PLM Innovation: Who will provide PLM to Boeing in 2015?

by Oleg on October 25, 2012 · 6 comments

I’m in Atlanta these days attending PLM Innovation Americas conference. Today is the first day, and I’m still expecting many things to come. Nevertheless, here is the thing that made me to blog. I’ve been attending first keynote made by Kevin Fowler or Boeing Commercial Airplanes . The name of the presentation – The sky’s the limit? Reaching for the value of PLM at Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The presentation provided a very interesting retrospective on how PLM developed at BCA (Boeing Commercial Airplanes) for the last 20 years. In my view, Boeing is one of the companies that stands at the root of PLM development back 25 years. Boeing fundamentally influenced the way PLM tools were developed by vendors like Dassault Systems and Metaphase (now Siemens PLM).

Growth of PLM system was driven by the need to support development and manufacturing processes. The ultimate request was to provide additional features to product development processes. Boeing moved from spatial integration (777) to build integration (737-next-gen) and functional integration (787). It means more and more features. The following slides show a very interesting trend related to Boeing PLM Value.

As you can see, functionality is growing. However, total cost of ownership is growing too, which is not very good sign. The most disappointing factor is related to usability of PLM systems. The usability of PLM tools is going down, which confirms the fact PLM is struggling from complexity and user experience. The level of information complexity at Boeing is impressing – 1B (Billion) parts to manage during the release of aircraft, Boeing has 12000 aircrafts in service and operation, Boeing employees are sending 63M (Million) emails during the month. Boeing engineers need to use multiple tools during their working day.

However, the most important message I captured from Boeing presentation was related the future evolution of PLM system. According to the Boeing, all PLM systems Boeing is currently running are approaching their end of life. Take a look on the following slide presenting four generations of Boeing PLM systems. Actually, it represents only three generations. Boeing put a question mark on the generation of PLM tools that need to come in 2015.

What is my conclusion? It is very interesting to see how large companies are turning towards usability of PLM tools. In the past, usability wasn’t a big deal for enterprise companies. Nowadays, end users cannot tolerate bad user experience. According to Boeing, their users are opening about 19 user interfaces to get data. Future PLM systems need to come with a different level of usability and user experience. The expectation level will be set by iPhone, Google, Facebook and other consumer tools. PLM vendors need to make a note. Important. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Tagged as: Boeing, Dassault, PLM, PLM Events, PLM Innovation, Siemens

  • Benoit Hamelin

    User experience… What is bad for one sound sometimes good for others, the MAJORS state that user experience is not the corner stone… “Because the pain for somes, should bring value to the overall business? I’m not of that opinion. The only way a great system can bring ROI to the next level, is when every persons enjoy the way they work… What the users community can bring to the system value more than what the system can do for them!

  • Sumesh

    Very interesting and you have touched upon a very important aspect. Companies like Boeing stretches the limits of what the current PLM systems are capable of and will be at the forefront of the disruption that should take place in the enterprise space and specifically PLM.Agree with you on the usability part and the next wave of PLM systems should address those issues- silos, data complexity and self adaptation. Afterall usability is a factor that mirrors what the system is capable of.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1502603289 Chris Williams

    Of course user experience is important but this is much more than easy to use. When you think about user experience you need to think about desire, useful and usable (the easy to use part). Each and every user needs to feel the system solves a problem they care about, in a way they understand (easy to use) and that they care to have solved. If anyone of these is missing then people will not be a user.
    I will go out on a limb and say the number one use of PLM today is CAD file management. So this being true what if you took this out of the system? What would you be left with that users desire?
    If you are going to rethink PLM I believe you must do so by starting with the idea that we will no longer have CAD files. I think you need to start here for two main reasons, first cloud based CAD will do away with files and second it will make you focus on finding things users value and desire.

  • beyondplm

    Benoit, I like your statement – “every persons enjoyes the way they work”. More than 10 years ago, it was a slogan of SmarTeam Corp. I was working for – “we work the way you work”. To me, it means first flexibility. I believe flexibility will become one of the key differentiators of PLM in the future. Thanks for your comments! Oleg

  • beyondplm

    Sumesh, thanks for your support! Boeing and other large companies were in a forefront of PLM creations for the last 20 years. In the past they pushed the limits of the complexity and functional requirements. It ended up with bad usability. At the end many PLM vendors did what they asked and paid lots of money. It will be interesting to see how the problem will be fixed today. Best, Oleg

  • beyondplm

    Chris, thanks for commenting! I agree, lots of CAD file management stuff is part of PDM/PLM business. However, this is not Boeing case, in my view. Not having CAD files is a good idea. Remember that — The future of CAD without files (http://beyondplm.com/2011/07/27/the-future-of-cad-without-files/ ). Best, Oleg

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