PI PLMx 2019 – California views and PLM status quo

I’ve been busy earlier this week attending PI PLMx 2019 event in San-Diego. With my double duties following PLM presentations as well as presenting OpenBOM (openbom.com) at PLMx, it took all my time. I’ve been digesting what I’ve seen at PI PLMx 2019 in San-Diego.

I have to start from the location – Paradise Island San-Diego is a beautiful place to have a conference. A convention center facilities with sea-facing walking balcony deck with breathtaking views.

And of course San-Diego sunsets

Let’s move the presentations. The list of usual suspects – vendors attending the event – Aras, Siemens, SAP, Oracle. Checklist of sponsors here. My usual favorites in such event are customer presentations discussing applications of tools. So, my top favorite presentation was Faraday’s Future presented by Rick Chang, Director – Enterprise Methods and Tools.

Faraday and Future is an American start up technology company developing intelligent electric vehicles. Established in 2014, this session will hear about the unique opportunities and challenges with creating a PLM roadmap from scratch. Rick brings a wealth of experience having worked within electric starts up and helped Tesla set up their PLM strategy. He has brought this experience to Faraday and is adapting their current PLM strategy to fit a fast moving and hi specification technology company. PLM can be used to create an efficient and agile work force and Rick will be sharing how at Faraday they are establishing business goals and objectives fitting to their business.

The most interesting aspect of this presentation was speaking “normal language:” with no buzzwords and used simple terminology to explain complexity of engineering and manufacturing BOM management.

My second favorite slide was about digital transformation and digital thread. At the same time, my concern is that the topic presents the problem, but doesn’t speak much about how to solve the problem.

Vendor’s panel was entertaining, but mostly focused around non-core aspects of PLM such as education, opportunities in innovation, technological convergence. To my taste vendors’ panel was a bit boring and vendors managed to have too many agreement and less disagreement.

Vendors spoke and presented stuff that was around already for a few years. Such as Aras overlay strategy (from 3-4 years ago).

Oracle PLM and Supply Chain presentation by John Kelly brought an interesting perspective on broad Oracle portfolio and different aspects and architecture of connecting systems.

Besides that, presentations like Virgin Galactic as a keynote are always a good spot to seem what awesomeness companies are building.

It was sad to learn that the Boeing presentation was canceled by the request of Boeing. Unfortunately, no more information than I can share about it.

Last, but not least, I want to say big kudos to the conference chairman – David Sherbourne.

What is my conclusion? Excellent venue, few inspirational conversations, but mostly status quo of existing large and medium-sized vendors. My biggest conclusion is that PLM needs a shakeout. One of the companies promising a shakeout is PTC with its acquisition of Onshape. PTC didn’t attend the event, but Onshape was presented. PLM industry needs a shakeout and to push things is actually very hard because of the PLM status quo.

Best, Oleg

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.