PLM and Engineering Task (Process) Management

by Oleg on December 13, 2012 · 14 comments

PLM is all about process management. This statement comes to the play when people explain the value of PLM in the organization. Usually, when you think about process management, your mind is switching to some kind of “workflow thinking” mode, which assumes you need to follow the process from state to state by accomplishing tasks and activities. In every PLM implementation, this is a moment of time, people ask – how do we manage engineering processes? What toolset we need to have to make it happen?

I can see, engineering people, are bad organized. In many situations to run processes among engineers is similar to herding cats. To manage process in an engineering organization is a challenge. This is a place where PLM vendors usually fails to provide a reliable and simple solution. Engineers are asking for additional flexibility and vendors have a tendencies to provide a complicated solutions. Many PLM tools are providing sort of Workflow designer to create a process model. Later on, you can discover that engineers tend to abandon these processes. Main reason – these processes are not reflecting the reality. I wanted to come with some ideas how to fix that. I came up with the three definitions – tasks, engagement and information context. Take a look on the picture below.

The overall engineering process is described as list of tasks (above). This is the simplest way to present what needs to be done. It easy to digest and follow up. At the same time, the activity around this task list is not linear. In order to accomplish the task, an engineer needs to engage with additional people. This a typical situation when a person who leads the process needs to communicate with other people and comes with the result. Often, it is ad-hoc communication that cannot be formalized resides in people’s mind. Another situation happens when an engineer needs to bring an additional set of information to accomplish the task or make a decision. To combine these activities together is not a simple thing. Workflow is a wrong tool to solve this problem. To support a simplified task management tools with the ability to manage external engagement and connect to information context can be  a potential solution to the problem.

What is my conclusion? The simplification is a key word to summarize my thoughts. In many situations, engineers will prefer a simple task list to get things done. However, tools need to provide a collaborative capabilities to connect the engineer’s activity to other people and additional sources of information. Just my thoughts. I’m interesting to learn how you manage engineering tasks in your organizations.

Best, Oleg

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Tagged as: Engineers, PLM, Process Management, Task Management

  • John

    Hello Oleg .. you are absolutely right. It’s very difficult to manage or change process in the engineering. Most of the engineers are introverted … o.k. i am also a mechanical engineer :-) . But since 2004 consultat in PLM and cost management. My recipe for success: They need to see the new process running. So …visualization is the best thing to bring them on “your” side. I changed a lot of product engineering process – and the work is done, if the people “live” the new process and have fun. One other important thing is: it has to be super easy to handle. There is still time to make the process more complicated. For the knowledge management i often use integrated blog systems (inside the PLM). Youger people love that … and the older one’s use it to find other inputs. Conclusion: Visualization, absolutely easy to “live”, and “joy” on the new process. It’s not easy – but possible. Best regards …

  • beyondplm

    John, thanks for your comment and sharing thoughts. Like your examples! I agree, modern tools like blog/wiki etc. can play a significant role in making engineering processes better. Best, Oleg

  • Doug Halliday

    PLM should be focused upon practice (tasks if you like) more than process. Enterprises are complex, living, breathing organisms. Process engineering is fraught with peril, as it always leads to undo complexity. Enabling contextual communication and focus upon work-product is the way forward. If one wishes to improve as an organization, create platforms that are self-adapting and flexible to measure progress
    . Also consider that formal processes and systems, especially complex processes, drive ad-hoc collaboration because of the pain associated with the formal process. Ultimately, it is through ad-hoc methods that work gets done.

  • http://twitter.com/McVayRyan Ryan McVay

    Engineering process is usually very mehtodical and laid out. Is it all computerized? No. It’s these pieces of the process that we are refferring to in your article. The main one that I find is the “communication” piece of the puzzle which we have seemed to re-brand as “Social Media.”
    How do we turn face-to-face and hallway solutions into a trackable/tracable solution? There are tools that allow you to turn these non-computerized process into computerized processes. One such tool would be the use of SharePoint for all the “communication” back and forth with other team members and/or vendors. Granted this is a way to communicate but face-to-face is still my preferred method.

  • Mike Payne

    Oleg,
    Thank you for describing the flexible social approach being taken by Kenesto. We totally understand the need for people to easily be able to communicate with each other in a business setting, just like everyone, even the old people, are doing in the consumer area. The emerging graduates who are entering the business world are used to have instant communication with whomever they want. When they arrive in the world of product design today, they are faced with a myriad of what they might call “anti-social” systems that are hard to learn and use. And yet, business needs to capture and protect IP. At Kenesto, we aim to provide a system that is fun for people to use, and yet is consistent with the needs of businesses. For example, as John point out, visualization is so import to communication. “One picture is worth a thousand words”, as they say. This is why Kenesto shows the process visually, and shows files on the cloud, including 3D files, without the need to download, and own the offending application. As each version of Kenesto is released you will find more and more functionality that will help people to get their job done, still without it being onerous. I am sure you saw the announcement earlier this week of our partnership with Nuage. This is a direction that we think is most important. One company cannot do everything for everyone. In the cloud environment, having real partnerships with other companies seems now to be more of the norm than with installed products.

  • Steve

    What you appear to be describing within this excellent blog post Oleg is Social Workflow. As Doug points out, tasks should be able to be assigned and interacted upon in an ad-hoc manner, with discussions, file sharing and many other social capabilities easily connected to the tasks, the team, the files, etc. Such solutions should, of course, include everyone who needs to be included – which often means that a cloud solution can be (and probably is) the right choice. The system should be very easy and engaging (as a couple of your comment authors have mentioned). It should capture a complete history of what was done and said by all involved. However, one very important thing is that it needs to be designed and built from the ground-up for businesses and for the cloud (as-in IT-acceptable security and multi-tenancy), rather than built on technologies designed for consumers or legacy architectures that have been cobbled together to function on the cloud.

  • Philippe QUERE

    I agree a good way to manage an Engineering project is often without workflow, you can do it in a simple way:
    - Task list
    - ToDo list (which deliverable I should provide to finish my task, or what I’ve done to do the task, ie: we had to buy a new machine that was not supposed to be done at the beginning of the project or do some extra calculation)
    - Get Adhoc task (notification, alerts)
    - View of the project (ie: Gantt view)
    - simple datalist to manage Change Requests, New Ideas, Issue List,…

    Here is a post I wrote that illustrates this:
    http://becpg.blogspot.fr/2012/12/plm-project-management-and-deliverables.html

  • beyondplm

    Doug, thanks for commenting. I think, first time, I heard about self-adapting systems 20 years ago. It is continues to be a dream of many people involved into information technologies. At the same time, I agree – enterprises are complex systems.To have a simple mechanism such as a task can be very useful. Best, Oleg

  • beyondplm

    Ryan, I think you captured “communication” topic absolutely right. At the same time, let think about the model of communication. For many years, the model of communication was File Explorer and Email client. I think, social media you mentioned introduced a new one – information stream. We can see it in FB and other social media/networking apps. I think, introducing of such type of mechanisms will simplify communication significantly. People are regular to FB now exactly in the same way like we loved our Outlook client 10 years ago. Just my opinion. Thanks for commenting! Oleg

  • beyondplm

    Mike, thanks for commenting and explaining about Kenesto. I think, experiments in communication are absolutely important. I’m trying to form my opinion about visual representation of processes. Many times, in the past, I’ve seen graphical representation of a process complicated and confusing. What is you take on a growing complexity in a flow diagram and how do you plan to solve it at Kenesto? Best, Oleg

  • beyondplm

    “Social workflow”- sound like a new buzzword :) . Thanks for commenting! What you are explaining sounds like the way companies are applying FB model in the enterprise (Salesforce Chatter, Autodesk Qontext, SAP streamwork, etc.). The difference with plain Facebook is a “contextual information” you can bring in the discussion. The history is exactly Facbook timeline feature. I think, CAD/PLM companies should not try to re-invent a wheel in that space – clone Facebook (exactly in the same way, PDM companies 10-15 years ago cloned File Explorer. Just my opinion. Oleg

  • beyondplm

    Philippe, agree about “simple task /todo list” concept. Thanks for commenting and sharing materials and links. Best, Oleg

  • http://www.softwareag.com/ Software AG

    “In many situations to run processes among engineers is similar to herding cats.”

    A very good point. Oftentimes everyone has their own idea of how the process should work and most think their plan is the best. The more people involved in the process the harder it is to organize because everyone wants to put their two cents in.

  • beyondplm

    Thanks! Absolutely agree. You ask 3 engineers and got 4-5 opinions :) … Best, Oleg

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