The Mountain Code for PLM

In this Easter time there are a lot of Norwegians going to the mountains to go skiing in the remaining snow. There are guidelines on how to behave to be safe in the mountains. They are called “Fjellvettreglene” or the Norwegian Mountain Code. As it turns out, they are also strangely relevant for PLM.

1. Be prepared (Don’t go on a long trip without practice)

A good plan is half the job. If you also have people with PLM experience and preferably some PLM implementation experience you are in a good position. It is hard doing a PLM selection and implementation if you don’t have any experience at all. Start small and learn along the way, don't try to take the whole elephant in one bite.

2. Leave word of your route

A twist on this is that you have a better chance of getting the rest of the organization along on your PLM journey if you inform and educate. Let the others know what you plan to do and why you do it. Communicate the visions, plans and achievements. Keep management informed along the way of both good and bad.

3. Be weather-wise (listen to the forecast)

Listen to the weather forecast and show respect for the weather. In a PLM context this can mean that there might be circumstances and events out of your control that can influence the PLM project in a negative manner. A typical one is: “we will do PLM after ERP. And, by the way, the ERP project is delayed”. Others kinds of “bad weather” can be: downsizing, financial troubles, the company is about to or recently has been sold. You should try to listen around for the most obvious ones and be prepared to handle them, and if the forecast is really bad: postpone the trip.

There is also a positive twist to this. Take the opportunity if the weather forecast looks good. If the financial situations is good, management is supportive and there are some clear areas where PLM can contribute: Start now and get a positive momentum.

4. Be equipped for bad weather and frost.

Even if the forecast is good, you might be surprised with bad weather. Be prepared for challenges and troubles. Do risk management properly and have plans for problems before they appear. If the company has financial troubles; how can you cope with a smaller budget and less people? What can you take out of scope if circumstances demand it?

5. Listen to experienced mountaineers

If this is your the first PLM project in your company and you don´t have people with PLM experience, you should listen to others who have done this before. Learn from others and avoid the mistakes done by others. Contact similar companies in your industry, companies in your neighborhood or personal network that have implemented PLM. There are amounts of good advice to get from others. And finally: don´t always trust the vendors ;-)

6. Use map and compass

Create a vision, a roadmap and a plan. And follow it. Of course you might have to adjust the course along the way, but you should always know where you are and where you want to go. You might have to change the destination as well, if you are surprised by bad weather. But that is better than getting lost.

7. Don't go solo

PLM is not a one-man or a one-team job. You must ensure that your project group consists of people from several departments and disciplines. You need involvement of and commitment of all key stakeholders. Make sure that they share your vision and trust your plans.

8. Turn back in time; sensible retreat is no disgrace

PLM projects can be hard and you will meet some trouble. If the trouble is big enough you should consider turning back. In a small scale it can be a new module or functional area just ready for roll-out, which turns out to not be of good enough quality. In a larger scale it can be the whole PLM solution. Turning back to stop the whole implementation is a tough decision, but in some cases it must be done. And it should be done sooner rather than later. Whether it is possible to turn back gracefully is another matter ;-)

9. Conserve energy and build a snow shelter if necessary

Instead of turning back you can stay where you are and conserve energy. Instead of continuing at high speed you take a break and evaluate your position. Did the map or direction change? Are there any unforeseen obstacles? Maybe it is time to re-visit the vision and plan. If worst comes to worst; you can of course book a one-way ticket to Hawaii and relax in the sun. Or, as the Norwegians do during Easter; Go up in the mountains and enjoy the last remnants of snow.

Conclusion

Mountain trekking or skiing has a lot in common with PLM. Following common-sense guidelines is helpful in both cases. From time to time you meet problems, but the better prepared you are; the more likely it is that you can handle it and progress without any danger. Respect the challenge and don’t plan for a harder route than you are trained and equipped to take.

Enjoy the PLM journey and have a nice Easter

Tore Brathaug
www.infuseit.com

PLM Success – Knowledge within the operational data that you produce

This blog continues a discussion which has been the topic of two other blogs; PLM – Vision or micro-ambition? and  PLM Success - Think Inside the Box. Previous blogs was about the importance of embracing changes and input along the way of implementing PLM and not only working blindly towards a set goal.  And the usage of your employees and cross-fertilization as a source for input.

Today we will deal with the usage of operational data as input for process improvements. 

I’m talking about the data generated while executing the company’s processes, and not “product data”. I believe that this is one of the “untapped” or at least underestimated sources for input we have, as it’s already collected to a large extent, to manage the company’s day-to-day business.

IT is traditionally a service and infrastructure provider for the business-side of the company; giving them the tools to execute their work and make well founded decisions. But, what if we could use IT to also provide the means to turn the “eye” inwards in terms of methods? Providing that a PLM system doesn’t always force a process and way of working upon you (read: not controlled in detail by the system), there is potential work to be done to see how the stipulated methods are followed. What if we analyzed how work is done and thereby receive feedback on current working methods and potential areas for improvements or alignment to reality (does it look shiny enough?).

Data warehouse analysis related to PLM processes, that I’ve seen, usually has their focus in time, money, quality and risk. Sometimes you’ll find this type of analysis in dashboard in today’s PLM systems and other enterprise systems. But they are almost always used to support the operational aspect of the business. What if we looked at the list but with method improvement focus?

• Time – How many iterations does it take to get to a certain status in the development and what are the underlying reasons for it (communication, education, etc)?
• Money – are we selling to the right price in the different markets? Are we able to get our “raw material” to the right price? How is our sourcing affecting transportation cost?
• Quality – sustainable sourcing and material statistics, scrap- and recall-statistics
• Risk – are we placing our orders “right” to get the right risk exposure? How is our in-stock volume? Could we use more low fair transportation alternatives? How good are we at forecasting and thereby being able to book, buy and commit so that we get better in-price?

With the information that we get from the data; processes and practices could be followed up to see how they are adopted and applied by business. We could also analyze good performing teams, and thereby improve company methods and best practices.

We could even take this one step further – with tools such as dynaTrace we could analyze on application level what functions are being used and how to optimize the flow and usability within the specific application in a prioritized way.

The important point here is that we could get input for the PLM journey by looking at how the company is performing and acting in its current processes. Changes doesn’t always have to be revolutionary and ground breaking, in this case they are evolutionary. Derived from the knowledge we get by analyzing data.

This is definitely not science fiction. All technology is there to be used; it’s more a question of maturity and determination to use the data with long term strategic focus and not only making the coming quarter look good.

Robert Wallerblad
www.infuseit.com

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

PLM failures - how to address them?

In my previous blog, I talked about why PLM often fails to reach its potential. Now I will look at how to address this. Is it possible to re-vitalize PLM if it has been stagnant for years? It might. Just ask Henry Ford.

These were some of the typical situations I discussed:

• Our PLM is just PDM
• PLM is just for Design/Engineering
• Management is not interested in PLM
• We have had it (PLM) for years and very little happens
• Our PLM system is hard to change and hard to upgrade

The last one – cemented solutions and challenging upgrades – I’ll save as a topic for later.

Should you rethink your PLM strategy?

You should ask yourself that question. If you have a limited PLM solution it might still be right for you. Maybe CAD management is the most crucial area to your business? Is it sufficient to handle parts, BOM, documents and controlling changes (PDM)? Yes, PLM have bigger potential but it comes with extra complexity and cost – if there is no business justification for expanding the scope of PLM, don’t do it.

If you believe that your business would benefit from a renewed focus on PLM, however, there are some steps you could take. Which steps, how to take them and whether you need to take them all depend on the size of the company, the business culture and your own position.

You might be fortunate enough to possess the necessary power and money to change things yourself. More likely, you’ll have to maneuver through several levels of management and surrounding departments where some of them don´t even have a clue of what PLM is all about.

To help you get started, here are some steps you can take to get PLM on the management agenda:

Get inspired
To get new ideas and to get other people start thinking about possibilities with PLM you probably need inspiration and facts. In other words: education and awareness. There are several ways to do that. This inspiration should be spread both upwards to management and downwards to users. Just be careful not to create too high expectations. Failure to meet new expectations will be devastating.

What are other companies doing? Maybe there are new solutions and approaches today than when you started 5-10 years ago? Get inspiration from others. Talk to companies that have done interesting things with PLM. Not only in your own industry. There is a lot to learn about new ways of doing things from industries that at first glance seem completely different. There is a reason why apparel, food and beverage or service companies have started to embrace PLM. They have taken PLM from discreet manufacturing and put their own flavor in it, focusing on additional areas, processes and functionality, which again can be of interest for other industries. This will be a topic in a future blog.

One tip is to challenge your PLM vendor. They would probably be more than happy to arrange a PLM inspiration day where they talk about all the exiting possibilities and what fantastic solutions other customers have implemented. The effort from your vendor is typically for free as they see potential new license sales somewhere in the future. Visiting PLM conferences and seminars is also a good place to listen to other’s PLM stories and establish new contacts. Even better: convince your manager to attend the conference as well – it could be an eye opener. Resources on the internet, including blogs and focused LinkedIn groups, have also developed into quite viral arenas for knowledge sharing on PLM related matters.

What is your PLM vision?
What should PLM bring to your company? Why should you invest even more in PLM? Which parts of the enterprise strategy can PLM support or even be mandatory for? It could be global internal collaboration ("Design Anywhere - Build Anywhere" or "One Company»). It could be reduction of non-conformance costs (One version of the truth). It could be simplified IT landscape (Replace local isolated tools with integrated enterprise PLM). The key here is to understand what is important for management and see if and how PLM can support that. An alternative approach could be: Pick a part of PLM that you believe in and figure out which part of the enterprise strategy it supports ;-).

Establish a PLM strategy
If you start to get some traction with management and they start to see some potential in PLM, you are in a good position. Use that position to get acceptance for establishing (or re-establishing) a PLM strategy. How to achieve the PLM vision? Which steps to take? What are the short term and long term goals & objectives? What main functionality and processes should PLM cover? Which roles and business units should use PLM? What information should be handled? Which systems should be integrated or replaced?

Build a solid business case
Earlier it was enough to justify PLM by showing functional capabilities. To convince management you must speak their language. And the language they most certainly understand is money. Build a business case with justified costs, earnings, ROI and the plan for how to get there at minimum risk. This is also a good test of your PLM vision. Can you provide enough facts and considerations to build a proper case? Maybe it will show you that you should spend your money elsewhere where it gives a better ROI?

For the business case to be accepted you anyway must get management believe in PLM and take ownership. Show them that you know what you are talking about, how it supports the enterprise strategy and that you know how to get there. You will need management support not only to get started, but also to be successful in reaching the objectives.

Enterprise PLM architecture
If the business case is accepted, you can continue to enterprise IT architecture where you go more in detail than in the PLM strategy. You position PLM in the IT landscape, main information flows, processes and functional areas. Which IT systems to integrate, replace, change or leave as-is.

Finally
Now you can start thinking about implementation. Note that the above activities are quite independent of which PLM tool you have. And it might not be your existing PLM tool that is the problem. Replacing it with another PLM tool will not help unless you do some re-thinking.

Depending on your position and the complexity of your company, this whole process can take a couple of weeks and a level of documentation that you can do yourself or it can take months or even years and a big team. You might be able to skip some of the steps. What you definitely should have is a PLM vision as inspiration and guiding star. Or you might end up unsuccessful again.

Tore Brathaug
www.infuseit.com

PLM – Tool or Mindset?

When we talk about PLM it very often ends up with an IT discussion. What tool is the best one or how much does the PLM system cost? Does OOTB (Out Of The Box) fit our processes?

The questions are valid, but in my view it is a very little part of a PLM project, and certainly not the ones to start with.

First: If you want to implement PLM, or re-implement for that matter,  You now have a golden opportunity to evaluate your product development processes and  Your business processes.  You should look at what they are like, and then ask: Is this process really the best one for you or is it a creation of boundaries from earlier systems or constraints? If it still is a good one, well implement it. If it is not, now is the time to make it better or evaluate OOTB processes from a PLM vendor. A bad process will not get better if it is implemented in PLM, it might only get faster.

Second: It is crucial to map the information flow to your processes. What information is available in what process and at what time. Is this optimal? Would it be better if some information is available earlier or if some information could be deferred until a later stage? The last one could be the difference between creating and maintaining a vast number of product variants up front or maintaining a generic product definition to support Configure To Order.

Third: Having the best IT solution in the world with first class processes and superb data quality will not help you one bit if the organization is not ready to embrace it. This is why PLM is often described as a journey, and in my view, it is. There is no way an organization can fathom a full blown PLM system with processes in one go. That’s why organizational roll-out and gradual maturing and rollout is essential in my view. This is also why it is very important to have sufficient support from management.

Fourth: At last we come to what is very often debated too early, namely the selection of PLM tool and vendor. My advice is that you select a tool that is able to adapt to your changing processes, because they will change, that the vendor has the bandwidth to support You and that he understands your business.

Conclusion: In my view the success of any PLM implementation is hugely dependent on a healthy overlap between processes, information, organization and IT-tool.

 In order for any organization to absorb and cope with the complexity it is useful to have a PLM strategy (think big).  After the grand thoughts are defined then start small with clearly defined areas that can be tested and rolled out in the organization. Now you have tested the internal processes needed for defining, migrating and deploying parts of your PLM system, so the time has come to start to scale faster to achieve the PLM strategy. Will it ever be finished? Well not until your company is finished…..

Why PLM often fails to reach its potential

Having worked with PLM for the last 17 years, I have seen many PLM implementations failing to fulfill the vision and potential. Why is that? And what are the typical circumstances we see in such cases? Maybe you recognize some of them in your organization? In this blog, I will focus on the bad cases and not the successful ones. The successful ones can be a topic for later. 

There are two main situations we see in the companies having trouble fulfilling the PLM vision. Either they were not able to meet the vision or they did not have the vision in the first place.

The companies with a vision usually had some visionaries aiming for the full PLM scope who were willing to fight for it, but it took too long and required more effort than anticipated. So, gradually they lost the steam. The reasons vary, but Machiavelli (1469 –1527) showed some insight to one of the main reasons: 

"There is nothing more difficult and dangerous than the establishment of a new order (PLM), as those promoting it will be fiercely attacked by those profiting from the old order, yet gaining only lukewarm support from those that will benefit from the new one."

On the other end of the scale we see several companies with a PLM system which came in the “back door” with their CAD system and consequently initiated by the design/engineering people. Many of those companies focused just on that: managing 3D CAD data and perhaps stretching it to PDM. Maybe the vendor sold in some bold ideas about what PLM could be in the future, but those were not adapted as a guiding star for the implementation. The long term PLM vision was not in place.

In both cases, there are some statements that we typically hear:

"Our PLM is just PDM"

Many companies are using their PLM system exclusively for PDM. Some companies even use PLM just for CAD management. In both cases they have an unfulfilled potential in PLM. Some people may see the potential and want to do more with the system, but are prevented by lack of funding to start on the journey towards more advanced PLM.

"PLM is just for Design/Engineering"

As a consequence of the above, the PLM tool is typically owned by the Design or Engineering department. In that case, PLM has ended up as a costly tool to manage their internal data and processes before delivering to surrounding systems or processes. Other departments are probably not interested in, or maybe even afraid of PLM. The processes and functionality is put in place for engineers with specific needs. The “engineering mindset” often leads to complex and user-hostile solutions and processes. You cannot easily expand such a solution to other people in the organization. For that, you need a much more simplified and possibly different solution.

"Management is not interested in PLM"

PLM is seen as a necessary evil for the engineers and something that only comes on the management agenda once a year during budget time and they see the costs for it. In this case management no longer has or maybe never has had a strategic plan and a vision for PLM. PLM has become a costly tool with limited benefits. The ones concerned and responsible for PLM have limited possibilities to do things as they lack management support to invest even more and other departments don’t see PLM as something that can help them.

"We have had it for years and very little happens"

Maybe there was a grand plan for PLM at some time, maybe not. The situation at many companies, however, is that they have had PLM for years. It has become cemented and very little happens. The wheels go round and the PLM tool and processes have become part of the everyday operation. Some see the need for a facelift or even some bold revolutions, but do not get the attention and funding to do so. Probably because of the situation described earlier.

"Our PLM system is hard to change and hard to upgrade"

Another reason for a cemented situation might be on a more technical level. The PLM system has over years grown in size and complexity. There are integrations with CAD, ERP and others. There are complex built-in processes and specialized functionality. The amount of data is huge. There are so many dependencies that it has become very hard to change it as no-one dares to touch the integrations, the processes, the functionality or the data, since it is very hard to overview all the consequences. An upgrade to a newer version that could revitalize the usage and open up for new possibilities is effectively prevented by the complexity and costs related to the upgrade.

What to do?

The situations described above are hard to get out of. You might end up thinking that the only way to solve the problem is to replacing the PLM tool with another one. This is very seldom the case. It is not the tools fault, it is how it has been implemented and used. Perhaps it is time to create an updated PLM strategy? Take the opportunity to reassess and analyze the needs to see what role PLM should have, based on current and future goals and challenges. PLM should not be seen merely as a tool to improve engineering efficiency. It should be seen as a means to achieve strategic business goals. For that you need management attention and a long-term vision.

Tore Brathaug

www.infuseit,com