Charles Clarke, 10 June 2002

The folks at Cambashi usually come up with weird and wonderful titles for their annual seminars, but not this year. Instead, as it was Shakespeare's birthday and the venue was in Warwickshire the presentation titles were derived from Shakespearean quotations and there was a general Shakespearean theme throughout.

The seminar was aimed principally at PLM vendors, offering them insights derived from Cambashi's recent market and marketing research. Perhaps the most thought provoking and relevant to CAD/CAM users was Bob Brown's presentation 'PLM by any other name would smell as sweet' a nicely obvious choice for the CAD/CAM acronym du jour.

"Because definitions of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) are so varied, vendors run the risk of confusing their customers in the manufacturing sector with seemingly contradictory statements," said Brown. Definitely no argument there.

According to Brown the core of PLM is about providing access to a unique description of the product and the possibility of accessing all the relevant history at any point in the product's lifecycle - and making this information available to a far wider audience of design stakeholders than ever before. This definition covers an enormous amount of ground and some very complex technology.

A nicely vague and all embracing definition - it is important to remember that PLM is a lot more than just a fancy new acronym for traditional CAD/CAM/CAE and PDM, it also brings in the so-called enterprise applications of ERP, CRM, SCM and MES. One of the real benefits of the new acronym is that (theoretically) you no longer have to remember all the others!

At the conceptual level the proposition of PLM is simple but the devil is in the detail. "The PLM vision, especially for an extended enterprise, often makes basic assumptions which are at best unproven and may simply be wrong", said Brown. Three of the most important of these assumptions are that: users will have to change their basic design process; the participants in the PLM process will share all relevant data willingly; and partner organisations in the extended enterprise will have business objectives that are in alignment.

The vendors may say "our solution can do X". Brown contends that this sentence should finish with "provided Y happens first". Helping customers to understand what is possible and appropriate for them is a more certain route to a successful project than selling an unrealistic vision that has been built on a false premise. Amen to that.

The whole notion of PLM as promoted by the CAD/CAM vendors implies that life has somehow magically changed and that users should be interested in the whole life cycle of product development from cradle to grave. This is patently not the case - this holistic view of PLM is probably only relevant to 1000 companies world-wide (or less). Fortunately for ordinary CAD/CAM users most PLM vendors offer highly modularised solutions, so you still "pays your money and takes your choice".

This dovetailed nicely with Allan Behren's presentation, "Much ado about acronyms", where he contended that too many vendors take refuge in unnecessary jargon and acronyms rather than helping their customers make money. Cambashi research in senior boardrooms concerning "PLM" found that "most [directors] had no idea what it meant. When offered a definition, one responded with: "Why on earth would you want to create an acronym for that, it's so obvious?"

"We should be talking the same language as our customers," Behrens advises. But overuse of jargon is just one customer complaint. Others include failure to integrate; too much need for customisation; unnecessary functionality; and over-selling.
"They will spend significant amounts of money with people that will help them meet their business needs. But what we must do is help them to do it the way that they want to do it, and not the way we want them to do it," Behrens concludes. Again, very little rocket science here, but it needs to be said time and again until the vendors get it!

The 'enterprise' position was covered by Edwin Ecob who pointed out that many of the traditional ERP vendors are offering PLM functionality to bolster falling revenues in their core product lines. And that whilst enterprise and engineering applications vendors today offer complementary PLM functionality, they will soon be head to head. And that Enterprise Application Vendors, with the ear of the Finance Director, are in the driving seat. Ecob suggests keeping an eye on the mergers and acquisitions columns.

Mike Evans in his regular examination of the market concluded that whilst times are tough and companies are reluctant to make investments, there are still nuggets of investment to be identified. However, finding them requires good market information and training for the sales team in speaking the potential users' language rather than esoteric acronyms and jargon. These users also need help to justify these investments to the bean counters. And of course, Cambashi provides information and training.

Quote of the day "Data, when tortured long enough will confess to anything."
Edwin Ecob Principal Consultant, Cambashi.

Insight of the day - "You can't talk to an FD or CFO about CAD but you can about PLM!"

Charles Clarke, c3 Magazine

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