Back in 2010 I wrote an article titled “No Engineering Organization is an Island”. The point of the article was to detail how almost all PLM systems can trace their origins back to Engineering. Since that time we have worked with numerous companies to implement PLM and while some portion of these companies embrace the concept of integration between engineering and PLM a surprising number do not. It is also noteworthy that in most of these companies the Engineers are one group that is most resistant to PLM or at least having integration with PLM. This is surprising to me since a majority of benefits of Engineering integrated to PLM positively impact the engineers. I have not seen any documentation that really addresses this so I thought it would be worthwhile to capture these benefits to help engineers understand why linking PLM to engineering data might not be a productivity drain. This article will explore the positive impact having a fully integrated PLM and Engineering environment from the engineer’s perspective.
Due to the nature of Engineering data most Engineering organizations have adopted tools to manage data and this usually is where the challenge for PLM begins. Since Engineering was focused on solving the issues around engineering data management, often little consideration is given to the rest of the organization. This can create friction when trying to set up enterprise oriented processes for Engineering since they have already established approaches that work best for them. Moreover we have seen issues when Engineering tries to impose their practices on the rest of the enterprise through the expansion of a CAD oriented PDM/PLM like Windchill or Team Center. What Engineers fail to perceive is the excessive amount of work created by this disconnect since the burden of sharing data now falls on the engineer. Ideally engineering data should be structured to generate a BOM that can ultimately be leveraged for manufacturing. In companies where Engineering and the rest of the enterprise are not fully synced, this process happens manually. Sometimes the engineers are responsible for creating spreadsheets to guide Configuration Management or Manufacturing or sometimes they just provide drawings. The bottom line for Engineering is that some way or another they will be involved and the process will be iterative and time intensive and subject to error due to mistakes or miscommunication. It would be a worthwhile study to find out how much time Engineers spend each time providing information to or answering questions from Configuration Management or Manufacturing. This has to be highly disruptive to most Engineers since they are tasked with generating new product design and generating the information needed to produce new products. Never mind dealing with external vendors and suppliers or even more challenging customers. Even though integrating to PLM might require changes to how designs are structured the net saving in communications should more than offset the additional time it takes.
Another overlooked impact to the engineer revolves around change. Even though managing the change process may fall to others, engineers absorb the most impact from Change Orders since they are the ones that have to do them. Having a fully integrated environment should reduce change orders significantly and shift them forward in the process making them easier to address. Late stage change orders are difficult to implement since so many aspects of the design have been set. Giving Manufacturing and Suppliers early visibility into designs can eliminate this from occurring. Providing Engineers with cost effective and quality data can also impact the need for change orders since they can make better choices around sourced parts. Design reviews, late night communications with Contract Manufacturers etc. impacts productivity and quality of life. It would seem that any system or change in process that could streamline this would be embraced. PLM provides a mechanism to share information in an automated way earlier in the process. This visibility reduces the need to change out parts and allows other groups to catch issues that could lead to change orders. Again while this approach may require more time up front the net effect is that it improves the Engineer’s productivity and allows more focus on new product design versus dealing with the bureaucracy of change.
The last aspect of PLM that is overlooked is the benefit of project management and resource allocation. By linking the output of Engineering into a more formal project management solution that is typical of most PLM tools, companies get a far better handle on resource load and allocation issues. Most companies manage this informally and engineers end up overloaded and again productivity and quality of life is impacted. When companies decide to take on new projects they have little visibility into what this will do to current projects or the workload of the resources involved. A separate PDM tool provides little or no visibility into how resources are working but linking Engineering data to project deliverable can allow for executive dashboards that clearly convey how resources are loaded and how new activities will effect deliverable dates. This level of project management is one of the most challenging aspects of PLM to get adoption for yet offers the most benefits to those who participate.
My background started with computer aided design. One of the big challenges we saw, and I suspect it is still an issue, was modeling practices. There are ways to build CAD models that will allow for robust change but this takes more time. Often external vendors and contract designers were more interested in short term productivity. This mean that models and assemblies were built expeditiously but if any change was needed they would blow up. Companies tried all kinds of things to fight this issue and I suspect the same mindset in play with PLM. The bottom line is that Engineers are better off with PLM whether they believe it or not. The time spent on communication, change management and project management is easily recovered with PLM and allows Engineers to focus on the aspects of their jobs that yield the most value for their companies. By redirecting their efforts they create more value and are in turn more valuable which is what every employee should strive for. To circle back, being part of a group versus being isolated as an island yields far more value. The effort involved will maintain the island is always more expensive.
[Edit: Repost from 2015]
