Questions About Data From Change Troubleshooter

Earlier this week I sat together (virtually) with Nina Dar whom I know for many years of meeting in PLM communities and events. Pandemic screwed many events but opened new ways to communicate and Nina suggested we take some time on her new podcast The Change Troubleshooter to discuss the topic of Data. This is an offer I could not refuse because the data, or to be precise, the use of data has been my favorite topic and passion for many years.

Questions about Data

Here is Nina’s intro and questions. In episode one, Changing Mindsets on Data, Nina is joined by Oleg Shilovitsky, founder of OpenBOM (openbom.com), a SaaS network-based global collaborative platform, and they talk about data and how we should think about it differently, how it is collected, used and stored. Data could be the answer to our sustainability challenges.

You can listen to our conversation via this link (with video)

Alternatively, you can check the podcast links here and the video here.

Future of Data Sharing in PLM

The conversation with Nina was a lot of fun. It made me think about how data will be shared and used in the future of PLM. This question requires a bit of more structured thinking before I can write a post. Today, I just want to share some of my preliminary thoughts. I can see three big groups of data that manufacturing businesses are relying on.

1- Public commonly available data
2- Public, but business restricted data
3- Product and business data with IP and business restrictions

The first group is all data you find online and use freely. The amount of public data is growing and to use this public data efficiently can become a big deal for companies in the future. The second group is interesting because this data is actually available (eg. electronic component catalog), but the use of the data in business might be restricted by specific rules and licenses. The last group of data is the data that belongs to companies, they own it and potentially protect this data from anyone else as this data can contain IP, trade secrets, and other proprietary information.  

What is my conclusion?

Data is a future oil and cannot stop repeating it. In the past, the power was sitting in a factory on the banks of a river to get access to power and transportation. Today, the influence and business advantage is coming from how efficiently we can use our data to benefit our business. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing a digital cloud-native PLM platform that manages product data and connects manufacturers, construction companies, and their supply chain networks. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.