Selfish Gene - Can India evolve in digital economy ?

I attended the CII West Tech Summit 2015 last week. It had  an array of distinguished guests  and series of topics impacting industries.

Here are some of the highlights I captured:

Inaugural address:

·         Mr Sanjay Kirloskar gave insights into huge potential of western region contributing to  25% of nation's  GDP

·         Dr  Ajeenkya Patil laid emphasis  on ever increasing role industry can play in shaping leaders of tomorrow.

·         The transition of India as nation from art and craft driven traditional skilled nation to mechanized mass production was beautifully laid by Dr Katragadda. Numerous examples on innovation in ancient India can no longer just surprise us but give sense of belief in our potential.

Plenary session: How knowledge driven economy can boost vision of Make in India?

·         Mr Kirloskar shared some insights into latest advances in use of augmented reality, to its value chain of solutions.

·         Mr Jehengir from Forbes Marshall spoke about freedom to experiment  and natural process of  socialization. He gave very interesting insights how instinctive and counter intuitive ways are helping them overcome   complex technology challenges and create sophisticated solutions.

·         Mr Parag Satpute shared deep mining expertise and how remote monitoring is crucial for safety of operations.

·         Mr Teja talked about how technology driven disruptions are causing paradigm shift across traditional industries. New business models are changing competitive landscape.

Industry forums

There were host of discussions around how industry is perceiving trends around  ICT Innovations.  Automotive was sector in focus embracing digital mechanism to delivery safety, sustainability and affordability.
There were interesting discussions on how contributions from India are making impact to wider audiences in context of Global economy.

Defence manufacturing
Lastly the final session on Defence was full  of anecdotal speeches. Capt Kalra  (Retd) shared insights  into his experiences  bringing  defence knowledge  as private contractor to Indian Defence manufacturing. I plan to read  book "Selfish gene" from which he quoted a statement of very profound importance. 

As a part of evolution every gene replicates itself to create an identical copy. Yet there is slight difference that leads to successor having higher chances of survival.

Lt Gen Shekatkar(Retd.) shared importance  of why  indigenization is vital for national security.  New paradigm will open avenues for private sector to grow in areas erstwhile not available.

Quote from his speech:
If you want to walk fast, walk alone. If you want to walk long, walk together.

What I learned ?
Summit confirmed the great opportunity for India as nation to transform itself in the knowledge economy. India has to realize its strengths and opportunities. We cannot bask in the past glory. Neither can we hope things will happen our way just because opportunities exist.

Lot of ground needs to be covered and right application of technology to create new profitable businesses. These will help industries take our nation to next level of evolution. 

IT for Manufacturing : Can SMB adapt ?

 

Last week on , 21 July 2015  I attended a conference in Nashik organized by CII. The workshop was titled ERP “A tool to drive your business”. Participants were small medium  business owners , ERP vendors and solution  partners. The workshop threw some great insights into highly engaging topics regarding IT adoption in manufacturing.

Relevance of  IT for Indian SMB

In his keynote  address, Mr Sudhir Mutalik,  Chairman- North Maharashtra Zonal Council, CII emphasized the role SMBs play in growth of  Indian economy. He shared, these industries account for staggering  1 crore 14 lakh enterprises in India.

Sudhir , himself a first generation  entrepreneur highlighted the huge gap in productivity for Indian SMBs  as compared to counterparts in developed countries.

While 95 % of industries fall into this bucket, however these industries are highly unorganized. He further emphasized that  renewed focus to "Make in India" requires Indian SMB to transform.

Opportunity as he pointed lies in the intersection  of Manufacturing  and  IT adoption. While challenges to SMB  are unique,  IT adoption can throw open new possibilities to be more efficient  , more  competitive and most importantly  grow rapidly.

ERP adoption for SMBs

ERP help scale and streamline operations for large corporations. However SMBs have lagged behind in ERP adoption. SAP , a market leader in ERP space presented their product offerings. Pressure on component manufacturers to lower cost in order to  innovate and be competitive  was highlighted.

Graphic on 1000 island dilemma (see picture) perhaps truly represents the fragmented nature of IT landscapes for many enterprises.

Mr Khanna, owner Kimplas piping systems shared his experiences in selecting, implementing  and using ERP solution from SAP.

Fujitsu  consulting presented their offerings including ability to share risk with customers.

Road ahead : What are the challenges ?

While need for IT is clear and there are solutions in market then important question  is why aren't  business  adopting these solutions ?
In my view there were two fundamental  barriers , which also surfaced from discussions:

• Flexibility of IT solution to cater to Industry and enterprise specific unique demands. While vendors claim 70 % of solutions can be used out of the box, enterprises are wary of the claim. The balance 30% which is unique to the enterprise , if not implemented correctly could result into failed implementation and be a disaster for businesses.
• Cost : Writing is on the wall. Current Cost of software Product  licenses , infrastructure , services, training and support together is simply way beyond what SMB  can afford. While SaaS , subscription based pricing and cloud deployment  were discussed , I think vendors and solution partners  need to work more on this front.

What I learnt ?

SMBs in India and perhaps elsewhere in developing economies represent vital element of  nation's  economy. There is huge opportunity  for IT to empower these industries with growth. Software vendors and Industries need to  figure out  a right answer to the challenges of solution flexibility at the right cost.

Please share your comments.

Copies everywhere : Where is my master?

Making an international business travel has its own set of  hassles. My recent experience of interaction with travel  agencies threw open some important issues. These issues of   inefficient use of technology are the ones we face regularly   in enterprise arena.

Chaos

It all started with a case where responding to my request, the agency had to coordinate with another third party and  shared my information incorrect. My name was okay, but  email address and phone number were referring other person. I will not go into the chaos that I kept observing .. Until a point I made sure that person who initiated called me and acknowledged that she had made an error.

Paradoxically, this agency apparently with global presence had a tag line on how efficient they are with processes , technology etc.

Copies, copies everywhere. Where to find my master?

It was not difficult for me to imagine why such issues must be occurring. This case they had an email interface for dealing with users for business operation. For every request  I need to fill a form with information and send email. For example if I need ticket,insurance, forex, etc every time the same process. 

Consequence lot of information like name, email, phone, passport details etc were repeatedly  asked by different departments. Imagine this for every traveler and every occurrence of travel. Not only it causes user fatigue  in repeatedly sharing same data, but increases risk of failure with so many copies of same information floating around.

Sounds primitive, yet familiar? Can we relate this with our everyday life in enterprise world. The complex product and manufacturing data still lies in those silos of Excel, word and power points. These copies are being exchanged and business goes on with agony and frustration.

Misery of Email and Office Applications
“Computers to be designed to make our lives easier” was a quote I recollect from the movie Jobs I saw recently. No doubt Email was great invention and office applications made it so easy to create content.

However what have gotten ourselves into is the trap , a habit that is becoming more and more painful to the extent going back to paper world could be more efficient than what we are doing today.

What I learned?
While there is lot of promise in future technology of connected devices, cloud and mobility for consumers, Enterprise IT in particular struggles to free itself from the old paradigm. I hope not too far from today, we will be evolving to efficient use of computing devices in business world.

So next time you send an email or create Excel spread sheet, think twice whether you are creating copies for yourself and generating more chaos !

Regards,
Mahesh

Cloud and its potential to transform PLM landscape

What are the typical scenarios where cloud can be potential differentiator in customer's business ?

Two posts caught my attention one on Applying Cloud to Mid size business and success of  Dutch Enterprises with cloud.

Later post contains plenty of success stories using AWS.

"...almost industry vertical Dutch companies are moving ahead rapidly to ensure that they can keep up with the global competition. Dutch enterprises from Media & Advertising, Financial Services, Energy, Transportation and Shipping, Life Sciences and Healthcare are experiencing the transformative nature of Cloud Computing; how IT can be enabler of innovation and greatly improve agility with traditional organizations"

Big  question that comes to my mind when and how can we see more of these stories from PLM world?

Personally these stories from other enterprises fuel optimism that cloud can really happen soon in context of PLM solutions as well. After all PLM is about managing product information, surrounding processes and associated people.


Here are some cases I thought, cloud can make a difference:
Collaboration with Suppliers:
Collaboration between OEM and Suppliers for design and manufacturing data exchange is one case where Enterprises struggle. Based on degree of collaboration the data exchange can be highly integrated to loosely coupled.
Can cloud add value by rapid on-boarding of suppliers within OEM ecosystem? This is especially true with lot of small-sized suppliers who do not have capabilities to deploy and administer IT environments.
Using cloud to integrate these suppliers into value chain will perhaps lead to new wave of innovation for OEM, as increased product content comes from suppliers.


Design collaboration with Alliance Partners:
With Global development and manufacturing becoming inevitable, exchange of data is another issue where performance is the key. Getting design data replicated across the globe within available window period is the key. Many IT organizations struggle to handle the multi-site replication.

Rather than spending internal resources, it makes sense for IT organizations to leverage expertise of cloud providers who are rapidly improving data replication and availability front.

Value-added services:
Like it or not managing product data with excel is something that happens a lot in the reality. Consider example of computing part cost.
Is it possible to provide a third party service to compute part cost including tooling, packaging and transportation cost?

Using cloud based SaaS services it will save organizations effort to deploy & maintain custom solutions but will give opportunity to built in standards and reference external sources efficiently.

I am sure there are many more areas where cloud can be used to as competitive  advantage ..  Looking forward to the possibilities !

PLM and usability

What will drive the Future user interfaces ..
Recent article on how third-party iOS developers are creating apps that could eventually drive the next generation user interfaces was interesting.

...innovative new methods for user interaction. Designs that do away with buttons, standard user interface elements suggested by Apple and built into the iOS development SDK, mean taking risks since you’re asking customers to start in unfamiliar territory, but in the base cases, they also result in a kind of new life for your iOS device.

The article further talks about gestures adding to new experience of intuitive interfaces ..

...Gestures are where it’s at for a lot of the newest apps out there. Gestures handle everything from data entry, to deleting and adding new items, to switching views and updating information.

PLM and usability ..
Fact that usability of PLM solutions have gone down in general is bitter truth and duly acknowledged in a Boeing presentation referred in PLM conference 

...functionality and cost of ownership increased due to more complexity, it was evident that usability decreased

Even today we see PLM solutions being developed with clunky interfaces, and usability always comes as second thought to functionality. Perhaps the spreadsheet mindset dominates the users so much that they expect a system with hundred plus columns and thousands of records to be managed with ease in an enterprise solution !  I understand few PLM vendors are putting serious effort towards revamping the Usability.
Read analyst briefing summary from Siemens PLM. I liked emphasis on data in context -
...manage large volumes of data but only use data in context to make the best decision.

My Thoughts .. 
Just as consumer space, third party developers are driving the parent towards UI innovation ,can this model be replicated in mainstream PLM world.

Like can we have any opportunity for community to create user interface components that can be plugged into existing PLM platforms. Important to keep the base layer with PLM vendor so that we do not end up into compatibility issues.

This model might be there in some form, yet making the whole architecture open so that PLM vendors act more of OS layer and let community drive and compete for better user experience might resolve the increasing problem of usability ...

Architecting PLM solutions using APIs

API Platform

News article in techcrunch on apigee analytics platform caught my attention. This led me to investigate the apigee API platform and what capabilities it offers for the enterprises.

Apigee gives you a complete API platform to drive customer reach, create innovative apps, and extract valuable business insights.

apigee offers interesting capabilities such as Gateway Services that allow enterprises to transform your services into well designed API in the app economy.  apigee is freemium that allows you to experiment and adapt. I walked through its tutorial to create a wrapper API around weather service. 

How can this connect with challenges in the Enterprise world?

While I was reading all about API management, in the background I was wondering how these concepts can be applied to enterprise world.

Most success stories on the apigee were based on ecommerce or around the retail consumer world. However I found Bechtel case study that could strike cord with business challenges in PLM.

Bechtel a world leader in engineering, construction, and project management, used API as strategy to address efficiency  and productivity improvements overcoming information silos across enterprise.

I liked following passages in particular:

… Due to the sheer size and complexity, it would be prohibitively expensive to re-platform or re-architect our entire portfolio such that our applications could be used easily on mobile devices.

.. To us, knowledge workers are those require immediate access to small amounts of information and who may never have the need to use the full features of a “traditional” desktop application.

“role specific” functionality via intuitive user interfaces enables us to significantly reduce the time taken to make our knowledge workers productive..

How can we apply lessons learned in the PLM world?

Blog post PLM Implementations and Open APIs by Oleg provided some useful insights on how APIs can play a role with PLM.

…. semantically-resource-oriented-APIs can provide an easy and open way to interact with PLM system to build the most effective services.

These and the lessons from Bechtel case study can lead multiple possibilities.

• Scenario 1: Today many organizations are struggling to replace legacy PLM and excels with next generation integrated systems. But adaptation is often slow and ineffective.
• Scenario 2: Second aspect is mobility is yet to see real world adoption with PLM. Though vendors have capabilities, the usage has not gone at a pace expected.

My thoughts – Use the opportunity to replace/refactor legacy systems by exploring use of API approach supporting mobile usage for product data collaboration. Of course underlying platforms’ support will play a crucial role, yet keeping the API mindset while architecting next generation PLM solutions might help.

Top 5 challenges with PLM solution performance

PLM solutions aim to increase efficiencies  with goals such as "reduce Product development cycle time" or  "shorten time to market".

Reality check 
Paradoxically many cases PLM systems rolled out have deep performance issues that cause user frustration and can nullify collaborative benefits of PLM .. If it takes longer to search part.. or longer to rollup cost , users are annoyed and consequence is inefficiency in product development.


The User Expectation ..
Unfortunately, comparisons are with consumer IT .. Once a user asked me how come Google searches and delivers millions of results in fraction of seconds .. while you take minutes to load few thousand parts ?

To an IT educated person, answer could be explained giving myriad of explanations. Nevertheless I think the question, why PLM systems cannot improve to the level of consumer applications need to be thought. Even  with perceived benefits of PLM, I think it is not unreasonable for users to expect performance of lotus notes and excel with PLM solutions. Since this is one thing they cannot wait for .. getting data in shortest time.

Of course there are advances, for example embedding indexed searches, yet I have not seen PLM solutions truly scale up to the level where performance issues are not the top concerns. Performance coupled with usability causes even more trouble.


Top Performance issues :
What are the top 5 challenges with PLM solutions with regards to performance ?
 .. based on my experience here is one list I could come up with :

1. Navigation: BOM Tree navigation , multi-level hierarchical navigation, structured navigation unique to PLM
2. Search: Based on attribute combination and displaying result information, structure compares
3. Rollups: Cost, Compliance, mass rollups, Bulk operations release ECO
4. Document Access : Vaulting, Upload/ Download file data
5. Integration : Product Data exchange  with upstream and  downstream enterprise systems

I hope sometime soon, some of these typical challenges get mitigated with future PLM solutions to the extent users are able to efficiently work with large data volumes at ease.

Pl share your thoughts ..

-Mahesh