- Welcome Page 2 - Update Page 3 - News Page 4 - Brief lines | Welcome to this issue of 2PLM, an e-zine distributed every two weeks on a free subscription basis. This week's article, "Data Migraine", is from Menno Huijben of Technia. But first some news :
More information on the February 2-3 Brussels PLM Research 2005 meeting is available here. The meeting has two objectives:
* PLM Best Practices Forum * At the request of some of its members, the PLMIG is preparing a PLM Best Practices Forum. This is scheduled for February 9, 2005 in Oxford, England (details). The Best Practice Forum will:
Decisions made at the front end of the product lifecycle regarding products and their associated intellectual property have broad and powerful implications for the rest of a product's life. In the recently released results of its 2004 Survey, Goldense Group, Inc. (GGI), which has been researching and benchmarking industry practices since 1998, reports on the best practices and tools for selecting new products, the processes and tools that companies use to manage their intellectual property, and the most frequently used corporate metrics in industry. GGI's primary research, the 2004 Product Development Metrics Survey, was conducted by sending questionnaires to a wide distribution of product development professionals in North America, Europe and Asia. Responses were received from 202 companies ranging from industrial and medical products to aerospace, defense, electronics, and chemicals industries. Respondents were asked to complete 75 questions covering their demographic information and the following five areas: product selection process, product selection tools, intellectual property management process, intellectual property management tools, and top corporate metrics used in industry. The 2004 survey was completed by respondents from April through early August 2004 and published in October 2004. Over the next five months, 2PLM, with GGI's permission, will publish selected research results and analysis for each of the five topic areas:
For more information about GGI's market research contact Richard James, GGI's Director of Research (rjj@goldensegroupinc.com). * Data Migraine * Many companies suffer from "data migraine", brought on by low-quality data resulting from the use of myriads of inconsistent data formats and item numbering systems. As a result of growth through acquisitions, or by complying with various standards imposed by their most important customers, companies are often struggling with product data quality. But discussing and deciding about data formats and quality issues is the boring stuff nobody wants to bother with. It seldom gets senior management attention. As a result of corporate cost-cutting initiatives, a lot of standardization departments in companies have disappeared, and with them the competence to understand and drive standards that help to define and agree on data formats. Data quality issues are regularly neglected in PLM projects until it is too late. This causes headaches for the project manager - delays in the rollout and extra costs resulting from over-complicated integrations between ERP, CRM, and what have you. Legacy data-loading activities in a PLM project require sufficient resource allocation. Remember to do the simple calculations to get an idea concerning the time required to migrate data into a new system. A typical case:
Though someone may have forgotten to schedule time and resources for data cleaning and migration activities, there will be still be pressure on the project team to get 'something up and running'. This way leads to the situation often described as 'garbage in - garbage out'. (Needless to say, a PLM system containing data that cannot be trusted is a failure.) Legacy data migration activities require very careful planning, and a lot of (boring) work. Apparently, we must all claim to do PLM nowadays. We have moved on from PDM, and our focus must include Lifecycles and Processes. However, product data is still at the core of the activity. Of course, nobody would dare to engage in selecting and implementing an IT system without having a good look at the business processes; we all know the mantra 'Business processes before IT'. No investment request would be granted without saying something smart about better and faster business processes. How I would love there to be a 'Data before IT' mantra: 'No IT investment is allowed without having a close look at the data that is going to be managed in the envisioned system'. I would claim that, in the beginning of a PLM initiative, it is even more important to look at your product data than at your processes. This is because:
For questions and comments, please contact me by mail or call +358 424 7221. Menno Huijben is a consultant at Technia, a leading supplier of PLM solutions in the Nordic countries.  * Feedback on the previous issue * Don Frank's feedback in the previous issue of 2PLM led to the following response from Chris Williams, CEO, Ingenuus Software. I read with interest the feedback from Don Frank on the many types of BOMs used by manufacturing companies. For the past 20 plus years I too have been working with Parts Lists and BOMs striving to solve the automation issues Mr. Frank so clearly describes. My experience in the aerospace/defense industry is similar to Mr. Frank's with this exception - engineering BOMs and manufacturing BOMs were separate long before CAD/CAM was in major use. In fact, in my experience, it was the advent of MRP, now ERP, systems that began the division of an automated manufacturing BOM, but only accelerated an already common practice. The problem is more complex than simply deciding on having a single BOM. Each manufacturing environment is different. I have always found it helpful to think of the engineering BOM as a "Parts List" and the manufacturing BOM as a real bill of materials. As the name implies, a parts list delineates all the parts required to make and assemble something. A BOM, again as the name implies, lists all the materials required to make parts and assemblies. A good example of the difference between an engineering parts list and a manufacturing BOM is illustrated by my experience with rocket casing mandrels used as a type of form to wind a graphite or fiberglass casing for a rocket motor stage. A common drawing note instructed that the mandrel was to be wiped down with a certain cleaner using cheesecloth. But the engineering drawing never specified how much cleaner was needed. Nor did the engineering drawing indicate how much cheesecloth would be required. This was left up to manufacturing and purchasing people who were much more familiar with how many people were on the line. For this one item that appeared as a drawing note (not even an entry in the engineering parts lists) manufacturing would need rubber gloves, cheesecloth, and cleaner. This simple example is endemic to the entire situation revolving around a common bill of materials. But I have good news for Mr. Frank. Many of our customers, using our software, have been able to standardize on a common BOM, and that BOM is stored in the MRP/ERP system. When a new product is created, engineering begins the BOM using our system, and manufacturing completes the BOM. Once the BOM is approved and released, the MRP/ERP system is updated with the new information. When a change is needed against the BOM, it already exists in our system and engineers can make changes only to the items that they care about, and only see the items they have changed. Manufacturing personnel can see everything they need to see and there is no need for separate BOMs. Purchasing functions that utilize the BOM are already in the MRP/ERP system and continue to function as intended. We have been able to help companies avoid fighting about a separate engineering and manufacturing BOM. email: cwilliams@ingenuus.com |
