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

PLM Collaboration, Social Trend and Lotus Notes Memories

PLM Collaboration, Social Trend and Lotus Notes Memories
Oleg
Oleg
1 September, 2010 | 3 min for reading

There are few terms in enterprise software and specifically in engineering software that was completely overused. In my view, collaboration is one of them. Collaborative design, collaborative PDM, collaborative engineering… what else? Vuuch blog about collaboration made me think about some lessons related to the development of systems that aimed to help people to work together. In addition, I found some interesting patterns in the way term “social” used these days.

Collaboration

When I hear people talking about collaboration, I am always asking them to replace the word “collaboration” to “working together”. In my view, it helps them to understand the main reasons and needs. So, you decided to work together? You need to communicate (making phone call, emails, exchange instant messages), share data (documents, 3D models, Bill of materials) and keep track of all these activities (see history of your communications). I can definitely how multiple tools can be used to help me to collaborate… Oops – working together with my colleagues, people in other departments, business partners, etc.

Manufacturing and Collaboration

People in manufacturing organization need to work together… Oops – to collaborate. However, product data and everything related is not as simple as files. CAD, PDM and lately PLM vendors tried to get data under control and manage it in the way that can help people to work together. Engineering and Manufacturing systems never been simple and complication becomes one of the most critical topic in implementation of PDM, PLM and enterprise systems in general.

LotusNotes and SharePoint

I found some interesting parallels in the development  of these tools. The focus of both tools is to share data between people and help them to communicate. With some extreme, I can see Lotus as a very good proof of concept used to develop latest versions of SharePoint. What is clear to me is that both products realized the basic need to share data. People need to share data in order to collaborate more efficiently. User interface (or how it now called UX – user experience) became much better in SharePoint 2007. Microsoft’s wizards learned something from Lotus’ past and earlier SharePoint baby steps. PLM companies are trying to repeat the success of SharePoint by adopting SharePoint practices. I can see some potential in this work. But world is moving faster.  Web 2.0 is coming…  

Drinking The Social Software Kool-Aid?

The next trend is coming – social software. It comes to us out of last 10 years of internet development. Also known as Web 2.0, social software is a cool combination of technologies, web sites and tools that helps people to communicate (they don’t need to work) together.

Blogs, wikis, social networks generated a significant interest of people in enterprise software – can we make PDM, PLM, PxM software as cool as Web 2.0 web sites?

What is my conclusion? Manufacturing enterprise companies are facing an urgent need to work more efficiently. How to work together (to collaborate) becomes one of the most important questions. This is a though one. Companies are run by emails, shared folders and lots of software pieces stitched together. It cost lots of money to companies to keep going. To crack-down a new way to work together by re-using internet technologies and web 2.0 website practices can be kinda cool. Is it possible? Web 2.0 is about pictures, videos, messages. How to make these techniques to work for 3D CAD, Products, Bill of Materials, Suppliers and still keep the same level of coolness? A very interesting question…

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
10 April, 2013

I’ve been attending North American PLM Market & Industry Forum organized by CIMdata earlier today. CIMdata is running these forums...

2 October, 2015

The world is changing. The power of manufacturing industries in the past was predicted by money, manufacturing facilities, assembly lines...

29 December, 2010

I read The PLM State: PLM Migration, No Data Left Behind on Zero-Wait State blog. Read it and make your...

26 November, 2010

This week Siemens PLM announced – “Daimler AG has selected CAD Software from Siemens as their standard for their worldwide...

12 September, 2013

I want to continue the topic of design interaction started in my CAD and Design Interaction: 50 years in 3...

14 March, 2011

Since Microsoft first released MOSS 2007, I can see an increased amount of manufacturing companies are investigating a potential move...

15 December, 2010

The conversations about future CAD and PLM solutions is not a new thing these days. I decided to re-read some...

2 June, 2017

Data is a new oil. You can hear it more often these days. In one of my earlier blogs, I...

1 March, 2014

The history of databases and database management systems knows many periods. Most of us developed strong association between database management systems...

Blogroll

To the top