I was just reading Jos Voskuil’s post about the 5 reasons not to implement PLM. Although his title is tongue and cheeck, he does stumble onto some things that need to be further explored. In one post, reason 5, he explains PLM captures Product IP. I really wonder about this? Does PLM capture the IP or just the net result of the design process?
Assume you are one year after product launch and you discover a major flaw. Oh ya you just laid off your team because of the economy. Let’s also assume you had been using Enovia and Windchill throughout the design of this project, therefore you have no concern, because you have all the data you need to fix the problem. All you need to do is get some engineers, give them PLM excess and the fix is right around the corner… Right?
I wonder they would pick if you lined up the newly hired engineers and told them they could have one of the following items (Since PLM is not file management, the new team can have every CAD file, plus one item below):
- Bringing back the old project manager
- Bring back the manufacturing engineer that worked on the team
- Access to all the PLM data
- Every email sent during the entire the design process
I would say they would rather have all the email conversations.
Hi Vuuch team (and I think I know who you are),
Your project looks very interesting. We agree that broad-based point solutions are critical to the product development path because 1) everybody has them so no additional $$, 2) they don’t require a week’s training to learn 3) they don’t add work to the user – ie. no additional logins or other steps. If you can bring the power of Web 2.0 to these processes, you will create a lot of value.
Your thinking is complementary to where we are heading at ENGINEERING.com. Go have a look. In particular, check out the MyEngineering tab we launched quietly this week.
John
Hey it would be nice to register at eng.com by i never get my authorization mail… any help would be great.
Hmm. About 20 people have successfully registered since your attempt last night. I wonder if our registration email is getting caught in your spam filter for some reason. If you want to contact me directly, I would be more than happy to chase this down. Please send your user name and/or email address to jhayes@engineering.com.
Chris I believe I have to elaborate my thoughts. For me PLM is more than storing product related (design) data – it is also trying to extract and manage design reasons and issues, which are mostly discussed in meetings (and never captured) or by email (only known by people who are in the TO or CC list).
And in that context i fully agree with the points you raised where currenlty the IP lies – it is mostly in the people’s head not in the organization.
I also do no claim any PLM system currently supports this approach. From that point of view I am tempted to dive deeper into your concept too when time allows me, as i see we are both targeting the same type of customers.
Looking forward for a further discussion
[...] development in that area I am observing recently is in http://www.vuuch.com. An initiative to empower design [...]
Certainly PLM is about more than file management… You say it is about the dsicussions used to move a design forward, but how do you these as part of what PLM does today? How have you seen customers capture this freeform exchange?
You point out that emialed information is available to those that are copied, but are you really sure. If I had an email conversation about a design issue 6 months ago, how do I get it today? How do I even remeber I had this discussion?
Chris, I see value in capturing design iteration and this is I believe, your main point. You assume most of such iteration today in mail – yes, I think so. Otherwise people adopted processes supported by PLM/PDM systems for design changes. Some of them have flow/messages/routes support to move messages between people with attached information and design intent. If we will take all this stuff together, we probably will have PLM IP.
Does it make sense?
Oleg
I feel most design iteration/dsicussion out side of a team meeting, either early or late in a design project, is done through emial. I also feel that even those compaies that have deployed PLM apply it very late in the process, really to only release a file. What I have found is users will check something out and leve it on their desktop for an extended amount of time as they don’t value the file being managed.
While it is important to control files I don’t beleive they are really out of control, even where people have not deployed PLM. The reason is most organizations still control the drawing. I know of PLM users that still only control the 2d and leave the source 3d files on desktops.
I agree that you can call all of this PLM. But what I find more important is how we put ROI on the components of what we call PLM.
Hey it would be nice to register at eng.com by i never get my authorization mail… any help would be great.