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* Welcome *
Welcome to 2PLM, an e-zine distributed about every two weeks. This issue includes :
- Top 10 Reasons why a Company needs Part Meta-data
- Increasing PLCS Understanding
- The Missing Element in PLM : Forecasting and Managing Economic Value
- Product Development Process
- PLM Market Survey Results (DACH, 2007)
- Airbus News
- PLM News
* Top 10 Reasons why a Company needs Part Meta-data *
- Enable re-use of an existing approved part
versus recreating a new part
- Properly define a part so it can be
re-used
- Manage the lifecycle of a part including
providing current part status
- Source more parts at once, enabling
similar part groupings or sourcing clusters
- Identify standard part configurations
facilitating part standardization and rationalization
- Properly migrate a part to mitigate
migration issues
- Find part substitutes including
preferred alternatives
- Parts preferencing to help prioritize
part usage
- Find associated data about a part
including where used, documents, programs, etc.
- Pre and Post merger acquisition - consolidate
parts and sourcing
More at
http://www.convergencedata.net/Resource_Center.htm#Top10
* Increasing PLCS Understanding *
Peter Bergström
A coherent information environment in which the necessary data are available
to all participants is a prerequisite for efficient product support.
ISO 10303-239, the ISO standard for Product Life Cycle Support (PLCS),
addresses this need.
PLCS can be thought of as a new "world map" for product support. Like any
new map, PLCS contains much that is familiar - a maintenance task is still
a maintenance task - and many new discoveries, for example:
- The removal of ambiguity in the meaning of terms at both
business and data level (e.g. the distinction between a type of product, and an actual product)
- Illustration of how support activities may be integrated
and harmonized to maximize re-use of information over time and to enable continual improvement
in support performance based on feedback from in-service experience
The three central concepts in PLCS are product, activity, and resource.
Each of these may be associated with properties, states, or locations.
Conditions may be applied to relationships between these concepts. Many entities,
attributes, and relationships can also be qualified by applying classification,
characterization and justification.
Just like a map, PLCS can be used in different ways. One is to solve business
problems by automating data exchange between existing systems. PLCS can also be
used to support a major update of processes across an entire organization.
PLCS is already used in the automotive, aerospace, and telecom industries,
and usage is increasing continuously. Deployment of PLCS is also increasing
in the defence sector, where both government and industry participants are
establishing policy requirements and several new full scale implementations
are being launched. More and more nations are becoming involved.
Lessons learned from implementation of PLCS:
- Major benefits can be realized by gaining better control of
product and support data. Many companies are not in control of the information they generate and use. They are, therefore,
unable to populate data exchange files with meaningful and reliable content. The main reason
for this is the lack of internal process discipline. The initial impact of PLCS implementation
is typically that of driving up the quality of internal data to the point where they are worth exporting.
- Do not outsmart yourself. Tactical/local implementation within an organization must
precede strategic/international efforts.
- All meaning is negotiated. PLCS has exposed many important, but subtle, distinctions
of meaning which were previously ignored and which often undermined major IT development
programs. Do not be discouraged when you find inconsistencies between applications
currently in use, such as missing or conflicting data, or inconsistencies in definitions. This is
"low hanging fruit". Finding it and fixing it is a worthwhile activity. Greatly improved
data quality is a typical early by-product of PLCS implementation projects.
- Real life tests and trials are crucial. The scope, range, and types of data that PLCS
addresses are very complex and should not be underestimated. It is also important not
to underestimate the size of the community of exchange, and hence the need for wider
consultation (e.g. single project use, versus UK MoD wide, versus NATO). Collaboration and
openness are key words. Publish your adaptation of PLCS in DEXlib, under your own "business context",
to solicit review and feedback.
- Do not wait for the "next version" of the standard, it is ready for use now. PLCS has
already been implemented by many organizations, and proven its value by providing significant
early benefits for the organizations that have used it.
- Analyze and structure your data today. Do your best for the first small-scale
implementations. Use your experience from these in the follow-on, wider-scale implementations.
- PLCS provides simplicity, clarity and discipline to an
IT environment in terms of information management.
To learn more from implementations already made, and the potential benefits that PLCS offers
your organization, you may want to extend your understanding of the PLCS information standard.
Eurostep will be running PLCS training courses in Paris, France between the 19th and 21st
of February. There will be a 1-day Executive Overview and a 3-day Technical Walkthrough.
The 3-day Technical Walkthrough includes individual exercises in which participants
use a specially designed tool to create examples of product structures, activities,
and requirements, to improve their understanding of the standard and learn how it can be used.
By attending this training course, attendees will prepare themselves for exploiting PLCS and putting
it into effect in their organizations.
The one-day Executive Overview of PLCS focuses on the business benefits of
implementing PLCS.
Both courses present examples of implementation of PLCS
in several different organizations.
For more information about these courses, please visit
www.eurostep.com/training
or contact ulrika.peterson@eurostep.com (dir tel +46 8 4101 3151).
* The Missing Element in PLM : Forecasting and Managing Economic Value *
Don Creswell
PLM - Product Life Cycle Management - addresses virtually everything
that needs to be managed to conceive of, develop, and bring a product
to market. The scope of PLM is immense: from innovation to computer
aided design (CAD), to computer aided engineering (CAE), to
project/portfolio management (PPM) and on and on. But, there
seems to be a missing element: how can management address the
fundamental question: what is the bottom line
result of doing all this?
Because the value question is frequently superficially
answered, an extraordinarily high number of products fail
to produce expected results or fail altogether. Industry
studies show that failure rates can be as high as 60 to 70
per cent. One reason, says Tech-Clarity (AberdeenGroup) analyst
Jim Brown, "Many companies fail at the very core of the
portfolio management problem - identifying and achieving
value from their projects."
Value-Based Management (VBM) directly addresses this issue by helping
managers confidently select the most promising products to pursue and to
focus efforts on the relatively few factors that produce the
highest profitable revenue.
VBM Focuses Decisions on Identifying and Achieving Value
For more than a decade, companies have emphasized "operational management"
of projects and portfolios - tasks, activities, and budgets.
Operational management is well supported by systems that enable
Stage Gate® processes, budgets, and resource management
Little emphasis, however, has been placed on "strategic" project
and portfolio management, addressing on fundamental issues like:
- Do we have the "right" projects? (Projects that
have the best chance for producing the highest value.)
- Do we focus resources on key value drivers?
- What is the expected economic value of
each project on the portfolio?
VBM processes and software focus attention on maximizing strategic value.
Companies that successfully combine strategic and
operational project/portfolio management report impressive
bottom-line results. For example, a portfolio manager
of a Fortune 50 company cited that within one year following
deployment of VBM, his organization realized:
- 100% increase in the value returned
from his portfolio - from $40 to $80 million
- 100% improvement in projects moving
from the lab to implementation
- 100% increase in the number of
projects terminated early
- 50% increase in the number of new
projects initiated
The Benefits of Adding Value-Based Project and Portfolio Management to PLM
A benchmarking study of the practices of best in class companies conducted by
the AberdeenGroup in 2006 concluded that "assessing, monitoring,
and managing value throughout (project) portfolio assessment and
execution pays off." This approach, said study participants:
- ".. forces us to get clear and specific about
the value of each element of the portfolio, which was something we had great difficulty
doing before." (Portfolio Manager, major oil company)
- ".. enables different stakeholders who speak
'different languages' - finance, technology, manufacturing and sales - to translate
what they know into a common 'value language' understood by all." (R&D Executive, Fortune
100 paper products company)
- ".. accelerated major decisions from years to months and
doubled the value of one project by recognizing a strategic issue 'lurking in the project
details.'" (Vice President of Discovery, pharmaceutical company)
- " .. showed us what our portfolio could deliver in
meaningful, bottom-line terms, giving us real insight into which projects to fund."
(Vice President of Business Development, technology-based packaging company)
Don Creswell is Vice President Sales and Marketing,
SmartOrg Inc.
For additional information contact info@smartorg.com
* Product Development Process *
When we carry out a review of a company's Product Development
performance, we often find issues such as:
- different groups of developers following
different processes
- many projects taking longer
than expected to achieve results
- many projects failing to achieve
acceptance at the final milestone
- even apparently very small projects
taking a long time to come to fruition
- no easy way for management to see the
status of development projects
- unclear criteria applied to decide
if a project should continue
- misunderstandings due to a lack of clear
definition of particular words
- a lack of agreement among the product
development team members from different functions
- no methodology showing developers what
they should do at each time in a project
A Product Development Process with well-defined Stages and Gates can help
overcome such issues. It helps:
- Ensure everybody knows what they should
be doing at a particular time
- Helps people from different functions
work together
- Shows which deliverables must be
available before an end-of-Stage Gate Review can take place
- Prevents a project continuing until
all required deliverables are available
- Enables pre-determined, pre-agreed
criteria to be used in Gate Reviews
- Provides a basis for significantly
faster and better Stage approval processes through automated workflows
- Improves communication among project
team members, and between team members and management
- Allows authorized individuals to view
up-to-date project information at any time
- Provides organization-wide transparency
on priorities, projects and status for each project
But where should a company start?
Chapter 4 of
Global Product: Strategy, Product Lifecycle Management and the Billion Customer Question
results from discussions with executives in companies
of different sizes and in different industry sectors about different
components of PLM, including improved Product Development processes.
Contributors included:
- Thomas W. Schmidt ; Group Vice President,
Head of Information Systems ; ABB Power Products Division
- Ruedi Klein ; Product Portfolio Manager ;
Mobility Access business unit, Lucent Technologies, Inc.
- Uwe Tontsch ; Head of ITD, Information Technology - Product
Development and Industrial Engineering Solutions; BSH Bosch und Siemens Hausgeraete GmbH
- Eric Peeters ; Executive Director ;
Sealants and Adhesives, Core Products Business, Dow Corning Corporation
- Luis Cediel ; CEO ; Habasit AG
- Heinz-Simon Keil ; Director of the Virtual
Engineering Centre ; Siemens AG
* PLM Market Survey Results (DACH, 2007) *
EMC GmbH announced the results of its Market Survey:
"The Situation in 2007 of PLM in Austria, Germany and
Switzerland". More information from info@e-m-c.de
Details
* Airbus News *
A380
16 January 2008; Airbus 2007 Results
"We were successful in the market and mastered
the industrial challenges of the production ramp up,
the timely delivery of the first A380, ..
Details
A400M
27 April 2007; A400M Delivery Programme On Time
"In early March this year, during the EADS
Financial Results Briefing to the press, the
company's CEOs announced the decision to
postpone the formal start of the A400M final
assembly process by up to three months.
Details
17 October 2007; EADS informs A400M customers
about revised delivery schedule
"A400M deliveries are now expected to start
six months later than initially planned with
a risk of a further slippage of up to a half year."
Details
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