Take-Home PLM Best Practice, PLM Conference, PLM: what does it do? Top 5 PLM Myths, PLM State of the Union
2PLM NewsletterJohn Stark Associates May 9, 2011 - Vol14 #3 |
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Welcome to the 2PLM e-zine This issue includes :
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| Take-Home PLM Best Practice by Roger Tempest |
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| Running a PLM implementation is an all-consuming task, and there are very few reference points to show how well you are doing. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your PLM approach, and how far do your internal methods mimic what has already been created in other companies?
At present, there are no metrics to show whether what you are doing is "Best Practice", and there is no open framework that you can follow to save re-inventing the wheel. Most PLM user companies have defined a set of internal rules or methods that work well, but they duplicate what other organisations are doing, and they all differ by so much that they cannot be used across the whole extended enterprise. Participation at the Gothenburg Workshop on 24-25 May will give you two days of detailed collaboration with other PLM practitioners who face the same problems, and want to make the same improvements. You can share experiences about what works, and what does not work; and start to formalise these concepts for the first time in PLM. When you get back to the office, you will have a brand new insight into what is, and is not, working within other companies, and can look at your own implementation programme with this new viewpoint. |
Participation at the Munich Workshop on 08-09 June provides a second platform for detailed collaboration, and one that will build on the Gothenburg results. As the Munich event is hosted by the Bundeswehr University, there will also be a feature on the Agenda about how we can achieve the advanced PLM we should all be aiming for by 2020.
Not only do you take home a much broader and more constructive understanding of what PLM Best Practice really means, but (unlike conventional take-aways) this one keeps on delivering. As more events are held in other countries, participants in Gothenburg and Munich will receive the results and give their feedback. Registration is open for both events, via standardisation@plmig.com.
Roger Tempest is co-founder of the PLMIG. Membership of the PLMIG is available via membership@plmig.com. |
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| Hotels, PLM Conference, September 2011 by John Stark |
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| A cost-conscious attendee, registering for the PLM Conference and Exhibition to be held at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland on September 6-7, 2011, asked about the possibility of a room at the hotel on the CERN site.
Other attendees may find the requested information of use. Hotel on CERN site
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Details of other hotels in the vicinity of CERN can be found here. Flights
Early Bird
If you're interested in participating, please contact John Stark. |
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| PLM: what does it actually do? by Henk Jan Pels |
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| In my previous column, I stated that PLM is more than a software package. It's a business function that aims for a product portfolio that is maximally balanced with the competencies of R&D, the needs of the market, the constraints of the manufacturing system, and the supply chain relationships. It's about better coordination between those functions, in order to make the enterprise more profitable. Information technology plays an essential role in PLM, with new possibilities to store and communicate product data.
The effect of new technological possibilities can be illustrated by the famous example of the Ford T, the first car to be mass-produced and affordable for a broad public. It could be chosen in "any color, as long as it is black". The cost of flexibility became clear when, at last, green was offered as an alternative color. Before then, there had never been any stock or delivery problems, but now suddenly dealers were fighting for green cars, while large stocks of unsold black cars occupied the factory parking lots. The difference was that, in the past, a steady flow of identical cars left the factory. The distribution among the dealers was decided one year ahead and every car produced was sold. The color option introduced a planning problem: how many black, how many green? The decision had to be taken 6 month before the customers made - independent of the planning - their choice. (Even the introduction of computerised MRP systems in the 1960's couldn't solve the issue that it's not given to Man to foretell the future.) Only since the 1990's have computer integrated manufacturing and ERP systems made the production system so flexible that lead times can be reduced to less than a week. Since then, the manufacturer doesn't need to plan anymore - just produce what the customers ordered. The Manufacturing Execution Systems tell the ERP system, real-time, the position of each piece of material and thus enable precise coordination of logistic processes over the complete supply chain. Does that mean that the end goal has been reached? Luckily not! If a customer wants something that isn't in the catalogue, it takes an awful lot of time before it's developed. Only three years ago, the PLM chief of Ford stated in a keynote speech at the international PLM08 conference in Seoul, that the task of PLM is to involve the customer more in the design process, to design more differentiated products and to reduce product development cost by a factor 10. Personally, I believe that he was too modest: the productivity of product development must increase by at least two orders of magnitude (a factor 100 or more). PLM will be the main enabler. |
Mail Model and Blackboard Model What do PLM systems bring that enables such a revolution in product offering? In the first place, PLM includes a database system that enables dynamic sharing of product data. To understand the importance of this, one should realise that there are two basic models of communication: the mail model and the blackboard model. In the mail model, the sender makes a copy of the data to be shared and sends it physically to the receivers. In the blackboard model, the sender writes the data on a blackboard that is concurrently visible for all receivers. They get the news without delay and always see the current state. The mail model is quite different. The sender will have to create a copy (redundancy) and a message. It takes time before the message arrives, and the receiver wastes time and effort storing the mail. When he looks up some data, the chance is very high that he gets outdated information. Because of the delay, the effort and the risk of errors, communication must be restricted to a minimum, and processes must be decoupled in time, causing long lead times and weak control. A database server in a network is a blackboard, because what is written on it can be read real-time by many users regardless of their location around the world. Thus a PLM system can be viewed as a virtual blackboard on which all parties involved write and read the evolving specification of the product. Since there are no delays, no redundancy, no effort for sharing information and no risk for errors, the frequency of interaction can be increased dramatically, delays are eliminated and control tightened, resulting in extreme flexibility. If we can convince engineers to write every new piece of data - from the initial idea to the experience with demolition - directly on the PLM-blackboard, and never to store any piece of paper, then the PLM system will have real-time knowledge of every step in the process. With that knowledge, the PLM system can coordinate the engineering process with high accuracy, and reduce cost and lead time dramatically. If, in addition to document and workflow management, the product structure is well-organised and visualised in 3D, then we can stop engineers inventing every wheel a hundred times, and focus them on only designing the new things the customer needs. To be continued.
Dr.ir. Henk Jan Pels is Associate Professor, Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences, Information Systems, at the Technical University of Eindhoven, The Netherlands. He can be contacted here. |
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| PLM State of the Union by Roger Tempest |
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| PLM doesn't often make the national press, but an enterprising media initiative has set out to produce a PLM supplement for one of the UK's main newspapers. A great idea, and a great opportunity to showcase what PLM can do for businesses.
However, even with the incentive of appearing in this national publicity vehicle for PLM, it turned out to be very difficult to find case studies of companies that have benefited from PLM, apart from the existing few that were already known via the vendors' web sites. The problem was made more acute by having to focus only on the UK - a quick glance at the vendors' sites shows that the generous list of customer stories is spread around many countries. Only one or two of them may be in yours. It seems that, whenever you examine a PLM implementation in more depth and detail than a one-page overview, there are more problems than benefits to talk about. This, in turn, means that the real state of PLM is not nearly as advanced as everybody thinks it is. |
It's important to understand this, and what it means for PLM standardisation. If you feel somehow that your own PLM implementation is not as advanced as everyone else's - then you are in the same position as everyone else. At the Gothenburg and Munich Workshops, the participants will be at the real PLM level, with all the successes and problems that go with it.
You don't need to qualify for the Workshops by having one of the world's best PLM implementations (though you will be most welcome if you do!). You just need to want to improve PLM from where it is now.
Roger Tempest is co-founder of the PLMIG. The Daily Telegraph PLM Supplement is due for publication on 14 June.
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