Business Process Management, PLM and Open Source Track

BPM (Business Process Management) is another interesting topic I’m following already many years. I found it connected to PLM and other product development disciplines. PLM usually contains some elements of Business Process Management. I’ve been discussing the topic on my blog early. Look on few previous posts such as PLM Software and Business Process Scalability and How to increase business process technology adoption rate for PLM? BPM wasn’t on the list of hot announcements that PLM vendors are doing these days. It was kind of “considered done” action. Was it that, in reality? I don’t know. Process management is an inside topic in PLM implementation. IT and engineering system management people are interested in how to make it right. The same people can also decide what tools and infrastructure will be used for process management. Does it come from PLM vendor? Maybe IT will decide to use some alternatives in addition to that? Who knows? The decision will be hidden deep in IT department…

Nevertheless, I found the following article in CNET interesting – Open Source BPM startup BonitaSoft raised $11M. For me the importance of the event was mostly because of it is another example in a wider trend – finding simpler and more affordable solutions for complicated problems. BPM is one of them. There is plenty of tools that can be used to get BPM done in a complex way. This is where IT is going. This is where complex PLM implementations are going. I found the following passage interesting:

Gartner explained the market growth by pointing to increased interest in software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools, which offer a cheaper entry point, and a shift toward funding BPM projects from business-unit budgets rather than IT, reflecting an emphasis on BPM’s business benefits.

The combination with open sources creates another confirmation that IT (or even departmental management) is seriously considering such a type of solutions to become part of implementation.

What is my conclusion? Think about mindshare PLM vendors. The solution portfolio they are selling combined from multiple layers, components and functional pieces. BPM is one of them. IT is the organization PLM vendors need to convince as part of their selling process. I think, we can see an evidence of how this pattern is going to change. A simpler and cheaper solution is going to challenge larger BPM vendors. Open source play a revolutionary role in this trend. PLM vendors learned from large ERP companies how to sell solutions to large manufacturing firms. Is it going to change? I don’t know. Just my opinion…

Courtesy - Oleg

How to increase “Business Process Technology” Adoption Rate for PLM

One of the things I see very important is user adoption. We can develop brilliant technologies, but if nobody  uses it, the value of these technologies will be very low. I see Process Technologies as  very important for the Product Lifecycle development… One of the problems I see today is that there is inconsistence between the definition of the Process  and its usage.
I think definition side of “process technologies” works very well. We can define who is doing what and when, how information is flowing and many other details. But as soon as we start this process, many things change. People move, new tasks and changes appear,  and at  the end it’s not easy  to understand  what is going on, how to execute, monitor and manage the changes in this process. Therefore, at  the end, many of processes slap and become  very formal or less usable. So, what can we do in order to prevent it?
I’d propose  three steps that can improve Business Process Technology adoption:

1. Flattering Processes Definition. A process needs to become more modular, simple and changeable.
2. Simplification of the User Interface. We need to remove complexity. Simple… Actually,  users need a list of tasks to perform on daily basis and a list of follow up tasks. We need to massively use mobile and other alternative communications and collaboration tools to allow users to follow up the processes.
3. Flexibility and Change. Changes will come very fast. Life and organizational processes are really dynamic. Process implementation  must allow managing those  changes. It  should be easy-to-make step. We need to be able to re-assign people, change/cancel tasks and to change the process itself. 

So, what do you think?

Courtesy - Oleg

PLM Software and Business Process Scalability

Scaling up is a tough problem. I want to talk today and PLM Software scalability in unusual aspects – business processes. In the past, CAD and PLM vendors spent lots of effort to help software scale up in their ability to manage huge CAD assemblies and very sophisticated product configuration. When PLM system first loaded airplane 3D model, made a DMU and resolved different airplane or car configurations, we said wow… However, it was many years ago. Since then, PLM wizards are stacking with a problem they didn’t expect to see – how to scale up PLM in the organization?

Emails, Collaboration and Business Processes

In order to scale up in the organization, you need to have people using the system. After many years of different types of collaborative software experience, my fundamental conclusion is simple. Most of the engineering and manufacturing organizations are run by emails. This is where PLM failed massively – it doesn’t scale up to get people using PLM systems. PLM collaboration is very successful when you think about two designers are working on the same feature. However, it is different when you think about a design engineer and a manufacturing engineer are collaborating. Yesterday, I had a chance to read Develop3D article – Design and Manufacturing in Perfect Harmony. You may think, this is an excellent example where PLM system can help design and manufacturing people to work together. So, why it doesn’t happen?

Design to Manufacturing

PLM vendors spent lots of effort and resources working on collaborative processes. Design to Manufacturing is one of them, and this is probably is one of the most important if you think about how PLM implementation can scale up in the organization. However, I can identify top 3 reasons why collaboration is so not efficient between engineering and manufacturing:

1. Environment separationDesigner and Manufacturing Engineer sees a world differently. In most of the situations designers are living in their CAD/PDM world. At the same time, manufacturing engineers are on top of MRP/ERP environment and working on their MBOM-driven processes. PLM failed to scale up and establish a scalable process between these two environments.

2. Common Goals and SynchronizationHow to achieve a harmony in a common work? You need to set up a common goal. When designer and manufacturing are working in different environments, they have a hard time to define a common goal and follow this goal in their daily operation. Most of their time they spent to synchronize their environments. The final stop in the synchronization is a weekly meeting. You can see how people spending their time literally synchronizing information between them.

3. Push ProcessesHow to get work done in the modern manufacturing organization? Unfortunately, email is probably the most widely used mechanism. And this is really bad, because it creates a ping-pong of information going back and forth between people in the organization. This is an environment where Excel is a king of the email road.

PLM and Process Scalability

In my view, this is the place where most of the current PLM implementations failed. Scaling up beyond the engineering department is a tough problem. The best organizations I had chance to see solved this problem by a massive customization work and enormous effort in making people work together in the same environment.

What is my conclusion? When I talk to people, I’m constantly asking the following question – what is the biggest problem you faced in all PLM implementations? Here is my today’s conclusion - PLM is a great concept and a very important organization strategy. However, it doesn’t scale up in the organization. In order to make it work out, you need to spend too many resources. When it comes to results you can see a very low value for money and resources you spent. Think about space shuttles. We need to spend a lot of rocket fuel to get a space shuttle in the space. The same with PLM… Something is wrong behind the scene. Is it technology? Implementation? People?

What is your take?

Courtesy - Oleg

What is the biggest PLM challenge?

First I want to state that there are several types of definition in the world for PLM, coming from different type of organizations – I listed here two vendor independent definitions:

The Wiki definition:

In industry, product lifecycle management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its conception, through design and manufacture, to service and disposal. PLM integrates people, data, processes and business systems and provides a product information backbone for companies and their extended enterprise.

The 2PLM definition:
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the business activity of managing a company’s products all the way across the lifecycle in the most effective way. The objective of PLM is to improve company revenues and income by maximizing the value of the product portfolio

The Wiki definition gives the impression that you need to have an infrastructure to manage (store) all product data in order to serve as an information backbone for the extended enterprise. It becomes more an IT-project, often sponsored by the IT-department, with the main goal to provide information services to the company in a standardized manner.

This type of PLM implementations tends to be the same type of implementation as an ERP system or other major IT-system. In this type of top-down implementations, the classical best practices for project management should be followed. This means:

• A clear vision
• Management sponsorship
• A steering committee
• A skilled project leader and team
• Committed resources
• Power user involvement
• Communication
• …… and more …

The following passage is worthwhile:

Instead of being able to implement new concepts or new technology, the implementation became more and more vendor monolithic as other capabilities and applications do not fit anymore. This is against the concept of openness and being flexible for the future. I believe if PLM becomes as rigid as ERP, it blocks companies to innovate – the challenge for big companies is to find the balance between stability and flexibility.

The flexibility is an important topic. It corresponds to some of my previous blogs: PLM out-of-the-box: Missleading or Focusing? and PLM Model: Granularity, Bottom-Up and Change. The ability to deploy pre-configured solution and make an easy change by manipulating multiple elements of PLM infrastructure in a granular way is one of the most important technological aspects related to most of successful PLM implementations. I think Jos nailed these topics in the list of PLM challenges. Here is the list:

-PLM is considered complex to implement
-PLM is a huge IT-project
-PLM requires change and structuring – but what about flexibility
-Where is the PLM value and ROI – user acceptance
-PLM for the mid-market – does it exist ?

Earlier, this year, I had a chance to run Beyond PLM panel discussion during Aras Community Event (ACE). Navigate to the following link to see my presentation and read more comments. Look on the slide from my presentation shows the list biggest PLM challenges as I see them:

What is my conclusion? PLM as it today introduces a significant level of changes in an organization. It can be considered as an organizational improvements and impact organization for the future improvements. However, in many cases, this change is burden organization and people. It is also coming with a significant cost. So, to decrease PLM implementation and future changes cost down is the top priority for all PLM vendors. This is a time to innovate. Just my thoughts, of course.

Courtesy : Oleg,Jos

PLM, ERP and Managing of Effectivity

Conversation about Effectivity is always complicated. There are lots of opinions about how you need to manage effectivity, what system serves the best the purpose of effectivity management and how to solve potential complication when dealing with effectivity management.

Effectivity in ERP vs. PDM/PLM

Effectivity definition originally comes from MRP/ERP environment. The most typical example is “date effectivity” which defines the available to a particular Part/Item. The “effectivity” term is not specific for manufacturing environment. However, I found it useful in many related to manufacturing systems. PDM/PLM originally was created without effectivity in mind. Most of engineering systems are “revision” oriented rather than “effectivity” oriented. It means PDM/PLM is managing different revision of objects (i.e. Parts, Documents, etc.) rather than defines their effectivites. However, with the increased need of integration between PDM and ERP as well as the introduction of PLM systmes on the market, the need to manage effectivity on multiple Bill of Materials int the environment different from manufacturing increased significantly. Effectivity might be defined as a date, serial number or, in a more complex way, as a “unit” (think about a particular car configuration / model).

Effectivity: Part vs. BOM

The difference between effectivity in the context of a Part and the effectivity in the context of a BOM is often getting misunderstood. These two effectivities can be managed independently. Part effectivity scope is only Part itself. An example is a manufacturing part effective from 1-June until 31-August. At the same time, you can define effectivity of a particular part in the context of the assembly. In the case of assembly, a Part can be used in different assemblies /BOMs with a different effectivity.

Effectivity Management

What means management of effectivity? Some of the elements of effectivity management related to the definition of effectivity dates, S/N, units, etc. They are coming as an information from suppliers (in case of standard parts), subcontractors, manufacturing planners, etc. At the same time, there is another aspect of efectivity management related to proliferation of effectivity during the management of Bill of Materials and ECO. One of the examples can be a change of Bill of Material related to the ECO implementation. There are many other situations. They can be very specific and depend on company practices and development/manufacturing processes.

Effecitivity and Different Industries.
Some elements of effectivity management can be different, depends on the industry. Development practices in discrete manufacturing are from electronic and others. In addition, different effectivity types can be applied in case of managing highly configured equipment (i.e. cars, airplanes, etc.)en. The diversity between industry are caused by differences in product development methodologies as well as by differences in data modeling.

What is my conclusion? Effectivity management can be complicated. It can be especially complicated, in the case of multiple environments – PDM, PLM, ERP. The synchronization between systems as well as effectivities updates can be challenging to be implemented. To maintain a consistent system is a crucial part of implementation from the standpoint of a standalone system as well as multiple connected environments. I hope this summary provided you with the basics of the effectvity management. At the same time, I would be interested to hear about your practices in how you manage effectivity in different environments.

Courtesy - Oleg

Enterprise Search - PLM Challenge

Aras and Enterprise Search

Aras is following OSS strategy to solve their momentarily interest in search. Built on top of Microsoft technological stack, Aras made an experiment with Microsoft based Search solutions. Most of them are coming today from SharePoint space.

I found the SharePoint search story a bit controversial. The actual cost of SharePoint solution can grow significantly depends on the size data storage and system configuration. Navigate your browser to the following interesting blog article to read more about The Real Cost SharePoint Search. You can also learn more about SharePoint search using ArnoldIT Overflight Search system. Navigate to the followinglink to browse through information about SharePoint search.

PLM, Enterprise Search and Open Source

Alcove9 and NorthRidge presented their solutions and vision of enterprise search related to Aras and PLM. Take a look on the following slides and make your conclusion.

Aras Enterprise Search Strategy

I found Aras’ strategy in the space of search interesting. I can expect customers are interested in search these days. PLM vendors experience challenging position in this place. We have seen OEM agreements and acquisitions made by other PLM vendors. Aras is taking an alternative way and playing with Lucene/Solr enterprise search platform to bundle it with Aras using community partnerships. Here is what Peter Schroer said about Aras Search Strategy.

What is my conclusion? The amount of information in manufacturing companies is growing. PLM vendors clearly see the need to solve this problem. The solutions seem to be beyond the level of databases. The information is located in multiple applications, systems, files, databases. Search is one of the possible options to help people to solve the information problem. Aras’ choice to follow “open source” path is complementary to Aras’ vision of Enterprise Open Source. It seems to me a good balance to Dassault/Exaled and OEM agreements made by other PLM vendors. I expect this space to become more active in the future. Just my thoughts…

Courtesy - Oleg

PLM: Share Data or Die

I’m still digesting a huge amount of information I learned fromPLM Innovation Congress earlier this week in London. However, there is one trend that I can identify that struck me as a major one coming across all presentations and talks. I can call it “integrate and share” trend. The problem of integration and share of data is not new in manufacturing organization. The need for integration of various elements of data for product development, manufacturing and supply chain is clear. Software vendors and customers are working for on this for years. However, something new happens now that allow me to have a fresh look on this.

Integration Processes

The sound of integration needs is very loud, and you are able to see it in presentations. I put few examples of pictures I made during the event to show how customers explain their critical business issues related to integration of data and processes in organizations. In a nutshell, inability to provide smooth integration prevents streamlining of organizational processes. It appears in communication between engineering and manufacturing, sales and production, support and sales.

Share Data

The need to share data is obvious. However, data sharing was never realized in an easy way. There are multiple reasons for that. Some of them are including the nature of people (keep my data close to me), company organization (departments, hierarchy, etc.) and competition between vendors (lock-in data inside of proprietary formats and data structures). At the same the value of data sharing is obvious. Organizations are losing money, projects are going out of schedules just because of that. PLM aimed to solve this problem during the past decade. I have to note a significant success in multiple implementations I had a chance to see. I personally participated in some of them. However, the ability to share data efficiently is still more science that ordinary process.

What is my conclusion? The need to integrate and share data is urgent. However, the way organizations are doing it, reminds me space shuttle programs. There is a need to downgrade and simplify these integration efforts to become more similar to transatlantic flights or even car trips. Just my thoughts…

Courtesy - Oleg