Episode Summary:
Today’s products, and the processes that make them, are changing. The Internet of Things, 5G and global wireless connectivity is altering the way we purchase, use and make everything in our lives from apparel to automobiles. T-shirts that monitor your cardiovascular system? Cars that react to your mood? They’re coming, and more, and for companies that research, design, manufacture and market them, it means more variations on everything with tougher market conditions. Time-to-market, margins, safety, environmental impact and regulatory issues have never been more important. TECHNIA CEO Magnus Falkman describes how modern, integrated PLM is changing to suit changing technology, and why all industries must make the shift to smart systems, and soon.
How can digitalization help accelerate sustainable product creation throughout the value chain?
Dive more in depth here.
Transcript:
Jim Anderton: Hello everyone and welcome to Designing the Future. It's widely understood today that creativity and productivity are inextricably linked, and that one of the keys to keeping teams creative without burying them in the minutia of day-to-day operations is with integrated software. It used to be in major industries like automotive and aerospace projects, projects moved as much paper as they did metal, a situation that slowed development and ran up costs. Is there a better way to do it? Well today I'll be exploring that question with Technia Chief Executive Officer Magnus Falkman. Magnus, welcome to the show.
Magnus Falkman: Thank you, Jim. Great to be here.
Jim Anderton: Magnus, I've been talking in a roundabout way about PLM, of course, because now we expect designers to do more than just make a widget or a component. They have to think about the entire life expectancy of the product, and we often talk about a value chain and the stakeholders in that value chain. What do we mean by stakeholder and what is the value chain?
Magnus Falkman: It's a great question. I think from my point of view, starting 20 years back we were talking about the designers, but now we are digitalizing the entire chain from the idea to the manufacturing and even the aftermarket. And along that you have of course like the R&D, design, development, simulation software of the different disciplines. Like most products, they are not just mechanical, they're of course electrical. Software is a bigger and bigger part of that. And then you have this simulation aspects, and, you have the manufacturing aspect and aftermarket.
So, PLM digitalization to me today spans the entire chain from the from the idea to the to the obsolescence of any product.
And of course, that's what we are targeting and where we focus to help our customers.
Magnus Falkman: We definitely are, consumers are, but so are governmental bodies. There are a lot of regulations also that our customers need to keep in mind when they design products. And then of course you know if you look at consumers, they’re becoming more and more aware and more and more concerned about like “am I facing with two different alternatives, is this sustainable product or not?” Maybe more customers will choose to sustainable product. I think it's a competitive advantage for many customers.
Jim Anderton: Magnus, I have a sense that young consumers these days are less interested in that kind of flat pack of cheap products, use it, discard it world and they're now more interested in something which is either longer lasting, higher quality, or is more circular, basically the circular economy. Is this reflected in the need for PLM these days?
Magnus Falkman: I think we see it around here and we have especially in certain segment that that has been pushing these like both circular economy and the lifespan of products in general that the market is asking for more sustainable products, supply chains. We at Technia have worked quite a lot on being inspired by that and we have created our own “why” statement that we kind of live by, which we aspire to, which is making product creation sustainable – meaning that we want to help customers not just design the best products, but the best sustainable product. And then, what is defined as sustainable? It has many meanings of course depending on what industry and what segments and where in the world you are. But we believe it's a more and more important topic.
Jim Anderton: Today, so much software is cloud based and integrated PLM software is no exception there. With the cloud does this change the way that designers the way that that manufacturers engineers that the way they approach the use of this software or is it seamless whether I load it from a floppy disk in my old desktop, or whether I pull it from the virtual world.
Jim Anderton: That you mentioned democratization, and that's a that's a very sensitive subject in the design community right now, because we can think of democratization in a couple of ways: you can democratize the design across the enterprise; but you can, but you can also democratize the design down to the customer level. And in some cases, some futurists have predicted a world in which the buyer of the Volkswagen will complain about the steering wheel, and he will feed information back up the supply chain and the designer of the steering wheel will make changes based on this sort of real time feedback. Now it's that sounds like chaos, but it could be an opportunity. Is this going to be the way the way it works in the future?
Magnus Falkman: There is enormous interesting potential with the technologies that are now entering the market and I'm sure we will see some disruptions compared to how it used to be: “what’s the value for me as a consumer?” What is the value of democratization? But I think for me, shortcutting the end consumer and designer creating a more feedback loop is clearly one thing that I would appreciate as a customer. And then I also think that giving more designers possibility to use the best tools, which is what cloud can enable, you don't have all you don't need all that heavy expensive infrastructure in your small design office. You can basically rent the capacity you need when you have the projects that requires them. I think those are great opportunities for a big part of the design world.
Jim Anderton: There was a time when, design engineers used a simple rendering package. It was a relatively simple software that replaced the drafting table and the pencil with the screen. And that that really was the extent of the change.
Now we're looking at a world that has generative design, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality all at the same time. And many of these things are different software packages developed by different companies. Is there any difficulty integrating all these things into one sort of overall package? Can the cloud help in that way? I've heard that individuals are trying to do this at the works level, can have difficulty.
Magnus Falkman: I think that's that that's not the new challenge, Jim. I think the fascinating thing is all the new opportunities in these technologies is what can be done in the cloud. Let's see how much further we can push the openness. We at Technia of course represent D’Assault Systèmes primarily. And they are doing, I think really cool things on centralizing their applications around feed experiences connecting design, simulation, manufacturing tools towards one platform where designers can work on the same models and so on which is really promising.
Jim Anderton: Magnus, in the industry I'm familiar with, the automotive industry, we had a natural 5-to-7-year product life cycle for a standard platform; so, if a change was had to be implemented, we would make a decision change now, or wait for the natural redesign of the product and implement the change later. And in those days, it was possible to tell the customer basically that no, you can't have that improvement yet, but in the next model, you can have it and the world accepted that. And today the time to market is so much faster it's so important to change and alter your product constantly, the redesign process seems to never end at this point it. Does that put extra pressure on the PLM side of this business? Do you have to plan now for a time horizon, that's maybe a week or a month instead of a year?
Magnus Falkman: I think a good PLM system will enable you to set up whatever cycle your industry and your customers’ demands. And of course, one is PLM, another is the logistical change. How can you deal with this in your factories and so on, but it's clear what we see is that many products are not final because software keeps updating also after you got it in your pocket or if you got it parked in your driveway.
So it's also a matter of definition. Then the physical parts will not change. But I think we see a trend where more frequent changes and more shorter time cycles and also during a life cycle we have a more controlled introduction of improvements, which is, I think natural and that that will continue quite clearly to me. It’s not going to go back even if it can, even if it was simpler.
Jim Anderton: Magnus, when we think of engineering change, it's the difficulty that every enterprise encounters in industry and we know that the traditional renderings would be revised revision A revision B revision C, and in frustration sometimes the engineering manager would claim that we're going through the whole alphabet with so many changes, all of which have to be managed. Do you think of PLM as a change management tool? Or a planning tool? Or is it both? How should someone think about this?
Magnus Falkman: I think it's both. Clearly it has to be. It's your master data. When it comes to engineering and that means that you have to have both the latest release designs, but the ongoing new cycles and be able to manage this simultaneously in parallel. But of course, keeping track what's accurate, what's for what users, or, what's for what group of engineers and for what purpose? It's tough. That's why you have a PLM system, Jim, to be able to manage this complexity.
Jim Anderton: Magnus, there's a very large Chicago based manufacturer of commercial airplanes that outsources extensively in new ways with a new product where and very large assemblies that are made across the planet, and they're ferried by cargo aircraft. There's another large maker of commercial aircraft based in Toulouse, France, which uses a similar strategy of making large assemblies in different places and pulling them together. So by pushing that part of the design and management process out to the supplier base, does that make the PLM process simpler or more complex for a company that wants to outsource like this?
Magnus Falkman: Of course, it makes it more complex. You need a great PLM tool to support it, otherwise you're going to have a lot of challenges. So the PLM backbone is the enabler for that kind of way of working.
Jim Anderton: The elephant in the room and there's no way to avoid this, is security. Data security is crucial; we're now talking about a cloud-based world. In America, ITER restrictions for some defense related items are a factor; there is proprietary information that your customer may need to keep quiet. I visited some factories where for security, literally, laptops are carried to next to machines, and cables are connected to avoid using even Ethernet networks, let alone the cloud. Can cloud based systems be secure enough to take care of customers, perhaps in the military world or with very sensitive information.
Magnus Falkman: So I think there are different parameters, but what is clear is that the threat of cyber crime and different actors is affecting all of us, individuals, companies and governments. I would say in general, do we see that any locally managed installation is necessarily more secure than a cloud installation? I think there is no argument that would say that that is true, because we've seen over the last couple of years, a lot of you know vulnerabilities being exposed on locally managed infrastructure and that the big actors hosting and running the cloud offers are more skilled to deal with the threats in their cases. Then you have local, you have governmental regulations and things that do that some products just won't be able to do it more difficult from legal point of view to manage in a cloud environment; but I strongly believe that the cloud may actually have a security advantage compared to on premises, depending on your size and the skills of your team. But I think cloud actually can help customer be more secure when it comes to their IP.
Jim Anderton: Magnus, originally when CAD/CAM evolved, many enterprises set a young engineer and made that individual the champion, the corporate champion for the software and they lead the integration. PLM the same thing. ERP the same thing. Very often the way it was rolled out in a corporation is to train one individual; that individual became the standard bearer for that implementation. Is that true of cloud-based system such as yours as well? Do you recommend that that an enterprise use that sort of single person as the lead warrior?
Magnus Falkman: In my experience of 20 years of PLM is that any type of major change requires a thought through change management. And if that is one strong champion or a number of champions per site I mean, you need like my experience, the biggest really simple failure when rolling out these kind of enterprise systems is that you underestimate the complexity of changes in people's behavior. Which is typically what we're talking about. And if you're doing that with an on prem or a cloud, it doesn't matter. You need to be on top of the change management and have an organization that is responsible and accountable for making the change happen.
Jim Anderton: For small and medium sized enterprises, cloud in some ways it's a huge opportunity because smaller firms will have access to the same level of technology that that large firms have with a cloud-based system. As you mentioned, you can serve pay as you play and just purchase what you what you need as you need it at the same. Sometime but at the same time that I hear that large customers are demanding much tighter integration with their supplier base as a result of cloud connectivity.
So, if your customer is a major automotive aerospace company, they want to look deep inside your operation and sometimes in real time and watch what's going on. Does this mean that smaller engineering firms now have to think About PLM from their customers perspective rather than just their own.
Magnus Falkman: In certain industries, yes. I think where the bigger OEMs dictate the rules potentially, but I think it varies from industry to industry and company to company. But I think for many customers of ours, it's not just their own needs, but also the network they operate and that dictates what is needed for them to be successful.
Jim Anderton: One final question. For a firm that's looking at adopting an integrated cloud-based PLM system such as yours, what are the key questions they should ask? How should they approach you and say, “I have a problem, please help me solve it”?
Magnus Falkman: What we like to do and what we try to do with our customers when we engage is to do a value assessment. So what are the business problems they have and what are the tools and potential process changes that that we can help them with to realize untapped business potential. So, we want to be a partner to our customers and help them guide them in the digitalization journey, and be there for the long run. This is what we were doing done for the last 20 years.
Jim Anderton: Magnus Falkman, CEO of Technia. Thanks for joining us on our show today.
Magnus Falkman: Thanks for having me, Jim. Great conversation.
Jim Anderton: And thank you for watching Designing the Future. See you again next time.