Johnny Bench(mark)

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Stan Przybylinski

Back in the 70s when I was much more of a baseball fan, the Cincinnati Reds were the Big Red Machine. Powerful. Efficient. Talented. Complete.

Why would I use this as a title for a blog post? Because in our role as strategic consultants to end user companies (60-70% of CIMdata’s revenues in most years), we often help them to define their PLM strategies, develop requirements, and select and implement PLM-enabling solutions. In this role, we have front row seats to solution benchmarks, where the leading PLM solution suppliers are asked to show how their solutions can meet a set of customer-defined scenarios.

And this is why I chose the Hall of Fame catcher for my title. All of these companies should be like the Big Red Machine. Efficient. Talented. Complete. They should hit these meatballs out of the park. Why do we believe this? Because in our analyst role, we work directly with the large solution suppliers and we KNOW that their solutions can kill most of these scenarios. Unfortunately, their performance is often like the 1962 Mets, one of the worst baseball teams in history. (Sorry to say I am a Met fan.)

Why is this? One of the biggest issues is that they just do not listen or read. The benchmark scenarios we help clients develop are very detailed, and we work hard with them to make them clear. But, in most cases the solution suppliers ignore certain aspects of the scenario. There can be good reasons for this. Some do not have the necessary functionality to do it. Or it may require customization, and we typically encourage benchmark development to use out-of-the-box (OOTB) functionality.

More often it is a corollary to the theorem that the “P” in PLM is not product, it is politics. Incumbent solution suppliers often do not take these processes seriously, thinking their existing position or “wallet share” will protect them. That may often be true. But is it worth the risk of upsetting your customer when you could actually do a very good job?

Future posts will highlight “News from the Front” on specific good and bad performances we witnessed with our industrial clients. The stories are true, the names will be changed to protect the guilty.

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(Not So) Cruel Intentions

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Stan Przybylinski

When speaking about design processes using Computer-Aided Design (CAD) solutions, people often refer to “engineering intent.” Not being a CAD guy (and not playing one on TV either), I would ask colleagues about exactly what this meant. Most of the conversations left me confused, because they would talk about history trees, and the problems with one person having to make changes to another’s design and having to unravel the steps that were used to transform shapes into the desired part or assembly.

This left me believing that a lot of what people referred to as engineering intent was really “geometric intent,” the steps that a person executed using their CAD solution of choice to create the desired result. As a lapsed mathematician, I knew that there were many geometric ways to skin the cat, if you will. You can get to a desired geometric end result using different transformations. How you got there was a function of what ways your chosen CAD solution provided to you, and you knowledge of how best to use them. That is not to say that there is NO engineering intent in these steps, it was just that what I was hearing was more about geometry than engineering.

One explicit way that engineering intent does get into models is through parametrics. The requirements that engineers start with can often be expressed by mathematical relationships between faces or other features in the model. Another is what some term “design in context,” where there are contraints on your model that result from the other adjacent parts and assemblies into which your part must fit.

So why is this important, and why did I choose the title of a 90s “chick flick” for this post? Because in the last few years, several CAD suppliers have introduced solutions that make it easier to repurpose, modify, and otherwise change existing geometry. Siemens PLM Software talks about Synchronous Technology. SpaceClaim is making a business around helping people downstream from geometry creation to tweak things to make them easier to use (like CAE analysts or manufacturing people or people in supply chains).

It is this issue that raises serious questions for me. How can downstream users modify existing geometry and really KNOW they are not doing so in a way that affects the true engineering intent? You can’t really embed all of that intent in the model, and downstream people may not know about the real requirements. If your analysis reveals a weakness in the structure, and the analyst can change that structure, how can you be sure that the resulting part still meets the original spec? This example is not so bad, because if they are in the same organization you can have it kick off an engineering change process to make
sure this happens.

But what about people outside your four walls and not so clearly under your control? Contract manufacturing organizations for instance. The results of such downstream changes could indeed be cruel to your organization. (Not sure that Reese, Ryan and Selma thought about this one.)

OK, if anybody is still listening, please explain to me the error of my ways. I look forward to the discussion.

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Excuse me, is this seat taken?

Posted on February 28, 2011 by Stan Przybylinski

Over the last several months, we have been asked by several players in the PLM economy about “seat counts” for various PLM solutions. This information is generally not published and is almost always confusing. The definition of a “seat” has as many variations as the ones creating the estimate or asking the question.

So, just what is a seat? Airplane seat (many of us in the PLM economy see too many of those, don’t we?), car seat (my time with those is up, at least for while), and I hope to see the two seats on the right in my down time. And, I also do not mean a SEAT.

Almost all of the solution providers in the PLM space apportion at least some of their portfolio by the seat. Over the last couple years, PTC has changed the way they report their numbers, and in their prepared remarks they provide great detail on seats of their products. Some solution suppliers occasionally talk about average seat price (ASP). For example, Dassault Systèmes reports on seats and average seat price in their earnings calls, but for SolidWorks only. Siemens PLM Software claims “6.7 million licensed seats” in their press release boilerplate but don’t specify what kind of seats. Some PLM solution providers have recently changed from “named seats” from “concurrent seats,” another compound use of the core term “seat.” Some offer “concurrent” add-ons to named “seats.” And still others claim to never offer “enterprise seats.” Most of the solution suppliers I spoke to would LOVE to have a consistent answer, but agreeing on a consistent definition seems to be a problem. So why can’t we have that good, consistent definition of a “seat” or a “license”?

As I said above, defining a seat is in the eye of the beholder OR the one asking the question. If I am in marketing, a seat count is the maximum it could be in the wildest estimation to improve the perception of size: demo seats, free seats, academic seats, seats where dust comes out of the keyboard when people try to log on, just about anything. (It is sort of how they count attendance at the University of Michigan football games – anyone inside the fence is “at” that game, which includes vendors, the bands, referees, the whole shooting match.) While these types of figures are good for press release taglines and Websites, they are not often instructive to others who want such data to make decisions. That is not to say large numbers don’t affect decisions. It is a measure of solution provider longevity and a proxy for provider size. However, in our work with industrial clients, they often want measures of “seats” in their geography, country, industry, or some other slice they feel is relevant to their decision process.

Others in the PLM economy have another definition in mind: for which seats are end users actively paying maintenance? This is where solution providers make a large percentage of their revenues, and there are many other parties interested in just how that maintenance revenue gets made over time, like the financial community. For example, Jay Vleeschhouwer has been making such estimates for some time to the benefit of the financial community and other interested parties. (Thanks Jay.)

In recent conversations with PLM solution suppliers as part of the data gathering for our 2010 Market Analysis Report (MAR), I have asked most respondents about this topic. One said the purest definition would be commercial “seats” on maintenance. Commercial does not include academic seats, and no demos, trials, or others (like seats provided to partners). A commercial seat is defined as a seat of software under maintenance that is being used to develop products by industrial companies This commercial definition gets to “gainful” use in the PLM economy – one for which the holder most likely paid a license fee and continues to pay for maintenance (to get access to bug fixes, updates and other covered forms of support). Yes, academic use is important, but more as “seed corn” for the next generation of designers and engineers. The “on maintenance” part would even include open source players such as Aras who have no license fees.

If you are interested in selling hardware, you might need an entirely different answer. I recently spoke to a hardware solution provider selling devices for use with active 3D CAD seats. For them, the right measure is really on the number of “boxes” of a relatively recent vintage being used for CAD or analysis purposes that can make effective use of their offering. Commercial or academic might be irrelevant here, as long as the users have the need and cash to buy that device.

How would YOU like to see the “seat” defined? If you have such a number, how would it benefit your role in the PLM economy? Inquiring minds would like to know.

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Welcome to “The PLM Economy”

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Stan Przybylinski

Analysts are often known for creating new words or concepts to describe the world. When it first came out that I was returning to an analyst role at CIMdata, I coined a word that I put on my Twitter feed:

Oblogation -noun 1. a blog that a person is bound or obliged to create when they become an “analyst.”

It took a while to get this blog started, but here goes.

The creativity of analysts extends to creating models. (In a future post, I will include my obligatory 2×2 matrix.) Any analyst worth his or her salt will have a model or two in their pocket. Maybe that is one reason I enjoy this profession, as I firmly believe in using models. No, not that type of model (at least not in this space). Models in the sense of what does not appear until the tenth definition of the word “model” at dictionary.com:

10. a simplified representation of a system or phenomenon, as in the sciences or economics, with any hypotheses required to describe the system or explain the phenomenon, often mathematically.

Continue reading →

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