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

PLM and ALM: How To Blend Disparate Systems?

PLM and ALM: How To Blend Disparate Systems?
olegshilovitsky
olegshilovitsky
2 June, 2010 | 3 min for reading

I had chance to read an article in SD time – Organization works to blend application, product life-cycle management. Author discussing the need to integrate two separate domain – development of hardware and mechanical components and software. I think, the message is very timely made. There are lots of software in modern products. Author brings an example of OnStar in vehicle communication. However, it is possible to bring more examples, of course.

Integration between disparate application having completely different set of data, rules and behavior is always a very challenging use case. In this case, author discussing the future of common standard creation that will help to integration PLM components and components managing software lifecycle (i.e. Rational tools). This discussion made me think about potential pitfalls and opportunities on this way.

Heterogeneous Application Environment
In the real world, many applications used during the design, engineering and manufacturing process. Mechanical, Electrical and Software teams are normally separate and relation between them quite limited from the software sides. This is the reality. In my view, when it comes to software, the disconnection comes to the top level. What can be a system that controls software build level need to be placed in the particular vehicle or other mechanical product?

Does One Standard Fit All?
The author is discussing OLSC (Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration). I found the following video funny. The idea of community is going very much aligned with modern social approaches.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2vqL8fujgE]

There are three key fundamental principles – URL, Minimal Schema and REST services proposed to make this solution work. I’m thinking how much time people will spend before they will agree about minimal schema that fit all. At in the end, as film states everybody wants to be a little different.

Don’t Integrate, Just Connect Dots
Here is my point. We don’t need to invent a minimal schema. It is enough to agree about to interlink different product representation- mechanical, electrical, software. Think about URL only. In my view, it will be enough to get job done. Global data identification similar to what we have in the internet can move us in the right direction. One of the examples of such technologies can be PURL. “A persistent uniform resource locator (PURL) is a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) (i.e. location-based Uniform Resource Identifier or URI) that does not directly describe the location of the resource to be retrieved but instead describes an intermediate (more persistent) location which, when retrieved, results in redirection (e.g. via a 302 HTTP status code) to the current location of the final resource.”

What is my conclusion? The landscape of application involved in this product development is very large. The number of applications is growing. The ability to absorb the requirements of all applications into one minimal single standards schema seems impossible. The new and more efficient way to interlink data need to be proposed. We don’t need to bring software build and engineering bill of materials to a single representation. However, we need to be able to interlink data related to different applications to maintain data integrity.

Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg

Share

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
2 June, 2017

Data is a new oil. You can hear it more often these days. In one of my earlier blogs, I...

19 December, 2014

Have you heard about collaborative economy? If you are not familiar with the term, it is a time to get...

10 May, 2017

In many ways, one of the most important functions in every PLM system is a capability to interconnect multi-disciplinary data about...

1 October, 2015

I was attending Aras Innovator Software-as-a-Service – a new PLM cloud offering of T-Systems webinar yesterday. If you are in...

1 May, 2019

Every CAD system is using so-called geometric modeling kernel – 3D modeling component. If you want to know what 3D...

15 February, 2013

Cloud is trending and we can see more examples of how cloud technologies applies in business. PLM vendors are not...

25 August, 2015

The technology around us is changing very fast. Even if you are 17 year old, you can already find your...

30 April, 2018

Time ago, I published an article saying Aras PLM lines up against Windchill, Enovia and Teamcenter. Here is the conclusion...

31 May, 2011

One of the trends I am following constantly on my blog is the simplification. PLM is very complex and still...

Blogroll

To the top