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

The pains of file management, will PDM be popular again?

The pains of file management, will PDM be popular again?
olegshilovitsky
olegshilovitsky
10 August, 2009 | 2 min for reading

file-pain-pdmTime ago, I had chance to discuss second mover innovation. For me, second movers are perfect example to learn from experience, talk to customers and introduce something breakthrough in the place of something we have today. So far, I came to my old friend, PDM system. Actually, the perfect trigger for my thoughts was SolidWorks’s “pain of the file management” campaign. Actually, SolidWorks people raised a very good point – after decades of PDM and later PLM, how many people still have “file management pains”? My conclusion – still many…

If I will go back 10 years and analyzes what was the “value proposition” for PDM systems in the middle of 90s, my short list will be simple – 1/ability to control documents; 2/ getting right revision of my work; 3/collaborate with co-workers. So, what we learned since that time. My assumption is that lots of experience with different PDM approaches can be concluded as following.

  1. Successful PDM system should rely on a design system (CAD etc.)
  2. Designers and Engineers normally tries to put all possible and impossible information to PDM system.
  3. Complexity kills.

So, where we are after all these years? I think one of the main PDM trends these days is to have PDM capability combined with CAD system. When it makes a lot of sense in context of functionality, the reality is to have multiple CAD systems in organization. The second point is related to information PDM is trying to manage. Simple in the beginning, any PDM systems become very complex as soon as we stretch it to support additional information.

So, what will be PDM trends in nowadays? SolidWorks proposal sounds very right – there are still lots of people having “file pain”. SolidWorks PDM these days is a good example simplicity in managing of SolidWorks files and document. Is it new? Probably not. So, I just wonder what future PDM system will look like?

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
15 April, 2013

I’ve been attended COFES 2013 earlier last week. For those of you not familiar with the event, navigate your browser...

10 April, 2009

Everybody wants to have “live access”, right?! I think that the marketing world has finally found the right word to...

15 February, 2013

Cloud is trending and we can see more examples of how cloud technologies applies in business. PLM vendors are not...

15 July, 2016

PLM is transforming from pure engineering discipline into platform capable to manage a diverse set of data and processes. I...

13 August, 2015

The amount of data around us is growing. The same applies to engineering and manufacturing companies. Our ability to collect...

1 September, 2009

Originally, PLM was born to provide solution for big enterprise customers. Aerospace, Defense, Automotive… these are original roots of today...

27 June, 2016

Two years ago I posted my Top PLM Vendors. Let’s face it – every vendor has its strength… sharing my thoughts...

19 April, 2011

As you know, I spent end of my last week, including the weekend at COFES (The Congress of the Future of...

20 August, 2013

Legacy data it painful. Speak to anybody in the business of PDM/PLM implementation and they will tell you that importing...

Blogroll

To the top