
May 1, 2014
PDM is a Personal Productivity Tool
Ready for a rousing debate on Product Data Management (PDM)? It may not be the most compelling topic, but reading up on it has its uses. In a pinch, it’s a surefire way to get to sleep on time. It’s a fine alternative to watching paint dry. And make no mistake, if you’re ever trying to convince your bosses to …

March 28, 2014
The Diverging State of PDM
A little more than a year ago, I wrote post titled The PDM Revolution is Upon Us, Brought to You by CAD in the Cloud, which postulated what would happen as some PLM providers moved their CAD offerings to the cloud. Fast forward to today, and things haven't quite played out as I suggested.
Technology can be a powerful thing. But is it always a good fit for every organization? The proposed advantages and benefits may sound appealing, but sometimes new tech can actually introduce more bureaucracy and disruption than it solves. In today’s post, I’ll look at what aspects of PLM and PDM systems make sense for smaller organizations. I’m sure this topic …

April 24, 2013
PDM: Boon or Plague?
Wow. So PDM is a hot topic now, eh? Over the past few weeks, we've had our Tech4PD episode on PDM for small organizations and a slew of blog posts on the topic. While there's a lot of content out there to browse through on PDM, one post got my attention this week from… *drumroll*… Oleg Shilovitsky from Autodesk.

November 12, 2012
Has PLM Been Misdirected All This Time Around?
Deploying PLM. I know few technical champions that face the prospect of starting a PLM deployment with earnest joy. Mostly, that's because it can be a long, hard slog. According to posts like this one there are fundamental pieces of PLM that you really need to put in place before you get into more advanced capabilities of PLM. Concurrent Engineering, a PTC reseller and author of the blog post above, is by no means alone. You'll find such posts on the basics, foundation or fundamentals of PLM all over the place. This view has been in place for years now.

October 30, 2012
Engineering-less PLM?
Back in September, Yoann Maingon over at Minerva, an Aras reseller, wrote a blog post that got my attention:Stop Starting PLM from Engineering!!! The gist of the post boils down to this excerpt. Start your implementation’s phase 1 out(side) of engineering and you’ll get live much faster. These people need integrated systems and their processes are more stable then in engineering. As you can see, it's another traditional perspective on... wait... what?