In Episode 74 of Razorleaf’s Stay Sharp podcast, Deconstructing PLM, co-hosts Jonathan Scott and Juliann Grant welcome returning guest Steve Nichols, the Vice President of Razorleaf Government Solutions to discuss some of the interesting uses of PLM systems and how PLM can be used in ways customers might not consider. Steve often ends up explaining what “PLM software” means by talking about “the capabilities themselves that are inherent in PLM software, but aren’t necessarily part of the title itself, such as workflow management, such as reporting, configuration management, all the things you do,” he says. “While we think about PLM usually as, as a single entity, it actually brings a lot of different things to a conversation or that can be applied to an organization.”
Non-Traditional Applications of PLM Capabilities
Traditional PLM approaches mostly start with people in the design function, but the trio agree that there are plenty of roles for PLM where no one is trying to design a product, but they still need to hold, track, and update a whole lot of complex data about one. As Steve says, “You’re picking up ownership and authorship of that whole lifecycle, just from a midpoint of some sort. But you still have the requirements and the need to know what happened in the past.” Jonathan suggests the example of an entity receiving something complex, like a power plant. He explains, “You may still be talking to people who care a lot about the lifecycle of a product, it’s just they’re coming at it from a different perspective … And you need to manage it and maintain it over its life—but you’ve got to receive this data. It’s a non-traditional use of PLM.”
Steve agrees that’s a perfect example of being the recipient of someone else’s data that you’ll need to preserve but also move forward with for updates, certifications, sign-offs, and more. He says, “When you get that data, that data has a structure to it. It has a little bit of a personality. You want to be able to preserve that structure and personality and carry it forward because there’s value there. You already invested in that. You may as well benefit from it.”
PLM Outside the Physical Realm
Jonathan takes the conversation in a different direction—away from digital representations of physical objects like parts, systems, helicopters, or ships, and toward simply managing layers of data for things like maps. That’s a perfect application of PLM, Steve says, noting “When you start to break away from the physical component and think about what’s the data look like and the process look like, you’re really looking at the digital representation here. And then you have a lot of flexibility in applying the capabilities of PLM.”
Another non-standard use of PLM Jonathan saw many years ago, which was made possible because of PLM’s database structures, was applying security to data sets. “You could be very granular about letting somebody look at one piece of the data and not another,” he says. PLM allowed for granular control over who could access electronic medical records and how they were secured.
Steve takes the idea of making use of PLM capabilities one step further, noting, “When you start to break away from the physical component and think about what’s the data look like and the process look like, you’re really looking at the digital representation here. And then you have a lot of flexibility in applying the capabilities of PLM.” PLM systems are especially good at integrating and getting data to or from other systems, which can be useful for aggregating data for reporting—whether via the PLM platform itself or feeding other reporting engines.
The final extension of PLM’s capabilities, and the idea of what makes a “product,” is considering the idea of the digital twin and applying it to people. Steve says, “You’re starting to walk away from the mechanical, the tradition of what we think about with PLM. If that product becomes the variable, what does it mean to be a product? Is the product a thing? A person? A process? An outcome of something else? … You think about the capabilities that are there. It actually becomes a whole lot of fun to think about what we could be doing here.”
Learn More About Applying PLM’s Capabilities
The full podcast contains more discussion and details on a variety of topics, including how PLM can help manage the layers of information in mapping applications, how to extend PLM’s integration capabilities to push data around your enterprise where you need it, how PLM is like a commercial kitchen, and more.
Check out the full conversation in Stay Sharp Episode 74: Deconstructing PLM, and join us each week for a new podcast.
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