One-to-One: Siemens Sharing SharePoint Use in PLM
I had the chance to talk with … Bill
Boswell and the team at Siemens PLM 
about
their use of Microsoft SharePoint in their PLM solution, Teamcenter
Community. PTC has captured a lot of attention by incorporating
SharePoint into their PLM solution to support social computing, but
Siemens is quick to point out that they have been working with
Microsoft on incorporating SharePoint capabilities into PLM for a
longer period of time than PTC. Both companies are doing some
interesting work on this topic,
so I
thought it was worth sharing the Siemens story to complement
my
post on PTC’s Social Product Development strategy.
What do they Offer?
Siemens offers one of the broadest PLM suites on the market. The
Siemens solution suite ranges from NX CAD and simulation
capabilities, through data management via Teamcenter, and into
extended PLM capabilities such as product compliance, portfolio
management, strategic sourcing, and more. In short, Siemens has
taken the enterprise PLM vision as far (or farther) than any of the
large PLM suite providers.
In regards to social computing, Siemens has been working with
Microsoft’s SharePoint since 2003. They have primarily focused on
using the collaboration capabilities within SharePoint. As I wrote
in my post on collaboration
in PLM with social computing, I believe that this is the first
area that companies will focus on as they apply social computing
concepts to PLM. Siemens PLM’s product, Teamcenter Community
Collaboration, it aimed primarily at fulfilling this need. The
solution offers companies the ability to share and manage project
information and collaborate more effectively with capabilities such
as messaging and application sharing. Siemens does not just deliver
SharePoint “out of the box,” but instead enhances it for use in a
product innovation, product development, and engineering
environment. Siemens’ strategy is to offer an informal
collaboration layer on top of the strong data and process
management capabilities already found in Teamcenter.
Who do they Work With?
Siemens PLM works closely with Microsoft in this area, among other
synergies. The Microsoft-Siemens relationship in PLM appears to be
very strong, and I have seen them sharing product development plans
in the past. In this way, Siemens can leverage existing
capabilities in the Microsoft “stack” of technologies, and instead
focus their own developers on providing capabilities that are
unique to PLM. This approach helps them focus on providing more
value-added capabilities, while allowing their customers to take
full advantage of the low total cost Microsoft technology,
leveraging technology many of the larger companies have already
licensed on an enterprise-wide basis.
How does this Fit into the Ecosystem?
This subject is getting a lot of attention, as I found at my recent
presentation
on the Social computing in PLM at
COFES. I believe that social computing will become an integral
part of all PLM systems, in fact of all enterprise systems. By
getting an early start, Siemens has very strong experience with
SharePoint in a PLM context. Moving forward, others will be
offering this as well, including PTC with their ProductPoint
solution and potentially Dassault Systemes (although no current,
commercial product exists). While Siemens may have to share the use
of SharePoint with their competitors, the platform is inherently
configurable which will allow each company to deliver their own
“flavor” of PLM capabilities in SharePoint. I believe the
incorporation of social computing is inevitable, and that there is
even greater value to be found than by using social
computing beyond simple collaboration. Those that leverage this
technology in an integrated way will offer the best of PLM and
social computing in a holistic way, and provide significant
advantage to their customers. It will be interesting to see how far
companies like Siemens will take social computing in PLM, and how
readily these capabilities are adopted by the market. Stay tuned
for more action in this area.
So that’s what I hear from Siemens, I hope you found it useful.
What do you think? What else should I have asked them?
Marc Lind commented:
Gentlemen, What's your take on licensing for "social product
development"? Will PTC or Siemens enable users across the company
without any further license cost? Should there be fees over and
above that of SharePoint itself? If so, then what good is it. The
cost of PLM licenses from PTC or Siemens for a company with
500-1000+ users that need access is already prohibitively expensive
typically coming in at over $1,000,000 and could be more than 5x
that if user count is higher (that's counting the end user lic and
the associated module/server access required). Wondering, MarcL
www.aras.com
Jim Brown commented:
Oleg, You could certainly use SharePoint as a quick-and-dirty PDM
system to manage files. It would not handle the volumes of data as
well as a more purpose-built solution, and would (at least
currently) miss out on the integration and interoperability between
PDM and the underlying data. That is a problem that our industry
knows how to solve by adding metadata, managing relationships
between files, versioning, and all of the great things PDM does. On
top of this, SharePoint offers a process and a collaboration layer.
This could take simple PDM further to a more full PLM solution
(with limitations, as above). This much is probably clear. What is
less clear (fuzzy) is how the new "2.0" technologies will be
implemented to improve product innovation, product development, and
innovation. Here are some thoughts based on your question: Blogs -
Many senior, experienced, knowledgeable engineers will be retiring
over the next 5-10 years. These men and woman are very interested
in leaving their knowledge behind, and letting the next generations
of engineers learn from them. They can do this one engineer at a
time, or they could share their knowledge in a blog format. The
blog format allows for others to comment, add, and link to new
ideas. Potentially, they could also link to existing templates,
designs, calculations, or analysis models. The blog captures
company knowledge, and leaves a legacy that pays tribute to the
retiring engineer and serves as a searchable knowledge resource for
others that might never have met that engineer in person. Wikis -
Wikis are a great opportunity to communicate community knowledge.
Why note have experts from different areas moderate a wiki that
shares best practices and knowledge with the rest of the
organization? Perhaps this a way to capture everything the company
knows about a specific product family, design technique, or
manufacturing process? Enterprise search - With all of the new
information stored across the enterprise, it is possible (but
unlikely) that it will happen in a coordinated way and in a
standard taxonomy. Despite efforts to manage knowledge and create
libraries of information, we will likely see a proliferation of new
information (from wikis, blogs, etc.) Enterprise search pulls these
items together in a logical manner based on defined search criteria
- as opposed to some pre-determined information hierarchy that may
or may not meet the needs of the person researching company
knowledge. Search brings it all together. I am sure that the
readers can find more in my past posts (and in yours, as I believe
you are asking a question to which you know the answer). What else?
There will likely be a lot more than I can come up with. My hope is
that by communicating how these capabilities can work,
manufacturers will embrace them to solve very specific, tangible
product development and engineering challenges. Today, it is early
and the picture is still fuzzy. This is the time when innovative
companies begin to develop their strategies and experiment. These
early adopters will then provide all of us with a much less fuzzy
future, while they enjoy the benefits of getting their first. Best,
Jim
olegshilovitsky commented:
Jim, it sounds very fuzzy for me. In my view initial SolidEdge
Insight used SharePoint to manage files. SharePoint social
computing capabilities are blogs, wikis, enterprise search (?).
What and how specifically PLM will benefit from this. -
Regards,Oleg. www.plmtwine.com
