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

PLM and chatter about digital transformation

PLM and chatter about digital transformation
Oleg
Oleg
17 July, 2017 | 3 min for reading

My favorite article during this weekend was – My Father-In-Law Won’t Become a Coder, No Matter What Economists Say.  Read the article and draw your opinion. The transformation is happening outside and human jobs are replaced with screens and computers. Marketing and sales is a good example, but the change is everywhere.

Here is a passage that summarize it very nicely:

In other words, the theory of creative destruction works when you’re talking about specific companies or industries falling by the wayside because a better alternative has come along. The elimination of the typewriter wasn’t an economic disaster, because typewriters gave way to a better alternative that created even more jobs. More people make their living from the production of computers than ever made their living from the production of typewriters. However, the theory of creative destruction isn’t as applicable when one of the things being destroyed is the very idea of human labor.

It made me me think about digital transformation. It is one big hot buzzword these days. Everyone is talking about digital and every company is thinking how to “get transformed” and not left behind in an old analog world. On the picture below you can see the interest in digital transformation from Google Trends for the last 5 years.

There are so many articles and discussions about digital transformation. My attention was caught by SAP publication () sharing top thought leader assessment about why digital transformation is important and what is behind this term.

My favorite passage was about Digital Transformation as a matter of business survival. According to Tamara McLeary, you need to disrupt your company by revitalizing your outdated business model if you want to avoid to be eaten by more nimble, agile companies these days. And it brings an opportunity to use the new technologies. The primary reason for digital transformation is to keep company relevant in the face of exponentially changing technological world.

According to Jos Voskuil, Digital Transformation is forgotten word in PLM. Read more here. I can see his point. Manufacturing industry is very slow to adopt some technological innovation. When I just started my career in CAD/PLM, I’ve been told that 2D drawings will be obsolete in 5-10 years. 25 years later, we are still solving a problem how to put Bill of Materials on the face of the drawing and send it to manufacturing shop.

What is my conclusion? PLM has a chance to connect a divided world of manufacturing and bring digital technologies to different places in manufacturing companies. It is not a simple tasks because PLM technologies are also divided between old traditional PLM dinosaurs focusing how to control manufacturing customer data and new digital technologies capable to convert product and related data into new decision tools. 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.

Digital transformation pic credit Gerd Leonhard

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
9 December, 2013

CAD, Cloud, Browser…  Since SolidWorks first started CAD in the cloud debates by making SolidWorks in the cloud announcement back...

22 March, 2016

Engineering.com article Winners and Losers When Industry Giant Bosch Consolidates CAD and PLM shed some lights on the recent announcement of...

22 May, 2014

Usually, it takes time and money to implement PLM system for a large company. This work requires understanding of customer...

12 January, 2015

PLM business and software vendors are transforming. Manufacturing companies are looking for new type of solutions that can give a...

15 August, 2018

Digital transformation is key initiative for many organizations these days. Every organization these days understands that there is no alternative...

11 August, 2015

ECM, PDM, PLM, MDM, ERP, CRM… you are familiar with the soup of acronyms used by enterprise software to fight...

12 January, 2020

PLM business is a complex discipline and often relies on resellers to grow and scale. PLM industry has many examples...

24 August, 2009

Short prompt. I’m reading the article “Microsoft Outlook sets its sights for Mac”.“Microsoft is offering Outlook on Mac to enterprises...

10 November, 2016

Large manufacturing companies have long love and hate relationships with enterprise software technologies and specifically CAD and PLM systems. These...

Blogroll

To the top