering solutions as I mentioned in my post Mythbusting Product Innovation and PLM 2010 Predictions.

Implications for Manufacturers

Hopefully you and your vendor made it through the downturn. The past year saw many manufacturers take a survive and thrive approach to the market, leaning out to make it through the down market but innovating to be ready to capitalize on the recovery. This time was very though on software vendors as well. Although there were acquisitions, there was not a mass market consolidation as some might have predicted. If your vendor made it to see 2010, the chances are pretty good they will have a better year this year. Hopefully, all of us in the manufacturing and manufacturing software community will.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on Product Lifecycle Management in 2010, I hope you found it interesting. I am looking forward to COFES (Congress for the Future of Engineering Software) where Cyon Research will report on the buying intentions of manufacturing and engineering companies. I had the opportunity to join Brad Holtz in conducting and presenting part of last year’s research on the impact of the economy on the engineering software market, and plan to do the same in Scottsdale this year.

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.

What I learned this week … came after long reflection on my predictions for product innovation in 2010. As you may have noticed from the sparse number of posts in December, I must have been doing a lot of reflecting! I decided to look back at my 2008 research at Aberdeen Group called “The Product Innovation Agenda 2010″ to see whether or not my predictions came true, and bust those that didn’t. I hope you find it interesting. For a look at my take on this last year, please see the post What I Learned: Product Innovation and Engineering “2009 Style.”

Disclaimer on my Lack of a Crystal Ball

First, I want to say that my predictions were not based on a crystal ball or some supposed deep insight into the world of product innovation. As a researcher, I always find it better to ask the people who know the answer instead of guessing. In this case, I surveyed manufacturers about their plans for improving product innovation, product development, and engineering between 2008 and 2010. Then, I compared what the leading companies were doing – and planning to do – differently than average and poorer performing companies.

Predictions and Outcomes

Based on the prior research, here are my thoughts on where we stand as a manufacturing and engineering community against our plans for 2010:

Overall, I feel pretty good about how well the study predicted where companies would focus their efforts. Clearly companies made adjustments based on the economy, but the fact that PLM can help both the top-line and bottom-line was a big benefit.

What Did I Miss?

I missed the impact that social computing would have on product innovation processes. The report touched on open innovation and standardizing innovation processes, but I didn’t ask the right questions to see how the explosion of social networking would impact product innovation. I am not sure that if I asked the right questions that manufacturers would have been able to predict the boom in these technologies and their applicability to product development. I hope that I have made up for my miss by reporting on the trend in posts such as Going Social with Product Development, Social Computing Drives Innovation, Social Innovation in Simple Terms, and Enterprise 2.0 Adoption Study Good Sign for Social Computing in PLM. This is a space to watch in 2010 and companies plan on how to compete in 2011 and beyond.

Implications for Manufacturers

Last year I saw companies adopt a “survive and thrive” approach to innovation due to the down economy. The economic downturn forced companies to run lean and many had to downsize. But many companies I studied were keeping at least a subset of their resources on future innovation to be ready for the return of the market. I noticed that the long-term strategies for PLM were the same, but companies were shifting PLM strategies to short-term tactics to reduce cost and get the most out of existing resources.

Predictions for 2011 and Beyond

This year:

• I expect to see continued emphasis on innovation and PLM.
• I believe many companies will be picking up where they left off with PLM strategies, but maintaining their focus on keeping costs in check.
• PLM will continue to expand, as discussed in What I Learned: PLM, Please Take 3 Giant Steps Forward, and will play a large role in helping companies improve product innovation, product development, and engineering on a broad scale.
• Social computing will have a profound impact on product innovation, and 2010 will see many initiatives exploring the value that the intersection of web 2.0 technologies and process have with PLM.

So those are my thoughts on the past, present and future. I hope you found it interesting. What does 2010 and beyond look like to you?

A quick peek into some research on … the adoption of Enterprise 2.0 technologies. The report, The State of Enterprise Adoption Q4 2009, is an interesting read from the “2.0 Adoption Council.” The analysis is brief, but the insights are strong and the authors promise more detail in the future. My first introduction to the research came from a blog post on ReadWrite Enterprise titled Enterprise 2.0: Study Shows Adoption is Real with a strong statement that “Manufacturing Has Surprising High Adoption.”

State of Enterprise 2.0 Adoption

I would suggest reading the underlying research, because (as you will see below) I have a different interpretation of the results. But with my high level of interest in Social Computing in Product Development and PLM I do see some positive signs from the study. Thanks to Oleg for his Enterprise 2.0 Adoption and Social PLM post which pointed me to a blog (and then subsequently to the underlying research). I have a slightly different take on the implications of the findings, but that may be because research is frequently left open for some level of interpretation. Regardless, we both agree that things are moving in a positive direction in regards to PLM and social computing.

The Research Findings

As always, I encourage you to read the study. The report clearly shows that participants are adopting “Enterprise 2.0.” The report itself does not provide a definition of Enterprise 2.0, but because the participants were pre-qualified I assume they have a good understanding. For the rest of us, here is a definition we can use that I took from Wikepedia:

Enterprise social software (also known as or regarded as a major component of Enterprise 2.0), comprises social software as used in “enterprise” (business/commercial) contexts. It includes social and networked modifications to corporate intranets and other classic software platforms used by large companies to organize their communication.

The report shows that the majority of survey participants still see Enterprise 2.0 in the stages of early adoption. But in their own companies, there are typically multiple projects going on. This to me indicates that there will clearly be leaders and laggards in the adoption of social computing techniques in the enterprise. This is where companies will be able to differentiate themselves and gain advantage over their competition.

Manufacturing is well represented in the survey respondents, but I wouldn’t read too much into that. The industry chart just shows the participants in the research, and the fact that 15 companies out of 77 that took the survey describe themselves as “high tech” and 7 describe themselves as “manufacturing” doesn’t really point to a larger trend that manufacturing is leading in social computing. What I do find interesting is the anecdotal comments in the report that “It is heartening to see that a drive to improve collaboration has taken hold in an industry (manufacturing) which is notoriously difficult to change rapidly” and “… our manufacturing members express the most frustration with introducing change.” This clearly reflects the conversations I have been having with manufacturers.

Implications for Manufacturers

So what does this mean for manufacturers? As much as I would love to jump to the conclusion that social computing is booming, I interpret this differently. I see this as:

• Manufacturers are very interested in social computing
• The early adopters are hard at work figuring it out
• Progress has been cautious (for the most part)

My beliefs on how manufacturers will adopt social computing in product development has not changed:

• Most manufacturers will start with the low-hanging fruit of improving collaboration, and most will start internally
• Manufacturers will be more likely to adopt social computing techniques when they are incorporated into applications they trust such as PLM, which will protect their intellectual property (IP)
• There will be significant value gained by those manufacturers that adopt social computing to improve product innovation, product development, and engineering performance

This study offers some good validation that some thought-leading manufacturers are moving towards Enterprise 2.0. I wouldn’t read too much into it in regards to a general trend, but there is clearly something going on that manufacturers need to learn about and start experimenting with.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on the adoption of Enterprise 2.0, 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 from Tech-Clarity.

What I learned this week… came from a Twitter message responding to my blog. I thought that seemed appriorate given that we were discussing social computing and social networking. The message was in response to a post the other day about Going Social with Product Development, pointing me to the embedded video. The post discussed the use of social computing techniques in product innovation, product development, and engineering. 

Note: Thanks to 3DPerspectives for passing this along

The Video

This video is a very straight-forward explanation, using simple terms and a practical example. Well done.

Implications for Manufacturers

I focused more on the internal uses in my research, because I feel those will be the first capabilities adopted. What I liked is that this video really focuses more on innovation in external communities. While I think this kind of example involves more thinking in regards to where the business value lies as compared to collaboration within the corporate social network, I also think the potential for developing a unique and compelling business model is higher and may offer higher returns. I think it’s good for manufacturers to start adopting social computing in their current PLM environment, while exploring the benefits of leveraging external communities for greater innovation.

So just a short and sweet link to the video with some of my thoughts, I hope you found it interesting.

A quick peek into some research on … how manufacturers are taking advantage of social computing and “Web 2.0″ technologies to raise the bar on product development performance in my new report Tech-Clarity Insight: Going Social with Product Development: Improving Product Development Performance with Social Computing. The paper discusses the intersection of social computing and new product development (NPD) processes and tools. I have posted frequently about the intersection of social computing and PLM and product innovation, and this research provides some examples on how these strategies are starting to play out for manufacturers like Microsoft (think PC hardware and game consoles, not Windows) and Pitney Bowes.
The Research Findings

The paper discusses uses of social computing from the basics of collaboration to the adoption of more innovative business models. Most companies will start with more conservative extensions to existing processes like design collaboration. In these cases, incorporating tools like instant messaging into the product development workflow can help streamline interactions. Capabilities like presence detection and interactive file sharing help make existing collaborative processes better. For many companies, these capabilities are readily available and require little change to underlying business processes.

Other forms of communication, such as blogs and wikis, offer a combination of better communication and knowledge management. These online discussion tools change the product dialogue from a one-way push of information to a two-way, interactive, dynamic, electronic conversation to help people better share information and ideas. Beyond better communication, the simple fact that the conversations are happening centrally and in electronic format turns product-related discussions and decision-making into a searchable knowledge asset.

Social computing can also be used to extend collaboration and information sharing to broader communities. This allows product developers to collaborate with the people they know, but also extend their search to find others in the corporate network that have valuable knowledge and expertise that previously would have gone untapped. By connecting people around product and project context, companies enable “social discovery” which fundamentally changes the available talent and expertise available to a project.

Beyond the corporate community, companies can also develop new product intellectual property (IP) from social computing. By extending the online community to customers and the market, new opportunities to gather “voice of the customer” and test ideas emerge. While these concepts require more change to the business and the way it operates, they also offer an even greater potential return by leveraging larger communities.

Implications for Manufacturers
The implications break down into two categories. The first implications are about the applicability and importance of social computing in product development. You have probably heard me talk about this before, and this report helps confirm and expand my thoughts on the subject. There is clearly something of value happening with the intersection of this exciting and popular new way of communicating and the business of developing profitable products.

The second set of implications fall into the category of practical advice and lessons learned to take advantage of this new opportunity. The opportunities are available, but the most important thing is that manufacturers don’t discount the applicability of social computing concepts based on their personal experience with Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, or any other social networking sites. Manufacturers have to see through the use of these communication techniques for “fun” and see the significant business potential. This potential will likely never come from the public social networking sites, but instead by incorporating these “Web 2.0″ concepts into existing infrastructure and product development solutions. This is the most practical method to both achieve the value, but also ensure that product data and intellectual property (IP) is protected and that the solutions are used in the right context – to improve products and projects that drive corporate profitability.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on social computing in product development, 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

A quick peek into some research on … the use of business intelligence in PLM provides insight on taking advantage of the tremendous amount of product data  accumulating in today’s PLM systems. The research discusses how the maturation of manufacturers’ PLM implementations has created a tremendous volume of untapped information that can be leveraged to improve product innovation, product development, and engineering performance. As it has in previous enterprise applications (ERP, CRM, SCM, others), the time has come for manufacturers to tap into their growing information goldmines through the use of business intelligence (BI) tools.

The Research Findings

The research points out two parallel trends in PLM implementations today:

• Manufacturers have moved forward along the PLM implementation maturity curve – meaning they now have stable implementations and clean data
• PLM has evolved and expanded to incorporate more valuable, business-focused data in addition to technical information – meaning the data to be mined covers a broader spectrum of the product lifecycle, including cost, projects, sourcing, service, and more in addition to purely technical engineering data

The result of these two trends is that there is now a lot more usable business data in PLM. The report points out a number of areas of value that can be mined from the data, including savings on new product development timelines, closing the loop from service to engineering, improving product quality, analyzing sourcing, and reducing cost. In short, it shows that value can be extracted by improving pretty much any part of the product innovation, product development, and engineering processes. Please read the report for more details and examples.

Implications for Manufacturers

The message for manufacturers is that “there is gold in them hills” …. errrrrr, in those databases. The research also points out some special considerations for business intelligence in a PLM environment. For most manufacturers, applying a BI tool is not the difficult part. In fact, they probably have (at least) one tool available in their IT toolkit. But before diving in from a technical perspective, manufacturers need to be very careful to consider security, IP protection, and regulatory requirements that surround this very sensitive data. Manufacturers should also look for ways to leverage PLM vendor offerings or partnerships that give them a ready-made view into the PLM data and security model, to avoid spending time recreating the wheel and potentially making mistakes that provide misleading “facts” that people will trust. As the report says, “Developing an effective BI in PLM strategy also requires knowledge of the engineering and product development domains and the specific software applications being mined.”

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on the maturation of PLM implementations and the opportunity it provides for data mining in 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.

What I learned this week … came from watching the Did You Know 3.0 Video and asking myself what it means to the world of manufacturing and product lifecycle management (PLM). The answer? Quite a lot. If you haven’t seen the video, it is worth 5 minutes of your time to give you an entertaining and informative look into the times we live in. The part that really caught me was that we live in “exponential times.” Things are changing rapidly in our personal and professional lives, and manufacturers need to consider the ways the world is changing in order to be relevant with the right products (and the right processes) to capitalize on the future.

Note: Thanks to Randall Newton at CADCAMNet for posting the link. I have seen this before, but his post was what made me really think about it.

Did You Know?

The video, if you haven’t seen it before, tries to put the world in perspective through facts and pictograms. I have seen these before, and they are always thought-provoking.  According to the source, this was put together by Karl Fisch and modified by Scott McLeod. Some of the key takeaways for me are:

• MySpace has 200 million subscribers, if it were a country it would be 5th largest in the world
• A week’s worth of the New York Times holds as much information as an average person would come across in a lifetime in the 18th century
• The amount of technical information doubles every two years
• The number of text messages sent/received in a day exceeds the population of the planet
• The time it took for a product/technology to reach a market audience of 50 million:
  • Radio – 38 years
  • Television – 13 years
  • iPod – 3 years
  • FaceBook – 2 years

Further, there are some fascinating facts about the increased capabilities of computing technologies.

What Does it All Mean (for Manufacturing and PLM)?

The video ends with a question – “What Does it All Mean?” – without providing an answer. The answer, of course, depends on who you are and how the changes impact your world.  When I watched this, I tried to take the perspective of what impacts this will have on product innovation, product development, engineering, and manufacturing. Further, I tried to consider how this will impact the software solutions that help support product lifecycle management. There are challenges and opportunities on the way. Here are my thoughts:

• Social networking is exploding – this offers a tremendous benefit for manufacturers that want to use social computing in PLM to improve collaboration and dramatically change the way they interact with their markets and customers.
• Knowledge is exploding – manufacturers have a tremendous challenge to manage their own information and intellectual property, let alone be able to access and leverage the information available across the globe. Search, Knowledge Management (KM), and Business Intelligence (BI) will become bigger requirements inside PLM and to drive product innovation by tapping into global knowledge sources. Social computing will also play a role here, as manufacturers try to discover the people with the right knowledge in addition to knowledge.
• Time to market is evaporating – the time lag between a technical advance and the commercialization is disappearing. This makes new product development (NPD) critical, but also further supports the need to rapidly discover and take advantage of knowledge anywhere in the world. It also means that manufacturers will have to get their products right the first time, or someone else will take the market away from them.
• Computing power is exploding – the exponential growth of computing power will play a large role in what PLM vendors are able to do with their software, opening up new opportunities including continued expansion of 3D, animation, and simulation in the way we interact with products.

So that is some insight on the times we live in and my thoughts on the implications for manufacturing and PLM, I hope you found it interesting. Who knew? I didn’t. And I am sure I missed something, feel free to add. And for those that watched the video, please pass along any ideas on how to get that music out of my head!

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