Welcome Sanjeev Pal with this guest post. Sanjeev is a Sr Analyst at IDC covering PLM, engineering software, EAM and project & portfolio management in my Software Business solutions group.
What is Social Product Lifecycle Management ? I consider SPLM as a Product Development and Management approach or philosophy that is based on the Web 2.0 blueprint. Social Product Lifecycle Management approach facilitates PLM applications to exist in cloud computing or Software as a Service (SaaS) model , encourages community based product design and collaboration within and outside the enterprise. As an ex consultant in the product design industry, I used to always struggle interpreting the multiple frivolous acronyms that floated in the industry. I have no problem equating PLM 2.0 from Dassault to Web 2.0 based PLM approach.
What about CAD 2.0 ?. Of course as one would imagine , all 2.0 products would obviously be based on social networking, collaboration and cloud computing. So I Googled “CAD 2.0”, I was expecting most of my results to be CAD tools encompassing Web 2.0 tools like Wiki, SaaS, online communities etc. Surprisingly the very first result is a paper that says - " Finally a Solution to the CAD Interoperability". In short the paper refers CAD 2.0 as a product that can be used to modify drawings irrespective of the vendor specific CAD program that was used to create the drawing. So instead of my teenaged niece's definition of social networking and her love of FaceBook as a social networking/collaboration site for planning her shopping escapades, I prefer using the adoption of Web 2.0 concepts in product development space being referred to as Social Product Lifecycle Management.
How relevant is SPLM ? Social networking using the Web 2.0 concepts offering open collaboration of thoughts and ideas continues to expand in many enterprise applications like ERP, CRM etc. Product development and management is a collaborative effort as it goes through the cycle of designing , manufacturing and maintenance. Introduction of collaboration, especially the Web 2.0 concepts can help the product development to be faster with considerable reduction of ambiguous information flow across the teams through the development cycle. Complexity of designs , iterative process involved in designing and managing the products, collaboration of various engineering concepts between skilled engineers are some of the pressing reasons that would necessitate the usage of Social Product Development in industries like Aerospace and Shipbuilding.
Dassault's PLM 2.0 initiative to promote Web 2.0 concepts in the product development domain, made headlines last year by introduction of its V6 product line. Amongst the bigger PLM vendors, Dassault clearly spells out its intention of socializing product development with its PLM 2.0 concept. It should be noted that Siemens PLM's Teamcenter Community and PTC's ProductPoint address the social networking needs of their customers. Unlike Dassault, vendors like Siemens, Autodesk and PTC have not emphasized the social networking relevance in product development, as their key marketing strategy.
Social product development continues to be a topic of great interest for analysts and executives. I agree that there are many benefits of social networking in product development, but I question if it is gaining acceptance amongst the engineers, as they are the majority users of the PLM tools. I feel it is fairly early to predict the acceptance or popularity of social product lifecycle management. This is mainly because the product development industry segment has been historically slow to adopt new technologies or concepts. Some of the highly advanced companies like Toyota continued to design with complex old home grown CAD packages in the twenty first century, despite the availability of highly advanced CAD systems in the market. The complexity of managing data , interoperability, integration and loss of productivity due to the big learning curve, remain inhibitors to adoption of new technologies such as social networking in the product development space.
