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

The Future Of PLM Walmarting

The Future Of PLM Walmarting
Oleg
Oleg
18 June, 2010 | 2 min for reading

Say “PLM” to anyone, and you hear the words “complex” and “expensive”. However, thinking about trajectories of different technologies, I came to the conclusion that it always introduced as something very expensive and then going down to become cheaper and, in the end, even free. It was a story of so many technological inventions in many industries. There are many outside of PLM examples. The most valuable insider’s stories related to the evolution of CAD systems. Even in the data management domain, we can definitely see a trend to move from expensive custom-built PDM systems to windows-based mid-priced solutions. It gave a certain push in the adoption level and allowed to “non-Boeing” customers to come and taste these products and technologies.

The Parallel History of CAD/PLM and Walmart
Let’s take an unusual look on how companies and product can grow within time. Let’s take a look first on the very interesting video of WalMarts growth across United States from 1964 until 2007. I think this video is amazing and shows viral WalMart distribution. You can take a look on the interactive map following this link.

Now let’s take a look on the following framgment. “This video is a TV show made about the software Ivan Sutherland developed in his 1963 thesis at MIT’s Lincoln Labs, “Sketchpad, A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System”, described as one of the most influential computer programs ever written. This work was seminal in Human-Computer Interaction, Graphics and Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs), Computer Aided Design (CAD), and contraint/object-oriented programming“. These are definite roots of CAD and PLM.

The Future Is PLM Walmarting
In my view, there is a very interesting paradox related to PLM. I can see Product Lifecycle Management ideas as a vision and practical guidance about how to manage product from their entire life. These ideas are getting good acceptance from many people in the organizations. At the same time, as soon as discussion is going towards software and vendors, I can hear much more negative context about what PLM can and cannot do. Here is my point – to walmart PLM! It needs to be done easy, cheaper, simpler. It needs to be open and available. It needs to solve initially the subset of problems that relevant to everybody and not requires implementation time.

What is my conclusion today? I love Wal-Mart’s mission statement: “To give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same thing as rich people“. I’d like to think about a direction toward the future of PLM – To give all engineers the chance to buy and use the same software as Boeing, Toyota, Honda, Airbus… I don’t think it is about people and methodology. They will not learn how to use complicated software. This is about software…

Just my thought.
Best, Oleg

Share

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
30 June, 2024

The debates about PLM and ERP about management of Bill of Materials are heating up. Recent years were remarkable with...

14 May, 2015

CAD files. Everyone who is dealing with design and engineering is familiar with this type of data. Large files, many...

12 August, 2014

I have a special passion for data and data visualization. We do it every day in our life. Simple data,...

12 February, 2018

My last post about SOLIDWORKS World 2018 is about dreams. I’ve heard Bernard Charles, Dassault Systemes Vice Chairman and CEO...

2 May, 2019

One of the most complicated questions when selling PLM is to prove ROI. The topic was debated so much in...

1 June, 2012

Let me start today from asking you a question. How do you run your company? Regardless on size, scale and...

27 January, 2024

Earlier this week, an insightful article by Prof. Jorg Fischer grabbed my attention. It explored the complexity of BOM (Bill...

8 March, 2016

I’m attending PI Congress event in Munich these days. There are lot of interesting information and presentation. If you follow...

22 June, 2018

This week was busy for events. At the beginning of the week, I attended LiveWorx. I’m sure you had a...

Blogroll

To the top