PLM Innovation, Information and Ambient Intelligence

One interesting trend that I captured during my stay at PLM Innovation conference these days was about “information” word. It was one of the most widely used terms by many presented and people I talked to. Do you remember what we had 10 years ago? The biggest concern of people implementing PDM/PLM tools was about how to establish the environment that can manage and control data. However, the time is changing fast. Everybody today are questioning how to access the information.

I’ve been reading an interesting article earlier this week – A new Google app gives you local information before ask for it. The article outlined a new application Google just released – Google Field Trip. Navigate here to learn more. Field trip is an application that recognizes where are you and presenting your local data even before you ask and search. I found the idea quite interesting. Obviously, it is not related to PLM. Google is not capable to search for manufacturing data, so don’t even try to run it in your company manufacturing shopfloor. Google will help you with San-Francisco landscape and monuments as well as searching for Lady Gaga last clips. However, I found the following passage very important and interesting:

“The idea behind the app was to build something that would help people connect with the real, physical world around them,” said John Hanke, a vice president of product at Google who runs a small lab at the company building location-based and social mobile apps. “It’s always running in the background, so it knows where you are and is always looking to see if something interesting is in your immediate physical environment.” While the app might seem small, it reveals a lot about the big directions Google wants to go. Google, along with other companies and researchers, dreams of so-called ubiquitous computing or ambient intelligence — computers woven into the texture of life as opposed to being separate machines. Eventually, the theory goes, computers will be part of the environment, know where people are and anticipate what they want to know.

What is my conclusion? Ambient intelligence. Actually, I liked this term. People like when software gets smarter. The problem is that PLM industry produced lots of difficult applications that exposed how complex and smart it inside. How many times we heard: look how we can support this complex model and data relations. I think we have a new set of priroties nowadays. The challenge is how to switch to dumb and simple user experience combined with ambient intelligence. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg