PLM Trends and Solution Alternatives: Presentation and Roundtable

The second day of Autodesk Forum in Moscow. Today, I gave my presentation about PLM Trends and Solution Alternatives. You can find my presentation below. I originally presented in Russian. However, for my blog readers I’m also sharing an English version. I found quite many people interesting about PLM and possible solutions.

This Afternoon, I had a chance to run a roundtable about PLM. Here is the list of my questions and discussion notes.

PLM Implementation Options

The conclusion we made actually stated that implementation option is very dependent on organization and organization perspective on PLM. Company with a strong PLM vision on the C-level, can take an approach to follow one of the big mind-share PLM vendors. However, if a company is looking how to solve a specific problem, the approach of DIY or PDM+ can be very appropriated too. Few people mentioned that they know about situations when IT managers were fired after making wrong decisions even if that decision was to bring one of “big name” vendors. The agreement across almost all participants of the roundtable was about two things: PDM as a foundation of any PLM solution as well as importance of “staged approach”.

PLM Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up

The discussion about PLM implementation options naturally came to the comparison of Top-Down and Bottom-Up approaches. Both options were considered as valid. At the same time, we discussed how a company can differentiate and make a right decision. Some of the aspects related to a company size, other systems (ERP, CRM) as well as specific business characteristics. The important conclusion we made – PLM can be a top-down strategy from the management standpoint, but from implementation side, it requires bottom-up implementations and integration of multiple tools to be really efficient.

Not Only PLM (noPLM)

The discussion was mostly about how to exclude complication and simplify PLM implementation. We didn’t make a conclusion about that. However, it was clear that not all PLM programs are achieving their results. In some situations, people are displacing PLM tools by some homegrown solutions mostly because of the simplicity. At the end, people just want to make a job done. It is important to remember.

How to make PLM Different?

It was the last question. We discussed historical retrospective from EDM to PLM. Two key opinions were raised during the discussion. 1- PLM is really different for everybody. Don’t even try to unify it and propose a solution that fits everybody needs. Local (Russian) PLM vendors were dominated in this discussion. 2- something needs to change in PLM technologies. Similar to dynamic data modeling (back to 1990s) and PDM integration inside of CAD tools (end of 1990s / beginning of 2000s), a new technological innovation can change PLM implementation approach in 2010s. A very bold analogy is related to tablet computers. The original tablets with stencil and flip/flop screens were available long before. However, only Apple innovation with iPad made real tablet computer revolution these days.

What is my conclusion? 1800 attendees – this is a very impressive number shows strong Autodesk community in Russia/CIS. It was good meeting people and discussing PLM. I’ve got interesting feedback about my presentation. Also, I learned a lot of things related to PLM implementations made by local Russian PLM vendors (I will share them in one of my future posts). I hope the conversation will continue online. Don’t be shy and speak your mind.

Best, Oleg