PLM, Expensive Documentation and Cheap Texbooks

by Oleg on January 20, 2012 · View Comments

Apple is going to eduction. Bam… It sounds fantastic. Textbooks are on the iPad. I was screening few publications about this event yesterday. One of them specifically caught my attention – Publisher Terry McGraw on Steve Jobs and Digital Textbooks: “This Was His Vision”. Another one from Mashable – Why the iPad Won’t Transform Education — Yet. You can ask me – how is iPad educational story is related to PLM? Here is what I’m thinking…

Technical Publication

The topic of product documentation is very important to manufacturing companies. Customer demands with regards to the product documentation are growing. It should be rich and precise. The stuff that was completely appropriate 5 years ago, today is obsolete. Customers are interested how to have a high-quality documentation, technical instructions and maintenance manuals. I’d like to quote Jim Brown of Tech-Clarity. Here is the passage from his paper “The business of 3D Technical communication“:

3D product communication goes beyond flat, static documents to incorporate richer, interactive, more realistic representation of products.

PLM vendors started to think about applications in this field already 5-6 years ago. It ended in multiple acquisitions and partnerships. PTC acquired Abotext back in 2006. Dassault acquired Seemage (aka 3DVIA Composer) in about the same timeframe. I can bring few more examples.

Tablet Computer and Technical Publication Platforms

iPad introduction and following golden rush of alternative post-PC platforms are presented new opportunity to PLM software vendors. You can see how companies are trying to approach a tablet platform for delivery of technical publication stuff. Below you can see two examples – one from PTC Arbotext and the second one is coming from Cortona3d

PLM and Technical Documentation

In my view, the value of product documentation and technical publicaton is clear. An interesting point if you think will be possible to convert high-quality product documentation into sellable assets. Actually, in my view, companies can try to do so. What if manufacturing companies will start selling (or renting) product documentation the same way Apple plan to sell textbooks? I don’t think it is crazy.

What is my conclusion? Do you think PLM vendors, and their partners will start buying iPad maintenance textbook on the iPad? Who knows? At least, it becomes obvious that sometime the most successful business models are sounds like a crap in the beginning.  Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Tagged as: Apple, Maintenance, PLM, Product Documentation, Tablet Platfoms

  • I think we all just wish it would happen sooner!  I actually had a conversation with one of our really large manufacturing customers about this.  They were spending SO much money updating their reseller channel with current product documentation or dealing with incurred cost from errors when they were using the wrong documentation that they made the move to shift 100% of it to electronic (and much of that with Inventor Publisher) and purchased themselves thousands of iPads and gave them to their resellers!  And they said even after the purchase if software, iPads and all the work that went into it - the ROI was almost instantaneous! 

  • beyondplm

    Brian, thanks for sharing these examples too. Is there public reference to this case? What software this company is using to product documentation in addition to Inventor Publisher? Thanks, Oleg

  • Rick Franzosa

    Oleg,

    This is a fascinating topic.  We were speaking to a small company that makes custom, complex wire harnesses in both the Medical Device and Aerospace industries.  Their shop floor vision is that, rather than punching a time clock, their shop work force would 'check out' an iPad from a rack, and proceed to the work area.  Using CIMx Interax, they would have a 'work order website' that they could access that would provide them all required and reference information that they desire.

    That's half of the paperless manufacturing equation, the other half being data collection and procedural control.  We've actually been doing this in one form or another since 1997.  We've just been waiting for the hardware to catch up ;-)

    Rick

  • beyondplm

    Rick, Thanks for sharing this information and examples! Actually, I'm very interesting to see pictures of iPad in the shop floor. Can you share it, maybe on your blog (or privately)? Best, Oleg

  • Ray Kurland

    Perhaps at the very least the software companies in the CAD PLM business could use these interactive textbooks to certainly improve their software documentation and training.

  • beyondplm

    Ray, agree with you. However, somebody needs to produce these textbooks. I'd be interested to see somebody in CAD / Engineering education business getting into development of CAD-oriented textbooks. Have you seen something for Autodesk? SolidWorks? Best, Oleg

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