What happened with PDM for the last 10 years – probably nothing?

Everyone needs data. But nobody wants to manage it. I’ve learned it for many years of working with the engineering team and manufacturing companies. The problem is the same for teams and companies of all sizes. Although it might have different flavors if you work within large enterprise, medium-size manufacturing company or engineering team.

CAD data management is a complex discipline and many people agreed that CAD files are the root cause of PDM nightmares. For many years Product Data Management (PDM) software was in a center of the debates about how to make it simple, easy, affordable, transparent… you name it. I’ve been following PDM development trajectories and companies for years. If you missed my earlier blog, here are few links to start – CAD and PDM improvements – liar’s paradox; Why PDM is far from retirement; PDM-less CAD data management; Cloud CAD is stuck in limbo between cloud CAD and old-fashion PDM.

My article back in 2009 – The Pains of CAD File Management. Will PDM be popular again? speaks about the problem with finding data, revision management, and data sharing. Is it amazing? I feel like it can be written now in 2019. So, I decided to look for more scientific researches and maybe some customer data.

The most commonly reported difficulty is searching for information. Far too often, technical resources struggle to find the CAD files they need to do their job. Respondents also face multiple challenges related to managing CAD files, including file conflicts, uncontrolled revisions, file duplication, and data loss. Many companies also report trouble collaborating because of difficulty sharing designs with others.

For many years, Tech-Clarity research was one of the best places for information about CAD and PLM space. His recent CAD Data Management Survey was published just a few days ago. This is a picture from Tech-Clarity research (2019) about CAD management challenges.

…and here is the passage from the article.

The most commonly reported difficulty is searching for information. Far too often, technical resources struggle to find the CAD files they need to do their job. Respondents also face multiple challenges related to managing CAD files, including file conflicts, uncontrolled revisions, file duplication, and data loss. Many companies also report trouble collaborating because of difficulty sharing designs with others.

I found an old article Tech-Clarity Perspective: Best Practices on Managing CAD Data from 2012. It can give you almost a decade old view of the problems with data management.

“Without a clear and precise method of managing design data and other documentation, a company can become stagnated by not being able to find, control, or retrieve important data. To be caught in the quagmire of lost or irretrievable information, design documentation, or company historical data can paralyze a company.”

Check the article, but here is a picture of problems identified by the research:

The recommendation in 2012 was clear

Ensure that your business has the basic fundamentals of data management in place. Improve design data management effectiveness to improve business performance in product design and development. Identify inefficiencies in data management tasks and reduce non-productive time, freeing up time for innovation and greater design throughput. Explore the use of structured, collaborative tools including PDM, PLM, and SharePoint to improve data management and product development performance. Leverage design data management solutions beyond data to automate processes and enhance collaboration

Here is a comparison between 2012 and 2019 view about how data is managed in a variety of situations.

You can see some improvements, but (still) 40-50% of companies are using shared network drives to manage data and only 9-12% of small companies (up to 5 people) are using PDM/PLM system. My hunch is that the situation in 2019 is not very different from what it was in 2012 especially for medium-sized businesses, which represent a huge challenge for CAD/PLM companies after so many years. Solidworks’ average number of seats for each customer is 2-5 and these companies largely failing to adopt data management systems. Small and medium-sized companies are hard to crack and I will talk about it in my next blogs. Stay tuned.

What is my conclusion? PDM was an interesting business for the last decade. While PDM functionality is usually provided by the system coming from the same vendor and integrated with a CAD application, we can see that adoption of these systems are not great. I can see some progress in large companies, but medium-sized businesses are struggling to manage data and at the same time, vendors are struggling to sell PDM systems and get them adopted. And the problem is still the same – find data, manage revisions, create BOM, calculate the cost, order parts. Just my thoughts…

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.