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

PLM, Projects, Tasks and Social Productivity

PLM, Projects, Tasks and Social Productivity
Oleg
Oleg
2 February, 2011 | 2 min for reading

I’ve got an email from one of the blogging colleagues about the acquisition of Manymoon by Salesforce.com. Manymoon was a company developed so called “social productivity software”. I tracked Manymoon as a company doing some nice work in developing applications complimentary to Google Apps. The question I’ve been asked  by my reader was “Is Salesforce is thinking about PLM?”. This question made me think about the dynamics in the development of various types of collaborative applications, but specially those that can be used to run product development and manufacturing projects

Manufacturing and Project Management

In my view, business life is about projects. Project Management software is a straightforward decision in many companies. Microsoft Project is an easy choice after you discovered that you cannot control your projects just by using the power of Microsoft Excel. However, when it comes to product development and manufacturing life becomes more complicated. With multi-discipline project management involvement you will prefer a software packages that integrated with product design and manufacturing information. You can see few examples of such a type of software coming from different PLM and ERP suppliers.

Aras PLM Program Management

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaWiZhgR4_s]

Enovia V6 Program Central

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BaUUwekIK0]

TeamCenter Express Project Management

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpwpyY-N8qA]

This is, of course, not exhaustive list of possible solutions. I can see multiple pros and cons in adopting them – complexity of implementation, price, integration with other applications and many others.

Emails and Social Productivity

I think, many companies and product development projects are literally run by emails. It is very easy in the beginning. However, within the time it creates a lot of complications. Lost emails, complicated message threads, different versions of documents. However, email remains the simplest and easiest tool to use for many people. I found Manymoon example interesting. Their connection with Google Apps tools looks powerful and the manage additional aspects of communication and project related information such as tasks is simple. Spend some time on the following videos and make your opinion if you like it or not.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJWerd6wY18]

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

What is my conclusion? I think complexity of applications needs to go down. In my view, Manymoon apps are demonstrating that. Even if conceptually it seems similar to project and program management products PLM companies developed before, future won’t be going the same way. Simplicity always wins. I can see some signs of interest in how to make PLM applications simpler. New applications like SolidWorks n!Fuze and Vuuch social tools are following the simplification path. Even if these new applications are not covering the scope of existing solutions, it seems to be a right way to go. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
4 September, 2013

Data vs. Process. The egg or chicken of PLM industry. This topic is  near and dear to many people in...

26 February, 2019

My attention was caught by CIMdata commentary about expanding of 3DEXPERIENCE platform – report SOLIDWORKS World 2019. Navigate here to...

16 June, 2010

Yesterday, I spent my day on Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. It wasn’t overcrowded, although Expo pass registration that included...

24 October, 2022

PTC is moving to SaaS. The move started with the acquisition of Onshape and turning it into the Atlas platform....

31 August, 2009

I’ve been reading blog post by Deelip related CATIA and SolidWorks and thought what can be the final solution for...

14 January, 2010

I’d like to share some thoughts today following yesterday’s Mass Innovation Night in IBM Center in Waltham, MA. This is...

8 August, 2012

Social. New buzz. You can hear it in many places. After the tremendous success of social networking and web, many...

22 June, 2009

Another interesting blog post this morning about SolidWorks Sustainability Xpress coming soon on SolidWorks Labs. You can see video. What...

10 April, 2023

13 years ago, I was sitting in a small coffee shop in Brookline, Mass with Hardi Meybaum, co-founder of GrabCAD....

Blogroll

To the top