Let me ask you this… Is there a connection between PLM and Cupcakes? I hope I’ve got your attention for a minute :). One of the questions PLM industry is struggling for a long period of time is awareness. PLM long time industry opponents ERPs are well positioned to get attention of CIOs and other executives in the companies. At the same time, speak to any PLM-related person about PLM awareness, and you will be immediately attacked by a long list of facts that supposed to convince you PLM is the first thing you need to implement in order to improve your business. Getting back to the original question about PLM and Cupcakes, one of my best blogging and twitting buddies, Jim McKenney posted in his PLM on my brain few months ago an interesting blog post called – Who needs Product Lifecycle Management? The following passage is my favorite:
People seemingly cannot agree on who really needs Product Lifecycle Management, or PLM. What is my response? EVERY business needs PLM! Why, you ask, well, let me tell you. Every business has a large pile of information that supports their products. It may be in the form of paper, but thankfully today, most businesses have a large amount of digital information that supports their business. Managing that virtual information is what allows the company to continue delivering products and support to their customers. PLM is all about managing virtual information to support physical products.
Later in his post, Jim is coming to the “cupcakes story” explaining why every company needs PLM. You can replace “cupcakes” with anything else – cars, airplanes, computers, food, etc. and it won’t change a story. The fact how people convinced themselves about the need of PLM is interesting to observe. As a result of this, PLM solutions’ appetites are growing, and many additional solutions become part of PLM portfolios.
Another thing that very often came in conversations about PLM is “change”. The company must change their processes, behaviors, organization, systems, etc. to successfully implement PLM systems. Another PLM blogger I admire – Jos Voskuil often writes about people’s aspect of PLM. In one of the last posts in his virtualdutchman blog – The State of PLM after 4 years blogging Jos is saying: I believe PLM requires a change in an organization not only from the IT perspective but more important from the way people will work in an organization and the new processes they require.
The aspect of change and the question about PLM awareness made me think about “blind spotting”. Everybody knows what is blind spot when you drive your car. However, this is not exactly what I want to talk about. I’ve got my exposure to the topic of blind spotting two years ago during COFES 2010 when I attended a lecture of Peter Marks about the same topic. I put a video record of this session. It is longer than a usual video I put in my posts. Keep it for coming 4th of July week and watch it. I’m sure you will learn a lot as I did.
Just to capture an idea of what Peter Marks is talking about I want to refer you to the article where Peter is answering 3 questions about blind spotting. Navigate here and have a read. Here is the question that caught my special attention. Peter is talking about what blind spot will make a biggest difference to us:
It’s probably the extension of our innate territoriality to territories of belief. This often leads to irrational escalation of conflict. As with many other animals, we’re wired to defend our territories. Home territories are where we find sustenance and protect our kin. Over the millennia, we’ve evolved many biases to give us a “home field advantage.” Today, the notion of defending a physical territory has extended to “territories” of belief and culture. The functional silos in most medium size and larger organizations are a mild form of this territoriality.
I found it resonating to the topic of PLM territory :). I hope you’ve got my point. It is about how to organize the territory of automotive manufacturing company, high-tech company and… finally, cupcake company with the way PLM is pretending to make their business. This is where a second blind spot mentioned by Peter caught my special attention –
Q: What is the biggest blind spot you overcome yourself? One thing I’ve become more aware of is how the “confirmation bias” affects me. Most of us, myself included, are confident in our own beliefs. When challenged, we start looking (only) for evidence that supports our opinion. Early in school and in my career, my knee-jerk reaction was to bury contrary opinions in an avalanche of facts.
What is my conclusion? I found “blind spotting” as an interesting association to look on what is happening around PLM these days. We’ve been very long-time believers of “know how” to make companies to use PLM software. I have to say, we’ve got certain achievements in how we did it. However, PLM software didn’t make it to the mainstream adoption similar to accounting, CRM and some of ERP functions. The market situation these days is very disruptive- cloud, social, different so-called “2.0 trends”. It is important to overcome traditional PLM blind spot in order to see what the shift PLM industry needs to take to go beyond its current potential. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
