Two approaches to innovation
This is a bit of a delayed reaction, but at PLM Connection in May of this year, I took in just a fire hose worth of information listening to various Siemens executives speak. Some of the info was dull, and some was really eye popping for me. One particular slide that Chuck Grindstaff gave put a lot of things in perspective for me. The folks at Siemens PR were nice enough to find and provide me with a slide with a couple of graphs that I think you’ll find pretty descriptive.
Here is a graph that describes one way you could approach software development. You might call this the “3 steps forward, 2 steps back” approach. Now, I can’t say with certainty that Mr. Grindstaff had Dassault or anyone at all in mind when he created this graph, but if you look at the graph, it seems to plot the progress of V4, V5, and V6, where each new “V” represents a nearly complete departure from how things were done in the past. Not necessarily an improvement, but certainly different. Promises that are somewhat beyond actual reach, and drastic setbacks in the name of progress are the name of the game. This reminds me of what is going to happen to SolidWorks users who choose to move forward to whatever the SolidWorks V6 product is going to be called. That parasolid to CGM translation is going to be costly, and will certainly be a big setback in trying to move forward.
Remember that current SolidWorks is not compatible with Catia V4, V5 OR V6. Even V4 was not perfectly compatible with V5. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to expect that Parasolid based SolidWorks will translate 100% into SolidWorks V6. So moving forward is almost certainly going to see a huge bump in the road, as the chart indicates.
The word “disruptive” has been entirely overused in the technology business world for the last several years. People marketing and selling technology have come to think of “disruption” as a good thing. They must be thinking of someone other than customers when they think “disrupting” your way of doing business is a good thing. CAD is just a tool. In the end, I can’t design any better with one tool than another. Marketing slogans that imply that I can somehow design “better” products because of a CAD tool are taking themselves far too seriously, and show a real misunderstanding of what engineers and designers do.
I do not need a CAD tool to disrupt my workflow. I do not need a CAD tool that thinks it can “design”. I do need a CAD tool that is powerful and reliable. CAD developers need to understand that people buy CAD software to DEVELOP GEOMETRY. We might buy other things for other purposes, but we need CAD for geometry. Keep your eye on the ball, guys, and don’t get distracted by all these pretty gewgaws you see everywhere else.
On the other hand, there is another approach you can use for software development. The changes in each release are smaller, and are better planned. You work toward a goal, and don’t have to be so disruptive on your way there.
Unigraphics absorbed SDRC over the course of years, and eventually the two products became a single product. This was not done overnight, and to the best of my knowledge, the merge was well managed.
I think we continue to see this approach with Synchronous Technology, where the new scheme didn’t completely gut the old software – it was added to it, so you could work the new way or the old way, right from ST1. By ST3, they figured out how to get additional advantage by combining ordered features and Synch Tech, to get capabilities that neither approach had before they were merged.
To me, this second approach is just product development that makes sense. Gutting your software on a regular basis so that the new and the old can’t even communicate doesn’t create any winners. I think its bad all the way around certainly for customers, and probably also for the vendor.
If you are going to use your own or your company’s money to buy in to one of these schemes, which one would you put your money on?
Hi Matt,
thanks for your article – I saw the same slides from Chuck Grindstaff and they resonated well. Although I agree with your points regarding disruption, I also think that Siemens PLM faces other challenges when trying to carry 10-15 year old PLM technology from Metaphase into the future. At some point in time, it’s time for a cut – for losing dead weight. Dassault and Siemens PLM just seem to use different criteria for determining this point. My guess is that Dassault – at least with V6 – focuses on new markets (industries such as apparel, CPG; end-consumers) that don’t have the long lifecycles that automotive and aerospace have. These new customers might just go for the latest technology and don’t care about a little disruption.
Best regards,
Jens
@matt
At least it rolls off the tongue pretty sweet. SolidWorks nFuze… nFuze… nFuzzzzzze.
Warning graphic content. No real cats or anyone resembling a CEO were hurt in this post. 😉
[img]http://www.dezignstuff.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/5703694684_b2afb3a670.jpg[/img]
The story on the men’s urinal – splash back,… was so much more interesting!
Clearly BC has never actually used iTunes – otherwise he would know it is terrible and not something to compare your own product with.
He has to go. Its that simple….Here puss puss…….heeere puss puss puss…
@Alessandro
Yeah, I read it. My favorite line from BC was “…You save on the cloud, use on the cloud, share on the cloud, and the user interface is the same one you work with. This is SolidWorks Enfuse [sic], it’s very SolidWorks consistent, people love it…. …but our business systems will make it easy for you, like iTunes, basically.”
“SolidWorks consistent”?!?!?! It looks like a bad web interface, that’s it. There’s nothing SolidWorks consistent about it. It doesn’t even read SW files!
Oh, and “people love it”. Maybe you could find one person who didn’t dislike it, but I rather doubt it. It was practically useless.
It’s clear this guy lives on a different planet. A very happy one. One where reality doesn’t exist.
Hey Matt,
have you had a look at Develop 3D October issue ? There’s an interesting Interview with Bernard Charles (Dassault Systèmes CEO), it’s sharing his view and future plans.
For what concerns SolidWorks he’s thinking of:
– exploring new markets (live Buildings)
– Keep building the SolidWorks community
– Going on the cloud
It’s also talking about CGM, parasolid and transition.
@Kevin De Smet
Yes, of course, the pictures just illustrate the concept. But the concept of being more or less disruptive in how you make changes to software tools is certainly valid.
Graphs idealize reality. You can’t really…like…do. that!
There is another perspective on innovation. perhaps DS is being very quiet to create a technology gap. What do they have to hide that is so important that they can’t already share with us? Keep in mind innovation takes a lot of work and R&D departments do the best they can to keep the sales and marketing people away from it for as long as they possibly can.
Matt, I have always appreciated your honesty. It’s what makes your work ten times more useful than any of SWX official tutorials.
Solidworks V6 will probably be a much bigger dip in the road than SW2008.
The unreliable performance of Solidworks in surfacing has been a significant source of work for me. Yay, I get paid more to do less in weird ways. I guess we will be loaded with work when they turn up the pain.
Matt,
The market is in desperate need for NX reference books. New opportunities for you I would say.
@Anon
I always keep an eye out for new stuff, or new information on old stuff. I find NX very attractive, except the price, and I find SolidThinking very attractive except that it doesn’t seem to have basic engineering tools – it’s a little too much a straight aesthetic development tool.
I waste a lot of time effing around with SW right now. I make my living predominantly by making the software do stuff it doesn’t want to do. It’s not well suited to making changes to complex models, and it lacks a lot in the finer points of shape control. The one advantage it does have is that it is cheap.
That said, I do have two relationships with SolidWorks. One as a customer, and one as a reference book and training material author. I’ve backed out of several other SolidWorks related activities for various reasons, mainly that I feel the company has lost its focus, and is no longer really interested in stuff that interests me.
Matt – “I do not need a CAD tool to disrupt my workflow. I do not need a CAD tool that thinks it can “design”. I do need a CAD tool that is powerful and reliable.”
This is why I quit as a Solidworks draftsman – it didn’t deliver these basics.
Question for Matt – Are you going to leave the Solidworks family?
Here is another graph showing the real motive – money – nothing to do with innovation or capability which I probably should have shown virtually flat lining. Lock em in at the top of adoption/dependency and charge what you like after a tactful introduction for whatever you care to let em have as cheap hand-me-downs from Catia development. Charges/profits also rise because users have to pay continuously, piracy is cut and they are skimming for the servers/hardware as well. Development and licence costs fall and probably staff can be rationalised as well.
[img]http://www.dezignstuff.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Sketch28323131-1.jpg[/img]
(drawn on and sent from android to see if it works 😉 ) edit: yay!