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

Process Thinking with the Development of Social Collaborative Business Processes for PLM

Process Thinking with the Development of Social Collaborative Business Processes for PLM
olegshilovitsky
olegshilovitsky
6 March, 2009 | 2 min for reading

I’ve been thinking about how a company can use business process tools to manage their processes. In one of my previous posts, “How to improve PLM process before PLM system using BPMN,” I discussed the possibility of using process tools supporting BPMN to capture business processes in the organization. One of the key ideas in this post was that you can use BPMN tools to capture process definition, and later, to implement these processes using tools and systems you already have in your organization. PLM and dedicated BPMS products are systems that can be used for this process implementation.

 When I started to think about how process capturing may occur, I came to the conclusion that the business process capturing process is very painful for an organization. As for product development in a manufacturing organization, this process can differ greatly from organization to organization. So process capturing is natural step for the organization when they implement Product Lifecycle Management and create a collaborative business process environment. 

What we can do to change this? One of the ways is to reuse the practice of social networking and crowdsourcing for process capturing. My key point in formulating this conclusion is that process development knowledge in an organization is spread over many departments – engineering, manufacturing and others. It is very problematic to have people efficiently involved in capturing their existing processes – too many people, too much time… Also, people are busy running their businesses and claim not to have time for processes capturing. Allowing all people in the organization to be involved in ‘capturing processes’ which I refer to as “Process Thinking” changes the rules of the game. With everyone involved, people are able to do multiple reviews. Step-by-step adjustments can make a significant change in the product development process implementation for PLM. In addition, this process can improve people’s process adoption. Socially created processes will reflect the existing processes accurately. Afterwards business process management tools can optimize and improve existing processes. 

How can we make this happen practically? The answer probably comes from software providers. What if process tools were to support a staged process of continuous process changes? Each person would be able to adjust the process to reflect the way people manage their work. Allowing everyone to vote and approve process changes will let all people be involved in the process definition possible right from the beginning. Another important achievement would be an increased trust in the process definition – normally, people trust something more if they were a part of it and defined it collaboratively together.

 I believe that you may have some experience in this by trying to centralize the definition and approval of processes. However, making process definition open and transparent for all people in the organization can allow PLM companies to leapfrog the overall adoption of PLM systems in an organization.

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
12 February, 2009

I’d like to come to raise the idea of visual WIKI. This is a possible way to make PLM more...

23 January, 2019

Digital transformation is a new darling of technological marketing PLM. It is promising to transform processes and organize data and...

6 January, 2011

Winter break is a time to make a traditional “lesson learned” or “next year” blog posts. I wanted to come...

20 April, 2009

In one of my previous posts, I already discussed PLM process management: Should PLM develop its own process tools?. In...

2 June, 2018

Yesterday, I shared my thoughts about PLM “Always be competitive” that was triggered by blog article of Sami Grönstrand of...

29 June, 2016

One of the news that caught my attention yesterday was Autodesk announcement to acquire CADSoft Eagle PCB design tool from...

1 April, 2019

There are endless debates about the scope and definition of PLM in the industry. One day I thought to collect...

18 October, 2016

For many years, databases is the most critical element of PLM infrastructure. After all, PLM systems are data management systems...

13 June, 2021

Data is a new oil. Unless you lived under a rock for the last few years, I’m sure you’ve heard...

Blogroll

To the top