Agile PLM Processes & Modular Architectures
Andrew Sparrow
Driving Supply Chain Excellence: Integrating Advanced Manufacturing, Data Analytics, & Sustainability Initiatives for Resilience & Agility. Consultant | Speaker | Author | Live Shows. The Product Lifecycle Enthusiast
Product Innovation and Asset Lifecycle Management linked via the Industrial Internet of Things creates new challenges within the PLM landscape.
Integrating not only the mechanical, electrical, structural and software components, but unifying development, manufacturing, marketing and service is in today's collaborative and customer responsive world, vital for the future success of enterprise in the 4IR.
In the 4IR, I think of PLM as the broker of all product data, the platform and single source of truth.
But, this is not just a giant storage facility; instead it is a modularized and flexible architecture allowing for the adaptation of processes and redesign of product - the backbone of any successful business!
Agility
The successful enterprise adapts, figures out what to change in its products and services and in the way its people work.
With so many dynamics pressuring us to adjust our products, be that a cheaper way to deliver a similar product, an entirely new product or point-of-sale customization, the role of PLM has never been more important.
Looking at your PLM's agility for the future, you might think of it in mere terms of design, engineering and manufacturing, however we need to be now extending this to simulation care of more and more data from the IIoT. Embracing simulation, helping you manage CAE workflows and making results available for the future products and design reuse.
Through an open, modular and extensible architecture, fast access to specific data, more targeted ways of visualising and using it, industry/domain specific applications that can't be addressed in the short-term are all reasons to adapt your PLM infrastructure.
Agile Product Innovation Platforms (PIPs)
While the initial implementation of traditional PLM enabling systems, such as PDM, remains important, it can quickly take a turn for the worse by the cost and disruption from continuing upgrades and deployment to new areas, projects, and programs, as well as by partnerships and acquisitions that bring new, unpredictable mash-up of tools and processes. As a result, these monolithic enterprise IT applications are proving unsustainable and robust enough to provide a viable solution. They are difficult to maintain, particularly when an enterprise wants to tightly integrate its product data with its product lifecycle processes and tools. A PIP approach can help mitigate these issues.
The PIP creates the opportunity to create a more agile and iterative development process. They offer the ability to conceive, design, engineer, optimize, manufacture, sell, and connect to a product in the field—all around the same set of common data. However for a PIP to truly work, requires you to make the move to agile product development and therefore embrace the process changes involved.
Agile Product Design is the approach to build products faster and with collaborative innovation – strongly emphasizing the rapid iteration and tighter communication lines across a wide-reaching team, including the customer.
Product Design Speed Is The Top Priority
Product Development Challenges
Platformization: The Open Architectural Landscape
Platformization is the cultural shift to enterprise strategic and solution PIPs. The main point of this type of Platform, is for multiple cross-vendor solutions to be seamlessly deployed using a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). As PLM spans from product concept through product life, and integrates people, processes, business systems and information, these capabilities cover activities from engineering and manufacturing to general business functions and they all need capturing in one place for analysis and intelligence.
When planning the new IT architecture, it is therefore important to always make sure that system suppliers and integrators observe the Code of PLM Openness (CPO). An open PLM architecture supports agile and flexible processes.
Modular PLM Architecture
With a rise in the development and implementation of Modular Architectures for product families, CAD and PLM system suppliers have been paying more attention to how their tools are being used for these purposes. Moving from 2D to 3D CAD to improve the efficiency of design, care of higher quality connections and component design because the interface is visualized upfront.
Modular Architectures create a huge amount of data and large enterprises are very excited about having access to all of their product data through a freshly implemented PLM system. Senior management is convinced that they will soon be making better, informed decisions.
However achieving just this is not for the faint of hear, as I have stated previously. CAD and CAD Data is used extensively to:
- develop module concepts
- detailed module variant designs
- swap-out the various module variants to evaluate the final product configurations
- contain documentation for modules and interfaces that preserve the integrity of the architecture
As you dive deeper into the interface and variant management it's clear there remain challenges in the co-ordination of complex configuration rules and while most have linked across specific properties and third party vendors, there remain challenges in tying in to the PLM solution.
The inbound information from point of sale is extremely diverse and needs close monitoring and manipulation in order to effectively deploy across the modular architecture. Extend this further in producing product forecasts and real demand for the supply planning and execution of design and manufacturing, leaves PLM with a big scheduling ask! Currently, there is limited integration between PLM module data and the information about the modules that are captured in CAD.
Furthermore, sales process integration remains a challenge and one as we advance further into the 4IR, at the forefront of enterprise minds. As customers expect personalization more and more, the ability to make changes or develop synergies across products becomes more necessary. PLM and CAD are the tools to automate the management of product data to make productive use of the parts. The automation of data comes from a set of rules embedded in the original designs, however it remains difficult to change or recreate these rules later as they are not contained within either of the CAD or PLM tools. With a Modular PLM Architecture, these rules are created and documented ahead of time. Given product personalization is today and will be more and more relevant in the 4IR, adapting this is critical.
Through the development of Modular Modeling and Design-for-Configuration, the enterprise is readying itself for the 4IR.
Always, always appreciate your thoughts and your feedback. An amazing world is changing before us.
My best wishes to you in your PLM 4.0 projects
Andrew
#plm #mes #productlifecycle #productinnovation #platformization #3dexperience #enovia #teamcenter #aras #agile #windchill #catia #nx #cad #industry40 #4ir #recruiter
CTO, Value creation from digitalization and modularity
6yI think you haven’t fully understood the concept of modular product architectures. This is not an engineering exercise but a company wide initiative to implement your business strategies. A module can include all kind of disciplines as mechanical, electrical HW, software, services or financial to mention a few. All of these can can be seen in everyday products like modern cars or trucks. PLM is a good tool during the deployment of a modular product by supporting the design process, it is not suitable for variant management were strategic and business perspectives needs to be considered. CAD can support mechanical and HW aspects, but not other disciplines. I welcome you to a discussion and would like to see an update of this article.