Why PLM stuck in PDM?

I’ve been following CIMdata PLM market industry forum earlier this week on twitter. If you’re are on twitter, navigate here or search for #PLM4UM hash tag on twitter. The agenda of PLM forum is here. The following session discussed one of my favorite topics- PDM v PLM. PLM: Well Beyond Just PDM by Peter Bilello. This passage is explaining what the session is about

CIMdata’s research reveals that leading industrial companies are looking to expand beyond PDM functionality to truly enable a more complete PLM strategy. This becomes even more important in a circular economy. In this presentation, CIMdata will discuss which areas are most important, and what opportunities they create for PLM solution and service providers.

My attention was caught by the following tweets coming from this session:

According to CIMdata, leading Mfrs are now looking to move beyond PDM. #PLM4um
— ScottClemmons (@ScottClemmons) link to tweet.

Peter B / CIMdata explains that it’s hard to find a ‘real’ end-to-end #PLM implementation hat works #plm4um
— Marc Lind (@MarcL_) link to tweet.

It made me think why after so many years of PLM implementations, most of vendors are still solving mostly PDM problems for  customers and it is hard to move on into broad downstream and upstream adoption of PLM beyond CAD data management functions. Here are my four points explaining in a nutshell why I think “PLM stuck in PDM”.

1- Focus on design and CAD. 

Most of PLM vendors historically came from CAD-related domain. Therefore, PLM business for them was the expansion of CAD, design and engineering business. As a result of that, use cases, business needs and customer focus were heavy influenced by design domain. The result – PDM focus was clear priority.

2- PLM is a glorified data management toolkit 

The initial focus of many PLM systems was to provide a flexible data management system with advanced set of integration and workflow capabilities. There are many reasons for that – functionality, competition, enterprise organization politics. Flexibility was considered as one of the competitive advantages PLM can provide to satisfy the diversity of customer requirements. It resulted in complicated deployments, expensive services and high rate of implementation failures.

3- Poor integration with ERP and other enterprise systems

PLM is sitting on the bridge between engineering and manufacturing. Therefore, in order to be successful, integration with ERP systems is mandatory. However, PLM-ERP integration is never easy (even these days), which put a barrier to deploy PLM system beyond engineering department.

4- CAD oriented business model 

Because of CAD and design roots, PLM sales always were heavily influenced by CAD sales. Most of PLM systems initially came to market as a extensions of CAD/PDM packages. With unclear business model, complicated VARs and service companies support, mainstream PLM deployment always focused on how not to slow CAD sales.

What is my conclusion? Heavy CAD roots and traditional orientation on engineering requirements hold existing PLM systems from expanding beyond PDM for midsize manufacturing companies. The success rate of large enterprise PLM is higher. But, it comes at high price including heavy customization and service offerings. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg