PLM Excel Spreadsheets: From Odes to Woes

One you don’t mention here is excel version incompatability. Microsoft typical doesn’t concern itself with backwards compatibility issues on an end-to-end basis, and when they release new versions of their office suite (which I believe they are doing later this year) it often “breaks” spreadsheets constructed in the prior version (often embedded in the macros). This can lead to some real challenging integrity problems in these massive, interconnected “PLM” spreadsheets.

It is a continual issue for Microsoft, they are always trying to get the customer base on the latest version. Given the maturity of the office suite and the lack of “must have” innovation, many larger IT departments effectively version skip and will go from 2003 to office 14 (the next version). For most, it isn’t worth the cost and risk ton adopt new versions. This is actually one of the great benefits of SaaS/cloud applications, the version update happens painlessly and quietly while you sleep (as the user).

I think there are two main reasons:

1) The complexity (or perceived complexity) of changing a process that works (kind of). PLM sounds scary and people have had very bad experiences with other enterprise application (e.g. ERP) installs. So it often ends up easier to stick with status quo.
2) Some organizations aren’t ready or don’t want the discipline that is associated with a PLM system. They actually like their processes a little “loose” with the belief that is gives them speed and agility (and for some this might be true, until they get to a certain point of maturity). PLM does require a certain rigidity around BOM rules, ECO rules, version management, etc.

I don’t think it was cost (typical Arena customer could use full featured PLM for $20-30k, depending upon # of users), nor product completeness (for the 300+ customers that do use it, across many discrete manufacturing industries, they give the solution high marks).

My experience in talking with hundreds of “potential customers”, it was the challenge of the change management project. Maybe a good VAR/consultant opportunity?

EXCEL is a wonderful engineering tool. It makes calculations of vast quantities of data easy, it makes you calculations semi-explicit, provides reasonable graphs and charts. And for process analysis and some functions within PLM it’s an aid.

My issue become one of collaboration. EXCEL is a desktop tool and thus to collaborate you either email it around or have strong sharing procedures in place. Works well for small orgs, but as the company grows it becomes cumbersome.

Microsoft at one time for all intents, ran its business using EXCEL and EMAIL. As it grew it found it could no longer manage using that strategy. There is a place for EXCEL in PLM but as the core integration vehicle –even with the new SQL 2008 EXCEL in memory extensions– it’s not the right strategy.

When I’ve reengineered various corporations, I’ve used EXCEL & ACCESS for both analysis and prototyping but scaling became an issue any time the engineering activities grew past a small department.

The two major functions needed outside of EXCEL’s strong points; Data management and Workflow suggest that other products be used in conjunction with desktop tools.

Oleg,
Violent agreement again, the operative word though is “Formal” data management and workflow. Microsoft and other companies managed using EXCEL using ad-hoc workflows using Exchange and NOTES. Much of the original process design work I did for Rockwell years ago was “structured” but not formalized in the sense that we had official checkpoints, sign-offs and job descriptions in great detail.

It worked because the groups were small, collaborated well due to collocation. Ref: Effects of Cellular Manufacturing –S.S.Seitz PhD Thesis Pepperdine University Once an organization gets beyond a specific size ad-hoc collaboration breaks down.

Brian, Could you, please explain what is included into “formal” data management and Workflow? -Oleg.