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Garden of Earthly Delights Hieronymus Bosch

Agile vs. Corporate Culture

By IT Strategy, PLM 3 Comments

Agile Software Development

Those of you who practice Agile software development will surely recognize the viewpoints expressed in the following quotations:

“Particularly alarming is the seemingly unavoidable fallibility of large software, since a malfunction in an advanced hardware-software system can be a matter of life and death.”

“In design you have to start at the level of organization of programs and machines, with the design of hardware and software together.”

“Begin with skeletal coding: Rather than aiming at finished code, the 46 first coding steps should be aimed at exploring interfaces, sizes of critical modules, complexity, and adequacy of the modules … Some critical items should be checked out, preferably on the hardware if it is available.”

You may be surprised to learn that these are not brought to you from a recent Agile conference or even from the Agile Manifesto circa 2001. These comments are from a NATO software engineering conference that was held in Germany in 1968!
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Mosquitodance

Why Do Software Bugs Continue to Plague Products?

By Automotive, PLM 5 Comments

Pesky Software Problems Plague Many Products

It seems not a day goes by without reading about yet another software bug that inflicted a catastrophic (or, at times, just ridiculous) malfunction on an everyday product.

In these conversations about software quality problems, the auto industry is often singled out. Indeed, consumer complaints about vehicle software systems have been growing steadily over the past several years, and numerous automakers, including Volvo, Nissan, and Volkswagen, have  initiated large  recall campaigns to remedy software defects. Even Tesla, that usually gets immediate praises for almost everything it does, isn’t immune from releasing faulty software controlled systems (although Tesla does a superior job in fixing software defects via over-the-air updates).

But not only cars suffer from software malaise. General Electric’s refrigerators, too, require software updates to remedy errors that hamper the appliance’s most basic operations, and Samsung’s connected fridge allows hackers to steal a consumer’s Gmail login information.
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Metamorphosis of Narcissus (Salvador Dali, 1937)

Digital Transformation and the Internet of Things

By Internet of Things (IoT), IT Strategy, PLM No Comments

The Internet of Things Enables Digital Transformation

I recently returned from a trip to Munich, Germany where I spoke at the Product Innovation Congress. In additional to the usual product innovation, PDM and PLM topics, this year’s Congress highlighted technologies, business strategies and use cases that use the Internet of Things (IoT) as a means to create a digital thread of product information to support product creation and service strategies.

As you might expect, a discussion on IoT and, in fact, any technology to drive enterprise digital transformation can generate a frustratingly wide range of definitions and, consequently, vague characterization of its benefits and economic justification.

During a panel discussion, I suggested that digital transformation isn’t simply a matter of establishing a new IoT-centric enterprise architecture. Rather, I maintain that we should look at the impact of the information and the digital thread enabled by the IoT in the context of organizational operations and decision making processes. Here is the approach I propose. You can use this to identify opportunities and assess potential value in a way akin to a maturity model. Read More

Knowledge Based Product Development

By Design Reuse, Innovation, Internet of Things (IoT), Manufacturing, PLM No Comments

Lack of ongoing insight into product operation and the interaction with users is a major contributor to the persistence of a knowledge gap that plagues many product organizations, reduces efficiency and stifles innovation.

What drives this knowledge gap? A number of general trends impact companies in most industry sectors and product types.

  • Technology complexity and, in particular, the increased reliance on complex embedded control software.
  • Elongated and fragmented supply chains that support global operations.
  • Meeting global markets demand results in lower volume of configuration-specific product instances.
  • Accelerated egress of an aging workforce from the workplace.

The impact of the growing knowledge gap is most recognized and frequently discussed in the context of equipment maintenance and repair, which is a knowledge intensive activity. Another area were closing the knowledge gap has significant benefits is engineering change management.

Organizations often speak about the need to collect and formalize “tribal knowledge” to close the gap between the knowledge needed to perform a complex takes or reach a decision, and the knowledge and experience the person performing this task has access to.

In a previous article I discussed the severe myopia that exists in many product companies: most engineering organizations lose sight of their products once they are sold or installed in the field. In some manufacturing companies this happens even earlier, during the transition to manufacturing engineering and before the product enters volume production. Once a product is in use, there is only a trickle of information in the form of service records and warranty claims. But many organizations dismiss critical maintenance and warranty information as merely operational and cost of doing business and aren’t leveraging its full potential.

Knowledge Based Product Development

Product organizations cannot have a true and complete view of a product and how customers are using it unless they can continue to observe it while it is in use. They must monitor and analyze products throughout their lifecycle, gauge their performance, quality and uptime, how users are interacting with the products, and how well they meet market expectations overall.

This rich multidisciplinary insight extends beyond design information. It includes multifaceted data from a variety of sources and disciplines and includes manufacturing, supply chain, filed operations and service and maintenance. The data can be aggregated from multiple sources, including real-time data such as IoT, maintenance record and customer experience.

The aggregation, classification and analysis of this data provides critical insight to embellish and enhance an organizational knowledge library for subsequent iterations of product design, manufacturing process engineering, and service planning.  reinforced by analytics, case-based reasoning (CBR), and similar tools to collect, analyze and vet information.

Product organizations cannot afford operating with blinds that prevent visibility to downstream processes. They should not ignore the value of information collected throughout the product lifecycle. They must establish knowledge processes, governed by PLM software, to maximize the utility and benefit of product lifecycle information.

(Photo: FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Elephant Monument for Champs-Élysées (Jean-Jacques Lequeu, 1758)

Design for IoT or Design by IoT?

By Internet of Things (IoT), Manufacturing, PLM No Comments

The Internet, mobile devices and cloud computing are drastically changing manufacturing. Software control systems embedded in smart devices and connected machines form a network of sensors and actuators that exchange information autonomously and can monitored and controlled online.

The potential impact of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0 are undisputed. While industry pundits and technology vendors may dispute the exact size and growth rate of the IIoT, there is a general consensus that the space offers significant business value and will be transformative indeed.

Are the smart connected devices—or the “things”—that form the IIoT the same machines and devices we know and understand today, only connected? Or do we need to invent new paradigms to define system functionality and product architecture in order to realize the value of the IoT? Read More