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Integration

PLM and Data Reuse Focus

by Oleg on May 24, 2013 · 7 comments

Product data is one of my favorite topics. People in product development and manufacturing organizations are surrounded by digital data these days. The life 20 years ago was much easier. I remember the story about how people collaborated before CAD systems came to aerospace industry. Engineers were gathered in a single room, drawing boards were setup in the way similar to functional scheme of jet engine or aircraft. As a result of that, people were able to collaborate with their colleagues working on related parts and systems.

Fast forward to 21st century. The life is much more complicated. Engineering and product data are scattered among multiple systems and data sources. 3D models, drawings, CAE files, suppliers data, ERP systems, released archives, etc. Earlier this year, during PI Congress event in Berlin, I captured the following slide from Gartner’s presentation – Navigating the Shifting Product Design and Lifecycle Management Software Landscape made by Marc Halpern.

Scattered product data creates lots of complication in a manufacturing organizations. Gartner research speaks about 7 sources of mistakes in product data.  The following two are specifically resonated to me – inaccurate data entry and incorrect data flow between applications. One of the ways to solve this problem is to foster data access and data reuse. It is still not unusual to see how people cut/paste or re-enter data between applications. Various point-to-point integrations create a mess in terms of ability of people (and systems) to use data located in other systems.

What is my conclusion? Data Reuse. This topic should be in a focus on people implementing engineering and manufacturing information systems. Variety of data management systems, PDM, PLM, ERP, CRM… All these systems should be focused on how to make data searchable, accessible and re-usable across the value chain. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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PLM360+NetSuite: Changing the integration game?

by Oleg on May 18, 2013 · 0 comments

PLM and ERP integration is not a new topic. Step in the discussion about any PLM implementation and you will come to the topic of PLM+ERP integration in less than 5 minutes. Integration between two enterprise software suites is usually a complicated tasks which involves lots of planning, adjustments and hard-wiring from both sides.

Cloud software brings a new perspective to PLM / ERP integration domain. Of course, it will not dismiss planning stage. Lots of EPR and PLM planning tasks are still needs to be done. However, cloud integration is simpler. Web APIs and architecture as well as cloud deployment can make integration between cloud products easier. Early stage SaaS products exposed some difficulties in integration. Usage of REST APIs and additional cloud-based integration tools is streamlining integration tasks.

Earlier this week Autodesk and NetSuite announced partnership focused on providing seamless integration between two products – Autodesk PLM360 and NetSuite. You can find press release of the announcement by navigating to the following link. Here is an interesting passage:

The bi-directional integration of these revolutionary cloud technologies gives manufacturers a single, closed-loop solution to accelerate product design and development, reduce risk of errors and delays, streamline supply network collaboration, and gain critical real-time visibility into costing, scheduling, capacity and profitability.

Market research shows that manufacturers are increasingly turning to cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications to run product development, production, supply chain, order management, financials and other core business applications without the time and cost burden of on-premise software and servers. Gartner predicts that nearly half (47 percent) of manufacturers worldwide will be using or piloting SaaS applications by 2015, up from just 2 percent in 2010.[1]

In the following video, Gavin Davidson and Brian Roepke demonstrate the new integration between NetSuite Manufacturing and Autodesk PLM 360 software at SuiteWorld 2013:

Couple of thoughts about the scenario presented. I found natural to see not only traditional BOM transfer function during the PLM/ERP integration, but also modern social collaboration functions presented by NetSuite. Also, additional cloud-based tools such as Fusion 360 (cloud design CAD) and online cloud simulation tools naturally fit into the scenario.

What is my conclusion? Integration is tough topic. Usually it requires implementation effort and additional services. It looks like cloud software (both ERP and PLM) is about to define a new trend in the ability to establish a different level of integration. Time and customers will show how it will work. Nevertheless, it is clear that cloud vendors are trying to resolve old integration problems in a different way. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Disclosure: I’m responsible for PLM and Data Management product development at Autodesk.

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3 steps how to put PLM / ERP each in their place

by Oleg on March 14, 2013 · 2 comments

PLM and ERP integration. Endless topic. My PLM blogging friends - Chad Jackson and Jim Brown decided to discuss it again at their Tech4PD video blog. Even if it is presented as a debate, I found much more similarity between their statements about PLM/ERP integration rather than differences. They both agree PLM and ERP systems are taking a big part of engineering information environment, both systems are important, PLM and ERP are complimentary in terms of their business functions.

There are differences in the positions, of course. Jim is advocating for single source of products data integrated with ERP, CRM and other systems. PLM is the master of product data. From Jim standpoint, the data from PLM system is integrated and represents as product master data to all other data management systems. Chad agrees, the integration needed, but think low-touch integration is more secured and can be less risky. His (Chad’s) opinion is that total integration proposed by Jim is a too big shot to take. Chad advocates for simple integration and so called “one time information push”. From Chad standpoint to keep integration simple is an easier and less risky path to integrate data. If you have few minutes, I’d encourage you to watch the video for few minutes (especially if you want to see how Jim takes a swim with polar bears).

So, a simple conclusion after 7 min of video – data needs to be integration between PLM and ERP. Well, it gave me sort of disappointment. Ask anybody in the industry they will tell you about needs to integrated information between PLM and ERP. I like the way Jim present the need – we have to have a comprehensive solution. At the same time, Chad put it down in a very pragmatic way- complex integration won’t work. We need to have something simple in place. The debates between Jim and Chad made me think about possible steps to resolve the complexity of integration between PLM and ERP.

1. Move from “data ownership” to “data publishing”. This is an important shift. Enterprise system integration people spent decades debating “data ownership” topic. It is all about “master” and about how to establish a logic of data ownership. The concept of data publishing takes the data ownership upside down. You shift the focus on how to use data. The access can be provided using multiple ways (APIs and variety of data formats). My personal preference to use linked data and RDF/RDFS model (format) for that purpose.

2. Move from “data mapping” to “data description and connection”. In other words, link everything. In the original concept of data integration (Chad called it “data push”), the focus is on how to map data located in one system to another system. The whole purpose is to take data in one system, convert (map) and put in another system. After you accomplished “data publishing” concept, you don’t need to transfer data. You just find right data using model qualifiers. It simplify the business logic and helps to establish more reliable data integration mechanisms.

3. Include links to data elements from other systems. Think about this option similar to links on web pages. If you need to extend data or navigate to related data, you just follow the link, which takes you to the right place.

What is my conclusion? I can see PLM and ERP integrations fail in many companies because it relies to old and outdated integration principles. These old principles relies on data ownership and business of protecting data in a boundary of enterprise applications. It is going to change soon. The new one doesn’t move the data while provide an open and reliable mechanism to build an integration system similar to web. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Why PLM is more complicated than Google?

November 15, 2012

Integration is a tough job. Especially when it comes to the enterprise software. The typical manufacturing company landscape is siloed it contains many systems – office application, email, content management, CAD, CAM, CAE, PDM, PLM, etc. Beyond that set of systems, every company has ERP and few additional enterprise systems. In my view, the demand [...]

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Total Integration and the Future of PLM

August 12, 2011

I’m still cleaning my post-vacation backlog of feeds and messages. One of the articles by UK Eureca Magazine caught my attention, since it was named exactly as my blog – Beyond PLM. This article is an interview with managing director PLM Software, Robin Hancock about the company’s vision for the future of PLM. One of [...]

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Autodesk and SharePoint: collaboration with no compromises?

July 5, 2011

Collaboration and SharePoint are two of my favorite topics. I’m following them for the last couple of years. In one of my very early posts on PLM Think Tank I wrote about SharePoint PLM Paradox? Microsoft SharePoint 2007 business model made it very successful. Technology was decent and I’ve seen many customers and business partners are [...]

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Design To Manufacturing Process: Bumpy Road?

June 11, 2011

Integration between design and manufacturing is one of the topics that normally hits a lot of discussion in the product development and PLM space. To support this process becomes more and more important in a modern enterprise manufacturing organization. You can ask me why? Let me put is simple – this is one of the [...]

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PLM Simplification, Alfresco and AutoCAD Integration

May 31, 2011

One of the trends I am following constantly on my blog is the simplification. PLM is very complex and still way too expensive. However, I can see multiple evidence of changes that happen around us. Open source and IT consumerization are two interesting strategies. Normally, I’m not reading press releases. In modern social Web 2.0 [...]

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Integrate PDM and PLM: Wrong Question?

February 8, 2011

Two weeks ago, during SolidWorks World 2011, I had a chance to talk with Jonathan Scott of Razorleaf about different aspects of integration between SolidWorks Enterprise PDM and Enovia V6. Navigate to the following link to see Jonathan’s presentation online. These slides as well our conversation made me think about trajectories of different product data management [...]

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PLM: Share Data or Die

January 22, 2011

I’m still digesting a huge amount of information I learned from PLM Innovation Congress earlier this week in London. However, there is one trend that I can identify that struck me as a major one coming across all presentations and talks. I can call it “integrate and share” trend. The problem of integration and share [...]

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