Structured vs. Unstructured – should PLM be reinforced by additional technologies?

Structured vs. Unstructured – should PLM be reinforced by additional technologies?

The question I’d like to raise is how to manage various type of data about your product? In today’s world information is very diversified. Obviously we have design models, product structure, bill of materials – all this is pretty structured. On the other side we have requirements, customer requests, sales, marketing materials, simulations, tests, mails, internet references etc.

We do have technologies to maintain and manage structured information about design and models. On the other side there are quite many excellent technologies comes from consumers and internet domain – search, content collaboration, web 2.0, wikis, blogs, semantic technologies etc. There is real opportunity to use technology for content search, collaboration, wiki, data share for PLM.

I’d like to know examples of mixed technological usage between PDM/PLM systems and web 2.0, collaboration and other consumer oriented technologies together.

Any comments on this?

Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing cloud based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.