Cactus, Eggheads, and PLM

Ever wonder what PLM really is? I hear people throw this term around a lot, but I never get the sense that anyone really assigns much meaning to it other than “really expensive PDM”. You never hear anyone say, “…so I got into work this morning and fired up my PLM software…” The people who use the PLM terminology are usually people who are selling something, which causes me personally to mistrust it as a sham.

Technically, PLM stands for Product Lifecycle Management. Not much help there, is it. Recently, I’ve heard it referred to as simply product development process renamed with a TLA (three letter acronym) that includes the word “management” to help someone bolster a resume. A little cynical maybe, but I get it.

More recently, I came across an old video (from April 09) where Brad Holtz of Cyon Research defines PLM as well as I’ve heard it described. I picked up this link from Mark Burhop from Siemens (@burphop) on Twitter. For his definition to make much sense, I think you have to understand where Mr. Holtz is coming from. Cyon Research does CAD market research, and sells their services and research/analysis results to the big (and small) CAD companies. Cyon calls it “engineering technology” rather than CAD, which opens up much more available territory, including CAE, CAM, PDM, AEC (architecture, engineering and construction), BIM (building information management)  each a field of study on its own. In essence, Cyon asks a lot of questions, and thinks really hard about the answers, and helps the industry to understand the dynamics of the engineering technology market, the relationships between the players (including buyers, users and producers), and observable or derivable trends.

For as eggheaded as this all sounds, Brad’s presentation in the video is conspicuously grounded in real-world research with real engineering software USERS. He talks about markets and financial obscurities, but he’s also talking about real technology in a way that makes it obvious he understands what he’s talking about, even to people who actually use the things he is talking about.  Very high level view, yet with very detailed familiarity, if that makes any sense. If you listen to the presentation a couple of times (at 50 minutes, you may just want to look at the pictures), you will hear things that make sense, and even see things that may be a little frightening.

To me, it is fascinating how he and his people put together a chart like the above just from scratch in a way that I haven’t seen before. The chart shows where each range of CAD products fits in a grid that charts geometric complexity against overall project complexity. For example, a bulldozer is not geometrically very complex, but the overall project is complex. On the other hand, a plastic toy may not be very complex as a project, but some of the geometry used on it may be very complex. The SolidWorks area is the big yellow section in the middle. It can get geometrically complex, but it does better in the simple 3D range, which is why it is larger at the bottom and skinnier at the top. The very bottom of the chart is essentially 2D type work.

Also, don’t forget that mainstream mechanical design isn’t the only part of this picture. Architecture, ships, oil rigs, and all of this stuff is also engineered. Kim is an architect, and it was interesting that Brad’s talk took a high enough view of the engineering software world that it was also relevant to her work, particularly in the realm of Revit and BIM.

So, back to PLM. What did Brad say PLM is? It is basically a high level, enterprise wide approach to product development. “Not PLM”, for lack of a better term, is the same thing, but taking each of the individual problems and solving them piecemeal. So PLM takes it all into view and solves all of the problems with a single all-reaching vision, and Not PLM considers each problem separately. To quote from the slide, “PLM = greater risk and cost in exchange for a much greater potential reward”.

PLM = Dassault (Catia/Delmia/Enovia/Simulia/3Dvia)

Not PLM = SolidWorks + Ansys + DBWorks + Microsoft Word +…

So that’s what the big deal is all about. The sales side of the CAD industry is all about obfuscation – how to take a common sense concept, and twist it until it doesn’t recognize itself any longer. Then you have to bring the eggheads in to make sense of it again. And I mean “egghead” in the most endearing possible way.

Anyway, the video was taken at COFES (conference on the future of engineering software) held in Scottsdale, Arizona every spring by Cyon Research. I’m not sure sitting through several days of this type of thing would be my idea of fun, but taking the best snippets of it, like this, is highly informative and helps put the industry in focus a little bit. I just wanted to share the link to the video because I think it represents a useful approach to the world of PLM rather than the other pointless jabber we tend to hear about it.