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

The Future Of PLM Walmarting

The Future Of PLM Walmarting
olegshilovitsky
olegshilovitsky
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.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbYnkg6wYSI]

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.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USyoT_Ha_bA]

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
9 May, 2020

Earlier this week, I shared my impression of Aras’ take on Digital Twin and Digital Thread. If you missed my...

8 May, 2015

Traditional manufacturing companies are associated with large manufacturing facilities, manufacturing equipment and significant initial investment to take business off the...

19 April, 2017

Internet is changing everything in our lives. And it includes manufacturing ecosystem. I shared my thought about how networking will...

6 September, 2019

Another day and one more conference to follow online. Thanks to social media, twitter and a large group of analysts...

19 January, 2010

Do you remember the time before PLM? Time, when our focus was about CAD and Product Data Management? With all...

27 July, 2009

I had chance to discuss PLM adoption rate already several time. I think, adoption rate, is one of the factors...

13 July, 2018

One of the best things about living in Massachusetts is that almost every CAD vendor office is not more than...

12 May, 2009

The latest trends in software development definitely lean towards simplification. People tend to avoid complex stuff. I think most of...

3 December, 2009

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

Blogroll

To the top