Mobility in PLM: Getting the Definition Right

In continuation of my previous blog and huge demand from folks across to know details on mobility, I decided that it is time to tell the story. Honestly, I was planning to publish this part sometime next week.

A fortnight ago, I was conducting a session on Mobility for Product Lifecycle Management. While I was preparing for the session, I thought of doing a search on the terms which define mobility for PLM. Checked up in Google trends and results are published .

What caught my attention was increase in interest for similar looking terms and change of interest over period of time. Interestingly, PLM Mobile is the term which is getting attention (increase of 35% over time) and the one which I choose ‘PLM Mobility’ seems to have zero records. Well, this did not discourage me as I still could not figure out the right definition behind most searched terms i.e. ‘Mobile PLM’ and ‘PLM Mobile’. Hence, I rest my case here for the term which I think rightly defines what we expect from PLM and Mobility i.e. ‘PLM Mobility’.

To understand PLM Mobility, we first have to start from defining what Enterprise Mobility is and then see how PLM Mobility fits. Yes, this is how we need to start rather than looking directly at PLM level and kill the essence. The reason for that is very simple. PLM is an enterprise level not an IT initiative. Although, how different it may sound to people and some may argue that PLM is an IT function, I must say that they need to take a step back and look at PLM ecosystem. PLM has a business case which is enabled by IT not the other way round.

Further, PLM enables product innovation and adding mobility to it effectively means enabling mobility in product. Now, this is interesting because mobility in product has many dimensions and most of them are based on business and strategic roadmap of an enterprise. So moving from top to bottom, Enterprise Mobility makes sense to be the right starting point to define PLM Mobility - which is at Level 3 as shown in picture below:

Level 1- Enterprise Mobility: To put it in simple terms, it is about converging business process, technology, and people on a mobile device (Tablets & Smartphone) either provided by an enterprise or by BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy. BTW, we should not confuse laptops and notebooks as mobile devices. Laptops and notebooks are considered portable device and not mobile devices.

Level 2- Enterprise Product Mobility: is innovating product by extending internal view and capturing external view via mobile device (Tablets & Smartphones). We extend the Product information which is stored in various systems to internal and external collaborating partners in Enterprise Product mobility.

Level 3- Enterprise PLM Mobility: is about developing & managing product’s life cycle via mobile device (Tablets & Smartphones). We extend the data that is stored in current PLM system to mobile devices. Native apps provided by the PLM Vendor can be classified as Enterprise PLM Mobility. These apps have limited use cases and focus on key out of box process approvals and consumption of data. Organizations have not fully adopted these native apps as these out of box use cases do not meet the organizations product development processes.

So I hope with this structure PLM Mobility will find its due credit in organizations who are thinking about it. Well, the business case for PLM Mobility needs to be envisioned because as organizations mature, new thinking has to seep in. 

Let me know what you think!