Insights from PI Conference Your Boss Wants To Know!!!

This year marks the 5^th anniversary of Product Innovation (http://oc.pi.tv/) conference in US. This year the conference was held in Orange County, CA. The conference has evolved a lot from first conference in 2012 that was held in Atlanta. This year’s theme focused on PLM, PLM 2.0 & Digital Business. PLM 2.0’s focus is about extending PLM to Product Analytics, Business Intelligence and Data Analytics. There were 30+ vendor’s booth, which is 25+ % jump for last year, which is good change. Also, there were some very small niche software vendors that participated in the US conference for the first time. One such vendor was ESKO (http://www.esko.com), a software platform that helps organizations to manage and Product Packaging, Sign and Displays. The other small vendor that caught my attention was PropelPLM (http://www.propelplm.com), a cloud based PLM platform build on Salesforce.com platform. PropelPLM also presented a client case study at the conference along with the client. Interestingly, in the past 5-7 years, there have been many small PLM vendors that have started offering very niche or extended capabilities. This is very helpful for small to medium size organization who have niche or specific requirements and do not have pockets for big 5 PLM vendors implementation. 

Day 1 highlights - Bloodhound SCC’s (http://www.bloodhoundssc.com) chief engineer presented their story about “Breaking the World Land Speed Record”. It was a wonderful presentation as they demonstrated the reinvented wheel for the car they developed which could   travel at 1000 mph/per hr. in 11 seconds. The BLOODHOUND Project is a global Engineering Adventure, breaking a 1000mph world land speed record in an attempt to inspire the next generation to enjoy, explore and get involved in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. A leading automotive company presented on they evolved to PLM 2.0. They build analytics for Engineering Change Managements which helped them to make faster decisions.

Another key highlight was from a leading CPG company which presented on topic “Overcoming Cultural Resistance to PLM 2.0 Strategy”. They mentioned some quotes like “IT does not own the systems, Business owns the systems” & “R&D create data and Supply Chain creates products”. This was music to my ears as we educate our clients every day on the same thing. Day 1 concluded with a presentation from the CTO of Salesforce (https://www.salesforce.com) on “Welcome to the New Era of Manufacturing”.

Day 2 highlights – The chief of Analytics – Global Connected Consumer experience at GM (http://www.gm.com) gave a very insightful presentation on “The Disruptive Effects of IoT & Analytics on the Product Development and PLM Space”. On an average a person researches 10 hrs. before buying a vehicle, with 46% purchase finance online. Ebay Motors sells 500,000 cars each year. One of the key take away from the presentation for me was “Data from Connected Customer and Connected Product with test PLM environments may present an entry point for new Vendors”. A leading LifeScience company shared their experience on how critical it is to sustain executive sponsorship for a successful PLM business transformation program. Also, over engineering processes, application and making complex UX screens can prevent a smooth end user adoption experience and can also derail the program.

A leading Pharmaceutical company presented on how to ask the right questions and building a compelling case. Finally, a leading Medical devices company talked about the importance of simplifying the UX across applications and how leveraging Design Thinking helped in system adoption.

Focus groups discussion were part of the prime slot presentation, this was a change from last year. The focus groups are exclusive for the delegates with no vendors attending it. I believe the focus group should be extended to Product Innovations practitioners that are not affiliated to any software and bring in the industry and domain experience. This will make the focus groups more interesting.

Overall a great conference for learning and knowledge sharing.

Remember, Knowledge is valuable when shared, so come and join the 6^th Product Innovation US conference in Wild West Texas in Oct 2017.

Happy Holidays!!!

#PIOC

Innovation changing the Fashion & Retail Industry!

Last week, I, along with a good colleague and friend attended the 2^nd PI Apparel conference (http://apparel.picongress.com/). Last year the conference was held in London, but this year they shifted the conference to NY, the US fashion capital. The focus of the conference was on four topics: Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Wearable Technology, 3D Technologies and Merchandising and Planning. The primary focus was PLM and Wearable Technology. I feel naming the conference “PI” (Product Innovation) is a bit misleading, since most of presentations focused on PLM rather than innovation, except for the key note presentations. The keynote presentations were the highlights of the conference. There were also about 20 software vendors at the conference. This year’s conference was a huge success with some key insights into Product Development across Retail, Apparel, Fashion and Footwear industries that made me write about it.

Day 1- The opening key note presentation was on “Wearable Technology and its Evolution into Broader Fashion” was by Qaizar Hassonjee, VP, Innovation - Wearable Technology, adidas. adidas had acquired Wearable Sensors Specialist Textronics in 2008 and the miCoach collection comes primarily from Textonics.  He talked about the world cup champions, the German Soccer team using miCoach products. Using IoT, Cloud and Mobile devices, Coaches could get real-time insight into the players’ performance, peak etc. Now we know secret behind the team’s success. Impressive!

The other interesting presentation of the day was from Director, Apparel & Accessories Product Development, Target and Senior Group Manager - NIT & 3D Virtual Product Development, Target. They spoke about their journey implementing 3D CAD designing. 3D CAD Modeling has been there for quiet a long time and industries such as automotive, industrial machinery, etc. have already being using 3D CAD Modeling for years. The Retail-Fashion-Apparel industry is now adopting 3D technology. It is helping them in sample reduction, sustainability, speed to market and making smarter design decisions. However, the interesting fact to note is that integration between 3D CAD and PLM is still lacking in the Retail, Fashion, Apparel, & Footwear industry. The 3D modeling vendors with PLM vendor are collaborating on creating the integration which will enable the companies to get max value.

The Design Director from Harley-Davidson for Apparel & Accessories spoke about their PLM journey and how Organizational Change Management is extremely important in any PLM business transformation.

Day 2- The key note presentation by Lauren Bowker, The Material Alchemist, T H E U N S E E N (http://seetheunseen.co.uk/) on "Seeing the Unseen" – Combining Science and Design to Create A New World of Materials was an eye opener. She talked about wearable fabric that can change colors based on sunlight, wind speed, humidity, temperature, etc. She started initially with feathers and ink and moved to Fabric. She showed a video about a headdress that changes colors based on brain EEG. The headdress has lab-grown Swarovski crystals dyed with the color-changing ink, which respond to the heat and electrical waves in the brain as it comes in contact with one’s head. One interesting fact to note is that the front part of the headdress changes color in the mornings, pointing to the fact that the front side of brain was more active at during that time of the day. In the near future, one will be able to change the color of one’s jacket, trouser etc., using a smartphone app.  This is possibly a game-changing innovation. Amazing!

The other highlight of the conference was a presentation on “The Shoe that Grows” by Kenton Lee, Founder & Executive Director, Because International (http://becauseinternational.org/).  Kenton traveled to South Africa where he saw that the kids in the orphanage did not have shoes to wear. These kids solely relied on shoe donations. He started a non-profit organization in Idaho to help this cause, and approached all the big and large footwear companies, but with no luck. With the help of friends, he then designed and built a shoe that grew so that it could last at least a few years. While we think of footwear as fashion, Kenton saw is as necessity, and contributed to a cause that helped humanity. I salute him!

One thing that I missed at the conference was the lack of in-depth case studies / presentations on Organization Change Management (OCM). OCM is often overlooked in Product Development business transformation programs.

I also participated in a think tank session on “Sustainability”. We defined “What is Sustainability, Compliance and Quality”. One point we all agreed on is that Quality leads to Compliance, which leads to Sustainability.

Acquisitions and Mergers spree continues in 2014 for Product Development service space

The Product Development service company’s acquisition/merger spree that was initiated by Accenture in 2013 continues in 2014 as well. In first half of year, we had Accenture complete the acquisition of Businesses from evopro group, KPIT acquire North Carolina basedI-Cubed, while Kalypso another Product Development service firm merged with Integware and DataSquare.

What does it mean for the Industry?

• Consolidated vendor solutions and offerings to cover entire breadth and depth of product development process
• Product services can be offered more easily around the whole ecosystem which nurtures customers and other stakeholders
• Streamline hand-off and hand-shake between multiple processes and touch points which are critical for a successful product launch
• Enable manufacturers to have a holistic views and capabilities for their new product innovation and launches

Also, some of the key acquisitions bring with them new thought leadership to change the product development services offering altogether.

Accenture gains access to highly-skilled employees in Germany, Hungary, Romania and Turkey, with deep expertise in software development, testing, and implementation, as well as automation and engineering solutions. These solutions also include integrated product lifecycle management processes, embedded software, analytics and an ‘everything as a service’ delivery approach. 

We are already seeing how Accenture’s last year’s acquisitions is becoming a game changer. Last week, Accenture announced the formation of Accenture Product Lifecycle Services (APLS), a new business service aimed at helping manufacturing clients better organize, develop and manage products and services, from ideation to retirement. They are leveraging all the 3 acquisition i.e. PCO Innovation, PRION Group and Businesses for the APLS. However, we still have to see if Accenture acquires a CAD/CAM Engineering Services outsourcing company.

With the merger of Kalypso and Integware, Kalypso expands the firm’s presence in the aerospace and defense, automotive, and energy industries in addition to life sciences, the most successful business of Integware.  The merger with DataSquare makes the European presence for Kalypso stronger; also it adds a few resources to their Oracle & Aras Product Development practice in Europe.

KPIT acquisition of I-Cube is an interesting one. KPIT Cummins Infosystems is a spinoff from Cummins was established in 1990, and became a public listed company in India in 1999. In 2013, KPIT Cummins dropped “Cummins” from its name and rebranded itself as KPIT. KPIT key strengths are in the Automotive, Manufacturing and Energy & Utilities industries. 

Before I-Cubed got acquired last week by KPIT, I-Cubed itself in March 2014, had acquired Akoya, Inc., a Chicago-based supply chain analytics solution provider of patented analytic software that helps manufacturers reduce product costs by identifying pricing inefficiencies and optimizing supplier management decisions. The I-Cube acquisition by KPIT will lift its Automotive and Manufacturing practice, as I-Cube is one of the leading service provides for CAD/CAM data migration and has Products, tools and accelerators that can help organizations in the Product Development processes. KPIT also gets access to PTC & Aras partnership that I-Cube has and will strengthen KPIT presence in North America.

There are a few Product Development services providers that are potential targets for acquisition. However, to be a potential acquisition target they need to have excellent Intellectual properties, industry domain expertise, software vendor partnerships and must have value added services. Just by relying on resources and good client base is not going to be enough. I hope there is more great news coming in second half of year.

Accenture Acquisitions: May be a Game Changer in Product Development Services

Last week Accenture announced their intent to acquire PCO Innovation which will be their 2nd acquisition of a Product Development Services company in less than 90 days. Accenture acquired significant capabilities in Siemens Teamcenter with their 1^st acquisition on PRION Group in August 2013. Now, with the recent announcement to acquire of PCO Innovation, it will acquire new clients and have additional capabilities in PTC and Dassault to strengthens its Technology services offering.

Traditionally, the big 5 consulting companies always had a focus on ERP and Supply Chain initiatives, as these tend to be much larger in revenue and are long term compared to Product Development initiatives which are much smaller. The Accenture acquisition signifies that these companies are now looking to grow and build their technology and outsourcing services capabilities for Product Development and become “One Stop Shop” for Discrete Manufacturing, Aerospace, Automotive, DOD, Retail, Medical Devices, Pharma and High Tech.

PRION Group has its headquarters based in Europe while PCO Innovation has its headquarters in North America. This will give Accenture significant additional presence in Europe and North America market and help them to become one of the top 3 Product Development Services companies in the world.

It won’t be surprising if Accenture next acquisition is a CAD/CAM Engineering  Services outsourcing company. Engineering Services is another area for growth for them where traditionally Indian companies have controlled 23% of market share as per Zinnov’s Annual Global R&D Service Provider Ratings 2013.

Last year, PWC acquired PRTM, one of leading management consulting company with significant expertises in Product Development. Kalypso another niche Product Development consulting company based in Ohio-US had setup a technology delivery center in Mexico. Well, it shows that Management consulting companies are looking to capture downstream revenues as well by either setting up delivery capabilities or through acquisition of delivery capabilities, while Technology services companies would try to acquire management consulting capabilities for to move upstream. One example is of Infosys which acquired Lodestone to up its consulting capabilities and thus provide “End-to-End” services to clients.

As we move into 2014, I foresee more acquisitions and mergers in the Product Development space (software and services). And with Accenture, let’s see if the recent acquisition is a “Game Changer” in the Product Development services.

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!

Product Innovation is getting attention..!!

Last week, I attended my 2^nd Product Innovation Conference (http://us.picongress.com/) in Chicago. This year’s conference focused more on Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) than Product Innovation. Or, I should say it was portrayed as if having PLM is in itself sufficient for Product Innovation. This is of course not true. Product Innovation is about letting innovation come from any aspect of product development, whether it is customer feedback which forces you to think differently, supplier’s new IP driven part which would revolutionize product, design engineers working on completely different – never heard before – design  and feature set or an idea which sparked out during a conversation over coffee with friends. All this have no relation to whatsoever with PLM, except the fact that PLM can help manage, organize and track this information, once stored. The conference did have a few participants talking on Product Innovation. Overall the conference was a huge success with so many insights into Product Development across various industries that made me write about it.

Day 1 - The key note presentation was led by the Commissioner and CIO for City of Chicago, where she talked about collaboration between cities, counties and communities and how they rely on expertise developed by each other when there are limited resources (human and financial). She talked about future of technology and mayor’s vision to use data analytics, mobility and social platforms to take information closer to society. Very impressive indeed!

The presentation by SVP of ETAC AB where he talked about 12 advises on changing status of PLM from mere an IT function to Enterprise PLM. His insight as to why most of PLM projects overrun and are not successful is because PLM is perceived as IT project and not business transformation program and hence a lack of alignment between IT & business.

Pharmaceutical companies shared insights into their product development facts. It was interesting to note the amount of investment needed to bring a new product is over 1 billion and with over 90 % failure rate at stage 3 (which is one of test stages before FDA approval). The best part was the future perspective where medicines will be about personalization, based on our body structure and weight. The rest of Day 1 had sessions spread across industries ranging from process centric, to manufacturing to automotive to pharmaceutical and so on.

Day 2 - The key note presentation by the Director at New Harvest was an eye opener. She talked about cell cultured leather and cultured meat which will change the future about meat and leather. The cultured meat (beef) is created by extracting & harvesting naturally occurring stem cells from living cows and requires only 1% of the land, 4% of water, 50% of the energy than farmed meat.  She also gave an example of a company using plant extract as a substitute for egg for making mayonnaise, which made it vegan. The company instead of marketing at vegan / vegetarian mayonnaise is marketing as cholesterol free mayonnaise as it could target a larger market segment. Amazing!

There were also some new vendors at the conference who participating for the first time. Two of vendors caught my attention; the first was a software vendor on Engineering Knowledge Lifecycle Management which talked about preventing knowledge lost during product development and reusing it next time.  And the second vendor was on PLM Mobility demonstrating some of the apps built for Engineering and Retail, Footwear and Fashion and how they are being acknowledged and demanded by clients.

One thing that was missed at conference was lack of any case studies / presentation about Organization Change Management (OCM). OCM is mostly overlooked on any Product Development business transformation programs.

Well, I was conducting a think tank session on ‘Enterprise Mobility’. We defined “what is mobility” and proposed an initial maturity model. There was consensus that Mobility is not another jargon or fad but reality near term. Stay tuned for more on this.

Why Do Need An Engineering Change Process?

One primary objective for introducing changes to the existing processes with the transition to the PLM environment will be to ensure consistency, discipline and control on the flow of data from Design to Manufacturing. This data flow, under Change Management control, will authorize manufacturing logistical actions. Automotive, Manufacturing, High Tech and Aerospace industries have widely adopted Engineering Change Management processes. Engineering Changes (EC’s) define parts release, revision and obsolescence which drives parts planning, acquisitions and dispositions. Knowing the EC level will help us isolate technical problems to dates and levels to minimize costs of identifying and fixing problems in the field. We know who has what, when it was built, and what is in each and every machine that is built. EC’s will provide a clear and precise historical record on all product programs, down to the individual part numbers.

Engineering Changes are the vehicle for releasing the product (item/BOM). An engineering change will establish or modify the basic records (part identification, content, usage) and reference the technical data, such as prints, drawings or CAD/CAM data. The release of technical data and records information should be concurrent. Usually, groups of parts to be designed and released at the same time are grouped into ECs.

The bill of material is a dynamic document, reflecting the dynamic nature of products. Products change and evolve, getting better. Changes to the bill-of-material can be a controversial topic. The problem with engineering changes is really several problems disguised as one. For a start, the basic problem is the volume of changes. One or two changes a year wouldn't amount to any problem at all. Dozens, or even hundreds, of engineering changes a month adds up to a nightmare when neither justified, nor

managed properly. Finally, bill-of-material changes, when handled incorrectly, tend to generate a lot of problems, which are usually blamed on something else.

Engineering changes are, as a rule, tough to control and hard to communicate to everyone who needs to know. Many companies do not have the tools for planning and scheduling in place, so it doesn't matter how the bill-of-material changes are made. Perhaps the biggest reason people are against using an EC to control a product/part release is a lack of understanding about the impact those changes can have on the business. It's not always obvious that the visible problems on the shop floor are a direct result of mismanaging engineering changes. Here are just a few of the problems that can result from poorly managed changes:

1. Excess obsolete inventory: This happens all the time. There is inventory left over after the part has been obsolete. If changes are poorly managed, it is not unusual to see obsolete parts reordered.

2. Assembly, packaging or finishing shortages: You can't build it if you don't have the parts. Shortages often occur because we run out of one component before the new component was ready or had been delivered. When the bill-of-material is not current, the wrong material is scheduled.

3. Inefficient Production: When engineering changes are not properly managed, theproblem often doesn't surface until the last minute. Final Assembly discovers it is using Revision D. The latest engineering design is Revision E. The parts must be reworked or produced to the latest revision with zero lead time.

4. Missed delivery dates to customers: Only items on the bill-of-material can be scheduled. When the bill is not updated with the latest engineering changes, the wrong materials are scheduled and produced. The problem is usually discovered in the final stages of production, and that's too late.

5. Poor product quality: When the bill is not properly maintained, the latest product improvements from Product Engineering are not communicated to the factory floor. 

6. Lack of configuration control: Product liability is a big issue facing industry. Failure to provide good control over the configuration of your product is the quickest road to failure.

7. Erroneous product costing: When the bill-of-material is not maintained properly, the product costs do not reflect what it actually costs to make the product.

The net result is that mismanaged bill-of-material changes result in major financial losses, and many companies don't even realize it. Time and time again, people who routinely handle their companies bills do not realize the cost implications in poorly managed changes. They don't monitor change costs, and, consequently, top management isn't aware that a problem even exists.

Conclusion

Competing in today's global market means getting new, innovative products to the market before the competition. By using the formal system and having an efficient product change management process which starts in the early stages of engineering, all of the documentation necessary to get into production can be justified, tested and released to manufacturing in a seamless fashion.