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

Why My PLM Won’t Work For You?

Why My PLM Won’t Work For You?
Oleg
Oleg
6 February, 2014 | 3 min for reading

plm-customization-complexity

To implement PLM is a process and change. Speak to anyone in engineering and manufacturing community and they will bring you lots of stories about complexity of PLM implementations and associated cost. Also, you can hear lots of stories about complexity of moving from one PLM implementation to another or switching from one PLM system to another. Companies are spending tons of money to align PLM systems to a specific set of requirements to fit company date management and process needs.

Couple of years ago, I posted “Is PLM customization a data management Titanic?“. For many of manufacturing companies, it is a reality these days. Implementations done 10 years ago can be hardly maintained. To update current implementation to a new PLM system version or another PLM systems is mission impossible. Companies are hiring advisers and consulting companies involved in the implementations and development of PLM systems to run migration and adjust PLM system to a new set of requirements.

Vendors have been trying to resolve the complexity of PLM systems by applying out-of-the-box configurations. However, the success  of these ready-to-go systems was somewhat mixed. Pre-configured templates worked well during marketing shows, presentations and evaluations. However, in order to bring system to production mode, (still) required customization to be done. Very often, the customization was coming to replace pre-configured template totally. The problem is not very unique in PLM space. I posted – How to de-customize PLM article few weeks ago. I discussed the importance to decrease customization level as well as presented some similar customization complexities coming from SharePoint implementations.

Today I wanted to provide some recommendations you can follow in order to stay away from costly PLM customizations. These recommendations will also help you to avoid some typical PLM implementation pitfalls. Here are 4 steps to follow:

1- Ask yourself what problem you want to solve with PLM for the next 2 years. The term PLM used by many people in a variety of forms and meanings. Going with specific scope (e.g. change management, quality, bill of materials, etc.)  will help you to chart functionality you expect PLM system to support.

2- Outline main data elements and structures PLM system needs to support in order to solve list of problems from previous step. Do it with no connection to specific PLM system and vendor. Make an agreement in your extended team about that. It can take you some time to get to the agreement, but in many situations this is one of the best investments you can do in order to eliminate extra customization steps.

3- Pickup few PLM systems and try to map your requirements to what these systems can provide you without customizations. Don’t be afraid to change your terminology alongside of this process. However, insure that whatever name PLM system is using, it will do what you expect from functional standpoint. It will be a good idea to hire consultant during this stage. It is worth to spend some dollars to avoid future budget waste.

4- Last, but very important. You need to test that selected system is flexible enough to apply changes on top of pre-configured parameters/templates. It is not unusual to provide out-of-the-box system configuration that cannot be practically changed. Practically means in this context the ability to add/modify system and data model and (at the same time) keep most of existing functionality in place. Stay away from system configurations with scripts and customized behaviors hard-coded to a particular data models and workflows.

What is my conclusion? The combination of flexibility and preconfigured environment is the key to stay away from costly PLM customizations. However, these two characteristics are very often mutually exclusive. Vendors can show up ready-to-be-used PLM configuration that will be literally destroyed as soon as you will have to change something. To run a test of how flexible is out-of-the-box PLM model is a key thing not to be punched in the face by future PLM system re-configuration and customization cost. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
26 August, 2010

I read one of the latest VEKTORRUM re-posts about Autodesk and PLM. Navigate your browser to the following link and read...

13 June, 2016

Cloud is coming to CAD and design world. Slowly, but surely CAD vendors are getting more interested in how to...

4 June, 2012

These days everything is going global. Manufacturing is not an exception from this rule. Design anywhere, build anywhere, support anywhere...

5 November, 2015

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are going through the renaissance period these days. Few days ago, I shared my some...

26 September, 2013

I like the way BOM discussion usually sparks. From my experience, “BOM management” topic has the ability to ignite conversation...

19 October, 2016

These days is really hard to read news and not to see a word “cloud” at least few times during the...

4 January, 2025

In my work on change management, I’ve been exploring how we can make meaningful improvements to traditional change management processes...

13 September, 2010

Last week I published my visual guide how to choose PLM. This post was the most popular during the whole...

8 December, 2011

I’m sure, you are familiar with highway 101 crossing Silicon Valley. However, you probably never heard about PLM Highway in...

Blogroll

To the top