My Slice of PLM Single Version of Truth

I have a crazy idea to discuss today. I’d like to talk about a topic that we like very much and that is often discussed when we mention PLM. The topic is a “single version of the truth”. In my opinion, in many cases, we do present it as being obvious.. Yes, the fundamental intention of Product Lifecycle is to cover a product from the initial concept up until the product is manufactured, released, supported and recycled. So, having a unified way to manage product, processes, and resources is one of the most important ideas concerning PLM.

Today’s enterprises are becoming very dynamic: changes are happening all the time; companies are working with a wide range of suppliers for different purposes. How can PLM provide affordable and scalable solutions for such a dynamic eco-system? This creates a lot of challenges for a company providing product data and lifecycle management solutions. How you can get everybody synchronized in the way you do business processes, and how can you keep your PLM systems up-to-date in this environment?

So, I came to a working conclusion that I’d like to discuss. My point is that in today’s enterprise eco-system, you cannot demand people to agree about how to manage your product data and processes. Ah… I know, it sounds bad, but bear with me for few more minutes, don’t close this post:)… I think today’s data management is too complex to allow large organizations to agree on a single way to do business and implement a PLM system to follow this agreement. This task is too complex and too long. You won’t be able to finish this task and you will have to start with new one! So, this is probably the most fundamental problem in today’s system implementations. It’s too long and too expensive since we are trying (and we need) to agree on how to implement the systems.

Here’s my 5-point view on the subject as follows:

1. Organizations and systems are too complex to agree on PLM related data, processes and best practices.
2. Successful PLM implementations need to focus on how to manage ongoing system changes.
3. Best practices and processes in an organization will be a result of multiple changes and improvements in the PLM system implementation.
4. The system needs to keep track of all changes
5. We need to have very a flexible PLM system, and I don’t believe we have one yet.

What’s my conclusion? I was reading Jos Voskuil’s blog post about PLM ROI yesterday and thought about why ROI for PLM is not obvious. My take on this today is that, probably, as our implementations are still too big and too complex, people see this as very big and fundamental investment. So, they need to double-check themselves with many calculations around ROI. Allowing ongoing changes and modifications of PLM systems will make implementation simpler and ROI calculations easier…

So, don’t keep quiet… I know you won’t all agree with each other – but let me know what you think.