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

You need PLM project to fail… to start lifecycle

You need PLM project to fail… to start lifecycle
Oleg
Oleg
23 June, 2014 | 3 min for reading

plm-project-failure

One day you discover that your PLM implementation project is not doing so well. It happens and it called failure. Scott Cleveland’s blog took me back to the topic of PLM implementation failures. Unfortunately, I didn’t find the link on CIMdata research to read the paper mentioned by Scott. According to the post, wrong scoping and failure to get buy-in from users are on the topic of the list. Not a surprise.

Failure is not such a rare situation in IT world. Google “IT project failure” and your can quickly discover that 68% of all IT projects fail. Few months ago, I had long discussion around my Why PLM stuck in PDM? article on LinkedIn. I cannot publish all comments from closed discussion group, but the question about “how to identify what is PLM project failure” was one of the dominant topics in the discussion. Guess what… no agreement about how to identify “Failed PLM project”. Few other notable references on PLM failure publications: PLM Failure, you didn’t see anything; Keynote presentation by Martin Eigner on ProSTEP iViP Symposium 2009.

Unfortunately, most of PLM events and publication are placing shining picture of success on their PLM references. The problem that all these successes looks the same. It is time to remember Leo Tolstoy passage from Ana Karenina – Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. One of the interesting place to learn about failures is to attend FailCon  – the conference for startup founders to study their own and others’ failures. There is no PLM Failure Con… yet. And I doubt companies will be ready to do so.

Reading and discussing PLM failure articles, made me think that you really want your first PLM project to fail. Why so? Here are few thoughts…

Challenge the status quo. As people  often say – PLM exists in every manufacturing company. You do product lifecycle management by the way you manage product development processes, store data, communicate within organization and with outside contractors. At the first attempt you will try to build PLM system that mimic all existing practices. I’ve heard it many times – if you have a mess, don’t bring a computer. Otherwise, you will have computerized mess. First, fix the mess, then bring computers.

Get rid of outdated stuff. Every manufacturing company usually trailing lots of existing software and practices. It is hard to cut the cord and switch and leave outdated stuff behind you. PLM project failure can bring an awareness to the problem and force company to make a change. It is hard to company and people to admit they do something wrong. Especially if they do it many years.

Learn as you go. You have the best chance to learn when you actually do something. Regardless on your experience, every manufacturing company is different. How to see that new system will fit? Put it in action! When it comes to people, they only way to see if it works is to try it. Then you fail and only after, find the right way to do it right.

Think about your PLM system in the same way you think about product development processes. Your design doesn’t fit manufacturing plan, some requirements are failing to communicate and some of them got misunderstood. Your first manufactured item fails and you need to fix issues. These are absolutely normal thing for every manufacturing company. Your PLM is not much different.

What is my conclusion? Failure is not an option is probably wrong PLM implementation strategy. Opposite to that, you need to bring it fast, engage with users, fail, fix it and bring back fixed. Lifecycle. This is the only way to make it right. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
26 September, 2011

Time ago, I was discussing on my blog about cloud file storage as one of the potential first step CAD...

29 December, 2018

Holidays week is here and it means the traditional time to write ‘best of.. ‘, ‘top…’ and similar type of...

2 February, 2018

Small manufacturing companies and enterprises always presented a weak point in the landscape of PLM implementations. While complex organizations demonstrated...

9 July, 2010

The problem of file conversion is CAD is long and never been easy. Engineers are working in multiple CAD systems...

23 February, 2019

I’m catching up on the social reading and publications after few very busy weeks. There are not so many non-vendor...

13 May, 2013

The discussion around Google Glass is heating up. Google was very transparent by rolling out Google Glasses and providing lots...

12 June, 2020

I’m continuing to digest PTC LiveWorx event keynotes and presentations. If you missed my earlier blog, please check it out...

23 October, 2017

I’m learning more about Solidworks PDM development trajectories. If you missed my previous blog posts, you can catch up here...

6 June, 2021

My recent articles about PLM vs ERP exposed how deep is the division of data and power in organizations. Many...

Blogroll

To the top