Clarity on PLM

Join me this week or a quick peek into some of my research in one (or more) of several PLM-related webcasts this week. I will be joined by some great speakers that will share their views as well. I am not sure why this week is so densely packed with web presentations, but it should give everyone an opportunity to tune in and get a perspective on a few different interesting topics! We have product innovation, product development, product documentation, engineering, and more. Last week a podcast on the business value of PLM, now a handful of webcasts – Mom I have gone multimedia!

The Topics

• Tuesday (2:00 PM, Eastern US) – The Five Dimensions of Product Complexity – Jim Brown of Tech-Clarity will present with Matt Greene of Siemens PLM on the trend towards increased product complexity, how it has made developing profitable products more difficult, and how Product Lifecycle Management solutions can help.
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• Wednesday (11:00 AM, Eastern US) – Transforming PLM for the Economic Recovery - Jim Brown will present with Chip Perry of Kalypso on this Aras ACE Innovation Series webcast on how to leverage PLM to take advantage of the upturn in the manufacturing industries, including innovation to increase revenue, decrease product cost, and reduce product development cost.
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• Thursday (2:00 PM, Eastern US) – Streamlining Product Documentation and Raising the Bar with 3D Communication - Jim Brown will present with Garth Coleman of Dassault Systemes on this IndustryWeek webinar on how to use 3D product communications to improve efficiency, time to market, quality, cost, and customer experience.
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So that is a quick peek into some recent research I will be presenting, I hope you find it interesting and helps bring the research to life for you. Please feel free to look for more PLM-related webcasts (upcoming and archived) from Tech-Clarity.

What I learned this week … came from a great conversation with Sankar from Younomy. I have been in a number of conversations recently that make me realize that the world of social computing is looking into social product development and social innovation as much as the PLM and manufacturing communities are looking into the social computing world. Still with me? Sorry, that was a mouthful. You can read Sankar’s interview of Jim Brown (me) on social computing and product development on Younomy here and learn more by reading this collection of social computing in PLM posts on my site.

Who is Looking at Who?

What I realized is that we are all trying to learn from each other. Manufacturers are trying to learn from what other companies are doing, and other companies are interested in some of the early initiatives from manufacturers. To me, this is just another reminder of how new social computing is. I am fortunate to sit in both camps – the advancement of social computing in business and the maturation of PLM. That is why the intersection of social computing and PLM is so interesting to me.

Implications for Manufacturers
One of the key points that I made in the interview was that I see the greatest value not from one side or the other (social computing or PLM). I believe that the most significant improvements to product innovation, product development, and engineering performance will come from linking social interactions with product data. That’s why I pay so much attention to what PTC, Siemens, Dassault Systemes, Vuuch, Sopheon, and others are doing in this space. That is the where the real power is unleashed. Generic tools will be helpful, but by connecting the two we get:

• A product-focused discussion that directly helps develop better products
• A source of product knowledge (the discussion itself) that can be captured and reused into the future

It was great to have an opportunity to discuss this with Sankar to remind me how passionate I am about the potential of taking the concepts of things like Facebook and applying them to product development. I hope you found the discussion (and the interview) interesting.

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!

What I learned this week … was that we could use a good, common PLM definition and scope, but we will not get one. The discussion (a lot of discussion in multiple forums, actually) came from my post SAP, Too Much or Too Little Credit for PLM Efforts and another called Who Will Disrupt Entrenched PLM Vendors? Chris Williams pointed out on a LinkedIn thread that he felt maybe the confusion was due to a lack of understanding of what PLM really is, and asked for a common definition. My response? Not so much.

A Not-so-Common Defintion

Chris asked the million dollar question. But PLM is not one thing. While ERP has matured to a more common footprint across the vendors, the scope of PLM from each of the vendors differs. I define PLM as “processes and software used to improve product innovation, product development, and engineering performance.” That is (by definition, not by fault) very broad. There is no one “PLM” definition. The vision of the vendors shows consoliation over time, but today they are very different. Siemens includes MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) for A&D. Dassault Systemes has spent much more effort in “lifelike simulation.” PTC includes development of product documentation. Then, there are the applications that don’t come as a part of the suite, which makes each implementation different. Aras includes APQP and quality. They are all different.

Implications for Manufacturers

The lack of a common definition is also why putting in PLM without a strategy is a quagmire waiting to happen. But a common defintion won’t help. While there are standard processes in PLM, they are not as common as in ERP. There are examples of common processes, such as Stage-Gate processes for new product development (NPD) or CMII for change management. But product innovation and product development are not as standardized processes as accounting, as an example. It is not the lack of common PLM system definition at the root of this, it is the lack of common PLM processes. And as much as companies like Invention Machine are putting process orientation into innovation, it will still not be as standardized as ERP functions like human resource management.

So, manufacturers really need to think about what problems they want to solve before implementing PLM. You can’t just install the software and expect any benefits (beyond maybe simple data management). This is what I call the PLM Program, a strategy and vision for PLM that you accomplish in small, incremental steps.

So those are my thoughts on a common PLM defintion, don’t hold your breath waiting for it. I hope you found it interesting. Do you have a better one? I didn’t, if you do let us know about it.

That, by the way, is one of the reasons it is very hard for ERP to simply build another module and call it PLM. That is why SAP has a long program to develop PLM (which will be yet another variation on the PLM theme, different from the others).

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 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.