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

Why PLM Scares Me?

Why PLM Scares Me?
olegshilovitsky
olegshilovitsky
11 August, 2009 | 2 min for reading

Following my previous post about how PLM can go to mainstream, I had chance to discuss this topic with some of my colleagues. We came to some initial conclusions that I’d like to share with my blog readers. Let me put upfront some assumption with regards to main trends I see happens in computer industry and enterprise software.

One of them is a trend for “simplicity”.  This is the biggest trend I see across many of the software systems during the past years. In my view, Google is staying first in the line and promoting the most simple user experience ever – single line. Following Google, I can mention Apple with their multiple products, also promoting simple approach. Almost in an enterprise software world, I can mention Microsoft SharePoint approach, as something maybe not very simple, but definitely less complex comparing to everything else you see around. So, my conclusion is that simplicity created strong trend toward user acceptance and understanding.

At the same time, Product Lifecycle Management became mature and prove success in companies and industries. The strategy of PLM was to move toward ability to support overall product lifecycle and because of that, PLM wanted to gather more and more processes, information, connection with other systems and people interaction. As a consequence of this PLM came to “maturity phase” and… overcomplicating. We got a system that can be deployed in global organizations, manage complex product structures, organization processes, supply chain and more. However, obvious price was big and complicated environment.

So, what happened as a result. Two trends “simplicity” and “PLM maturity” had actually different directions. User demands for simple and elegant solutions came in conflict with mature and complicated PLM deployments. What solution do I see for this situation? In my view, PLM providers understood situation and their immediate answer for short term was as following: 1/best practices; 2/industry approach; 3/education. We had chance to see these trends in strategies of all PLM providers. Would you ask me – is it enough? No, I don’t think so. I think a current “state of the art PLMs” are scaring users and prevent PLM from mainstream deployment.

Just my opinion.

Best, Oleg.

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
22 May, 2017

Some products are bought. Think about milk, gas, pain medicine, airplane tickets. The vendor just need to let know potential...

26 June, 2017

Five Ways Product Design Teams Fail at Data Management article by Engineering.com brings results of survey Engineering.com did to learn about...

19 November, 2013

Three years ago I sat together with Hardi Meybaum of GrabCAD is one of Starbucks coffee shops near Brookline, Mass....

30 December, 2023

In today’s increasingly interconnected world, managing product information efficiently has become a complex challenge. Traditionally, Product Data Management (PDM), Product...

20 December, 2018

As world is buzzing about Aras PLM, I thought it is a great time to come and check what is...

22 May, 2018

We are facing new technologies intervention almost every day. While technological transformation is a very good thing, to find and...

3 August, 2012

Free is the best future price. If you follow my blog, you probably had a chance to read this post...

31 December, 2023

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems represent the foundation of the product development and business processes....

9 July, 2020

SaaS PLM is trending and we’re going to see more SaaS PLMs marketing and sales coming from vendors very soon....

Blogroll

To the top