The State of PLM Keynote at CONTACT Software Open World

Earlier today, I was honored to be a keynote speaker at CONTACT Software Open World 2017 user event in Fulda, Germany. Manufacturing industry is going through the transformation process, which is the outcome of many industry and technological trends – cloud, IoT, agile, open source, AI and machine learning. In my view, one of the most fundamental paradigm shifts is happening PLM – shift from data control to data intelligence.

This is a picture that can give you an idea what I’m talking about.

Another significant trend is digitalization. However, digitalization is not a simple translation of paper based information into digital form. It is a transformation, which takes lot of things around existing process and turn it in many ways in completely different experience. This is what happened with digital photography for the last 10 years and it turned Facebook in a platform to share photos online. Another example is driving and navigation experience. We moved from paper maps to social navigation systems capable to leverage all information available around to improve driving process and make it safe.

Other technologies and trends worth mentioned in my presentations – cloud, AI, machine learning, bi-modal IT, user experience, agile PLM implementations and others. Some of them will remind you my earlier blog posts and some of them are my new observations.

Below is my slide deck. I hope you will find it interesting.

What is my conclusion? PLM industry is following change trajectory. In the next 5-10 years, we are going to see a tremendous changes in the way PLM systems are going to process information and turn it into actionable intelligence to drive product development and manufacturing intelligence. Data is a new oil and to unlock the value of product data will be next PLM imperative. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Want to learn more about PLM? Check out my new PLM Book website.

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.