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

How to make PLM less complicated and more user-friendly?

How to make PLM less complicated and more user-friendly?
olegshilovitsky
olegshilovitsky
9 February, 2009 | 1 min for reading

I think that PLM in general as well as most other enterprise systems are very non-user friendly. My simple conclusion is that all these systems have a ‘push’ behavior – you need to manage all processes, initiate data transformation, send released design to engineering, release bill of materials to manufacturing… processes, processes, processes. We have too many processes to manage, in my opinion… How we can change and transform PLM systems to behave differently?

I suggest that we don’t focus on processes. Organizations need processes but people are troubled by them. They see processes as something that makes their life more complex and slows down their work. They are not good for people. They are not good to people. I cannot understand processes. BUT I can understand the list of my tasks. I need to have data to make a task happen, yet, in most cases my task depends on changes somebody else makes to the data. So, let’s focus on this and imagine that our PLM system is a single Web. Everything is published and organized. You need to be notified when something is changed. This reminds me of RSS!

In order to create a possible revolution for PLM, I think that we need to formalize 3 fundamental steps:

 1/ Stop dealing with processes and focus on data

2/ Manage people’s tasks

3/ Notify people about data changes

I envision a future PLM system that deals much less with processes and focuses more on data and tools. Process management will become a native part of the IT infrastructure and will be used across organizations, without being limited to a particular application domain. 

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
7 April, 2019

One of the topics of my special interest at SuiteWorld 2019 last week was around Manufacturing. NetSuite is growing in...

15 January, 2014

The word “social” is getting into many places these days. However, very often, it is overloaded and misunderstood by people...

2 March, 2015

PDM was long time a step child for many CAD systems. To deal with CAD files, their relationships and dependencies...

7 June, 2011

I want to talk about the topic, which is actually is not very new – revisions. I was reading Autodesk...

16 October, 2009

When I discussed a cloud options for PLM yesterday in my article, I mentioned that a very significant opportunity comes...

28 August, 2020

How to provide the mechanical design community access to a growing library of products available and connect engineers working on...

10 December, 2009

Some thoughts about Business Intelligence (BI). I found it somewhat under-invested in Product Lifecycle Management field. BI considered as a...

21 May, 2009

Yesterday, I had the chance to see two deliveries from Jim Brown related to PLM for mid-size companies. ENOVIA SmarTeam...

29 October, 2010

So, it finally happened. After almost 6 months of official preparation, PTC launched a new product line – CREO. CREO...

Blogroll

To the top