PLM Roadmap and PLMx Chicago – Can we still sell “PLM” acronym?

There are not so many independent PLM events in the world. Actually, there very few. One of them is PLM roadmap organized by CIMdata. Here is a link to the European event, which took place last week – PLM Roadmap Europe 2018 – Digitalizing Reality—PLM’s role in enabling the digital revolution.

PLM Road Map EMEA 2018, in collaboration with PDT Europe 2018, is the must-attend event for PLM practitioners globally—providing independent education and a collaborative networking environment where ideas, trends, experiences, and relationships critical to the PLM industry germinate and take root.

I wasn’t able to attend the event this year. My blogging buddy Jos Voskuil (aka Virtual Dutchman) published notes from CIMdata event here – The weekend after CIMdata Roadmap / PDT Europe 2018. According to him, the event is small, but very focused.

My attention was caught by the following passage. Despite growth in PLM, tools are actually growing faster then cPDM (traditional data management segment for core PLM functions).

Peter Bilello kicked off with providing an overview of the PLM industry. The PLM market showed an overall growth of 7.3 % toward 43.6 Billion dollars. Zooming in into the details cPDM grew with 2.9 %. The significant growth came from the PLM tools (7.7 %). The Digital Manufacturing sector grew at 6.2 %. These numbers show to my opinion that in particular, managing collaborating remains the challenging part for PLM. It is easier to buy tools than invest in cPDM.

Peter mentioned that at the board level you cannot sell PLM as this acronym is too much framed as an engineering tool. Also, people at the board have been trained to interpret transactional data and build strategies on that. They might embrace Digital Transformation. However, the Product innovation related domain is hard to define in numbers. What is the value of collaboration? How do you measure and value innovation coming from R&D? Recently we have seen more simplified approaches how to get more value from PLM. I agree with Peter, we need to avoid the PLM-framing and find better consumable value statements.

Nothing to add to Peter’s closing remarks – You cannot sell PLM as acronym any more.

Quick jump to another (future event) I’m planning to attend next week in Chicago – PLMx Chicago organized by MarketKey. You can catch up on some of my notes related to past and coming PLMx events here – PLMx discussions from Hamburg and plans for Chicago.

The most updated agenda can be seen here – PLMx Chicago agenda. My special attention was caught by PLM Leaders Panel. The panel will be chaired by CIMdata Peter Bilello from CIMdata. It will have a very impressive list of participants from Aras (Marc Lind), Enovia (Bino Panicker), Onshape (David Katzman), Oracle (John Kelley), Propel (Ray Hein), SAP (Keith Zobott)  and Siemens PLM (Kirck Guttmann).

Almost all attendees are usual suspects in PLM world. There is no PTC people on the panel (this is really sad not to have them attending in the panel). At the same time, it is interesting to see Onshape participating – what does it mean about Onsahpe future PLM trajectory?

Gathering all vendors around the same panel is usually very entertaining experience and I look forward to this session next week. It will be especially interesting giving the remark of Peter Bilello from past week PLM Roadmap Europe 2018 about some difficulties in selling PLM acronym.

What is my conclusion? Independent PLM events are rare thing these days. Maybe because selling PLM acronym is hard? Is it a time to stop selling “PLM” acronym? PLM paradigm requires some rethinking and changing. In my view, this is a reason, vendors are selling digital transformation, digital thread, modern CAD, Product information for customers, etc. But mindshare leads in PLM are selling PLM. It is very interesting time in PLM these days. Everything can change and nothing can be taken for granted.  Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

PS. You can still decide to come to PLMx Chicago next week. If you’re industrial company, please contact me.

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