2 years of PLM blogging – pick a future topic

Time flies. We have a 2 years anniversary as bloggers. Here are some reflections about the previous blogs. What is getting the most attention? What is a bit scary? You also get the opportunity to vote for a future blog topic.

Some statistics

• 26 blogs in two years.
• Close to 15000 readings. We aim higher the next 2 years.
• Most of the readers are in USA, Sweden, Norway or France. Our main market is in the Nordics. Hello Denmark and Finland! You are not even in top 10…

What gets most attention?
As independent PLM advisors we have had very different topics. Some of them are generic views of PLM challenges and how to overcome them. Others are deep dive into specific processes, industries or solutions. Others are on the outskirt of PLM.

The 3 with most attention (percentage of total readings):

• PLM vs ERP – the everlasting trench war or the best PLM ROI? – 6%
• Why PLM often fails to reach its potential – 5%
• You don’t know what you don’t know about PLM – 4%

It is a bit scary that the top topic is PLM vs ERP. This has been on top of the mind in most PLM implementations and clearly one of the selling points of PLM; Get control with PLM and feed downstream processes automatically with quality data. This is still a struggle, 20 years after I started with PLM. It should not be so.

The other two topics are related to PLM challenges in general. Why is it so hard with PLM? And what do you need to know in order to succeed? This is less as a surprise as people struggling will look for tips and tricks and learn from other failures. These are still on a very generic level.

Some other of the top ones:

• The Strategy of Divide & Conquer and its pitfalls – 3%
• PLM – Vision or micro-ambition? – 3%
• How to select a PLM system – 3%

These are more to the point and explains or discusses pros and cons of a strategy or method. There is a hunger out there to get inspiration or tips in their PLM tasks. Maybe we should be even more concrete and deep dive into some of our experiences?

Some reflections
I have been working with PLM for two decades. It is a bit sad that many of the topics are the same today as when we started. And there is not commonly agreed definition of what PLM is? Is it a tool, an approach, a process or what? And many companies seem to have to do the same mistakes as many have done before them.

I don’t know, but I guess that many of our readers are really interested in PLM and have some specific PLM responsibility. Then it is like kicking in an open door for some of the topics. Sometimes it seems that the PLM community is for a secluded group of men in their 40’s and 50’s, with a white shirt and little hair, and have been working with PLM for at least 15 years – like myself and my colleagues. Where are the hipsters and our better halves?

It would be very nice if some of the posts also would be read by senior managers or non-PLM people. Then we could have some interesting discussions. There is still a need for raising PLM awareness and understanding. It is fully up to us to attract new audience.

Many are happy to share their experience and there are some really good sources for PLM inspiration. Here are some of the ones that I appreciate the most.

• Beyond PLM
• The virtual Dutchman
• Tech Clarity
• Engineering (Engineering)

We want to focus on PLM as an approach covering many tools and processes and not that much on PLM solutions as such.

Vote for a future topic
We want to share our experience and want your input on what topics that are of biggest interest. The topic with the most votes will be a future blog post. Please spend a minute and vote for a topic.

Summary
It seems that the interest is in both strategic high level, process or industry specific and deep dive into solution areas. There are a lot of possible topics. Please help us select the most interesting topics.

Thanks for reading our blogs and interacting in discussions. We will continue as long as there is an interest in our posts.

Tore Brathaug
www.infuseit.com