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

Wikipedia: PLM Open Source Reference?

Wikipedia: PLM Open Source Reference?
Oleg
Oleg
4 August, 2010 | 2 min for reading

It becomes very common to use Wikipedia for most research projects. It becomes an ultimate source of information open for everybody. Do you think Wikipedia can become an open source reference for the information about software for engineering and manufacturing? Kind of Open Source PLM reference place?

What is a good source of knowledge about CAD, PDM, PLM and other systems? What can be used as a consolidated information reference? Think how much time we are spending in discussions about terminology, names, useful practices? What if Wikipedia will become this sort of knowledge? To understand current “state of the art”, I spent some time browsing PLM-related resources on Wikipedia. Here is my list of the references and my conclusion.

Terminology

I found quite complicated to work on well known TLAs. The search for PLM, brings the following definition:
Product lifecycle management, the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product. In addition, multiple searches for relevant terms are available. One of them stated as a PLM (marketing) is very far from product lifecycle management definitions and hardly can be a reference.
Some of other useful links – CADPDMPLMCAECAM. .

Companies

This part of Wikipedia is in a good shape, in my view. Most of the companies are represented. Sometimes, you can find interesting link redirection caused by company acquisitions, renaming and re-branding.

Autodesk
Aras (wasn’t intuitive to find- who may think searching for Corp.?)
Arena Solutions
Bentley Systems (was confused by multiple links to Bentley cars)
Dassault Systems (contains lots of links on deleted pages as a result of re-branding)
SolidWorks
PTC

Siemens PLM (recently renamed as Siemens Industry Software, according to upFront.eZine)

This is, of course, not a full list. I just started to come with some initial list and examples.

Standards

I found as a very complicated task to find PLM related standards. I found STEP (ISO 10303) pages in a relatively good shape. Also, list of “Engineering Standards” returned by Wikipedia search contains a list of interesting resources.

Other Resources

I found PLMPedia as a good resource of information about PLM. The PLMPedia initiative belongs to the Russian forum isicad.

What is my conclusion? I think the industry need to have a good reference source. Wikipedia is an excellent open source reference that can be adopted and used by lots of engineers and developers. These days I can see quality of industry is in supporting “open source reference”. Wikipedia is a good candidate for such information placement.

If you are aware about any additional information resources related to CAD, PLM and other engineering and manufacturing software, please send me links or comment on blog.

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
18 September, 2023

Digital transformation has unfurled a new chapter for the world of manufacturing and product lifecycle management (PLM). This seismic shift,...

6 April, 2012

One year ago, I posted – PLM and Post-PC era. It is interesting to read back and think about the...

28 March, 2020

Yesterday, I shared my initial thoughts and comments from CIMdata PLM Forum 2020. If you missed my blog, check this...

26 March, 2018

To integrate PLM with other islands of information in manufacturing company, downstream applications and value chain is a big deal....

28 December, 2015

This is a time of the year when PLM analysts and journalists are trying to look at crystal ball for...

20 April, 2019

Continue to share my reflections after COFES today, I want to touch CAD/PLM mergers and acquisitions (M&A). COFES is a...

24 May, 2011

Ask people about usability of PLM and other enterprise data management systems. From my experience, the answer is simple –...

26 August, 2009

PLM as a combination of technologies, software, and methodology came long way from initial CAD systems, followed by CAE, Product...

12 August, 2010

Scaling up is a tough problem. I want to talk today and PLM Software scalability in unusual aspects – business...

Blogroll

To the top