Robin Saitz, Senior Vice President, Solutions marketing and Communications, PTC
Additional value can be realized by augmenting managed processes.
There are a number of tools available to optimize product development. There are authoring tools, such as CAD/CAM/CAE (CAx), which are focused on making the individual engineer or designer more productive. CAx equips the engineer to create a realistic 3D representation of a product, define the tool paths necessary to manufacture the product, and predict the product’s performance through analysis on the model, avoiding the need for physical prototypes.
Product data management (PDM) applications, became necessary because CAx data is very complex (i.e., relationships among parts in a sub-assembly, sub-assemblies within the top level assembly, and how those relationships evolve over time). Further, the power of associativity — where a change made to the part, for example, automatically ripples to the referring assemblies, NC toolpaths, 2D drawings, etc.—has to be managed.
In most case, a workgroup or team is involved in designing a product. If CAx is left unmanaged or loosely managed using shared folders and/or network drives, individuals may find themselves working with an old version of the model, or worse, the wrong version goes to production, resulting in quality issues, higher costs, and missed delivery dates.
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Enterprise applications, such as PLM (product lifecycle management), are focused on governance and control of product information. PLM is dedicated to shepherding a promising product idea through design development, sourcing, change and configuration management, manufacturing planning, production, service, and retirement. Core to PLM is process automation, which is typically facilitated by structured workflow technology.
The concept of product/projects teams is also core to PLM. Product teams are comprised of cross functional representatives assigned to work on a specific product/project with milestones and deliverables. Often, once the project is complete, this team is disbanded and individuals are reassigned to new projects. PLM evolved from PDM which today is fully subsumed by PLM applications. But there’s another set of activities that hasn’t been suitably addressed by either PLM or desktop apps.
Before a product idea makes its way from an individual engineer or marketer to a PLM system for management and control, there are many people who could, should, and do get involved in considering that idea as well as other ideas, vetting them against ideas considered and discarded in the past, morphing ideas into better ideas, leveraging broader communities inside and outside their organization. This is true whether the idea is for a new product or a possible way of solving a design challenge in a current product. Maybe you’re just stumped on a question; don’t know where to turn but think someone in your company should be able to help.
PLM tools are designed to create and manage structured bills of materials (BOMs) and automate well-defined, formal product development processes. Companies count on PLM for governance to ensure that selected products get to market with all the t’s crossed and the i’s dotted. And while collaboration has always been a mainstay of PLM, some of the technologies necessary to enable the type of fluid interaction described here have fallen a bit short. Enter social computing.
New social product development capabilities, those leveraging social computing technology, can significantly improve this type of idea exchange. These capabilities can enable like-minded people who have common interests to come together in ways very different from designated product/project teams. Often referred to as communities of practice (CoPs) or communities of interest, these ad-hoc, organic groups require more flexible and natural ways of interacting, without carrying the constraints inherent in a governance system.
Not every idea exchanged, considered, commented on, discarded or every question asked and answered needs to be managed with the rigor traditionally brought by the PLM system. But having the freedom to spawn and discuss ideas and spontaneously ask questions or help out your colleague can make the process of identifying the best ideas faster and easier.
Then the governance capabilities of PLM kick in with the task of managing the processes needed to bring that great idea to market. So, while the role of PLM in product development is undeniable, additional value is can be realized by augmenting these managed processes with the organic infusion of innovation provided by communities of practice.