How to reinforce PLM by additional technologies – round #2 – Tagging

In one of my previous posts (Structured vs. Unstructured) I wrote about ability of PLM to bring additional advantages to users by leveraging technologies emerged in consumer market and web applications. In particular I talked about ability to manage flat view on product data. We are so regular to see all data structured and sometime to manage flat look on what we are doing brings excellent results. 

Topic I’d like to bring today to discussion is tagging. In context of data management – metadata tagging is most relevant in my view. Tag is non-hierarchical keyword associated with particular piece of information. In my view tagging can simplify way users can reach PLM-related information. You can tag things across regular information structures (Projects, Assemblies, Documents, EBOMs etc.). By using tags you can bring flat list of TODO actions for today pointing on different Item Masters, BOMs, Assemblies. 

Tagging is very popular in web 2.0 applications and used widely in blogs, web sites and wikis. Del.icio.us is probably most known service to tag web links. So, I think it will be good idea to bring tagging to PLM applications.

What is your opinion on this? 

PS. I almost finished to write this post and worked on links when I’ve seen last product came out of SolidWorks Labs – Tagger. I liked way you can tag part of SolidWorks assmeblies. So, if you are SolidWorks user you can try to experiment with this and hope it will come in other applications too.