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

PLM and changes in manufacturing eco-system

PLM and changes in manufacturing eco-system
Oleg
Oleg
23 February, 2015 | 2 min for reading

new-manufacturing-ecosystem

In my previous post, I summarized changes in enterprise software that are going to influence a future of PLM. But enterprise software is not only thing that impacting PLM. A lot of new things are happening in manufacturing itself. You probably heard about “new industrial revolution”, “Manufacturing 4.0”, “makers movement”, etc. It is hard to put right tags on every new thing and classify them. I also think it is too early. However, there is one thing clear to me – changes are coming. These changes will impact the overall manufacturing eco-system and status-quo. What will be a manufacturing environment of the future and how it will impact product lifecycle management?

I’ve been trying to capture 3 most important trends I’m observing related to fundamental changes in manufacturing:

what-changing-in-mfg-1

1- Global. Manufacturing business is going global in many ways. It is impossible to imagine manufacturing company these days that is completely disconnected from rest of the world. Small manufacturing firms are multi-located, using rich supply network and manufacturing facilities. Even more interesting, the smaller size you go, the dependencies is getting more interesting. Individual makers, mini-factories are getting even more power and distribution efficiency.

2- Agile network. In many places, hierarchical structures are displaced with  the power of network. It is a very interesting, since size won’t matter in the future. Network is more powerful compared to single hierarchical manufacturing structure. The power of communities for manufacturing is yet to be discovered.

3- IP paradigm changes. Manufacturing is going to challenge one of the most fundamental thing – IP ownership. Traditionally companies are owners of IP on manufactured things. Patents, trade secrets, design and manufacturing techniques protection. These are things we are familiar with. What is coming? Manufacturing companies such as Tesla are opening patent portfolios. Open Source Hardware is new trend that you can find similar to Open Source Software. The last one changed the landscape of software as we knew before. How OSHW will change manufacturing?

What is my conclusion? The new manufacturing eco-system is building up in front of us. It comes in many ways as combination of new possibilities of digital manufacturing, 3D printing, scaling, etc.  It brings fundamental changes in the process of manufacturing, product development and innovation. Small is a new big. Digital technologies are going to amplify manufacturing potential similar how back 18th century first industrial revolution replaced human power with machine power. The new manufacturing will be built on top of new principles of globalization, networks and open IP. The shift towards networks from centralized databases, open communities with open source hardware and others can influence existing PLM paradigms. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Image courtesy of Idea go at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Wirearchy picture credit.

 

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
7 April, 2024

The complexity of products has grown enormously for the last decade. The growing number of manufacturing companies are moving their...

13 August, 2016

Product Innovation Platform is a term that coined for the last 2-3 years to describe a new way to design,...

6 July, 2015

In engineering world, digital vs. analog differentiation can be explained in a very precise manner –  analog is using electrical signals. Opposite...

3 January, 2016

The end of each year produced tons of predictions and resolutions. Rarely we look back to check what happened and...

17 March, 2020

I grew up in a country where supermarkets and grocery shops shelves were empty. Your best luck was to the...

24 May, 2012

In personal life, the justification of your buying decision is simple. You want to have the next cool device, period....

15 October, 2009

I’m continuing to explore a world of cloud for PLM. Today, I want to take and discuss a direction which...

21 April, 2017

It was almost 20 years ago. I was developing AutoCAD software for customers in Israel. I remember a conversation with a...

7 May, 2009

Clouds have become a very important trend lately. Earlier this week, I was reading a McKinsey discussion about document presentation...

Blogroll

To the top