Creating a Profession for PLM Practitioners

The Home of Professional PLM

The PLM industry needs a recognised, worldwide professional structure for the people who work within it. The Professional PLM Initiative has been set up to fulfil this need.

The Initiative covers the whole spectrum of what it means to be 'professional' in PLM.  This will be a significant step forward, and will change the way that PLM practitioners work.

The Initiative is inclusive and interactive.  This web site shows the latest developments, and how you can get involved.

The drive to form a specific profession for PLM will raise profile and awareness amongst other disciplines, and will have the effect of expanding and integrating the worldwide PLM industry.

			As the Initiative reaches through the world's manufacturing countries it will spread good practice and cross-fertilise ideas. This effect can be leveraged by the Steering Group to actively influence and enhance the direction, growth and adoption of PLM.

As well as generating a neutral reference point for skills and competencies, the sharing of best practices from many countries will show everyone how PLM can be improved.

The decision-making role of the Steering Group creates a brand new mechanism to guide this to optimal effect.

By refocusing on the Fundamentals of PLM, raising standards, internationalising the approach and actively planning for the future, the Group can guide the Initiative to expand the overall marketplace for PLM.

Raising Standards

PLM understanding has become very vague and diffuse, with many different interpretations and with the distractions of Digital.  There are no standards of any kind that show whether PLM is being done well. Confusion and a lack of clear understanding impedes people from acting, adopting and improving.

In order to establish a profession, we must first establish and define clearly the parameters that apply to it. This will bring a new focus to PLM knowledge.

Focus on the Fundamentals

At its most recent meeting, the Steering Group identified 4 areas of initial activity.

Defining PLM

By going through this process, the Initiative will produce central, neutral working definitions of all aspects of PLM - not just "What PLM Is", but what skills and training are needed, how it should be done well, how it is being done differently in different parts of the world, and where it is going in the future.

As these definitions and standards are published, then everyone can see where it is possible to improve, and also show that the improvements are effective.

Cycle of Improvement

The Professional PLM Initiative is working to a 3-Year Plan so once these improvements start they will continue to build in a virtuous cycle.  Better understanding breeds better application, better feedback, and better neutral knowledge to refer to.  People gravitate around success.  They want to know how to understand PLM, and then do PLM well.

Internationalisation

The Goal

There will only be one PLM profession, and it must encompass the needs of PLM practitioners wherever they are in the world, and whatever their role in PLM.

Organisations should be able to hire with confidence, and deploy their PLM specialists in any part of the world knowing that they will be fully effective there.  This is a fundamental prerequisite for DASAMASA in modern manufacturing.

Integrators and consultants should be chosen on the basis of their certified PLM capabilities, and not the part of the world they come from.  Vendors should be able to sell PLM to an informed user base that strives for the highest reaches of PLM. PLM practitioners should be sure that their training and career path is based on an international body of knowledge that will be applicable wherever they work.

True mobility of PLM expertise is at the heart of PLM. It will come from one professional world.

Scope

During its two-year genesis the Professional PLM Initiative has reached over 30 countries, and the long-term aim is to establish this single, global PLM Profession - one in which PLM is at the same high level of adoption no matter which country or industry sector.

This involves more than just balancing the PLM message in Europe, the USA and India.  It means bringing industrial companies on board in countries where PLM is a neglected or unknown discipline, and spreading the word about the value of skills and training.

The Initiative will define the "Case for PLM", and set up an effective liaison framework with industrial companies in all of these countries so that they adopt the message.

Impact

This widespread feedback mechanism will begin to share standards and best practice and will integrate the many different approaches to PLM that are currently found in these countries.  It will eventually build a single neutral body of knowledge that will make PLM take-up faster for everyone.

It also gives the Steering Group leverage over this in a way that has not been possible before, so that the international integration can be guided to best effect.  The Initiative becomes a control mechanism that allows active direction of PLM development, to resolve the long-term issues and barriers that still need to be addressed.

Certification and Training

In many ways, PLM certification is long overdue.  Companies would not let their accounts be prepared (or their HR be managed, or their engineering be carried out) by unqualified staff, and they should apply the same diligence with PLM.

However, such certification is very complex.  It is fairly straightforward to say that vendors, integrators and consultancies should only put forward accredited staff for client assignments, but they have a different spectrum of skills to users, and some part of what they know must be proprietary.  For more technical roles, it could be that staff need to be qualified in the use of vendor software (for example), so the vendor's own accreditation standards may need to be part of the mix.  It will need active involvement from the vendors if this is to be achieved.

For users too, certification will be a career transformation.  The PLM Manager's skills and expertise will become clear to colleagues and management; achievements in PLM will be recognised; training for higher roles can be planned; an upward progression to senior management will be backed up by a comprehensive background in business improvement; and younger staff can be brought through to fill the gap.

In general, a well-devised, international certification structure will bring balanced education opportunities, better provision of training, more receptive and active users, properly-resourced implementations and the skills pull-through to support this into the future.

Achieving this will require thought and preparation.  It will need input from all parts of the PLM spectrum to get this right.

Controlling the Evolution of PLM

If there is to be a new PLM profession, it must meet the needs of the PLM industry now, and also in 10 and 20 years' time.  This must be achieved at a time when PLM itself may be evolving into a different discipline because of the pull towards a 'Digital World'; and when the ever-increasing use of Agile means that old career models may be obsolete..

For two decades the PLM industry has been rudderless, wandering where technology trends have taken it. The outcome today is that the global take-up of PLM is probably less than 50% of what it ought to be.  For every product-oriented company that is applying PLM effectively, there are several that have yet to properly get started.

This is in nobody's best interest.  Successful implementors still feel isolated, and vendors and advisors are selling to a deflated and widely unresponsive marketplace.

The Steering Group creates a new 'Voice of PLM' that can act to guide the Initiative towards a future Vision, and provides the mechanism to make it happen.  This means that leading user and provider organisations can decide how PLM ought to evolve, and influence it in that direction to achieve specific outcomes.

In other words, for the first time there will be a way to actively lead the PLM industry worldwide towards a better Vision of the future.  We need to agree what that Vision should be - and this is why participation in the Steering Group is important.

Expanding the Market

A chance quotation from a vendor in 2005 is still true today, 15 years later:-

"The market doesn't understand why it's doing PLM."

Even with the combined training provision of commercial and academic institutions, the number of people being trained in PLM around the world is in the low hundreds.  It should be thousands.  This means that the majority of implementations are being managed by people who have learned about PLM by trial and error, or from word of mouth.

This is a major cause of failure. All major PLM projects are ultimately controlled by the in-house team. If they are unsure of themselves, or learning as they work, the result is always underachievement. If they cannot articulate the benefits of PLM, then many opportunities simply fail to get backing.  Despite the purported $50bn size of the PLM market place, it is significantly under-performing.

By bringing together PLM practitioners from around the world to establish a single, global profession, the Initiative will highlight the skills and experience in the common body of knowledge and act as a focal point to raise the profile of PLM in the minds of business leaders.  As it reaches into all of the major manufacturing countries, it will create a global perception of PLM that has not been possible before.

Industrial companies can coalesce around this new model. Emerging markets can learn from the leaders, assimilating the techniques and benefits and creating a positive cycle of PLM awareness and adoption.

The way to influence this impact on the PLM market is to join the Steering Group.  Organisations of all types are welcome - the common factor is the will to improve the world of PLM.

For users, the benefits come in the form of shared knowledge and insights; connections with other thought leaders; and being part of the 'Voice of PLM' that can shape the way that PLM develops.

For vendors, providers and advisers the benefits include a new collective interaction with the user base as the professional criteria are defined; establishing the standards and the value of the professional skills that are already provided; and expanding the overall take-up of PLM as more companies and regions of the world become aware and better able to adopt.

Full details can be found on the Steering Group Page.  You can request more information, or add your thoughts on the market impact, via impact@professionalplm.org.

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