Customization is one of the most favorite topics in PLM. Back 20-30 years ago, product data management (PDM) was born as a toolkit. Earlier PDM implementations took months and required deep changes in PDM system code and behaviors. It was leading to a growing complexity of implementation, highly sophisticated implementation skills and time. What is even more important and dangerous it was a reason many PDM/PLM implementations stuck in the back and failed to upgrade to newer versions of PLM software. I expressed it in one of my old articles – Is PLM Customization a Data Management Titanic? My guess back in 2010 was that future flexibility of data management technologies should make future customization and updates easier.
Customization problem exists in other domains of enterprise software. I found an interesting example of how extensive customization can damage enterprise software deployment and implementations. CMSWire article 6 Predictions for SharePoint, Office 365 in 2014 speaks about adoption of SharePoint 2013. One of the prediction speaks about SharePoint customization or actually… decustomization. I found this passage interesting:
We’ve heard Microsoft strongly suggest not to customize SharePoint, that branding doesn’t improve user experience or make processes better. That migration to new versions is easier without a lot of customization. The new SharePoint 2013 app model is also a strong pointer from Microsoft to keep SharePoint as out of the box as possible and focus on using Apps for additional customizations.
I think this is a good thing. Many of the challenges we see with migration projects are the result of branding and customizations — some of which may not have been necessary. Part of the reason SharePoint has been customized in the past is that developers are learning to use the platform and trying new things. The new App model reduces much of this, putting the testing and learning outside of SharePoint directly.
It made me think again about PLM implementation and customization projects. For the last decade, PLM vendors put a lot of efforts in developing of out-of-the-box offerings and strategies. Marketing used different names for this activity – from “express solutions” to “industry offerings”. In my view, the result was somewhat mixed – it simplified PDM implementations and some smaller PLM deployment. At the same time, many even relatively smaller PLM implementations are still far from go simple way. In my view, the best confirmation to that is growing interest in acquiring service and consulting companies by PLM vendors. The last one was Siemens PLM acquiring TESIS PLMWare focuses on PLM integrations.
What is my conclusion? Decustomization of PLM will be one of the most important elements in the future PLM infrastructure improvements. To make implementation cost effective and to support future cloud deployments, PLM vendors will have to invest in technologies and methods to simplify deployment, flexibility and speed of implementations. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
