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

PLM, Organization and Information Silos: Good, Bad and Ugly

PLM, Organization and Information Silos: Good, Bad and Ugly
Oleg
Oleg
2 October, 2011 | 2 min for reading

Earlier this month, I posted What is the biggest PLM challenge? Since then I had multiple conversations on twitter, blog and LinkedIn groups. Discussing a potential level of changes in the organization, I came to the topic of “information silos”. I found this topic interesting. Information silos – is it good or bad? Is it a problem at all? What PLM vision need to be applied to handle it? I wanted to quote one of my readers:

…It is about maintaining a trade-off between what is local and what is global in a company. The problem in my view is one of terminology. If we say “silos” we immediately think “bad”. This in turn promotes actions to minimize silos, which is harmful if driven too far. We need to conceptualize the organization in a different way. My take is “work practice” or similar constructs. An organization would be seen as a constellation of workpractices, each contributing to the overall goal of the organization. This would provide a perspective where trade-off, silos, business processes, etc., could be discussed from a more productive point of view.

I followed up the same topic on the round table during Autodesk Forum in Moscow. During the discussion, we found some interesting facts. Few participants mentioned that one of the challenges during PLM implementation is that PLM improve the transparency of  processes and corresponded information in an organization. You can say – this is a really good thing. However, I’ve heard people faced organizational resistance. Information and process control is a power in every organization. So, people responsible for it don’t want to lose it. At the same time PLM streamlines processes it reduces the power of “gate keepers”. This is the ugly truth.

What is my conclusion? PLM is not only about technology. It can (actually does) change the way organization works top-down and bottom up. To manage this change is an important part of every implementation. However, PLM technologies nee to allow to make this change more transparent and less painful. Just my thoughts… I’d be interested to hear more about your experience. Speak your mind.

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
12 December, 2014

PLM selection is complex process. It takes time to make a decision, evaluate, build a pilot and implement PLM system....

13 June, 2014

About half year ago, I was looking for bluetooth location trackers. The solution that caught my attention was Tile. I...

3 June, 2012

Files. It is so obvious, right? We are using files everywhere in our life. Documents, Pictures Photos, Excel spreadsheets, CAD...

20 December, 2013

Communication and collaboration is an important part of every PLM solutions. To maintain an efficient way to communicate is not...

3 July, 2021

Graphs and Networks are fascinating. The last two decades of technological development show how powerful connections could be. From the...

30 January, 2013

For many years, enterprise was considered as a boring space. It was so much fun to talk about web, gadgets,...

25 May, 2020

My recent articles about the digital thread and multi-tenant architecture raised a number of questions and generated a healthy amount...

23 November, 2010

I’ve been watching a recorded webinar with a fascinating name: PLM+ERP = Manufacturing Success. The tweet about this webinar caught my...

16 May, 2014

Have you heard about “150% BOM”? BOM management terminology is confusing sometimes. Ed Lopategui gave a shot to explain it in...

Blogroll

To the top