PLMIG: PLM and the digital future

Towards a digital future: the evolving role of PLM in the digital world

In 2020, Xlifecycle Ltd joined forces with the Professional PLM Initiative to address the following question:

What will PLM practitioners of the future need to know about digital transformation in order to work professionally?

The rise of smart products, smart factories, Industry 4.0, IIoT, hyper-connectivity, AI, AR, VR, and related digital technologies continue to have a major impact on PLM. The possibilities and problems associated with this are only just surfacing.
Almost every company that undertakes Product Lifecycle Management related transformation also wants to take advantage of the new digital advances. Boardroom attention is focusing on digital capabilities to shape a connected ecosystem.
There is a vast amount of PLM experience that should be carried forward into this new digital age. This can only happen if there is clear alignment on how the two disciplines relate to each other. Industrial companies need a template for applying the combined PLM and digitalisation disciplines in real, effective manufacturing environments.
Xlifecycle Ltd has partnered with the PLMIG to establish the facts.

Survey findings

White-Paper

https://xlifecycle.com/Towards A Digital Future - White Paper v1.0/

Read paper

PLM is a discipline, not just a tool. A clear definition of the relationship between PLM and digitalisation is needed; every PLM professional will need selected digital skill set to work effectively in the future.

Industry Survey

https://xlifecycle.com/Towards A Digital Future - Survey Overview v1.0/

Read paper

How PLM and Digital differ now, and whether they will converge; how the Digital Twin and Digital Thread differ and complement each other; and whether PLM needs to evolve to adapt to the 'Factory of the Future'.

Position Paper

https://xlifecycle.com/Towards A Digital Future - Position Paper v1.0/

Read paper

PLM solutions must solve business problems, and digitalization is a mean to an end. Understanding PLM principles is essential when implementing digital platforms, improving data and associated processes.

Challenging the status-quo and making sense of the digital hype

The rush of enthusiasm for the possibilities of Digital Everything and Smart Everything has drawn attention away from the some of the core aims and principles of PLM. Some people perceive that PLM is the platform on which new digital improvements should be constructed—whereas for others, PLM is now just a component part of a more important Digital Revolution.
From Engineering 4.0 to Industry 4.0, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT), the Digital Thread, the Digital Twins and business transformations offer ways to enhance PLM; they have also captured the attention of senior management and business executives in a way that PLM never has.
The purpose of this initiative is to put forward a neutral picture of the role of PLM in the ever-changing digital landscape, and of how the digital world is transforming PLM.

PLM and the digital future

PLM has existed as a strategy and practice for over 20 years and pioneered many aspects that are now seen as part of the digital wave.

There is no most significant view about the relationship between PLM and digital. Almost every option has support, apart from the possibility that PLM and digital will remain completely separate into the future.
We are faced with the certainty that PLM and digital will merge to some degree, but have no consensus about how this should be.
Ideas for accelerating the convergence focus on increasing the digital emphasis and capability within PLM in order to provide a pathway for the two activities to integrate, with several suggestions of how to do this.

The effectiveness of any business improvement initiative is greatly increased if there is a clear Vision of where it will be the future.

The most prominent response (33%) is that there is no clear vision for PLM or for Digital, which is possibly to be expected.
A fifth of respondents (21%) saw PLM and Digital visions existing separately. Those who thought they would merge had no significant preference for how this will be.
In terms of balance, most respondents (65%) felt that the visions would come together (if they are not already) by more digitalisation; by extending PLM capability; or by the vendor drive for software development or to the cloud.
A small percentage thought that the PLM and Digital visions would be driven to merge because of business activity, which is perhaps an encouraging prospect.

The concept of the Digital Twin has appeared as part of the new Digital landscape, but PLM has been working on this for a long time, starting with Model Based Definition and extending across the lifecycle.

Most respondents (84%) viewed Digital Twins as a synonym or overlapping with PLM scope, with focus on the model-based definition of the product across its lifecycle. Several suggested that Digital Twins can help bring clarity and interest into PLM, especially with non-technical experts and executives.
Overlapping with the above, slightly more than one third of the respondents (36%) thought that Digital Twins reached beyond PLM and covered a wider scope, both from data and functional perspectives; clearly Digital Twins are models that can help expand the scope of PLM and improve product data quality and traceability (leveraging new data models and closed-loops).
Most views suggested that the Digital Twins are “applied” in context of PLM, whereas a minority of responses suggested that the reverse might also occur.
A small number of respondents (16%) did not see any value in discussing Digital Twins, either because PLM was already covering these (albeit using different language) or they considered Digital Twins as marketing jargon attempting to “digitalize” everything.

And similarly, the concept of the Digital Thread has appeared as part of the new Digital landscape, but PLM has been working on this for a long time, based on configuration and change management across the lifecycle.

Response trends about the Digital Thread were broadly similar to the ones regarding Digital Twins.
Most responses (87%) suggested that the Digital Thread has something to do with PLM and is contributing to integrate data across the enterprise. Many respondents gave their own definition on what Digital Thread might mean. The ability to link with PLM was obvious, but not exclusive, in how the responses were framed.
Similarly to Digital Twins, the general perception is that Digital Thread can help introduce concepts of data integration to non-technical experts or senior management which might not be familiar with PLM.
Looking at opportunities and threats that Digital Thread might bring, further clarification is needed to explicitly state how they contribute to better business integration and data continuity—especially in the context of PLM, managing data lifecycle, configuration and change.
There was no consensus amongst all respondents about what aspects of the Digital Thread specifically relate to digitalising the product lifecycle vs the rest of the enterprise operations. Overall, the terms was used in a fairly broad and vague sense, pretty much as a synonym of ‘data continuity'.
A small number of respondents (13%) did not see any value in discussing the Digital Thread.

In an industry context, the rise of smart products is often coupled with the emergence of smart factories. Traditional PLM is based on a fixed data structure and may not be adaptable in its current form.

These results, which are the first in the survey to be presented in the respondents' own words, reveal a mix of good ideas and outright disagreement.
On the one hand, PLM should and must evolve from its current limitations in order to support and be part of the new Digital developments: but on the other, a significant number believe that PLM is already there, and covers everything that Digital needs.
The ideas seem to offer a natural path to progression. Removing silos and other barriers from PLM is in line with the Digital 'connect everything' philosophy; and the suggestion of leveraging data, and data management, as a convergence mechanism seems to make use of one of the strong points shared by both disciplines.

The overwhelming picture is that we are starting from a point of confusion. People are keen to explore the subject, but talk about it in different ways. There is no clear or consistent view of what the relationship between PLM and digitalization should be, and no clear vision for either. For some, PLM is about people first, for others it is about Digital Twins connected with Digital Threads, enabling smart factories, etc.
PLM is not well understood, and is difficult to explain. At the moment, the digital wave is still in hype mode and because of its wide scope it makes it very difficult for the enterprises to really understand the whole digital business beyond the marketing jargon. As yet, no-one has devised any agreed definitions or standards in this area.
The gaps that continue to affect digitalisation, such as legacy platforms and ECAD / MCAD / BOM / compliance functionality, are generally the same as those that delay PLM, so there is a business driver for an integrated approach.
These findings from the survey are viewed entirely from the PLM perspective – it is unlikely that many purely 'Digital' practitioners will know what PLM is, let alone how to blend with it or leverage it. It seems, therefore, that any advance in this area has to come from the PLM side. Wider dissemination and discussion may serve to highlight the important role of PLM amongst the digital hype.

This study sets out a practical approach to aligning the role of PLM in the evolving Digital landscape, and for embedding the PLM discipline in any future Digital environment.

Debating the place of PLM in the Digital future

Enterprise digital platforms have perhaps diluted their specific “purpose” by aiming at integrating all operations under a holistic umbrella—this is perhaps the vision for a fully connected digital future; vendors are also keen to continue to grab new digital 'real-estate' and markets.
This should not be an excuse to dilute the meaning of PLM, ERP, MES, etc. but perhaps on the contrary, time has come to clarify (and simplify) these disciplines and their respective roles in the digital future.
Though the 2020 survey is closed, the debate and the quest for clarification / simplification carries on...

Add feedback

Debating the place of #PLM in the wider #digital context to help clarify its identity and scope across the #business #operatingmodel, #digitaltwins and #digitalthread https://t.co/sALwcp1YBL
— Lionel Grealou (@lionelgrealou) May 26, 2020