What I learned this week … came from a question in response to my post on The Evolving Roles of ERP and PLM in Manufacturing. The question as asked was “For a mid-size company that has a complex Bill of Materials, are there specific ERP systems that integrate well with CATIA and SmarTeam?”
Vendors
Dassault Systemes and IBM put right the PLM Ecosystem
I had the chance to talk with … Dassault Systemes and IBM today about Dassault’s announced acquisition of parts of IBM’s PLM business. For many, this is the dissolution of a long-standing marriage that they are comfortable with and makes sense. They may mourn the loss. To me, this is just the final correction to a legacy relationship that has served its time and purpose. Dassault Systemes (DS) and IBM have been great partners – and still will be. But this move will allow IBM and DS to focus on their core competencies and allow DS to continue pursuing their PLM vision.
The Evolving Roles of ERP and PLM in Manufacturing
A quick peek into some research on … how the roles of ERP and PLM have evolved from Tech-Clarity’s most recent report, Tech-Clarity Insight: The Evolving Roles of ERP and PLM – Integrating the Roles of Execution and Innovation. This research is a follow up to The Complementary Roles of ERP and PLM. The paper furthers my previous research and describes how the use of these enterprise systems has evolved, and the associated maturation of the integration between ERP and PLM systems. As my past research has concluded, these systems remain the cornerstone of product profitability and are better together.
What I Learned: PLM, Please Take 3 Giant Steps Forward
What I learned this week … came from reflecting on three major PLM product announcements this week. In one week, Dassault is announcing the new release of their “PLM 2.0” suite, Oracle is announcing the next release of Agile PLM, and Siemens PLM is announcing the new releases of Teamcenter and Tecnomatix. Jeff Hojlo and I will be covering each of the releases in our blog, but I thought it made sense to start with some context-setting across all three. I am impressed with the amount of investment that PLM vendors have made in their products in what has been a difficult year for enterprise software in general, kudos to all three (and the others that have continued to invest in this solution set that continues to grow in importance).
What I Learned: Is Social Product Development Viable without PLM?
What I learned this week … came from a post on PLM Think Tank (aka PLM Twine) titled 5 reasons why Wiki fails for PLM collaboration which I think points to an interesting set of questions:
Is social computing software enough on it’s own to support product innovation, product development, and engineering?
– Will social computing software evolve to handle more full PLM-related requirements as it matures?
– Will PLM leverage social computing platforms to extend their capabilities?
– Will PLM embed social computing capabilities of their own?
Here is my take on an interesting conversation, and some of my thoughts on the direction that social computing in PLM might take.
Research Rap: Impact of Economy on Smaller PLM Vendors
A quick peek into some research on … how the economy has impacted smaller companies in the engineering software market. This is a follow up to last my post on the impact of the economy on the engineering software market as a whole, with the detail I promised on smaller vendors. Last week I tipped my hand by saying that smaller companies believe they will weather the storm, and some feel they will come out stronger on the other end. That generated some interesting discussion, so I thought I should hurry to post some detail, so here it is…