Innovation in PLM Podcast - Episode 1

Hi! This is Mike Cohen and this is my Innovating PLM podcast. Today we’re going to talk about HD-PLM – that’s High Definition Product Lifecycle Management.

We’re all familiar with HD Television providing us with a higher video resolution and better viewer experience. HD-PLM promises to provide a higher resolution of user experience through personalizing PLM and informing us with timely information so we can make better decisions… not just during manufacturing, but in all stages of a product’s lifecycle.

HD-PLM is the brainchild of Siemens PLM Software. Right now, Siemens is focusing on enhancing the PLM software users experience through smart user interfaces. An engineer can log in and their workspace automatically adapts to whatever task it is they happen to be performing depending on where the product happens to be in the lifecycle. Microsoft Office kind of already does something similar on a smaller scale though its ribbon bars technology.

Well that’s a good start and that’s great for the manufacturer, but I believe there’s so much more potential here that can be realized. Right now, all this manufacturing and even maintenance data is being collected and nobody’s really doing anything interesting with it yet.
Imagine if your car was able to notify your dealership ahead of time when it sensed you needed maintenance… or better yet, your airplane. This could ultimately end up being something that can improve product safety. Do you think safety would improve if the FAA could electronically ping any airplane at random for its real-time maintenance status?

Maybe “HD-PLM” could be the start of something better… “Smart PLM”.

This is Mike Cohen and this was Innovating PLM.

Bill Gates, the Futurist

Does anyone remember the book that Bill Gates wrote, "The Road Ahead"? I'm surprised Gates hasn't been mentioned in the Futuring and Innovation course I'm taking yet, even though he is famous for his vision of a "computer in every home".

Back when the book was published in 1995, Gates wrote about how HDTV was available but was not even popular in Japan yet. Yet he was optimistic at the time that HDTV would catch on.  10 years later, he was right.

In "The Road Ahead", Gates also predicted phones (he calls them "wallet PCs") with flat screens, cameras, GPS capability, Internet access, and even the ability to use it as an airplane ticket. Our smartphones today have all these capabilities plus much more.

Bill Gates himself was probably a force that affected the success of some of his visions. Before smart phones, Pocket PCs were available for a number of years which ran predominately on the Windows CE Operating System. Microsoft was already driving the mobile computing market. They just didn't get a hold of the phone market fast enough before Apple, Blackberry, and of course the major cell phone manufacturers and networks.

Socio-Technical PLM

One cool (at least to me) new Web 2.0 tool that would support Socio-Technical Innovation would be a cloud based Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) application that is integrated with social networking.

PLM software does not immediately come to mind when we think of the cloud, or Software as a Service (SaaS) in general for that matter.  This is mostly because PLM software is a niche and there are only a couple of competitors who drive the market.  These companies include Siemens PLM (German owned), Dassault Systemes (French owned), and Parametric Technology Corporation (U.S. owned).  SAP and Oracle are also (small) competitors, however they lack the focused expertise in PLM of the three companies previously mentioned.  Right now, all the big players in PLM software only support local server-client based products.

Currently, a review process typically works like this:

1. A review board member is notified by an email that a document is awaiting his or her review and sign-off.
2. The user signs into the PLM software, clicks on the document, reviews it, and signs off.

While this does not seem like a lot of work, consider that the user may be in the middle of other work with other software applications open.  Not to mention that PLM software today is not very intuitive (especially for the occasional user).  This creates a negative impact on productivity.

A cloud based PLM application could be interfaced with internal social networking services, such as the open sourced Eureka Streams social networking application which was recently developed and implemented by Lockheed Martin (Eureka Streams is basically Facebook on steroids and specialized for internal corporate social networking).  If PLM were integrated with such a social networking app, users would be able to comment, review, and sign-off on engineering changes from within a familiar micro-blogging environment (today's younger user typically has their favorite social networking app already open and tend to be more responsive in that environment than in responding to email).  This would streamline the time it takes a business item to go through a lifecycle since it would eliminate the need to sign into yet another user interface.  A direct hyperlink to the reviewed document and the ability to sign-off right from the micro-blogging post are just two possible features of such a social networking integration with PLM.  Of course, a separate UI would still be needed for Bill-of-Materials (BOM) management and the creation of business items, but those are usually activities performed by only a few PLM power users.  The majority of users are typically review board members who only need to review and sign-off on technical documents.

One question still remains: Do we build a link to existing social networking apps (such as Eureka Streams) or build social networking functionality into the existing PLM product?

Delphi Method vs. Nominal Group Technique

I recently read two papers, one on the Delphi Method and one that described a single use of the Nominal Group Technique as a curriculum evaluation tool.

At the beginning of this futuring and innovation course, I was interested by the innovative idea of an automobile that automatically detects an unsafe maneuver by a driver and automatically safely corrects itself. Given the choice between the Delphi Method and the Nominal Group Technique for researching such a problem, the best choice is clearly the Delphi method, mostly because it allows participants the freedom of anonymity, but also because the iterative process itself is more rigorous.

Anonymity is important since research participants would include subject matter experts from the major car companies, tire and part manufacturers who may disagree with a competitor’s analysis or suggestions. Keeping the input and feedback of the participants anonymous ensures that all of the information presented is treated fairly.

Skulmoski et. al. (2007) point out that the Delphi Method is well suited when there is incomplete knowledge or the problem is not well understood. Furthermore, their paper indicates that the Delphi method is very adaptable to a variety of problems. They cite no less than sixteen cases of the Delphi method used in published research in both non-IT and IT areas of study.

I will be fair in stating that the paper written by Dobbie et. al. (2004) only presented one application of NGT, a curriculum evaluation tool (which was actually a “modified” version of the NGT that adds three additional discussion stages to the original NGT process), so at this point in the course it is still difficult for me to say one research method is better than the other in all cases. However, from their paper I was able to note another disadvantage to the NGT other than the lack of anonymity. In addition, the NGT seems to require a lot of face time between the contributors. It has been my experience in the manufacturing and aerospace industries that the type of subject matter experts (SMEs) who would be involved in such an automotive study (they are similar industries) would be very busy people. In most cases it would be almost impossible to get them all in the same room together. Even if face-to-face meetings were replaced by virtual meetings, there would still be a lot of overhead in organizing the group working sessions involved. The SMEs I know just don’t have that kind of time or the patience (I disagree with the statement that “anonymity takes more time”). They would favor the questionnaires of the Delphi Method.

References

Dobbie, A., Rhodes, M., Tysinger, J.W., & Freeman, J. (2004). Using a Modified Nominal Group Technique As a Curriculum Evaluation Tool. Family Medicine, 36(6), 402-406. Retrieved from http://www.stfm.org/fmhub/fm2004/June/Alison402.pdf

Skulmoski, G.J., Hartman, F., Krahn, J. (2007). The Delphi Method for Graduate Research. Journal of Information Technology Education., 6. Retrieved from http://jite.org/documents/Vol6/JITEv6p001-021Skulmoski212.pdf

The 3 A's of Awesome

I didn't know this until after I watched this video on TED, but Neil Pasricha won the 2009 Webby award for Best Blog. You can see his blog here: http://1000awesomethings.com/

In the video, he talks about his "3 A's of Awesome" on which his blog are based:

1. Attitude
2. Awareness
3. Authenticity

After my first business trip these past two weeks away from my wife and daughter, the video really hit home as to what is really important in life and how much we take the little things for granted.

I wish I would have watched this video before my trip because instead of concentrating on my perceived fears of flying that I had learned as an adult, I might have paid more attention to the little things that made the experience fun when I was a child.

In his video, Neil describes how kids are more aware of the little things. I remember my very first airplane ride when I was 7 years old. My mom was taking me to Texas to see my Dad who was stationed at Fort Hood. I was fascinated with the flight crew, the informational card in the seat pocket that tells all about the airplane (that as an adult nobody ever reads), the little plastic wings they used to give all the kids, and how the toilet in the airplane lavatory sucked all the blue water down (did it get dropped on the houses below?). Above all, I was flying... I mean, I was really flying!

Then of course, there was the experience of my trip in general... picking up the rental car was painless (they just scanned a bar code on the car and I was on my way), my room was always cleaned with fresh sheets when I returned from work each day, and my cell phone told me when and where I needed to be during the entire trip. That in and of itself is pretty darned cool.

There really isn't a "technical aspect" per se that I can tie into my Futuring and Innovation class. However, looking forward does not always have to be about technology in and of itself. Looking forward is having a different attitude towards life, being aware of the little things around you, and being authentic in how you carry yourself and who (family, company, etc.) you represent.

2010 Horizon Report

The 2010 Horizon Report predicts that within the next year, mobile devices will become more utilized in the classroom. As early last year, I was already observing students downloading their textbooks in electronic format so they could view the course material on their mobile phones.

Open content is also supposed to become "mainstream" within the next 12 months. I've actually used open content such as that found MIT's OpenCourseWare and the Kahn Academy to help me in my classes. I have the benefit of looking at this prediction from two different angles, one as a private university adjunct professor and student, the other as a former student of a state university. At the state university level, yes I do see open content becoming more popular. I've taken several classes within the past two years at the University of Colorado that utilized publically available online material (including material the instructor's have made freely available on their websites) as their main course material. However, at the private university level this has not been my experience. This could be because private universities are more limited by copyright restrictions, and courses are more standardized.

In 2 to 3 years, electronic books are predicted to be used more by university courses.With the number of students who travel for work and students who are in the military, I'm really surprised that electronic textbooks have not yet become a REQUIREMENT for most courses. I hope this becomes "mainstream" much sooner.

The key trend that seems to be pushing both the technologies of open content and electronic books is the growing demand to work and learn remotely.

Gesture-based computing is set for widespread adoption in 4 to 5 years, according the report. I'm blown away and quite impressed with the accomplishments that Microsoft has made with its Kinnect game system. The fact that it's worked so flawlessly is frankly just amazing to me. It should only be a matter of time for their engineers to adapt the technology as a regular computer interface. What's even more encouraging is how cheap the Kinnect system is $150. Within 5 years, I can envision a replacement to the mouse for under $100 and I expect Microsoft to be the market leader for such a device. This could also start a new trend of end users requiring larger monitors (50+") so they have more space in order to efficiently move and manipulate objects on the screen.

Welcome to my Blog!

I'm starting this blog for as a deliverable for the Futuring & Innovation course I'm taking for my doctoral program at CTU. I'm not really sure where to start since I already microblog via Facebook, so in my next few updates I'll be posting my thoughts on our readings from Week 1 of the course.

Our reading material for the course include the following books:

• Futuring: The Exploration of the Future by Edward Cornish
• Technology's Promise by William Halal
• The Fortune Sellers by William Sherden