PLM and the Changing Nature of Design

I am honored to contribute to this re-launch of Time Compression.  It’s a well-understood fact that in today’s harshly competitive environment, manufacturers must meet multiple targets in order to produce a successful product. Speed, affordability, and creativity all play a major role.

This may seem odd to say in a magazine about reducing product development time, but to understand the value of digital product lifecycle management (PLM) technologies and the power of design in the 21st century we must go beyond “faster, cheaper, cooler.”  We must change how we think of design and PLM.   The new design paradigm can best be described by a simple change in preposition.  A product will no longer be designed by an individual “for” somebody.  A product will be designed “with” somebody. Digital product development knowledge, communicated in the graphical language of 3D, will be unlocked and shared with a variety of constituents, allowing for direct feedback on the product design. This concept has far reaching implications for the future of design, for the future of manufacturing, and the future of society in general. 

Since the introduction of 3D CAD in the 1980s, we have seen incredible gains in product development technology.  Then digital mock-up technology allowed the creation of complete virtual product prototypes – not just a collection of parts, but product creation in context. Manufacturers now design products in full detail, simulate functions, analyze performance and anticipate interactions among the different components.  This brings products to market more quickly and at higher quality.  The use of 3D CAD/CAM programs today has become pervasive throughout all industries, including everything from shampoo bottles to satellites, from aircraft and vehicles to cell phones.  Even the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain was modeled perfectly in a virtual 3D world prior to construction.

Virtual design makes it possible to imagine and innovate, to share design and production processes, to simulate and anticipate problems, and to better manage resources prior to any physical production.  This shared knowledge enables decision-making not only at the global level, but at the local level, as well.  Through implementation of a PLM strategy, 3D design data integrates the entire manufacturing process – spanning production, maintenance and recycling.  This allows users to virtually optimize products, identify and eliminate malfunctions or production errors prior to any physical build.  Companies that have made the transition from 2D drawings to high-end visualization and 3D PLM strategies have reaped significant benefits, resulting in products brought to market easily 30% faster than traditional methodologies. With this quicker time to market, companies have more time to develop innovative designs, ultimately boosting a company’s competitive edge and customer loyalty. 

Successful enterprises today recognize digital content as their key manufacturing asset, using a 3D collaborative environment as the natural vehicle to leverage this value.  By creating a single IP repository that shares common product data and information across the enterprise, re-use of content from previous designs becomes much more possible.  There is no need to “re-invent the wheel,” as the original design data exists in a best practices repository.  Digitalization creates the ability to store, harvest and continually build upon an existing wealth of product-related information. 

Additionally, with 3D PLM comes the ability to involve non-traditional players into the product development process, expanding design from the individual to the collaborative.  Stakeholders can ideally share a common understanding of their product’s business objectives.  Relationships become seamless so that engineering can automatically know via purchasing what the additional cost or savings impact is on a design change. Unlocking and sharing the product development information with additional constituents outside of engineering allows for additional collaboration and feedback closer to the point of product creation, when changes are the least expensive. 

Even more compelling is that the latest Web-based 3D technologies can share knowledge and enable feedback beyond the manufacturing organization right down to the end-user.  This is far beyond traditional PLM environments, traditionally limited to the world of the supply chain. The value of a consumer seeing a product as it is being conceived, experiencing its operation in a virtual world, and providing direct feedback to improve its market attractiveness, is immeasurable in an economy that demands faster and more effective responses to market opportunities. This approach better captures and defines real end-user requirements, enables targeted product design, and improves the success rate of the product development process.

There is little to no room for product development missteps these days.  Our goal is to continue to develop technologies that immerse the real and the virtual through the universal language of 3D, helping manufacturers enable continual innovation in product/process development, leverage intellectual assets across the entire product lifecycle, and ensure that new product development is based upon current customer desire and reasonable price point. 

This is the future of design and the future of PLM.  Design is no longer a process of individual creation.  And PLM is no longer about optimizing that process of individual creation in a linear design-to-manufacturing manner. It is not just about faster-cheaper products.  It is about collaboration and innovation for better products, a better future, and a better life.