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

What technologies PLM leaders need to watch in 2018

What technologies PLM leaders need to watch in 2018
Oleg
Oleg
24 August, 2018 | 3 min for reading

I’m taking some time off with my family, so please excuse me for irregular blogging this week. My attention was caught by Gartner Hype Cycle 2018. It contains 35 must-watch technologies out of a field of more than 2,000, dispersing them along the phases of the cycle: innovation trigger, peak of inflated expectations, trough of disillusionment, slope of enlightenment and plateau of productivity.

There are 3 trends outlined by Gartner:

1/ Democratized AI, as cloud computing, open source and the “maker” community open AI to the masses. 2/ Digitalized ecosystems, as companies shift from compartmentalized infrastructure to platforms that create broader ecosystems to connect humans and tech. 3/  Ubiquitous infrastructure, as limitless, always available infrastructure expands business opportunity.

Here is a diagram. Check the picture and look for buzzwords of your interest.

Here are  things I picked up with my PLM twisted brain:

1- Augmented Reality. I noticed AR is coming to the slope of enlightenment. During past few years, I’ve see a growing number of AR  examples in manufacturing, services and production demonstrated by PLM vendors. I like the idea of augmentation between data and presentation layer. Complexity of manufacturing data is an ideal place to bring new presentation and user experience technologies.

2- Digital Twin. It is all hype and Gartner confirms Digital Twin is on the top of the hyped expectations. It is consistent with how I see PLM companies are selling Digital Twin as a marketing to their existing PLM platforms. But we all know PLM implementations had their problems in the past. So, how Digital Twin will be different? It is not clear to me yet.

3- Blockchain. Lot of conversations and promises. Companies are researching what can be done, but not much outcome. Net-net: don’t plan to get anything from blockchain in the near future.

4- Knowledge Graphs. Networks are powerful source of innovation. Networked businesses trigger lot of innovation and opportunities. But, according to Gartner, it still has long path to the plateau of productivity.

What is my conclusion? Timing is everything. When you innovate, check the timing of the events and how your innovation is corresponding with the reality. Timing is one of these things that impossible to change. Too early and you burned tons of money for somebody else to pickup it later. Too late and you lost it to competitors. PLM was slow to adopt innovative technologies for the last decade. What will be the wining technology to bring a difference to PLM innovation? Good question, but not many answers. The big PLM wave is over. Company got to the idea of single version of truth. But implementations are complex and technologies are expensive. The idea is good, but it requires new delivery form.  The next PLM wave requires changing existing paradigms and augmentation of PLM into new tech form. Gartner doesn’t seem to recognize PLM as innovative hype anymore.But Digital Twin hype is sky-high. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Want to learn more about PLM? Check out my new PLM Book website.

Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing cloud based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
15 January, 2023

Manufacturing companies are looking into the digital thread of data across multiple stages of product lifecycle as the method to...

20 February, 2017

Develop3D article – Kenesto Drive 2.0 updates cloud product document management, collaboration and version control brings a news about Kenesto Drive...

4 May, 2009

Over the past few months, I have seen an increased volume of discussions related to the connection between CAD/PDM/PLM space...

7 September, 2012

One of the biggest issues PLM vendors want to solve today is “PLM adoption”. PDM/PLM moved from a toolbox to...

16 April, 2012

I was very busy since last Thursday. As you probably know, I was attended COFES 2012. It took all my time...

3 September, 2018

It is a formal long weekend in United States. But things aren’t coming to rest, not on my side at...

30 August, 2010

I’m continuing discussions about PDM vs. PLM differences. I’d encourage you to take a look on my previous two posts...

19 May, 2009

Look on announcement of Wolfram Alpha: Today’s Wolfram Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make...

17 August, 2009

I’d like to follow few very interesting discussions that happened last week. Few blog posts you probably want to read...

Blogroll

To the top