CIMdata PLM Forum – PLM Future Is Unclear And Not Only Because of COVID19

CIMdata PLM Forum – PLM Future Is Unclear And Not Only Because of COVID19

I’m slowly digesting information from the first-ever virtual CIMdata PLM Forum 2020. The forum switched into virtual presentations and this week we had Peter Bilello, President & CEO and Stan Przybylinski, Vice President, CIMdata speaking about The State of PLM- today’s market, leading trends, and market analysis results.

PLM market was up 7.6% (US$51.4B) in 2019 slightly below CIMdata expectations (8.6%). Here are a few data points and trends I captured from Peter’s presentation about the state of the PLM industry. The key theme of the forum was about development connected products. Also, Peter shared CIMdata survey results and gave some high-level financial results.

Here is a view of connected products. As much as it is fascinating, the reality is that PLM is still focusing on very basic scenarios and workflows.

These two slides about Digital Twin caught by special attention. Digital Twin concept is a very interesting concept, these slides basically taking it down to another name in representing virtual models. If you replace the “twin” name to the model, you can find a lot of similarity with old PLM presentations. The key difference, I’d be looking for is to have a digital simulation of products and processes, but how far are we from this goal is not clear.

The survey demonstrated the ugly truth- most companies are old-timers in the PLM business. The percentage of new companies is very small.

And the last slide to share is the future of PLM. Nothing very much new, but the acknowledgment that PLM is still perceived as an expensive engineering tool misunderstood by management.

According to CIMdata, the COVID19 pandemic is a major force that will be changing many industries, behaviors and also create many opportunities. Many companies are coming to realizing the value of online services in organizing our work. For many companies, it will be a question about their legacy PLM infrastructure and opportunity to change PLM

What is my conclusion?

PLM industry didn’t change much in 2019. It faces similar challenges as in previous years. At the same time, future product development and COVID19 pandemic are two major forces that will influence the trajectory of the PLM industry in the coming years. 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.