What do you think about the role of standards in CAD and PLM? Some of recent development in Open Standards made me think about CAD and PLM related standards again. I had a chance to discuss “the standards” theme several times in the past on my blog. Navigate to the following links to catch up the discussion.
PLM and Open Standards – Money Talks?
PLM Standards: From Formats to Frameworks
What is the future of CAD and PLM Standards?
Open PLM – A Climb for Losers?
Standards: Obvious and Expensive
In my view, customers are interested in standards. Their reaction on standard is normally positive. The benefits of standard-related activities for customers are obvious. In the past large manufacturing companies were involved in the successful standard development. STEP is probably one of the examples. At the same time, I cannot see vendors are signing up for open standards in the world of CAD and PLM. They are mostly reactive and keep balance of supporting standard and proprietary system development.
Data Sharing and Standards
Manufacturing is global these days. To be able to exchange information between in-shore and off-shore, OEM and suppliers, vendors and partners become extremely important. Do you think “data sharing” problem will disappear with the development of open standards? I don’t see direct dependencies. Obviously, it will be easier to exchange data using standards. However, the devil is in details. The support of particular application features and/or data elements will give us a right answer on this question.
What is my conclusion? To support open standard is expensive tax. Who will pay it? Customers? Vendors? My favorite joke: Standards like toothbrushes. Everybody needs them, but nobody wants to use somebody else one. Next month, I’m going to attend Eurostep Share-A-Space 2011 Forum. Read more about this forum on LinkedIn. I hope to learn more the potential role of Eurostep in the supporting of standards as well as about development of commercial systems based on such a standard like STEP and PLCS. I’m going to live blog from there, so stay tuned…
Best, Oleg
Freebie.
