PLM Success – Think Inside the Box

This blog will deal with two of the “shiny things” mentioned in PLM – Vision or micro-ambition? – Cross-Fertilization and Knowledge from within the organization.

Usually when talking about “thinking inside the box”, the message is simple - look within your own organization and you will find an untapped source for innovation.

But creating an entrepreneurial culture within a company resulting in innovation is a challenge, and it has primarily to do with people and less with tools. If outside forces don’t push for a change, it really requires strong leadership to create a culture which will make it happen (culture of innovation by Dilbert). Simply having ideas is not enough; you need to have a way of capturing, screening and executing upon the right ones. So the solution is to bring the knowledge of the employee and the means of the company together. According to a study, made by Accenture, 85% of ideas from employees have been focused on internal improvements, so there is a large potential.

More and more industries are forced to change their way of working, making it more focused on reuse, repeatability and knowledge sharing.  Even industries such as Plant Design, which traditionally look at themselves as one-off project oriented, are moving towards PLM. But looking for possibilities to reuse components, modules or products should not be the only goal. Processes, practices and tools should also be considered part of these initiatives. A colleague of mine, Bjørn Fidjeland, wrote a blog about it some time ago; PLM for Plant Design Project?

This takes us smoothly into another way to look at the “box”; look at it as the PLM domain and the untapped resource other industries. What could we learn from each other and how can we combine our knowledge? Or, in other words Cross-fertilization.

Getting inspiration from other industries is a low hanging fruit as both business concepts and new ways of tool utilization don’t have to be reinvented; they are just there ready to be discovered and utilized with minor adoptions to a new context. It’s an “easy” way to inject your practices with good ideas from others; basically adopting the old and proven concept of “steeling with pride”.

You don’t know what you don’t know so the challenge here is to interface with other industries.

An excellent example of the strength of cross-fertilization is Jack Andraka. With only his mind, the enthusiasm of a 15-year-old, YouTube, Google, Wikipedia, and some helping hands from “people in the business” he invented a new diagnostic test for pancreatic cancer. By connecting the dots, using his knowledge and others,  Andraka managed to create a test which according to him is 168 times faster, 1/26 000 as expensive (costing around three cents), over 400 times more sensitive than the current diagnostic tests, and only takes five minutes to run.

(If you want to see something that will make your day, please have a look at this clip of Jack winning the grand prize of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair)

Just by looking at the headlines used to outline different take-aways from different industries, see picture below, there is a lot to learn.

And if we then, look at the challenges that the different industries are facing we will find a lot of touch points again, but dealt with in different ways - Market regulation, global and local sourcing, simulation, design collaboration, traceability, reuse of information/components/modules/products, … Isn’t it time to stop inventing the wheel?

Robert Wallerblad
www.infuseit.com

PLM – Vision or micro-ambition?

The journey itself is the goal, not the actual destination. A cliché, I know! But clichés are clichés because they contain some truth. You might have heard that people are often referring to PLM implementations as being a journey.  And I tend to agree.

I agree because I believe that implementing PLM is a spiral of continues change. In my view you are never done, there are always areas of improvements or completely new ones to discover and conquer. A grand vision is important to have, everybody will tell you that, and I will probably not be the first one to tell you that a big bang approach is neither preferred nor feasible in most scenarios.

Just as the first line of the blog states; I believe that there are great values in areas not necessarily tied directly to the envisioned goal. Areas that will emerge throughout the journey of implementing the PLM vision, as your knowledge expand in the domain and outside influences force itself upon your company.

The comedian and all round geniuses Tim Minchin expressed his thoughts around big dreams and goals in this speech in a way that I found also suitable for PLM. Below is a segment of it (if you have time, its 12 min well spent to listen to the complete speech):

“I never really had one of these big dreams. And so I advocate passionate dedication to the pursuit of short-term goals. Be micro-ambitious. Put your head down and work with pride on whatever is in front of you… you never know where you might end up. Just be aware that the next worthy pursuit will probably appear in your periphery. Which is why you should be careful of long-term dreams. If you focus too far in front of you, you won’t see the shiny thing out the corner of your eye.”

I believe that these “shiny things” are very important for PLM initiatives, as a complement to a vision, as it will allow the company to keep the momentum, strength, and passion and show the surrounding world (read: “non-believers” within your own organization) that one can be responsive and deliver value.

An incremental way to slice the “elephant” is often discussed when one debates how PLM goals should be “digested”, but this is something else. This is a piece of the strategy that embraces agility, as it will allow new input throughout the journey. It is also an approach that brings an evolutionary mindset to the table, as it pushes for enhancements based on the outcome of already implemented initiatives. Don’t see this as something that is less valuable than the big vision - the outcome of this could be as innovative as the big visionary goal but perhaps smaller in scale.

Another important reason to address these emerging needs is that, in most cases, if the business requires a change they will find a way to get it. In other words; solutions addressing the challenges will be built to support their daily work – May it be excel or db, silo or no silo.

So what are those “shiny things”, if we put it into PLM context, and where can we find them?

Here are five sources, which I believe we could use to air refuel your PLM initiative:

• Cross-Fertilization – get inspiration from how other industries and domains are doing things. What is it that they are good at? And then apply the well-known concept of “stealing with pride”.
• New Industry and Market “trends” – market situations and trends will push business to act in areas neglected before and allow for tools and processes to emerge or evolve.
• New Technology Opportunities – new technology, maturity and adoption will allow for new ways of doing things.
• Knowledge from within the organization – look within your own organization and you will find an untapped source of innovation in your own employees.
• Knowledge within the operational data that you produce – operational data that companies collect to manage their day-to-day business can also be used to get input for process and tool improvements, and not only focus on supporting the operational aspect of the business.

My intent is to elaborate further on some of the topics above to illustrate better how these sources can be used and how one can expect to benefit from them. Stay tuned for more details in coming blogs …

Robert Wallerblad
www.infuseit.com

Other blogs in this series are:

PLM Success – Think Inside the Box
PLM Success – Knowledge within the operational data that you produce