PLM 4.0: The Landscape, The Drivers & Opportunities [Part-4]

The PLM sector is in the midst of an extended value-chain platform enablement era. This shift toward the enablement of robust platforms requires a fundamental change for the solution providers.

The solution providers need to continue to evolve existing platforms, and how they remain open and integrated with third parties and how all they adhere to standards and the openness of interfaces that permit platforms to be reliable over multiple upgrade cycles.

The innovation platform provides potentially so much, be that:

• a cohesive approach to product innovation, product development and engineering, right through manufacturing and service.
• a single data model so everyone works on the same information in real-time, creating a cohesive digital twin
• a single digital thread that connects information and people across the product lifecycle.
• providing the foundation for manufacturers to fundamentally transform their business and their relationships with customers.

Today’s digital enterprises are moving from a product-centric business to offer extended value. They’re redefining their value streams to deliver more than just a commodity to instead finding ways to offer value across the entire customer relationship.

These integrated solutions provide business value as the next step in the evolution of product lifecycle management (PLM) software suites:

The Favorites

Knowing the right product innovation platform and the vendors is important as most are moving fast to take a strong lead in the market share rankings. Deciding which partners to consider is critical and getting it right can save a lot of time and headaches. Before jumping into the Product Innovation / PLM choice, it's always best to listen to some analysts and systems integrators and to discuss your future product plans.

You will want to make sure that the consultants you engage work with multiple Platformization systems as you'll need someone with a breadth of software experience to help define your early list.

When getting started, start by understanding not all vendors are right for your industry. In traditional Automotive you'll see a strong presence from Siemens, in Aerospace from Dassault Systemes, in Construction from Autodesk, and Retail from PTC & Centric, to name but a handful.

Next, understand what functions of the entire product lifecycle you want to manage, from envisioning, design, development, manufacture, assembly, logistics, maintenance and service. Then, let's look at integration across the product innovation platform, connecting data across the ecosystem, from requirements through conceptual design all the way through engineering to verification and validation -- and beyond. It starts with CAD and looking toward the ease of integration of the various designs into the platform.

Look at your Enterprise Management applications (ERP, CRM, SCM), many of the vendors for which carry their own PLM solutions. But, keep in mind they start and finish from a different perspective than that of the Product Innovation / PLM specialists.

4IR Innovation

And finally we come to look ahead to the 4IR, thinking strategically about what your Product Innovation Platform (PIP) should be doing for you.

As an example, if you feel the Internet of Things is important, and I for one do, then you really should take a look at ThingWorx. I believe strongly IoT is an essential part of products, supply chain and manufacturing in order to deliver smart, connected, more personalised and faster delivered products. In addition to the strong PTC offering are the recent developments from Autodesk and power of the Siemens offering, Mindsphere.

Then, I'm a big believer in the Dassault Systemes ongoing vision and development of Exalead and its AI that's harnessing data extracted by the IoT and many other sources, in order to assist ecosystem collaboration. In addition, it takes Business Intelligence to another level surrounding product design, development and performance. Siemens Omneo also can't be ignored, built on its robust and functional Teamcenter suite.

Of course, collaboration at a design development level is one thing, however these are merely ideas without execution and as we know the 4IR is driven by customers wanting faster, smarter and more personalised products and so integration with Digital Manufacturing and Manufacturing Operations has to be one of your visions, be that today or tomorrow. Both Siemens and Dassault are leading the charge.

And lastly and currently one of the most talked about due to its strong commercial viability is the 3DExperience platform and the DS vision surrounding the experience economy and starts to take PLM beyond the core of what most people would imagine.

3DEXPERIENCE Community Feedback

I understand there around 2900 3DEXPERIENCE experienced individuals around the world today and I am delighted to say that I have the honor of being connected to just less than 2000. There are so many projects underway, so much "fail-fast, learn-quick" (learning) going on and future projects in discussion that we are all enjoying a journey full of twists and turns.

I thought the other week it a good idea to reach out to most and seek their opinions on the platform; be that good, bad or indifferent and a big thank you to all who responded. I asked three questions: 

1. On your recent 3DEXPERIENCE project, what was the main business benefit hoping to be gained from the platform?
2. What was the greatest challenge in installing the platform?
3. In your experience, how would improve the existing 3DEXPERIENCE Solution?

Answers came in thick and fast across the customers, systems integrators and some of the Dassault people. 

On your recent 3DEXPERIENCE project, what was the main business benefit hoping to be gained from the platform?

Across the many answers we were able to summarise the answers into the following: 

1. Build Internal Best Practice: the platform gives a central point for everyone to track and trace methods, styles and approaches across the organisation in order to understand future best practices. 
2. Improve Internal Collaboration & Trust In The Process Of Innovation: a platformization approach helps to breakdown the silos and brings multi-functional and purpose teams together in order to collaborate in a trusted, single-source-of-truth platform.
3. Design & Manufacture Faster: ultimately, the platform is there to help collaborate across the ecosystem in order to design and manufacture better, smarter and more flexible products.

What was the greatest challenge in installing the platform?

Nothing unsurmountable but all in their own ways very challenging in order to breakthrough into new ways of working and producing: 

1. People Change / Business Process / Training in the Platform: By far the most common challenge surrounded the people and getting them to adapt both personally and in what they do, day-to-day. Shifting an enterprise culture and the personalities within has to be always the greatest and the first focus of the organisation. While the 3DEXPERIENCE is relatively intuitive, everyone needs different levels of training and in different ways. 
2. Server Installation: understanding the technical and infrastructure aspects of the platform remain one of the greatest challenges.
3. Data Migration & Multi-CAD Integration: most enterprises wish to wrap in the legacy product data that can go back many years and in many different formats and structures, combined with multiple-CAD softwares. Pulling those together in a fast and agile implementation remains one of the greatest workloads for the team.
4. Speed Of Install:I think most of us have learnt it's about empowering the workforce to new ways of working in bit size chunks and building momentum through quick wins. Agile, Scrum, DevOps all are needed to bring success to the business and platform.

In Part-5, the final part we move to improvements and opportunities for the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform, pulled from our global community. 

Thanks and welcome your views

Andrew

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