Standards, Standards and Challenges
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2PLM NewsletterJohn Stark Associates January 18, 2010 - Vol12 #21 |
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Welcome to the 2PLM e-zine This issue includes :
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PLM Standards: Starting the Debate |
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| The December issues of 2PLM highlighted the lack of structure in the PLM industry, and the need for standards and qualifications to be established if PLM is ever to become the profession that we think it should be. In particular, from the December 07 issue:-
"Almost every other business function or profession (management, project management, quality, engineering, purchasing, supply chain - the list is extensive) has its own industry body, its own professional standards, and its own qualifications. The PLM industry should be no exception. PLM standards lead to more effective working and the possibility of "right first time" implementations. PLM qualifications lead to professional recognition, and an enhanced career path for PLM specialists. In order to develop standards and qualifications, the PLM industry will have to get organised. There will need to be meetings to propose, define and agree the standards. There will need to be collaboration to establish exactly which roles, skills and knowledge will be embodied within the qualifications. There will need to be international cooperation to align the standards across countries and regions. Furthermore, there will need to be a new industry grouping of professional experts from PLM organisations that will act as the appraising authority." |
Given the need for standards, more questions arise: "Do we want them?" "Would we adopt them, or are we afraid of them?" The response of vendors and consultancies to these questions will be interesting.
There are practical considerations, too. The worst thing that could happen would be for many committees and subcommittees to be formed, generating overblown material that looks interesting to them but is of no practical use. We need simple, easy-to-apply standards that do not conflict with the existing pool of intellectual capital. In fact, we need an open, international discussion. The debate begins below with a viewpoint on the consequences of the lack of standards on the education of our future graduates; and an overview of the Product Structure issues that effective standards could resolve. It will continue on the PLMIG web site with an Open Forum and a 'PLM Standards Reference Page' that summarises the PLM-related standards that currently exist. Input and feedback from everyone involved in PLM is welcome. Roger Tempest is co-founder of the PLMIG. The PLMIG would welcome your views or suggestions for PLM standards or qualifications, via standards@plmig.com |
| The Effect of Standards on Education by Maarten Hagen |
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| From my experience I expect that PLM is here to stay. Both the Product Development and Product Change disciplines will continue to have a place of their own and within the wider collaborative business network going forward. Some say it may be superseded by an all-encompassing ERP system but from what I have seen, despite the fact that the humble BoM is what ERP needs to manufacture, ERP itself is not expected to broaden its scope to encompass PLM.
Another reason PLM will remain as such a discipline is that university students do not receive an education in PLM to a large extent. They are trained to be engineers, food technologists, fashion designers, etc - often in quite a narrow manner. Their training does not necessarily cover the 'scaled-up'/industrial/ thinking, and most graduates only pick this up when they start to work in (larger) companies. There they see industrial manufacture, industrial cooking, industrial fashion manufacture. |
As a result they start to appreciate the wider business network for making decisions, based on data and interactions. It is within these businesses that PLM 'happens' - not a university lecture theatre.
The discrete industry is very much a front-runner in PLM, followed by industries with a need for global collaboration (such as fashion). Within food manufacturing companies, PLM is rarely recognised by any people who work on Product Development. This however, is beginning to change. The success of PLM will depend on the extent that it is relevant to the needs of engineers/technologists in specific industries, so I would suggest that discrete manufacturing leads the way, and from this we can develop 'standard' industry specific visions for PLM, and the associated skill profiles for PLM professionals, that can then bring PLM into the universities. dr. Maarten Hagen is a Business Consultant at Infor. He can be reached at maarten.hagen@infor.com or +44(0)7920 495 258. |
| The Challenge of Product Structure By John Stark |
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| At 2PLM we have many contacts with PLM implementors as we prepare each issue. A recent discussion with the PLM Manager of a multinational telecommunications corporation about the issues they are having with Product Structure is worth including as thoughts move towards possible PLM standards.
"A significant PLM issue in our industry is that of product configuration. It might seem that this should follow the same rules as for a car or a PC, but PLM is never so simple. Naturally, the starting point is a base product, which may sometimes be pre-configured, available in any colour as long as it's black, and with all the possible configurations and variants. In the car industry, there is the useful idea of a silhouette to represent a 'product', but in our industry we sell 'solutions', comprising a kit of products and services. We already consider a solution or service to be a 'product', so the whole thing becomes hierarchical (and/or recursive!). For planning and forecasting purposes, we need to know, "How many of each 'product' will we sell next period?" So there are planning models which are 'typical' configurations. And there are also tendering models when the customer's requirements are not yet known in detail. Of course, customers are not interested in our product management difficulties. They simply want to place a one-line order for what they require as a "product, configured as discussed". |
The order is transformed into a BOM of sellable items (modules, racks, shelves, cables...) and these become line items on the internal view of the order.
Furthermore, there is Customer Support where the customer needs a picklist of all our products to raise his tickets against. And on top of all this, there are regulatory agencies who want 'product compliance' which may need a different view (maybe a worst case configuration). Across the company, the goal is to have one Product Master Database (trying to avoid terminology conflicts with ERP) but it is a constant challenge to crystallise the line between the Product Line/Family and the sellable modules that are actually shipped, actually have part numbers, serial numbers and prices...." I've seen many companies with similar issues, so I expect many readers of 2PLM will have thought, as they read the above, "That looks familiar, we have those issues too". And they would know that the effort required by a company to address such issues is huge. Since there are no standards, each company has to build its own PLM solution. Perhaps the questions isn't, "Should there be PLM Standards?", but "Can we afford not to have PLM Standards?" 2PLM welcomes your views or suggestions. |
| Effective BPM By Scott Cleveland |
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Over the years, I have talked to many companies. I used to be surprised at how few had even begun to address their business processes.
Today, I am surprised if they are doing any business process management. I am sure that there are many reasons for this, but I would expect the top of the list to include:
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Back to my mantra - if you want your company to be one of the companies that breaks out of this 'depression' stronger, then you must get more efficient. Don't we all want to increase revenues, decrease costs and improve customer relationships? Leverage Business Process Management to increase market share and increase profits! |
| PLM10 Conference and Call for Papers By David Potter |
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| You are cordially invited to participate in the 7th International Product Lifecycle Management Conference, PLM10, to take place 12th - 14th July 2010 in Bremen in the North West of Germany.
Following the successful first six conferences, held in Bangalore (2003), Lyon (2005), Bangalore (2006), Bergamo/ Milano (2007), Seoul (2008) and Bath (2009), this will be the seventh PLM conference and the first to be held in Germany. The purpose of the PLM10 conference will be to present recent developments in this area of both significant academic interest and critical importance to industrial enterprises. |
The conference is promoted by the International Federation for Information Processing (ifip) Working Group 5.1 on Global Product Development for the whole Lifecycle.
Please follow this link for further information David Potter is Chief Technical Officer, Promise Innovation International Oy., and former Chairman of the Project Steering Board of the EU PROMISE Project. |
| BPM and Social Media By Scott Cleveland |
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| Pundits are forecasting that Social Networking will deeply impact many types of Web-based software - including Business Process Management.
Having worked for startups in Silicon Valley, I've been watching Social Networking Websites very closely. Over the last several years, I've been researching how to use these sites to increase revenues - today, pundits are calling this Marketing 2.0. Social sites are getting a lot of attention from marketers trying to figure out how to make money on the movement. But it's still early. BPM is about managing business processes. The goal is to manage processes to increase revenues, decrease costs and improve customer relationships. You can manage business processes without using any software or websites - it's been happening for years. |
And, if using software or social media will help you manage processes, then I'm all for it. But, today, I can't see a reason to go there. We already have Email, why go through a Social Site's mail? We can already share documents, why post them on a Social Site? We can notify people of tasks with basic Email, why use Social Networking technology?
But I'm not totally negative on this - I do see that a social site could be a part of a process that helps you build and maintain customer relationships. What do you think? I'd be pleased to know your views. Scott Cleveland - Coldwater Technology - can be contacted on +1 408-464-6387 |
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