A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

PLM Today and Tomorrow: Tighten Your Belts … and be open to new technologies

PLM Today and Tomorrow: Tighten Your Belts … and be open to new technologies
olegshilovitsky
olegshilovitsky
14 January, 2009 | 2 min for reading

The financial crisis possible can hit PLM companies… but remember, many successful and well-known companies were established during times of economic crises.

LexisNexis (1973 oil crisis), FedEx Corp. (1973), Microsoft Corp. (1975), CNN (was a very small company in 1980), MTV (1981), Wikipedia Foundation Inc. (post 2001 recession), HP (Hewlett-Packard Development Company LP, was established at the end of this recession) – this is only a short list of companies established during various crises.

In my view, a crisis always opens people’s minds in terms of delivering something new or innovative within their space, in order to be more attractive for existing and potentially new customers. In this post, I’m going to try and change my seat from the point of view of a PLM developer to the PLM user’s standpoint.

So, what would a PLM user find attractive?

1.     Popularize easily what engineers are doing. When the average game controller provides a better look-and-feel compared to the PLM systems, whatever companies will do to make My Content available will be beneficial. I’d like to be able to show my latest product on iPod, race new cars available for my games, try a new kitchen environment in my SIMs™ or animate my process nicely on Wii, xBOX or other devices.

2.     Communicate easier and faster with  relevant people. At the end of the day, I want to make my working environment more comfortable. When I need to search, I’ll go to Google. When I  need to speak with colleagues, I’ll chat or IM. , When I need fresh news or opinions, I’ll go to blogosphere. Now, when I want to design and/or create something new – where should I go?

3.      Reuse technologies… This is most efficient way to create something new. Experience, Reuse, Change, Improve. Today, we hardly can find anything on our laptops. What about questions like  “do you remember a similar problem”, “similar part”, “something that the customer wanted”;, “how can I reuse an existing design?” and “What did we decide last year when faced with a similar situation?”… all these “reuse topics” can be hit top ranks in user communities.

4.       Breaking silos… Today’s enterprise organizations are very siloed.: Openness, Interoperability, Connectivity, Intelligence – although none of these words are new, the issue of siloed enterprises is still unresolved. I think that a crisis will definitely help to climb steps in this direction. Innovating technologies and people will break silos and find technologies, business models, and products that will allow PLM users to move forward.

5.       Information explosion?… We have finally produced more information that we can consume. This doesn’t seem to be a passing trend. Although this subject might not be specific to PLM, it can this is not something specific for PLM, but can really help  people in enterprises organize their work more efficiently.

So, I’m really looking forward to your comments, ideas and the next innovative products in the PLM world. 

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
24 November, 2020

SaaS is a topic of many debates in the PLM industry these days. Back in the 2010s, the question was...

3 November, 2010

What do you think about “paperless processes”. A good dream I can tell you… So, I decided to talk about...

18 January, 2013

PLM vendors are continuing to adopt cloud. I can clearly see a difference between people attitude for cloud solutions now...

30 March, 2015

Cloud is transforming businesses and technologies. CAD and PDM are going to be transformed too. If you had a chance...

18 July, 2018

Modern manufacturing world is all about communication and networking. Companies are hiring engineers all over the world. Contractors and suppliers...

31 October, 2011

Earlier, this year, I post a blog called – Integrated PDM and PLM: Wrong Question? In the beginning, this blog...

10 June, 2013

Big data is one of the biggest hyped buzzwords of the last two years. With all hype around, it is...

10 April, 2020

Earlier this week, another virtual session of CIMdata PLM Market and Industry Forum provided a bunch of interesting ideas and...

17 December, 2012

Experience is one of the most popular words in tech these days. CAD and PLM vendors are part of this...

Blogroll

To the top