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

PLM: How Much Do We Have and to Whom it Belongs?

PLM: How Much Do We Have and to Whom it Belongs?
olegshilovitsky
olegshilovitsky
2 December, 2009 | 2 min for reading

Extensive development of social trends and connection between social trend and product lifecycle management got me to think more about intellectual property of PLM and related product information, business process etc. How we handle it today and how we will handle it in the future? I can see three parallel trends – all of them brought me to the same question of how much PLM worth and how organizations and individuals will be able to manage it in a corporate and social ecosystem we have.

Trend 1: PLM IP in the  organization.

PLM vendors and services providers are using the term PLM IP very often. Which means companies are developing products and business processes in the organization that accumulates product and organization IP. This is the way I’m taking PLM IP. The lifecycle of products is much longer than the lifecycle of products and technologies. So, the question how organizations will preserve IP around PLM implementations.

Trend 2: 3D/CAD Online Content

I can see growing effort to develop online content. It comes in different ways – online portals with 3D models (I had chance to write about it last week in the post “3D Warehouse Parade“) and content web sites like cadooku (thanks Gabi Jack blog post for reference) that thinking how to trade 3D models between people. Growing amount of online content with future involvement of OEM and suppliers will raise a question how to preserve and manage this content and IP.

Trend 3: CAD Publishing Effort

My assumption is that CAD vendors took an idea of publishing as an efficient way to answer on the old question about CAD formats and interoperability. I can hear voices saying – format is not relevant anymore, we can publish content. So, efforts like PTC Arbotext, DS 3DVIA Composer, Autodesk Inventor Publisher (presented yesterday on AU2009, thanks Al Dean for his post and video) becomes very popular.

So, what is my conclusion? As a customer, I want to be able to own my PLM IP. Product models, designs, manufacturing instructions, Bill of Materials, ECO processes, Supplier’s models. How can I do it? I think this is a question we’ll need to answer in the near future.

Just my thought. What is your opinion?
Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
17 February, 2021

The file is a fundamental concept in any operating system. Files are one of the most popular mechanisms for data...

7 February, 2017

Solidworks World 2017 have started yesterday in Los Angeles, CA. It brings ~5000 individual designers, companies, partners and vendors under...

16 December, 2009

I want to finish my ‘back to basics’ set of posts with the topic of PLM and ERP integration. Staying...

24 November, 2014

The days of ugly UI are in the past. The trend that started from website design, mobile UI and intuitive...

3 December, 2009

Common definition of the process: “a set of activities leading to the desired outcome.” Despite such a simple and straightforward...

8 September, 2014

  PLM implementation discussions are usually brings lots of controversy. Vendors, analysts, advisers, service companies, customers are all involved into...

17 August, 2015

Last year, my attention was caught by CIMdata article – IBM Forms New Watson Group to Meet Growing Demand for...

30 June, 2016

Enterprise software is infamous by its complexity. After years of preaching complexity and rich set of functions, enterprise vendors are...

18 April, 2025

Why fast-moving product development teams need a new playbook for PLM? Manufacturing industry is evolving and looking how to keep...

Blogroll

To the top