We are coming to the new decade, and I found interesting to drop my thoughts related to what I’d expect in 2010s from Product Lifecycle Management. I think last 10 years were the period of initial introducing of PLM concepts on the market. Initial came in early 2000s as a transformation of Engineering Data Management and Product Data Management, PLM emerged as an integrated information oriented approach to manage a product lifecycle.
1. Find Simple Solution for Complex PLM Problems. Most of the people in the industry today agreed about the need to manage a product lifecycle. However, opinions about what should be a way to do so are very different. This is in my view the biggest PLM problem today. PLM considered as a complex, expensive, service-depended software initiative. Established PLM brands as well as newcomers are trying to explode complexity of PLM. I think it will be the biggest challenges PLM companies will try to resolve in coming years.
2. Explore New Business Models. Life is going to be different in the next ten years in everything that related to business models. PLM will not be able to continue existing business model with mostly direct sales, heavy reliance on the service offering by partners and marathon of new product releases with new features. What will come next? Open Source, Online / SaaS services or maybe even “Free” options. Time will show…
3. Processes beyond Engineering. PLM is very much about what engineering is doing. Most of products became mature in design and engineering. At the same time, there is no significant presence of PLM products related to disciplines outside of R&D departments.
4. Internet Technologies Adoption. Majority of PLM systems was created based on previously available EDM/PDM and CAD products. Some of the products related to ERP offering inherited lots of ERP technologies. However, nature of PLM products drives Product Lifecycle Management into areas where Internet technologies demonstrated clear differentiation – scale of data management, integration, collaboration, information sharing. PLM needs to stand in front of complicated decisions about how to adopt various internet technologies to keep tecnological leadership.
5. Develop Open Strategies. For the long period of time CAD (and PLM too) considered as not open products. This is come initially from low interest to share product data information, integration, etc. In my view, current status quo served as very bad characteristics of CAD and PLM software. I think, many organizations these days understand it and require a change in existing CAD/PLM products.
So, these are my 2010s predictions, and I’m looking forward to you comments and thoughts.
Best, Oleg
