puthimaas - PLM Blog

Effective Product Returns using PLM

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:31:00 +0000

How can PLM systems effectively aid returns management/reverse logistics?

My views on the topic at MCADCafe Blog: http://www10.mcadcafe.com/blogs/plm/2012/05/13/effective-product-returns-using-plm/

My PLM blog crosses the 10,000 page views mark…

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 04:49:00 +0000

Yeah I know a lot of sites have 10,000 visitors every day (probably before even I begin my day), so my blog crossing the 10,000 Page views mark (in fact its 11000+ views now) over the course of two years might not be a big occasion for some. But anytime the page view stat crosses a certain order of scale you have to celebrate it some way – especially when you are a hobbyist/weekend blogger and write on a very niche topic.

I usually do not check the stats – and when I did today I was delightfully surprised. So – I want to appreciate my readers from around the world for perusing the posts and recommending the articles for others to read. Thank you so much!

As usual please feel free to leave comments if you like. I look forward to hearing from more of you.

Cloud Based PLM and Enterprise Application Integration

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 13:42:00 +0000

Putting PLM in the cloud is not enough – What matters most is enterprise application integration.

Read my thoughts on this topic at MCADCafe: http://www10.mcadcafe.com/blogs/plm/2012/04/03/cloud-based-plm-and-enterprise-application-integration/

Increasing Software in Automobiles – Can ALM-PLM Help?

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:21:00 +0000

My thoughts on increasing amount of software in today's automobiles and how a ALM-PLM solution can help.

Read more at MCADCafe: http://www10.mcadcafe.com/blogs/plm/2012/03/06/increasing-software-in-automobiles-can-alm-plm-help/

Competing on Analytics – Time for PLM based Analytics?

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:36:00 +0000

In my opinion PLM vendors currently provide fragmented analytics tools – Most of them address only a very specific section of the addressable market need. Also the problem seems to be compounded by the fact that not only companies implement a closed-loop PLM system thereby making data collection much tougher. PLM vendors should start taking note of the emerging trends (specially the “big data” problem) and start providing value-added analytics products to customers.

Holiday Spending, Returns and Need for a Closed Loop PLM System

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 23:17:00 +0000

I was reading about the 2011 U.S. Christmas Holiday Retail Data this weekend and noted some interesting points:

According to the National Retail Federation, December retail industry sales (which exclude automobiles, gas stations, and restaurants) increased 4.1 percent to $471.5 billion – slightly surpassing NRF’s holiday sales forecast of 3.8 percent growth. [source]
Gifts are the most common purchase that consumers make during the major holidays (nearly 50%). Top gifts categories were: Clothes, Gift cards, Electronics, Jewelry, Home and garden, Personal care, cosmetics and pampering, Toys, sporting goods and hobbies.
Shoppers are expected to return 9.9% of their Christmas purchases, which would be the highest return rate since the recession. [source]
$46 billion of merchandise is predicted to be returned, which would be a 4% increase when compared to holiday gift returns in 2010. About 33% of shoppers said they return gifts in the NRF 2011 Holiday Returns Survey. [source]
Reasons for returns vary: Buyer’s remorse, better deals elsewhere, unwanted gifts, too many of certain kind, shopping error etc. [various sources]

One of the major reasons for return also is because of manufacturing defects. Usually all merchandise with manufacturing defects that are returned by customers are claimed back to the producer by retail vendors, even if this occurs after the “selling season”. Although I couldn’t get any specific data on the amount of returns due to faulty products but I assume it will be a significant amount in dollar terms.

Managing product returns due to manufacturing defects, obsolete products and shipping errors is difficult to say the least. Manufacturers must manage the reverse flow efficiently to ensure maximum recovery, and reduced wastage. While larger manufactures due to deeper pockets might be able to withstand the financial effects of high returns, smaller manufacturers tend to lose a lot more.

Hence it is imperative that they:

Integrate their Quality Lifecycle Management (QLM) and Reliability Management solutions with their PLM solution. This will not only trim down the cost of poor quality but also will allow them to utilize lessons learned to augment product designs (thereby closing the loop in the product lifecycle).
Integrate Warranty Management into PLM so that manufactures can build an early-warning closed-loop system which will enable continuous product and service improvement.
Develop strategies for End-Of-Life Management so that returned products can be refurbished, repaired or disposed efficiently and in a cost-effective manner. For high-value, high-velocity products it makes sense to integrate the Returns Management platform with PLM for better asset recovery, warranty, returns, repair, and refurbishing, packaging and repackaging services.

My 2 cents – Would like to hear your thoughts on this.

Adobe’s Solutions for Manufacturing

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:27:00 +0000

Adobe Systems has historically focused upon creating multimedia and creativity software products, with a more-recent foray towards rich Internet application software development [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_software]. With ubiquitous products like Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Fireworks, Acrobat, Flash etc I was surprised to see Adobe's offerings for the manufacturing world. (Maybe it’s there for some and maybe I have just noticed while writing my previous blog post “3D PDF Technology – Where it fits in”).

"Adobe and partner software can be used to publish, protect, review, and archive product data as part of these and other product lifecycle management (PLM) workflows: 3D model-based definition (3D MBD), Item master creation, First article inspection (FAI) reports, Engineering change orders (ECOs), RFPs/RFQs etc." [http://www.adobe.com/manufacturing/solutions/product_development/]

This image shows where Adobe is trying to push its product in the PLM world:

I am not sure how successful Adobe has been in its endeavor to optimize product development since they are so much PLM vendor dependent to tie up with actual PLM systems. However I do think Adobe will be successful in helping organizations create and deliver more effective technical communications and enhance customer service because of their history. From their site: "Leverage 2D and 3D engineering data in the creation of technical publications (Work instructions, Field service manuals, Training manuals etc) for manufacturing, assembly, sales, service, and support. Provide technical publication users with a much richer, easier to understand learning experience by sharing 3D data in a more secure, easy-to-use format — 3D PDF. Whether it's a local field service technician repairing a commercial pump or military personnel in a remote desert outpost maintaining an F/A-18, anyone, anywhere can view rich, interactive 3D manuals electronically with free Adobe® Reader® software, which is installed on over 90% of Internet-connected PCs." [http://www.adobe.com/manufacturing/solutions/work_instructions/]

3D PDF Technology – Where it fits in

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:29:00 +0000

I happened to read about PROSTEP PDF Generator 3D in CIMData’s website this weekend which lead me to explore the world of 3D PDF’s. I find interactive 3D PDF files pretty amazing. For those of you who haven’t had a chance to view them please click on this link: http://www.adobe.com/manufacturing/3dpdfsamples/3dsolutions/ to view sample 3D PDF files. There are several examples listed like:

→ Turbine engine (PDF, 4.5M, Original CAD format: SolidWorks)

→ Jet concept design (PDF, 4.7M, Original CAD formats: Siemens NX, CATIA V5, and Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire)

→ Crankshaftassembly (PDF, 3.0M, Original CAD format: Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire)

I observed many tools when I opened these files in Adobe Reader including those to isolate Parts, different Part Rendering Modes including Transparent, Wireframes, Illustrations etc, different Model Rendering Modes, Model Tree highlighting - will highlight different parts in the model, 3D measurement tools, etc. PDF Generator 3D Reader Extensions Module offers the option of activating a large number of additional functions for using the generated 3D PDF documents in Adobe Reader. The recipient can, for example, add comments or fill in certain fields on a form. PDF Generator 3D Rights Management Module allows the information contained in the 3D PDF documents to be protected against access by unauthorized persons. Access rights can be restricted to a specific period of time and if necessary can be revoked when, for example, a document is no longer valid. Overall I feel it’s a good tool for visualization even though rendering and loading takes some time even with a powerful computer. For those interested in the details of the components of PDF Generator 3D have a look here:

I see 3 major advantages of using 3D PDF technology:

→ Standardization: No doubt there are visualization tools from nearly every CAD vendors which will help view a multitude of product data (e.g., MCAD/ECAD files, MS Office documents) without the authoring application. But all such tools need the downstream consumers to have the same tools which might be difficult considering that manufacturing and support services are likely to be outsourced. I think Adobe tries to solve this problem with Interactive 3D PDF. “Interactive 3D PDF files look exactly like the original 3D design, regardless of the application used to create it or the environment in which it's viewed.” [http://www.adobe.com/manufacturing/solutions/3d_solutions/] The currently supported CAD formats are:

→ Reduction in Total Cost of Ownership: If your product data needs to be viewed across the Realise (Manufacturing), Use/Support (Customer service), Retire/Dispose phases (The phases are from John Stark's PLM Grid) then each user associated with the individual phases will need licenses for a visualization tool. With 3D PDF that cost is cut down. Since Adobe Acrobat is installed in the majority of users – this would also mean a reduced load on IT for installing and maintaining the visualization tool. However a details cost benefit analysis should be made comparing the total license costs of the currently used desktop-based visualization tool versus the cost of the 3D PDF Generator tool (a professional server solution that offers full functionality and accommodates up to 50 users for less than € 10,000).

→ Long Term Archival and Retrieval Solution: If the lifecycle of your product extends several decades then a question worth pondering is whether the CAD format would still be supported. While the PDF specification was available for free since at least 2001, PDF was originally a proprietary format controlled by Adobe, and was officially released as an open standard on July 1, 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO 32000-1:2008. In 2008, Adobe published a Public Patent License to ISO 32000-1 granting a royalty-free rights for all patents owned by Adobe that are necessary to make, use, sell and distribute PDF compliant implementations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format].3D PDF is the perfect candidate for a long term archival and retrieval solution. More information at 3D PDF Consortium http://www.3dpdfconsortium.org/pdf-standards-info.html.

Thanks for reading! I would be happy read your comments.

What Google+ failure can teach about PLM implementation and User Adoption?

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 00:28:00 +0000

A few days back, Google engineer Steve Yegge wrote a classic tirade about Google's inept handling of the Google+ platform. (You can read it all here). Google+ was supposed to be a Facebook killer, but slowly it is turning to be another Google Wave/Buzz. One of the most interesting things pointed out in the blogpost was “The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood”. The fact that Google doesn’t even eat its own dog food is very evident in this post from a few days back.

As I read this post, I realized how many times we have implemented PLM at various sites and, what the end result has been - all along we have known for a fact that the one of the key measure of a winning and thriving PLM implementation was effective user adoption. And this not mere consultant conjecture, this has been validated by research too - According to a study done by the Sand Hill Group and Neochange, the most critical factor (70% listed as number 1) for software success and return-on-investment is effective user adoption. Software functionality came in at 1% surprisingly, with organization change at 16% and process alignment at 13%. No wonder Google+ has been a nonstarter (Paul Tassi has even written “A Eulogy for Google Plus”)

So what can we learn about Google+ hopeless case and how it relates to a successful PLM implementation from a user adoption standpoint? Several I would say:

1. Not Enough Power Users (or Management Support or Practice what you preach): Google's Schmidt finally took to Google+ only a couple of days back. Most members of the company's management team aren't still using Google+. Likewise if your PLM implementation has to be successful the concerned top level management has to use it. No point if the VP or Director of Engg/Rnd still uses emails to approve designs or wants printed copies or whatever completely bypassing the system.

2. Have Real Value for the End User: If the current PLM system is just a replacement for the old one with lots of cute UI’s and bells and whistle – quite likely the reaction is going to be the same as was with the old one once the initial hype cycle dies down.

3. Launch when ready: Most people would advocate implementing PLM in phases. Good point. But just because you have to close out one phase to start another doesn’t mean you need to roll out a half baked product/service to the user community.

4. Vendor Size Doesn’t Matter: Even with an 800 pound gorilla’s backing, Buzz, Wave and now + failed. Likewise even if the vendor is large or their PLM system caters to the biggest of the big Fortune 500 companies, it’s not necessary that it will cater to all your user needs. Give your users what they want to be successful in getting their job done. Don’t focus almost exclusively on tiny little features that few people will ever use.

5. Customize if needed: Oh yeah, that’s a bad word – We don’t want to customize and keep on paying for the maintenance! Right – But what is the point in using terminology or vendor mandated business processes which the user community doesn’t understand? I still don’t get circles, stream, hangouts or whatever.

6. Motivate People to Use it: People simply didn’t move in droves from Facebook to Google+ as was expected. There was no motivation to do so. FB was sufficient to satisfy the needs of most of the users. Just because something is mandated by the organization doesn’t mean that the users will use it or be happy to use it (sometimes you don’t have a choice – like using LotusNotes or HP’s Quality Center for example!). Motivate the end users to use the new PLM system – Have a plan much before go-live!

7. Integration: Well Google+ has probably integration with lots of websites and stuff, but Facebook is better! Host of games and apps and I can even sign into/comment on a bunch of websites using my Facebook id. Similarly if the PLM system doesn’t have integration to systems like corporate LDAP, or the SMTP server or inaccessible externally users would have tough time getting on-boarded.

Probably I can go on and on but I hope readers get the point! Don’t take user adoption unconscientiously – it’s the key to a triumphant implementation. (I wouldn’t underestimate Google though – Maybe this time they will get it right – eventually)

The under-appreciated role of PLM in implementing Document Creation Retention and Destruction (DCRD) policies

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 19:23:00 +0000

Have you heard about the famous (or infamous?) “Pitt’s Postulate”: “Whenever you think you’ve destroyed the last copy of any document, there’s always one more that exists, and it will surface at exactly the most inopportune time. The only exception, of course, is if you really need the document, at which point you’ll discover that you actually did destroy the very last copy.” – Quite true, isn’t it? Over the last few years businesses have come to appreciate that they need to better manage their documents and records to tackle a number of key issues including legislation's like SOX, risk of lawsuits, protection of intellectual property and identity theft. Most corporations have formalized Document Creation, Retention and Disposal (DCRD) policies, primarily outlining the length of time for which the organization will keep certain documents and records, either in hard copy or electronic form. These policies serve as guiding principles for employees, indicating which documents to discard and which to save while ensuring compliance with laws and hindering inadvertent or ingenuous destruction of records.

Numerous off-the-shelf solutions are available for such purposes (including SharePoint which impelled me to write this article) but if a company has already implemented a commercial PLM system then they in all probability do not need to go for another system to take care of DCRD policies. Record/Document classification, integrity, storage, access control, data retention, backup, data purging, comprehensive version and revision control, viewable file generation, auditing, search etc. are all effectively present in a enterprise PLM system.

What are the challenges before trying to get PLM in managing corporate records?

→ Assessment of different document type and their value needs to be determined first – Certain type of documents might not be suitable for storage in PLM like employee evaluations or expense reports etc when other systems are present to manage them.
→ Emails in particular – Time and again emails have been the center of attention in much litigation and unfortunately the retention/control/purge of emails is out of PLM’s scope.
→ Backups – Electronic data backup produce historical copies of documents/records which even though purged from the current system will be preserved in archives and are discoverable.

My conclusion: PLM is a viable solution in conjunction with other systems to aid implementation of DCRD policies. If a PLM solution is present then a new Records Management solution doesn’t need to be implemented.

Securing your PLM Infrastructure (before it’s too late!)

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 21:40:00 +0000

I read an interesting report at Symantec’s website - The average organizational cost of a data breach [in 2010] increased to $7.2 million and cost companies an average of $214 per compromised record, markedly higher when compared to $204 in 2009. The full report is here. Also per the Second Annual Cost of Cyber Crime Study

Cyber attacks have become common occurrences. The companies in our study experienced 72 successful attacks per week and more than one successful attack per company per week. This represents an increase of 44 percent from last year’s successful attack experience.

Pretty frightening huh! I am not sure it would be possible to break up such estimates into a granular level, but data loss from a PLM system would be also very expensive. And that needs to be seriously looked into. With this mission I looked at various PLM vendors websites – all they claimed was that their system was “highly secure” – But how secure is the question? Is there an established criterion or matrices or has it been quantitatively corroborated? CIMData deals with this topic in their white paper “TenQuestions to Ask PLM Solution Suppliers - What You Need to Know to Make anInformed Decision” though very briefly.

The risks are not only external but also present due to the fact that today users work from everywhere and not only from their office and even iPad apps are being released by several vendors. Other requirements like ITAR, export control, and other security protocols make it more imminent to secure your PLM environment. I believe during the PLM evaluation phase itself security mechanisms need to be evaluated and security should not be added as an afterthought.

Some of the security measures that come to mind (and nowhere are these comprehensive):

→ Application Layer Security

o Application Security – Including On-site and off-site tape storage, OS hardening, Virus protection on all servers, etc.

o User Authentication - Access Control and Data classification model. Strike the right balance between sharing information and securing it. See Ford’s slides on Product Data Security and Access Management.

o IP Based Access Control.

→ Data Management Security

o Data Encryption – 128-bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) data encryption, etc.

o Database Security – minimal open ports, no scott/tiger or Default Password’s (I have seen this a lot!), no master passwords to control access to all systems, No text (property) file passwords!

o Lock down on file vaulting servers(s)

→ Systems Security

o Internal and Operating Systems Security – Firewalls, network address translation, port redirection, IP masquerading, non-routable IP addressing schemes, DMZ, Intrusion detection systems, etc.

o PerimeterDefense including video surveillance

→ Data Center Security

o Physical Security of server farms including biometric authentication for access. (Though one of my customers had an enterprise down scenario when rats gnawed down some of their fiber optic cables)

o Reliability and Backup –Hardware: UPS battery systems, diesel generators, and HVAC systems – (I saw this first hand when a few years back a snow storm hit a customer site in New England area and power lines were down, they didn’t have diesel generators and UPS battery lasted only for an hour or so causing servers to crash). Disaster recovery sites, Backup tapes also are important.

o Water Suppression, Fire protection facility in server room.

o Social Engineering – Do not underestimate the human aspect of security. Ignorant or discontented employees can cause more harm than you can imagine. Former computer hacker Kevin D. Mitnick has a good book on this topic: “The Human Element of Security”

Audits and Standards

Facilities can be designed to withstand extreme elements that comply with ISO/IEC 27001 standards. A SAS 70 Type II or SSAE 16 or ISAE 3402 audits can also be done. A comprehensive security assessment and mitigation of risks related to system would bring in peace of mind.

Conclusion

There is a Data Breach Risk Calculator available which will estimate your risk exposure and can calculate amongst others the cost of a data breach at your company.

Organizations should remember the costs involved – What a mid tier firm might have the funds for will be appreciably different from what a Fortune 100 firm would. They should pigeonhole the sets of security features needed based on priority and significance and make practical decisions based on their budget.

Using Rule-Based or Supervised Document Classification for Legacy Data Migration in a PLM Implementation

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 04:02:00 +0000

I was reading about Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA, also Latent semantic indexing ) recently and the controversies over whether Google used this technique to rank their search results, though the jury seems to be that they use something much more sophisticated statistical methods of text analysis. Latent semantic analysis (LSA) is a technique in natural language processing, of analyzing relationships between a set of documents and the terms they contain by producing a set of concepts related to the documents and terms. LSA assumes that words that are close in meaning will occur close together in text.

Latent semantic indexing is closely related to LSA and is used in a assortment of information retrieval and text processing applications, although its primary use is for automated document categorization. Document classification/categorization are used to assign an electronic document to one or more categories, based on its contents. Document classification tasks can be divided into two sorts: supervised document classification where some external mechanism (such as human feedback) provides information on the correct classification for documents, and unsupervised document classification (also known as document clustering), where the classification must be done entirely without reference to external information. There is also a semi-supervised document classification, where parts of the documents are labeled by the external mechanism (Rule Based). There are Open Source tools [like Mallet] for statistical natural language processing, document classification, clustering, topic modeling, information extraction, etc.

The reason I bring up this topic in my experience in legacy data import during PLM implementations. Legacy data migration is tough to say the least. Stephen Porter gives a good overview here: The PLM State: What’s thebig deal about data migration?. Some of my real life experiences include:

1. Manual scanning of historical documents, manual classification of those documents into folders and uploading it to the PLM environment using vendor tools in a FDA regulated organization’s implementation.

2. Legacy data extraction from a commercial document management system, mapping data with vendor PLM system, cleaning the legacy data, and finally data import.

3. Legacy system consolidation - Merging numerous home grown legacy systems into one commercial PLM system.

None of the processes used were scalable or easy to start with. Also the amount of time taken cannot be guaranteed. In such scenarios wouldn’t using Rule-Based or Supervised Document Classification make sense? Arguably CAD data would be difficult to handle and historical revisions or intermediate iterations of files between releases might be lost but probably for non-CAD data using such techniques would make up for huge investments in time and labor for legacy data migrations.

Creative problem solving using Visual Analytics in Product Development

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 13:06:00 +0000

Visual analytics is a new interdisciplinary science aimed at drawing inference and conclusions from data. In contrast to standard machine learning or statistics, visual analytics emphasizes information visualization, interactivity, and analytic reasoning. [http://smlv.cc.gatech.edu/2010/03/17/what-is-visual-analytics/]. It is an outgrowth of the field’s information visualization and scientific visualization, which focuses on analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_analytics]

If you really want to go into the depths of VA then you can attend a few web lectures from Georgia Tech here

A few years back digg.com had these great visualizations – stack, swarm and big spy; though they seem to be out of service now. (see Where Have Digg Labs Gone?)

A related disciple is text analytics. The term text analytics describes a set of linguistic, statistical, and machine learning techniques that model and structure the information content of textual sources for business intelligence, exploratory data analysis, research, or investigation. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_analytics]

A tag or word cloud is related to text analytics. We all have seen these tag clouds over the past couple of years. Tag clouds are an informative image that communicates much in a single glance. Word clouds are easy to read, analyze and compare, serve a variety of useful purposes including visual analysis of qualitative data. For example using FDA Medical Devices CFR - Code of Federal Regulations Title 21 and TagCrowd I created this visualization (clearly showing that the major emphasis of this regulation is on manufacturers.)

Coming to the PLM domain, if we can process product data in such a method then we can arrive at a number of interesting observation very easily. For example to show which product has how many change requests? Or which product uses the least parts from a standard library. It can be easily done and if there is an enormous amount of data in an organization such visualizations can offer great information to executives very intuitively.

Another great tool I recently saw was from TouchGraph. See this image which displays a person’s network connections from Facebook.

This sort of visualization when brought into an enterprise can easily put in the picture about a multitude of different things, like for example; a change in a standard part is going to affect how many products down the line, etc. I believe Visual analytics will lead to creative problem solving and faster solutions to problems will drive higher product profitability.

Data Visualization/Infographics in PLM – Will it help make better decisions?

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 17:36:00 +0000

As PLM implementations and usage have matured over time, from being a simple repository of CAD data to a single source of truth, the data locked in these systems have also increased exponentially. This data usually exhibits the key characteristics of good data – being well controlled, accurate, organized, relevant, reliable, and valid. This treasure trove can be harnessed to yield knowledge (which is a series of facts) and intelligence (the ability to think and reason and using and processing the knowledge) and to do that it needs to be properly understood. However till now in most cases such data have been presented only in the form of tabular search results with very little emphasis on mechanisms of illustrating the data in a form which enables a mental picture of what is being revealed.

“The point is that the data [is] good but looking at it and trying to analyze it without an appropriate visual representation will not be helpful in drawing [any types of] conclusions or noticing any patterns. “ [http://veronicatsvetkov.com/2011/04/12/ted-talk-eric-brlow-data-visualization-tableau-public-software/]

Infographics Example 1

I believe Infographics can help here. “Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge. These graphics present complex information quickly and clearly, such as in signs, maps, journalism, technical writing, and education. With an information graphic, computer scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians develop and communicate concepts using a single symbol to process information”. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_graphics]

Infographics Example 2

“The adage "A picture is worth a thousand words" refers to the idea that a complex idea can be conveyed with just a single still image. It also aptly characterizes one of the main goals of visualization, namely making it possible to absorb large amounts of data quickly.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_picture_is_worth_a_thousand_words]

Infographics Example 3

Identifying solutions to problems becomes easier if complex data can be easily refined. See ecologist Eric Berlow illustrating the tips and tricks for breaking down big issues, he distills an overwhelming infographic on U.S. strategy in Afghanistan to a few elementary points.

Most of the Inforgraphics I have seen till date seems to be one off creations of artists – Can an automated, scalable, efficient technology deliver infographics that is quickly refreshed with current data? As a matter of fact can we do multidimensional analysis of volumes of product data to get information about the business in a more intuitive way?

The World’s Largest Machine and PLM!

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:24:00 +0000

When you think about large machines what does come into your mind?

The Caterpillar 797?

Or the Liebherr T 282B?

Or the Krupp's Bagger 288?

Or the NASA's Mobile Launcher Platform?

Well as per the Guinness Book of World Records, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is the largest and most complex machine ever built.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) lies in a tunnel 27 kilometers (17 mi) in circumference, as deep as 175 meters (574 ft) beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. This synchrotron is designed to collide opposing particle beams of either protons at an energy of 7 teraelectronvolts (7 TeV or 1.12 microjoules) per particle, or lead nuclei at an energy of 574 TeV (92.0 µJ) per nucleus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider

More information, facts and figures on the LHC can be found in CERN FAQ – LHC the guide http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1165534/files/CERN-Brochure-2009-003-Eng.pdf

PLM Challenges: The primary challenge is the complexity of the whole operation – The accelerator complex consisting of close to 100 million assets. The other challenge is quality as tolerances are measured in µm in an installation of several kilometers. Maintenance and operations are other significant challenges.

The PLM puzzle in CERN is solved by a mix and match of several commercial PLM systems. The Equipment Data Management Service (EDMS) provide the organization with the engineering and equipment data management capabilities.

While probably it has not been easy, but this proves that (commercial) PLM systems can be used in a scientific environment too.

QR Code and PLM

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 01:58:00 +0000

Yoann some time back wrote an exciting article on Integrating QR-code tag in User form in Aras Innovator (http://bit.ly/dGW2gx). This is a very interesting union! I am surprised to see that not many PLM vendors have QR code generation facilities. For starters QR Code has the capacity to encode 7,089 numeric characters, 4,296 Alphanumeric characters or 2,953 bytes of binary data (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code).

QR Code was created by Toyota subsidiary Denso-Wave in 1994. As noted in the Denso-Wave’s case studies, QR code is being used in a variety of industries including Order/Product Scanning System for Automotive Parts, Process Control System for Electronic Circuit Boards, Logistics Control System for Food Products, Shipping Control System for Garment Products, etc. These codes contain varied data including product code, expiration date, manufacturing history, shipping destination, color, size, customer data, shipper data, production line, serial number etc.

The potential for QR Codes is limitless. What’s most exciting is how they take what social media is doing well now, bringing people together with technology, and extending it to enhance the experience (http://bit.ly/i3hs2S). Some suggested uses for QR codes in the AEC (Architectural, Engineering and Construction) industry include using these codes to Link to Technical Information, Testimonials or case Studies and Customer Service (http://bit.ly/eKWU5e) Howcast in a recent blind pitch to Ikea, the company illustrated how video and QR codes could be used to create clear, overlaying instructions to guide consumers through the furniture assembly process. Such technology could be leveraged not only to improve consumer satisfaction, but could very well cut down on customer support costs for the company as well (http://on.mash.to/9FUyO5).

Howcast - IKEA pitch deck

View more presentations from Howcast Media

Another interesting article here http://bit.ly/hurw73 shows how QR Codes has been used to foil counterfeiting, for example the counterfeiting of postage stamps. Many countries of Europe as well as Canada and the United States have implemented this scheme, although details vary from one country to the next.

There has been some discussion on identification of drawing using embedded QR codes (http://bit.ly/cyGup4 and http://bit.ly/cyNVe4) but there hasn’t been anything spectacular. QR Code generation is easy with number of sites allowing you to generate simple QR code for free including Google. (Go to http://goo.gl/ and enter the URL of the site which you want your QR code to be generated. Once you have shortened URL, put it in the URL bar and add .qr to it. Click enter and the QR would automatically created). Hopefully PLM vendors will wake up to this reality and provide options for generating such code in their solutions.

Examples of Frugal Engineering

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 09:04:00 +0000

This blog post is in continuation to my earlier post on "Frugal Engineering and PLM". In that post I had tried to but a brief idea on what Frugal Engineering was (which is also being now termed as "Gandhian Engineering". In this post I posting a few examples of this brave new field of work.

Tata Nano: Obviously Tata Nano comes in at a first when we talk to Frugal Engineering. For a video on the car please see my earlier blog post "Frugal Engineering and PLM"
Nokia 1100: A very basic model
Godrej ChotuKool: See above pictures
Tata Swach: Water filter at Rs. 999. Approx $20. Swach does not require running water, power, or boiling once installed. Each of its filters can produce 3,000 liters of purified water, enough to provide a family of five drinking water for a year.
Samsung's washing machine with sari cycle
Mini Truck Ace
Aravind Eye Care System (AECS): AECS now treats around 300,000 cataract patients in a year.The cost of a typical cataract surgery in the U.S. is around $3,000. AECS has managed to bring down the cost between $30 and $300. Detailed comparison here.
Jaipur Foot: " The Jaipur Limb is so efficient that after this limb is fitted, a person can walk like a normal person without a stick or support, and even run, ride a bicycle and climb a tree, Many of the patients can, after the fitment, go back to work in the field, factories, shops and offices."
GE Vscan Portable Ultrasound Clam Shell Scanner
Narayana Hrudayalaya Cardiac surgeries in the United States can cost up to US$50,000. In India, they typically cost around US$5,000-US$7,000. Depending on the complexities of the procedure and the length of the patient's stay at the hospital, the price tag increases. At Narayana Hrudayalaya, however, surgeries cost less than US$3,000, irrespective of the complexity of the procedure or the length of hospitalization.From India Knowledge@Wharton.

Godrej ChotuKool

Tata Swach

Tata Ace

While this list of examples is by no means comprehensive, I intended to show that there are lots of activities happening in India to give extreme affordability with disruptive innovation. I would encourage readers to have a look at this article published in HBR by Jeffrey R. Immelt, Vijay Govindarajan, and Chris Trimble: How GE Is Disrupting Itself

Frugal Engineering and PLM

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:45:00 +0000

The term frugal engineering was coined in 2006 by Renault Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn to describe the competency of Indian engineers in developing products. He says in an interview "...We are here to learn about frugal engineering".

So what is Frugal Engineering?

From Wiki Answers "Frugal Engineering is the science of breaking up complex engineering processes into its basic components and then re-building each component in the most economical manner. The end result is a simpler, more robust and easier to handle final process. It also results in a much cheaper final product which does the same job qualitatively and quantitatively as a more expensive complexly engineered product.

It is generally believed that Indians and other South Asians are the most adept in frugal engineering, because resources and capital are scarce in this region."

The Economic Times says:

"Frugal engineering is not simply low-cost engineering.

It is not a scheme to boost profit margins by squeezing the marrow out of suppliers' bones. It is not simply the latest take on the decades-long focus on cost cutting. Instead, frugal engineering is an overarching philosophy that enables a true "clean sheet" approach to product development. Cost discipline is an intrinsic part of the process, but rather than simply cutting existing costs, frugal engineering seeks to avoid needless costs in the first place."

Further on

"...It recognises that merely removing features from existing products to sell them cheaper in emerging markets is a losing game. To achieve the drastically lower prices that emerging markets require companies must be open to rethinking all aspects of the product."

Frugal engineering is catching on as per this report in Business Standard.

Some examples of such products in this strategy paper:

The trend that surfaced when Tata Motors' tiny $2,200 car, the Nano, hit Indian roads in July, has resulted in a slew of new products for people with little money who aspire to a taste of a better life. Many products aren't just cheaper versions of well-established models available in the West but have taken design and manufacturing assumptions honed in the developed world and turned them on their heads. For the farmer who wants to save for the future, one Indian entrepreneur has developed what is, in effect, a $200 portable bank branch. For the village housewife, a wood-burning stove has been reinvented to make more heat and less smoke for $23. For the slum family struggling to get clean water, there is a $43 water-purification system. For the villager who wants to give his child a cold glass of milk, there is a ChotuKool - the $69 fridge for rural India that can run on batteries. And for rural health clinics, whose patients can't spend more than $5 on a visit, there are heart monitors and baby warmers redesigned to cost 10% of what they do elsewhere.

automotiveproductsfinder says: "The real thrust for frugal engineering and innovation seems to emerge at the supplier level. And helping put up a smooth communication link between suppliers and automakers to seek a closer and more fruitful collaboration are IT companies that are introducing better and more open PLM, engineering and link platforms in India at the same time they are introducing them to automakers in other parts of the world."

My question is: In what ways can an existing (or even new) PLM system aid the frugal engineering process? Btw some thinking on a slightly different line here: “Is Frugality Fashionable?”

Can PLM encompass ALM (Application Lifecycle management)?

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 09:17:00 +0000

Some time back I had raised this question in the "PLM Group" in LinkedIn - Can PLM encompass ALM (Application Lifecycle management)?

A large number of products today contain software in them. Should a company which uses a PLM system to manage their engineering data invest in an additional ALM system to manage the software development part of such products? Or as the categories of ALM tools as defined in Wikipedia should there be a convergence of PLM and ALM and PLM vendors start offering support for such embedded software development as well? Are their any PLM vendors already doing this?

To which David Fulton replied:
"If you are building a product which has a significant software portion -- you need both an ALM and a PLM system. At least today...

PLM systems are typically centered around a "part" -- meaning something that is manufactured. ALM systems are typically centered around software code files. ALM systems have to manage all of the complexities inherent in software development -- which are at a much more detailed level than the PLM system, because numerous changes to the software files usually result in a single compiled software module which the PLM system treats as a single part.
Thus, if you were (for example) a large automobile company and you were having trouble with your electronic speed control in several vehicles, the PLM system would manage the BOM for each vehicle, but the ALM system would need to manage the changes and revisions of the software used in each version of the speed control software. So, if the problem was introduced in rev 3 of a particular software file, you would use the ALM system to determine which version(s) of the speed control software module included that file -- for example, Rev 2.1
Then you would use the PLM system to determine which automobiles (ie - model and serial number) included the electronic speed control assembly that Rev 2.1 of the "speed control software" belonged to.
Yes, this is complicated -- but until PLM systems REALLY understand the idea of a "sub-part" and allow it to be associated to individual software files -- you must have both systems -- one to manage the "part relationships" and another one to manage the "software file relationships".
Otherwise, you don't have enough capability in the ALM system to effectively track the BOM for a collection of physical parts and you don't have enough visibility within the PLM system to be able to drill down and track each software file. (BTW -- this argument goes away if your device has only a few parts, like a cellular phone, or if the software component is minimal, like in an appliance.)"

And David Sherburne "I agree with David, we are working on what the integration between the ALM and the PLM platform needs to look like. In the end the PLM platform has to house the complete BOM and we want to have good relationships between the change control process and SW and HW team at the products level. PLM has to be optimized for broad access to data and ALM has to be optimized for agile and frequent change control."

PLM and ALM integration is becoming a real need specially if you are developing electromechanical devices. Last heard, PTC has proposed ALM be included in the PLM solution. The benefit, is “customers will be able to have a single solution that manages mechanical, electrical and software development.”

Most of the features like Project Management, Change management, Issue management, Monitoring and reporting, Workflow, and Versioning will be the same for PLM as well as ALM systems. However note that a PLM system is more of a “part-based” system whereas an ALM system needs much more levels of granularity. For a mature PLM system to add some kind of logical layer over their original core to attain such levels of granularity will need a major investment – which is only possible if there is an adequate amount of requirement. Looks like there might be “PTC has seen limited adoption of ALM, but said their customers are starting to ask for a software product to help manage the embedded the software.”

For more discussions one can see Oleg's blog entry: "PLM and ALM: How To Blend Disparate Systems?"

One More TLA - PxM Anyone?

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 06:49:00 +0000

Edsger W Dijkstra (May 11, 1930 – August 6, 2002) said in his paper “On the cruelty of really teaching computing science” in 1988 “…no endeavour is respectable these days without a TLA (= Three-Letter Acronym)”.

Use of TLA's is in both industry and academia is now viral. I was surprised to see that the "Lists of TLAs" in Wikipedia spanned 17 pages. Well then, I thought, what TLA’s do I see in my field of work?

CAx for Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Computer-aided engineering (CAE), Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM),

CxO for Chief Information Officer (CEO), Chief Operating Officer (COO), Chief Information Officer (CIO) amongst others.

GxP for Good Manufacturing Practice(GMP), Good Laboratory Practice (GLP), Good Clinical Practice(GCP) etc.

So why not add to this acronym list?

PXM Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico (Airport Code)

PXM Processor Switch Module (Cisco)

PXM Processor X Module

PXM Point Expansion Module

PxM for Product lifecycle management (PLM), Product data management (PDM), Product Resource Management (PRM), Product Information Management (PIM), and Product Content Management (PCM).

Well yes, fundamentally nothing changes and this just adds one more TLA to the list :) Long live free speech!

Responses to “Top Five Concerns About PLM Systems”

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 10:57:00 +0000

Oleg Shilovitsky published an article in his blog titled "Top Five Concerns About PLM Systems". My response to the article.

While TCO and customized change management can be dealt with, I believe huge overselling of PLM as a panacea for all ills as the major concern. This overselling ups the expectations of all parties signing the bill for the solution but when they see the implementation they find the ground realities to be different. Also vendor lock in and upgrade's to newer version's forcibly by the vendors are major issue's – Usually vendors approach customers saying that the particular product version has reached its end of life stage and will not be supported anymore and whether the customer likes it or needs it or not, they are forced to fork out truck loads of money to upgrade.

Customers on the other hand should also realize that PLM is not a quick fix solution to enable business improvements while driving out costs – a long term strategy, clear cut requirements and assumptions must be in place before approaching the vendors. Also customers must clearly define their ROI metrics before making PLM investments. More on "Profiting from PLM: Strategy and Delivery of the PLM Program" here. This report states: "Best-in-Class companies achieve twice the ROI on their initial PLM projects, and 2.5 times greater ROI for subsequent PLM extensions" and "Nonetheless, many companies still lack a strategy for recognizing the value that PLM can offer. They know they want to improve their product innovation, product development, and engineering performance but struggle with the best way to transform their business. The benefits are available and compelling. The difference in achieving this value is how companies went about implementing their PLM solutions."

Resolving compatibility problems between different CAD packages, ensuring that multiple manufacturing partners have the most recent software updates, conversion of existing design data, end-user training and gaining management support so that standard practices and procedures can be put into effect across department and inter-company boundaries are vital. For deep integration with CAD data it's best to go with a PDM system from the CAD vendor.

Airbus' multibillion dollar problem connected with the postponement of A380 super-jumbo shows what can go wrong in implementing PLM systems. "An unthinkable blunder had happened—as the computer aided design files were passed between the different versions of the Catia software, the company said errors occurred. And software experts familiar with the incident say the errors included changes in measurements. Those errors are going to cost Airbus billions." More on this at: http://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/PLM/SME/plmboeing.pdf

Aardvark for PLM?

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:34:00 +0000

This blog is based on a posting I published in the "PLM PDM Professionals Group" in LinkedIn.

Aardvark for PLM?

Lately an enormous amount has been written about “Social PLM” and how it has the potential to be a game changer.

In February 2010 Google acquired Aardvark (available at http://www.googlelabs.com as well as http://vark.com ). As the site says: “Ask any question and Aardvark will discover the perfect person to answer in minutes!” Now this is something amazing!

In the research paper “The Anatomy of a LargeScale Social Search Engine” by Damon Horowitz from Aardvark and Sepandar D. Kamvar from the Stanford University says “We present Aardvark, a social search engine. With Aardvark, users ask a question, either by instant message, email, web input, text message, or voice. Aardvark then routes the question to the person in the user’s extended social network most likely to be able to answer that question. As compared to a traditional web search engine, where the challenge lies in finding the right document to satisfy a user’s information need, the challenge in a social search engine like Aardvark lies in finding the right person to satisfy a user’s information need. Further, while trust in a traditional search engine is based on authority, in a social search engine like Aardvark, trust is based on intimacy. We describe how these considerations inform the architecture, algorithms, and user interface of Aardvark, and how they are reflected in the behavior of Aardvark users.”

Aardvark …is a new kind of tool that lets you tap into the knowledge and experience of friends and friends-of-friends. Send Aardvark a question and you’ll get a quick, helpful response from someone with…The right knowledge and experience to help, similar tastes, Friends in common” More coverage in the New York Times and Wired.

Will such crowd-sourcing tools like aardvark foster rapid innovation and product development cycles with social search (if they are integrated with enterprise CAD/PLM tools)? Will it drastically change the way people communicate and collaborate? What do you think?

Quality Risk Management: Missing Link in the Product Lifecycle?

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:38:00 +0000

Tech-Clarity published a new report titled "Quality Risk Management in Life Sciences: Preventing Failures, Protecting Patient Health". The study reviews two manufacturers’ experiences using Quality Risk Management (QRM) to proactively reduce risk. My response to the article.
Jim – Thank you for the timely article, especially when we are seeing a number of Recalls, Market Withdrawals & Safety Alerts by the FDA (http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ArchiveRecalls/2010/default.htm)

Medical products are developed and used within an intricate system involving a number of crucial contributors: manufacturers who develop and test products; the FDA, which does pre-marketing review, authorization and post marketing surveillance; the organizations providing health care, governments, health care practitioners and patients. Such products are required to be fail-safe, but safety does not denote zero risk – rather is one that has reasonable risks, as judged against the amount of benefit/gain expected and alternatives accessible. All participants in the medical product development and delivery scheme have a role to play in maintaining this benefit-risk balance. As per FDA, most injuries and deaths associated with the utilization of medical products result from their known side effects – some are unavoidable, but others can be prevented or diminished by vigilant product selection and usage. Other sources of preventable adverse events are medication or device errors, and product defects. Another category of potential risk involves the remaining uncertainties about a product like unexpected side effects, unstudied uses and unstudied populations.

The FDA recognizes ISO 14971 as an acceptable risk management model. Even if the makers choose not to implement ISO 14971, they are still expected to conduct and document a risk management process. ISO 14971 specifies procedures for a manufacturer to use in order to be familiar with the hazards involved with medical devices. The process is used to estimate and appraise associated risks, manage these risks, and keep an eye on the effectiveness of the controls. The requirements of ISO 14971 are applicable to all stages of the lifecycle of a medical device. Implementation of ISO 14971, proactive quality risk management, making information retrieval and reuse easier, post marketing vigilance and reporting, and the implementation of Good manufacturing practice, Good Laboratory Practice, Good Clinical Practice etc results in better prevention of defects, higher quality, and reduces cost of poor quality including claims, complaints, and rework.

Superior risk management is an imperative part of the industry. The extent of business damage due to recalls, warning letters, seizures, criminal prosecution by FDA are exponentially higher than the quantum of investment needed for a first-rate knowledge capture/management solution.

More Details:

Augmenting PLM system as a LMS in FDA regulated companies

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 07:39:00 +0000

Learning Management Systems

Most of us have used a LMS system sometime or the other. Broadly “A learning management system (commonly abbreviated as LMS) is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, and reporting of training programs, classroom and online events, e-learning programs, and training content.”
Modern web based LMS’s usually have certain key characteristics like: Computer-Based training, Training workflow (e.g., user notification, manager approval, etc), On-line assessment, Collaborative learning (e.g., application sharing, discussion threads), and Training Resource Management (e.g., manage users, roles, courses, instructors, facilities, and generate reports, high-level executive dashboards). Some LMS companies are also venturing out into the SaaS and M-Learning (PDA’s etc) space.

In an enterprise, an LMS can expand its clout when it's coupled with existing Document Management System, Human Resource Information System (HRIS), Talent management systems and possibly Access Control Systems in a regulated manufacturing facility.

Compliance Management for the FDA-Regulated Organization

In FDA-Regulated organizations, LMS system’s supports the quality and validation constructs determined by Good Automated Manufacturing Practices (GAMPs) and GxPs. Such systems usually enables companies to manage the distribution of SOP’s - Standard operating procedures, corporate policies, forms, surveys and regular communications with acknowledged electronic receipt and tracking to employees, suppliers and contractors. Quizzes can be produced and associated to SOPs and vital documents, which can then test understanding of the material. Such systems also place a great deal of focus on Electronic signatures and records, Audit logs etc. to comply with 21 CFR part 11 requirements.

Can a PLM system be enhanced to work as a LMS?

“A learning content management system (LCMS) is a related technology to the learning management system, in that it is focused on the development, management and publishing of the content that will typically be delivered via an LMS. An LCMS is a multi-user environment where developers may create, store, reuse, manage, and deliver digital learning content from a central object repository.”
Many life sciences organizations already use their existing PLM system as a LCMS (for SOP’s policies etc.). Also a PLM system already takes care of features which a LMS system provides such as versioning, data security, storage and distribution of documents and auditable record of all activity associated with them, history of end user activity, change control, manage users, roles, and 21 CFR part 11 requirements.

As noted in the paper “Trends in LMS” by Don McIntosh, Ph.D. prices of LMSs vary widely from as low as USD 5,000 to several hundred thousand dollars depending on the features they offer and the number of people using them. Some of the simplest LMSs just provide a platform for launching and tracking e-learning. While there are a bunch of open source LMS systems out there (for more reading see “Open Source LMS – 10 Alternatives to Moodle by Barry Sampson”) if you want your PLM system to take care of your training needs as well then with a bit of customization (example: to build your own electronic quizzes and exams), it can surely be extended to take care of such needs. Leveraging a single platform to take care of multiple needs increases your ROI.

PLM and Innovation

noreply@blogger.com (Jyotirmoy Dutta) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 09:53:00 +0000

Does the word “innovation” seem like a clichéd utterance to you? Google it and you get a mind-boggling 142,000,000+ hits. Every company or organization today seems to be willing to attach the word to it. I have been following the PLM industry for some time and roughly all companies (regardless of being a product, services or a pure play consulting firm) seems to promoting that either its products or services can help customers in innovating. So then what is innovation?

Wikipedia delineates it as: “Innovation is a change in the thought process for doing something, or the useful application of new inventions or discoveries. It may refer to an incremental emergent or radical and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations.”

Further, “Invention is the embodiment of something new. While both invention and innovation have "uniqueness" implications, innovation also carries an undertone of profitability and market performance expectation.”

So then “Innovation . . . is generally understood as the successful introduction of a new thing or method . . . Innovation is the embodiment, combination, or synthesis of knowledge in original, relevant, valued new products, processes, or services.”. There are a number of variations to the central theme - Doblin Ten Types Of Innovation™ seems to capture them all.

Here is what some of the key players say.

Leading PLM Software for New Product Development en Yahoo! Video

I identify more closely with what Prof VG says about innovation: “Innovation is Not Creativity” and "The guiding managerial model for innovation is just too simple. It reduces to: innovation = ideas. As a result, most corporations have more ideas than they can possibly move forward. Far too many promising ideas on paper never become anything more than . . . promising ideas on paper. Here is an improved equation for innovation: innovation = ideas + execution"

So then if your company can generate “sell-able” ideas consistently you just need a tool to help you in their execution? Love to hear your thoughts on this.