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

PLM and Integrated Project and Process Tools

PLM and Integrated Project and Process Tools
Oleg
Oleg
1 June, 2012 | 2 min for reading

Let me start today from asking you a question. How do you run your company? Regardless on size, scale and nature, the answer is simple in my view – processes and projects. It won’t surprise you if I say sometimes projects go out of schedule, and processes are stuck. Every company requires a solution to manage processes and projects these days. Do you think you can solve these problems by emails and spreadsheets? The project or process management solution are needed. I was reading Steve Bedder post – Is that a bottleneck in my process? Steve brings an example of how process and project management capabilities are integrated in PLM 360 – new cloud PLM product from Autodesk. Here is an interesting passage:

The Project Management app provides you with a live view of where all the individual tasks\items within the project are up to, as they are moved along their process by the people managing that part of the project, the top level project automatically updates accordingly. You can also quickly and easily link through to view any of the data that is being tracked and managed within each of the project tasks (assuming you have the permissions to do so).

The key aspect in this functionality to me is the ability to integrate process and project tasks with relevant “data”. FPLM project management integration tradeoffs. There are many independent process and project tools that can be used in the company. How important to have integrated project and processes tools?

Frankly, Autodesk PLM 360 is not a unique tool introduces integrated project and processes with PDM/PLM. Almost all major PLM providers have “project management” module – TeamCenter Project Portfolio Management, Enovia Program Central, Windchill Project link, Aras Program Management.

At the same time, I can see many innovative and independent tools primarily focusing on project, process and task management – starting from traditional well known Microsoft Project and going to cloud-based Basecamp, Zoho, Clarizen and many others. While project management is not a new discipline, I can see many companies are trying to come with interesting user experience, available on many devices working in a different way. One of my favorites for the last time was do.com claiming so-called “social project management”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7myUgmtFPkc

What is my conclusion? Integrated vs. best in class. The dilemma isn’t new. I have an integrated GPS in my car. At the same I found myself many times using my iPhone to find a place and then enter the address into GPS system. To get right information to drive project management tool is an important function. At the same time, interaction with people usability and experience will matter as well. The car with Google’s maps in dash is probably a right solution. Integrated best-in-class class solutions – sounds like a good idea :). Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
2 October, 2019

One of the most interesting trends today to watch is how all companies are transforming into technology companies. Manufacturing companies...

27 July, 2016

We live in an interesting time of computing model transformation. Some of us can still remember Mainframe era 40-50 years ago....

20 February, 2012

I’m heading to Munich tomorrow to attend PLM Innovation 2012 conference. I’m looking forward to many discussions and meetings. One...

5 January, 2016

Almost hundred years ago Henry Ford started to build River Rouge factory. That was a giant plant that literally took...

6 December, 2010

I read the following blog post by Christine Longwell – Do we really need structured workflows if we have visibility...

14 May, 2009

Look at this news about Google Cloud: 1. MS Office: 0. Actually, most of the discussion here is about when...

20 March, 2009

I’m sure you have heard about Deep Web. For those who are not aware of this term,  Deep Web, (also...

28 June, 2013

App Store. These two words changed our life for the last few years. You have a problem? We have an...

29 July, 2010

What do you think is the most adopted mainstream collaboration tool? My conclusion is that most of the companies are...

Blogroll

To the top