virtual+digital (v+d) is a semi-technical / geeky(-ish!), leadership and business strategy blog which focuses on digitalization, business transformation and enterprise operations platforms, including (albeit not limited to) master data strategies and business change across the PLM+ERP+MES+CRM stack — the four cornerstones of manufacturing.
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)
Product development requirements: how product attributes drive the new product introduction process
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Strategic requirements: how the corporate objectives are derived in strategic requirements
Manufacturing Execution System (MES)
Manufacturing requirements: how the product is manufactured and / or assembled
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Customer requirements: how they feed into product development, in terms of product and process quality
Broadly speaking, PLM knows "what" (technical requirements), ERP knows "why" (strategic requirements), MES knows "how to" (operational requirements), while CRM knows "who" (customer requirements). Read more about these principles here (blog post initially published via LinkedIn on 22-Feb-2017).
Latest insights
This post follows the publication of a joint white-paper with the Professional PLM Initiative on “PLM in the Digital Future” as an open plea for practitioner feedback. The future is Digital Simply put, Digital refers to two principles: 1...
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Implementing change is never easy; it requires a holistic view across business, technical and people aspects for the change in scope. A roadmap is required to inform all stakeholders about the steps and key milestones to implement the ch...
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Edited on 14 April 2020 following a discussion with Kirk Carlsen as he had already published about “PLM 4.0” in 2019 which precedes this article — please follow the link to his blog here as it is definitely worth a read and it also relat...
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How do people make decisions? What data, facts, knowledge, insight does everyone use to make informed decisions? How do organizations ensure that the right decision is made at the right time? What digital tools can be implemented to help...
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From Napoleon’s Battlefield to Digital Transformation Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1971) is a literature masterpiece which brings to light many interesting, contradicting and sometimes confusing aspects of human behaviors: observing the wo...
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Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a pro-active iterative approach used throughout the lifecycle of a product or process to prevent problems, identify mitigation or resolution measures. Simply put, FMEA follows a systematic proc...
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Everyone (almost!) can have clever ideas and define new visions and strategies. Implementing them is what matters and, above all, the people delivering value and benefiting from such strategies. This applies a fortiori to digital strateg...
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Enterprise capabilities: maturity models and deployment roadmaps Business competencies regroup multiple capabilities which are not uniform across the organizations despite implementation of various digital technologies. Over the past dec...
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Parameterisation of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) models provides assistance to designers and engineers in making manufacturing related decisions, in combining creation feature and geometric parameters. Historically, the Digital Mock-Up (D...
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The need for BOM-CAD alignment and associated challenges Bill of Materials (BOMs) typically contain parts / items which are grouped into component and sub-component assemblies based on fit-form-function factors and other usage & market s...
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Digital twin technology: why and how it matters? A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical product or process, used to understand and predict the physical counterpart’s performance characteristics. Dr Michael Grieves Co...
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The rapid pace of technological change brings both opportunities and threats for businesses, across domains and industries. As a matter of fact, every organizations increasingly rely on technology to differentiate their products, service...
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Digital transformation is the new constant, no doubt about it: everyone talks about it, everyone recognizes the need to gain or retain competitive advantage, everyone wants to leverage value from new technologies, new requirements, new p...
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Building Blocks of the Manufacturing Enterprise Broadly speaking, the lifeblood of manufacturing companies is the Bill of Materials (BoM). More accurately, the lifeblood of manufacturing ARE the BoMs. As a matter of fact, there are multi...
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Configuration change management is the control of a product definition throughout the lifecycle of the product. It is an integral part of the design and development process for products and processes. Traditional change management (CM) f...
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Business Process-Technology Trade-Offs The typical approach to successfully implementing enterprise Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions includes considering a number of people-process-technology related compromises and concurren...
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The right data at the right place at the right time Data can turn into information and intelligence or insight depending on how and by whom it is used: data leveraged into intelligence into action in the crossing of digital and physical ...
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Patrick Lencioni argues in his book The Advantage that “being smart is only half the equation in a successful organisation“. The other half of the equation, the one that is largely neglected, is about being healthy. SMART organisations e...
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Dealing with multiple stakeholders is a given for any organisation, either operating in the private or public sector. Stakeholder management is a critical component to the successful delivery of any project, programme or activity. A stak...
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The Need for Business Agility Business agility is a source of competitive advantage – allowing organisations to adapt to new business imperatives, technology changes and various other industry forces. The ability to adapt quickly is the ...
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Companies continuously face tough decisions when it comes to enterprise technology investments, should they relate to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions. In practical terms, “PLM is the ena...
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Going digital: to customise or not to customise? Digitalisation strategies include the selection, design, build, test, deployment, continuous improvement and maintenance of enterprise IT solutions, such as Product Lifecycle Management (P...
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Systems Engineering enables product data traceability Organisations and people need simplification to manage complexity and derive ‘big or complex things’ into smaller and manageable systems – where a system is a set of interacting ele...
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It is no surprise and nowadays perhaps even a cliché to reiterate that: Manufacturing organisations strive to create MORE innovative products and increase their portfolio, combined with FASTER time-to-market and increased productiv...
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Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) applications are often referred as a ‘single system of record’ for product data across the product creation lifecycle. As maturity increases, product and process information flows from PLM to downstream...
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The number one challenge of manufacturing is getting ‘the right product, at the right time, at the right price‘. Competitive advantage used to come from automation and more recently digitalisation, but this has now become the norm with t...
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Manufacturing organisations aim to create more and better innovative products and bring them faster to market. This is enabled by enterprise product development and manufacturing tools and technologies to automate core business administr...
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Product development requires an eco-system of inter-dependent capabilities and complementary functions to bring teams together around a product creation and industrialisation platform. The so-called platform contribute to converting new ...
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Backup vs Archive Data backups are usually risk mitigation measures in the event of a technical production issue, such as hardware failure, data corruption issue, accidental deletion, etc. Backups follow a cyclic process, and contain per...
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Simply put, a PRODUCT is a good, idea, method, information, object or service created as a result of a process and serves a need or satisfies a want. A product has a combination of tangible and intangible attributes (benefits, features, ...
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Complex products and services Most complex products are both mechanical and electrical, with the balance rapidly increasingly moving towards innovative electrical engineering as new product and service differentiation. Competitive produc...
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Data is everywhere In most industries (and including the manufacturing industry), data leads to knowledge, and ultimately to Intellectual Property (IP) and competitive advantage. There is a lot to do, in business understanding terms, to ...
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Simply put, Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) is the process of solving complex engineering problems through the use of sophisticated, interactive graphical software, coupled with mathematical models and optimisation systems. The true val...
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Multiple Enterprise BOMs Bills of Materials (BOMs) can be referred as the lifeblood of manufacturing companies. Whether or not the ‘single enterprise BOM‘ vision will ever be achievable is still open for debate from different perspective...
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Bills of Materials, aka BOMs, are multilevel metadata structures that represent a hierarchical arrangement of components, materials, and other information required to develop, engineer, assemble, produce the finished product, as well as ...
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What may provide value to one specific end user, stakeholder group or function may not provide the same value to another. One universal ‘one-size-fits-all‘ solution does not exist or may not be perceived in the same way; therefore, it is...
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Product and process development capabilities are not mutually exclusive. It is often thought that product innovation fundamentally differs from – and is at odds with – process innovation; however, they actually rely on similar competenci...
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Digitalization and new technologies contribute to better products and better services, but also better product and service development. This is driven by the fact that today both products and services rely on technology, and that techno...
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Gamification is about amplifying the effect of an existing, core experience by applying the motivational techniques that make games so engaging. It taps into the basic desires and needs of the users impulses which revolve around the idea...
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Manufacturing is changing Some call it the emergence of next-generation manufacturing which is likely to lead to a new industrial revolution, a.k.a. industry 4.0. What will be the human-machine interactions in context of the new manufact...
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Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is an ‘old‘ discipline; it came out in the mid 80’s as the engineering data management solution of choice to support product development, especially in the context of optimising CAD and Product Data Mana...
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Technology is increasingly complex and integrated, providing more business benefits than ever, and enabling organisations to create and sustain competitive advantage. The rapid rate of change also implies that organisations must deal wit...
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Effective Master Data Management (MDM) and product development efficiency are closely linked. They are both concerned with data optimisation, decision-making and process improvement principles. Business process efficiency requires effect...
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It does not matter what technology is used in the background, whether it is called machine to machine (M2M), Internet of Things (IoT), mobility, cloud, big data, or whatever other technical jargon. The IoT is about sensors (which capture...
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Disruptive change The automotive industry is going through a disruptive change – moving into the era of full connectivity, full mobility, full integration, full immersive experience. First and foremost, connectivity decisions are an impo...
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There are several definitions for ‘sustainable manufacturing‘, which is often referring to a quality that permits to preserve, to keep, to maintain environmental resources without compromising the ability to future efficiency. It is also...
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Businesses demand more intelligent products and intelligent products demand data intelligence. The typical challenges with data engineering (which obviously relate to the ‘science of data‘) include one or more of the following considerat...
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Understanding the source of disappointments can help to prevent them. Herzberg et al. (1959) introduced the two-factor theory of motivation: intrinsic motivators vs extrinsic hygiene factors. Improvement in some areas might help to ...
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Effectively product configuration is essential to achieve mass-customisation and equally to satisfy ever more demanding customer requirements. Mass-customisation aims at satisfying the specific needs of individual customers with mass-pro...
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“Design for X” (DFX) is not new (it was introduced over 30 year ago). DFX stands for detailed design techniques aimed at improving the product lifecycle efficiency, productivity, quality, flexibility, resource optimisation, etc. It bring...
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Cloud is a hot topic these days. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and PDM/CAD solutions are no exceptions to that – many are now available on Cloud infrastructure and pay-as-you-go (PLM/PDM/CAD software-as-a-service). However, one shou...
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Virtual Reality (VR) vs Augmented Reality (AR) Connected devices and wearable products are now everywhere in the consumer electronics industry. They are not new – they’ve been around in various forms for almost forty years. VR and A...
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Part numbers and bills of material Bills of Material (BoMs) are the lifeblood of product creation – from a wider perspective, BoMs mature as the product evolves: from concept to development, prototyping, start of production, launch, serv...
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Professionals involved in innovation often claim to prefer agile rather than waterfall – which is synonym of bureaucracy and hindrance to creativity. There is a common perception that waterfall is about structure and sequencing logic, wh...
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Developing and launching a new product require creativity, collaboration and accuracy, but also discipline and rigor. New Product Introduction (NPI) frameworks cover business case for a new product concept or idea to a market reality, ty...
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Smart, connected products are emerging everywhere nowadays as manufacturers and service providers embrace technologies, embedded systems connected to the cloud, social networks, analytics for processing large amounts of data, automation,...
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Aerospace and automotive are two major manufacturing industries – also old industries born over a century ago; they have drastically evolved in the past 30 years in terms of product performance, leveraging high technologies and significa...
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There is an old debate about Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) and Enterprise IT application landscape and how the ecosystem is architected: either based on one core ‘harmonized‘ or consolidated platform that is used across the rele...
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A business process is typically an activity or a set of inter-dependent activities, tasks or actions that, once complete, will accomplish a specific organizational objective. It can be described and illustrated by a use case or a set of ...
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Products are developed (designed and engineered), manufactured and managed throughout their lifecycle through a collaborative approach across a combination of functions (people, departments, organizations), processes and IT tools. Every...
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Typically, requirements are defined as follows: A function that the product or process must have, or a process must do (e.g. a functional attribute like the ability to sign-off the approval of an Engineering Change Notice or ECN followin...
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Rapid changes in technologies and IT solutions provide opportunities for increased adaptability and flexibility in terms of enabling or sustaining competitive advantage. Manufacturers, OEMs and Tier 1-2 suppliers spend millions of dollar...
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Rapid changes in technologies and IT solutions provide opportunities for increased adaptability and flexibility in terms of enabling or sustaining competitive advantage. Manufacturers, OEMs and Tier 1-2 suppliers spend millions of dollar...
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By definition (according to the Oxford dictionary), an engineer is: A person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or structures. A person qualified in a domain or industry of engineering, especially as a professional: eg ...
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Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) is an operating model and a platform covering across many business needs, dimensions, functional, integration, technical and non-technical layers. These ‘elements‘ represent the foundations of product ...
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Implementing any enterprise-IT solution, PLM, ERP, or others, requires a degree of personalization in the form of either (or more realistically a combination of) configuration, extension or customization. Typically, choosing one or anoth...
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Definition of compliance: observing statutory provisions, internal company policies and ethical principles. Sustainable growth requires integrity. Compliance management is concerned with the management of regulatory requirements (or for ...
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Running a successful and growing business depends on the ability of the organization to react and be proactive in developing its assets including its employees. Human Resource Management (HRM) is essential for achieving organisational ob...
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Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions are like the ‘central nervous system‘ of the organization, providing the ‘sensory‘ input to management – so that they understand what is happening with their finances, employees, suppliers and...
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The world of Manufacturing has moved from 1) craft manufacturing, 2) mass production, to 3) modern Manufacturing – which replaced the mass production paradigm with a combination of: Flexible specialization – leveraging open innovation an...
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Manufacturers are managing the development of innovative products and services that are required to succeed in an increasingly competitive and distributed global marketplace. Ten critical factors determine the ability of today’s busine...
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Big data is a popular buzzword, or catch-phrase, used to describe a massive volume of both structured and unstructured data that is so large it is difficult to process using traditional database and software. Data is dead. Long live big...
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Hyperconnectivity defines connectivity at a new level, multi-devices, multi-locations, multi-media, multi-purpose – bridging across platforms, silos, and bringing people together with ‘everywhere data‘ and social interactions through the...
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Everything that needs to be manufactured requires a ‘precise‘ Bill of Materials (BoM) which described exactly what specific items, components or parts composed the products that has been specified / ordered (which are typically pre-defin...
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Siemens PLM’s Teamcenter uses a concept of precise/imprecise Bills of Materials (BoMs) structures. There are fundamental differences between the two approaches and one should understand their purpose and how to utilize them effectively. ...
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Conventional planning implies that organizations are largely predictable enterprises and that they are typically resistant to change. These are characteristics of linear systems; therefore, conventional planning ignores non-linear charac...
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A Bill of Materials (BoM) is often compared to a recipe – both identify and list the components of a finished product. While the recipe identifies the required ingredients, preparation steps and presentation recommendations, in manufactu...
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In short, Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) is the glue between Product Engineering & Project Execution [design, development, manufacturing] Operations and Engineering-IT, enabling the entire Product Realization, by aligning people and...
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Everyone likes Excel MS Excel has become a must-have tool to create, edit, organize and present data, in a tabular or chart format. In the manufacturing industry, Bills of Material (BoMs) are the most critical piece of information used ...
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Change is becoming a way of life across the manufacturing industry. Even very traditional sectors can no longer afford to stay still. The stimuli are both internal and external. 1) Change typically comes from outside Change is often imp...
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In the Engineering and Manufacturing industry, New Product Development (NPD) typically follows an end-to-end process of bringing new products to market, consolidating and aligning product portfolio with business strategy. All products an...
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There is typically a sequence of phases that a customer goes through when deciding to buy something. As a fundamental rule, the sales cycle must be described from the customer’s perspective. The first phase of the sales cycle may be eith...
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Undoubtedly, Bills of Materials (BOMs) are the lifeblood of manufacturing organizations. They represent core product information that constitutes the backbone of Product Development and Manufacturing, as well as finance, procurement, mar...
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Broadly speaking, Computer Assisted Engineering (CAE) is the process of solving engineering problems through the use of sophisticated, interactive graphical software. It includes the series of disciplines which aim at digitally testing a...
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It is obvious and common knowledge that (with reason): The client is King… i.e. the client is always right (aka never wrong). In business to business relationships, successful client relationships are typically based on mutual value shar...
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The concept of “Lean” is not new and has different meanings: “do more with less”, “process optimization”, “resource efficiency”, “productivity improvement”, “increased throughput”, “just in time”, “waste elimination”, “Kanban”, “seiri, s...
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Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis is a method of valuing a project, company, or asset using the concepts of the time value of money. Each cash inflow/outflow is discounted back to its present value (PV). Then they are summed to calcula...
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Nowadays everything is getting connected with ‘smart‘ products and devices transmitting and sharing useful information. In the manufacturing industry, data become more and more available with embedded software and sensors for analysis, o...
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Data migration refers to the movement of data from an old or legacy system to a new system (often linking to data quality in context of: “garbage in, garbage out“). It takes place during the transition from one solution to another, is ty...
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Decisions are made in context. They typically involve a problem definition, a decision maker and a feedback loop on action taken. The concept of ‘informed’ decisions is linked to (though distinctly different) the concept of ‘better’ deci...
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Collaboration with partners, suppliers and customers has become a strategic imperative for companies in the networked world of business; there are company-centric and customer-centric views of collaboration. This also applies to the manu...
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Discussions about Engineering & Design (E&D) Return on Investment (RoI) among manufacturing industry executives often turn to engineering productivity. A far more important metric is perhaps engineering throughput combined with cycle tim...
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In the current context of globalization, people and organizations must react and try to anticipate increasingly rapid change: People must plan for their own career development. Continuing Personal Development (CPD) is a ‘viral‘ process a...
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Robust information and (meta-)data management is one of the core requirements for Engineering and Manufacturing functions to deliver new product developments and innovations with a solid data foundation. Managing effectively (or not) Bil...
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Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) defines how people create and manage products, following a New Product Development & Introduction (NPDI) process, with the digital information that supports digital product development and digital manu...
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Problem statement Many business analysts and industry experts have raised looming local shortages of Engineering talent (specifically in the UK and Europe, North and South America), raising the possibility of a diminished capacity for in...
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Every (manufacturing) organization creating products or delivering engineering or IT-related services is managing a portfolio of projects (whether it is done formally or not, in a manual or semi-automated way). Project success and deliv...
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The determination of the basic long-term goals and objectives of an enterprise, and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for those goals. (Chandler, 1962) 2 – 5 year roadmap… not a plan for next q...
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Marketing can contribute directly to improved performance and strategic success. Organizations define their marketing strategies based on the attractiveness of their industry, their target market segments, their customers relationships, ...
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Quotes from Engineering VPs and Chief Engineers -alike, captured in various contexts while discussing Product Life-cycle Management (PLM)… Engineering efficiency, I want more PLM. I do believe you’re making my PLM twitch. Global business...
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Information management during the whole product life-cycle is important, utilizing information from multiple different operational sources and sharing across functions to support the decision making in different stages of the product rea...
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Practice development typically consists of developing value propositions, consulting and commercial models, strategic positioning, consulting frameworks to market service offerings, networking, facilitating the understanding of client’...
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India became a ‘hot cluster’ for global OEMs and obviously Tata benefited from this attractive economic expansion. For a global consulting and Engineering organizations, the risk can be to over-standardize its offering and rationaliz...
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Following on my earlier post on “3 KPIs to Assess the Success of Innovations“… It is critical to find the right balance between flexibility and control to allow future ideas to emerge and successful ones to be realised. Innovation system...
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An innovation refers to doing something in a manner that was never done before, or ‘changing for better’. The level of innovation that is required in a given industry varies significantly. Innovations are means to adapt to the changi...
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Following on my previous post on “why do PLM Implementation fail?“… It was noted that the very reasons why Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) implementations fail can be similar to reasons why other types of IT projects fail; this begs ...
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Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) implementations are often difficult to justify as their business cases are typically complex, long time driven; it is not straightforward to get them approved by the board as they don’t see short term ...
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Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) can be defined as an operating modelenabling Product Realization [create, make, sell, service, re-iterate, re-use or re-cycle]. Short: PLM is the glue between Product Engineering & Project Execution ...
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The implementation of an enterprise-wide Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) system involves organizational as well as cultural changes in a company. By definition, tools and technologies (and IT from a broader point of view) are enablin...
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What is the difference between Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)? There are many schools of thought around the broader PLM vs ERP topic, here are a few perspectives to consider: ERP and PLM system...
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At its simplest program management can be defined as ‘a group of projects managed together for added benefits’. Both projects and programs can be seen as a vehicle for organizational learning. This post discusses guidelines on the purpos...
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Organizations generally respond to the environment through control and feedback loops using a combination of strategic control (strategy formulation, planning, risk management), and management control (strategy implementation, people, ac...
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Today’s knowledge-intensive Product Development (PD), Digital Manufacturing (DMFG) and Project Engineering (PE) environments require a framework which effectively enables capture, representation, retrieval and reuse of product, project...
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The rise of cloud-enabled PLM solutions Global PLM platform accessibility is – and will become more and more – critical to enable concurrent product development, Engineering and Manufacturing, while efficiently managing data security and...
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What is the difference between Product Data Management (PDM) and Product Life-cycle Management (PLM)? There are many schools of thought around the topic, and here are a few perspectives to consider: PDM was there before PLM, so it might ...
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By definition, a project has a defined start and end, clear objectives and scope, and finite budget – which can be managed as part of a portfolio or/and under a program umbrella. Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) projects are not diffe...
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Business-driven Project Management Offices (PMOs) charged with enabling or delivering successful transformational projects and strategic programs can make the difference between thriving organizations and those that fail to survive. PMOs...
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Centrally managing materials information in a holistic manner across the enterprise is critical for manufacturing organizations ultimately seeking to enhance products, processes and profitability. Selecting and applying the right materia...
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The lifeblood of manufacturing companies is the Bill of Materials (BoM). Simply put, a BoM is the list of assemblies, parts and components that make up a system and that are required to manufacture a product. A BoM is usually in a hierar...
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Typically, value can be defined as “the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something“. The Institute of Value Management defines value as “the relationship between satisfying needs and expe...
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The question is: “what will manufacturing processes of the future look like, and what will be their defining features?“ There is an increasing demand for products that match customer expectations precisely and more closely, in a timely a...
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The principle of ‘Open Innovation’ as introduced by Chesbrough (2003) has become widely used in a range of industries. It is widely accepted that open innovation is concerned with combining internal and external ideas as well as inte...
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PLM (Product Life-cycle Management) is a popular strategy to deliver improved business performance and achieve competitive advantage. In broad terms, PLM is about getting access to the right information needed to support process executio...
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Organizations thrive for robust mechanisms to deliver their business strategies and create more value for their organization. One key difference between successful and unsuccessful executives lies in their ability to execute and delivery...
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Effective PLM transformation initiatives are typically structured in programmes following a multi-wave implementation and deployment framework. Managing PLM transformation initiatives as programmes allows focusing on benefit realisatio...
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The manufacturing industry is facing a number of challenges, from global competition, increasing offshore innovation, cost and regulation pressures, to engineering talent crunch and rapidly changing expectations of the market place. In t...
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Many will agree that defining the PLM business case can be a daunting exercise due to complex (and sometimes conflicting) business requirements, implementation and transition challenges, legacy IT inertia, resistance to change, ongoing b...
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Following on from my previous post on PLM Transformation… ‘Full PLM‘ transformation is about aligning PLM vision and strategy with business requirements from Product Creation, Manufacturing, Marketing and Sales, Finance and HR functions,...
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Most PLM implementations are typically reported as being IT-driven initiatives focusing on traditional deployment challenges: 1) selecting the right PLM toolset, 2) implementing the required business rules, and 3) defining phase-wise...
13All things digital
The Digital Thread, Digital Twins, and Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) are key enablers that allow program and product managers to reduce both technical and programmatic risk through better business / IT interfaces and more robust collaboration — while getting more visibility on implications from design choices on cost and schedule.
Digitalization is all about leveraging the virtual to create, simulate and enhance the real, across digital engineering, smart operations and connected products.
Digital
Engineering
From product attribute strategy, requirements, concept design to engineering, managing product development process and data lifecycle — enabled by Virtual Twins to simulate future product capabilities, performance, safety compliance and user experience.
Smart
Operations
Data joins the dots horizontally between front-end and back-end of the manufacturing execution, and vertically from shop floor to top floor — and every "thing" in between, leveraging Digital Twins with the Internet of Things and machine-to-machine communications.
Connected
Products
From smart factories to smart products, complemented by digitally enabled services, operating in connected buildings, based in smart cities: embedded sensors, software and analytics are joining the dots between a data network of opportunities.
Connecting data sources (input devices) and data engines (machines) with digital models provides opportunities for continuous improvement, end-to-end business analytics and close feedback loops for data alignment, traceability and optimisation across the Digital Thread. Overall insights and analytics become exponentially available, leading to even more possibilities in complex operations or product interactions.
- What data set is mastered where (it could be a number of databases or files, this is not about having a single system, but a clear original source of authoring for each data set)?
- How data mastership evolves / changes throughout the product or service lifecycle (i.e. as one data set matured, it is combined with other data sets and transformed from its original purpose to a new purpose)?
- How data set are combined to support business capabilities (e.g. product development, service execution, etc.)?
- How platforms are integrated within their own components and between themselves, how data is sewed across the digital thread, and what interfaces enable this and how open / agile are these data models and connections?
- How to motivate to embrace change and train business users to create better operations?
virtual
Virtual Reality (VR) describes an interactive computer-added experience or immersive simulation of the real, sharing important functional aspects with other things (real or imagined); by contrast of Augmented Reality (AR) which is about overlaying virtual things onto the real. VR immerses users inside virtual worlds, while AR augments the real world with virtual things. Not all virtual objects that are used today are digital models of physical objects, sometimes these objects are new concepts designed for any type of task or information encapsulation.
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As technology advances, more and more things appear in digital format; any thing or object, conveniently tagged, may be able to communicate with other objects equally tagged through internet or any other protocols. These devices, objects and associated machines form the Internet of Things (IoT) which rely on data interconnections and machine-to-machine communication. Simply put, virtual objects are digital elements with a specific purpose, comprised of data series and which can perform dedicated actions.
digital
As products and services mature, virtual twins evolve into full digital representations of the real. More and more objects called things which are merely physical start to be seen also in digital format. Digital twins are representations of product or service attributes, informing decision making from ideation to experimentation and service optimization. Digital twins combined with IoT enable communication and integration of physical objects (with each other) and people to automate tasks and improve efficiency.