PLM Interest Group

The PLM 2025-35 Project provides a global collaboration framework for implementors to share and apply best practices, and for advisors and educators to model them into a single source of truth.

It combines the twin drives towards Professional PLM and the PLM Body of Knowledge in a constructive and completely open way that benefits participants directly while generating industry-wide solutions.

			The aim is not just to establish the advanced knowledge and professional techniques of right-first-time PLM, but to embody them in real implementations.

By integrating the two programmes, everyone who participates learns from both streams and can make use of the combined knowledge set.

Global corporations have developed very complex, structured solutions for PLM, generating their own methodologies based on what they have found to work best.

This represents many man-years of experience and learning that have never been shared or re-used. Thousands of different implementations around the world with locked-in knowledge.

The solution is very simple.  Take a number of user implementations that have each developed in their own random way, in response to their different business drivers and technical competences.  Array them in parallel, and we find that their strengths and weaknesses are in different areas.  Where one implementation has a weakness, others will have strengths - so the 'weaker' implementation gets a problem solution for free, immediately.  And that same implementation will have strengths that the others will use.

PLM 2025-35 not only facilitates this knowledge-sharing, but also provides new tools for areas which do not have existing solutions.

The PLM 2025-35 Project will run for a year initially, aligned with the natural pace of actual PLM implementations and consisting of two streams:-

PLMIG experience with user groups shows that users come up with much more detailed and practical ideas when working amongst themselves than they do when vendors or advisors are present.  Keeping the separation provides a double benefit, because in order to derive common, neutral conclusions from the Users' work, the findings must be distilled and rationalised - which is exactly what is needed for a Body of Knowledge.

Current AI is woefully inadequate for PLM, and will stay that way unless we reconsider how it should work.
If you are interested in this, there is an opportunity for you to define the new, productive AI environment that we all need.

PLM 2025-35 will generate the core Body of Knowledge over the forthcoming twelve months.  Somehow, AI will be a necessary part of it - not in creating the Knowledge, but as a sort of "tour guide" or instructor that shows practitioners where to find the material they need and how to apply it in their live, day-to-day environment.

We need to develop the answer to this, and so the Project includes a Working Group to produce a definitive AI tool for PLM - if such a thing is possible.

There are two streams in PLM 2025-35 (User Collaboration and Knowledge Development) and members of the AI Working Group can come from either of them.  Anyone who is part of the Project can opt in. This allows participants to learn about serious AI as the Project unfolds, and also enables the advanced AI practitioners to build the model using the structured framework as a testbed.

By far the most important problem raised in the Solution Map discussions is the lack of C-level commitment to PLM, and the impact this has on PLM progress.  As one practitioner put it:-

Solving this is a difficult problem for everyone.  It needs time and resources to convince the Board of the value of PLM, but the Board will not fund this because they are not convinced (the C-Level PLM Paradox). You have to get the implementation itself in good shape before approaching them, and you have to keep getting the message across for a long period of time.

PLM 2025-35 provides a structured and effective way of doing this, known as the Senior Management System. It utilises the collaboration of companies who all have the same aim to generate specific tools for upward management; and supports participants as they interact with the Board and get questions or pushbacks.

Over the course of the 12-month Project it will embed high-level commitment to PLM into the respective implementations so that the Board becomes a driver rather than a barrier.  You can see how it works in detail by joining one of the Open Forum Discussions.

The Proposal explains everything.  It shows how the User Collaboration stream passes expertise and solutions between PLM Teams, and how the Knowledge Development stream refines the new material into the Body of Knowledge structure. The 12-month Gantt chart is straightforward, structured around the central Solution Generation activity in which PLMIG workshops address the priority issues of the participants.

The role of the AI Working Group is also covered, explaining how it integrates with the two working streams as they become the testbed for the new PLM AI Solution.

The management approach is based on the PLM Solution Map and is far more comprehensive than anything that currently exists.  It is also far more interactive than anything that currently exists, channeling synergy between implementations in a way that has not been possible before.

Download the Proposal [Word] >>>                              Download the Proposal [PDF] >>>

You might like to see for yourself how all of this works. The PLMIG will run some on-line sessions next week that will start with a slide presentation on the logic and methodology, to show how everything is structured. This will be followed by an open discussion in which everyone can ask questions.

Each session has the same 90-minute Agenda, and there are early and late timings that enable practitioners from almost anywhere in the world to participate.

These sessions are relaxed and entirely open: any PLM practitioner, in any type of role, from any country and from any part of the industry can request a joining link.  The Agenda is shown below, with the [UK] timings for the Early and Late Sessions.

Participants need only choose a session, and request a Zoom invitation via either of the links below.  The email request link should work at one click, but if it does not then just fill in and return the Request Form.

Email Request >>>                                    Request Form >>>

This is an international project - you can take part no matter where in the world you are based.  PLM is a global discipline, and the principles and methods of PLM are the same everywhere.

We are still at the introduction and alignment stage.  Everyone who might like to participate can see who else will be involved and the benefits that the Project will provide, without obligation.  Have a look at the Proposal, watch the presentation at one of the Open Forum sessions, and ask any questions you may have.

In the meantime, if you would like any other information about the Initiative, you can request it via
plm2025-35@plmig.com.

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