I was attending Product Innovation Orange County (PI OC) event last two days in Southern California. Idillic location with stunning panoramic views of Pacific Ocean created a relaxed atmosphere to inspire debates and discussion on variety of topics related to PLM, product development, manufacturing, analytics, big data, cloud. Navigate here to see detailed conference program.
I’m still in the process of digesting materials and presentations from the last 2 days of PI OC. Meantime, I want to share materials of the focus group discussion I had a privilege to run.
The topic of my focus group discussion was – Millennials and Digital Disruption. I had an opportunity to share my observations about what I’ve learned for the last year talking observing how modern generation is engaged in the business related to product design, engineering, manufacturing, supply chain and others. Here is the synopsis of the session.
Technology is an incredible thing; that is if you can keep up with it. Today, people are so used to the speed, useability and ease of tools used in their personal lives that when faced with those at work, they struggle with how archaic, outdated and unnecessarily complex they seem. This has put immense pressure on digital software providers to adapt and enhance their offering.
The Internet and mobile technology continue to have major transformative effects on everything we do, and especially on communication. Interactive technologies are replacing old-fashioned workflows and providers are expanding from smartphones and websites to mobile and SaaS apps that provide a more useable, self-guided, and worry-free user experience. All of these together form a new digital framework around our lives and as such, new digital habits.
And here is my introductory presentation for the focus group:
What is my conclusion? It is all about speed and connection. It looks like new generation of people will be inspiring and motivating manufacturing companies to develop faster and run processes in a more efficient way. People in the room agreed with my assumption that workflow as a paradigm of process management is suboptimal these days and many companies are looking for alternatives to slow and sequential workflow. Small and agile teams can perform faster and deliver better results using interactive communication and agile tools. So, the transformation of traditional PLM workflows into interactive collaborative communication is underway. Just my thoughts..
Best, Oleg
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Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of openBoM developing cloud based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.
