Can we build PLM bottom up?

This week, I have been getting more intense feelings about  “trying to find a new solution for an old problem”. So, giving into this feeling, I was thinking about PLM user adoption. Looking at many blog posts and strategic presentations, enterprise software caught my eye. And so the next question was, what about user adoption?

I think that the most important things to speak at this point is how to get users to use your product. So, with this perception, I feel that global enterprise deployment is probably important, but we need to present it in a way that will be different from the typical top-down enterprise architecture approach.

 So, there are a few practical ideas I’d like to introduce in order to build your PLM from the bottom-up.

 1.    Set of problem-oriented tools

These tools will be oriented on how to work on a specific area- design, bills of material, projects etc. Tools need to be easily available for all people in the organization. You need to invest only a small amount of time to learn it (as you do with Excel)

 2.    Adaptable data and process models.

Today’s enterprise data modeling is very complex, in my opinion. Lots of time is spent on designing and changing data models/schemas. We need to come up with small data blocks (maybe a new PLM data format? – see my previous blog article).

 3.    Portal Tools and Enterprise Search

These technologies are becoming more and more mature- SharePoint from Microsoft, Content Management Tools from OSR vendors, IBM and others. You can choose your IT stack and follow it.

 Well, this is sort of a dream, but I’m sure you will be glad to discuss it with me and perhaps bring examples of your implementations.