I have chance to listed AMR’s Mike Burket interview during Siemens PLM Innovation Summit. It seems to me as a very interesting talk and slides about current PLM priorities. You can see it on this link. Thanks Dora Smith for this nice blog post, video and slides. One of the key requirements coming from manufacturers today are around cost reduction, better integration operation and product development as well as improvements in a supply value chain.
I counted two issues that, in my view, can be considered as very old requirements and demanded by many customers long time:
1. Design to Manufacturing Processes
2. Supporting of segmentation in Supply Chain.
On the one side, you can think about them as two separate issues. However, these two issues share one common fundamental problem of PLM systems. The problem is how to organize integrated cross organizational processes. If you will take a look on the following slide presented by Mike, the need for integration is something that I see as a must requirement to link demand insight, product development and supply networks.
Listening Mike it becomes almost clear that process integration will become the next PLM challenge. However, here is my point. Unfortunately, integration is a very expensive job. All integrated projects I know, took a lot of time, resources and, in my view, doesn’t fit IT budgets. The issue of reduced IT budgets makes this problem even more important and critical. Many of today’s PLM integrated projects were possible only due to result of long and dedicated work done by vendors, services providers and organizations.
What is my conclusion? There is no magic outside of powerpoint slides. Integration is hard. Nobody can do it easy today. Big PLM systems provide a comprehensive product development environment, but they are not adaptable for lean cross-organizational process integration. How to find a way to reduce PLM integrated project cost and improve the agility of product development environment? This is sounds as a deadlock and the biggest challenge for manufacturers and PLM vendors in coming future.
Just my opinion.
Best, Oleg
