Wow! Blowing the dust off the 'ol keyboard here. Been a while since my last post huh? That's what 59,000 airline miles in three months will do to you. So what have I been up to you ask? If you're following me on Twitter then you know I've been jet setting around the world talking to customers that are clamoring to get their hands on Autodesk PLM 360. Since our announcement last year at Autodesk University the team has been in constant contact with companies interested in learning more, implementing, and using the product.
So just want to put that into perspective real quick... Customers up and running with PLM 360 in weeks! Contrast that to what has been determined to be an accepted standard with implementing on premise PLM. It's such a stark contrast that our competitors are trying to dismiss it - You can't possibly be up and running that quickly because it takes longer than that to setup and deploy one of their servers. So the general reaction is since they can't do it that quickly, it's either simply not possible, Autodesk is making this stuff up, or the fun one... It's toy PLM.
Ask them. Can you deploy your version of PLM and have Requirements Management, Project Management, Quality, Compliance, Supply Chain processes up and running according to your specifications and deploy it to any location around the globe in a month? Just ask them. I'm interested in what they say, do they go on the offense and start to lay BS claims that we aren't a robust solution, or that we can't possibly know the PLM space because we supposedly just realized the value of PLM? I love how one of them said that Autodesk couldn't possibly have a reasonable discussion regarding PLM. Really? Is that why your customers are calling us looking to understand why if our product can do what yours can, "then why the hell am I paying so much?" What I'm hearing is that they are spending more time in a juvenile attempt to dismiss our product than they have been promoting the value of theirs. Is it just me?
On Tuesday Carl Bass talked about how disruptive technology is often dismissed. That's the attempt here in my mind anyway, but what I think they are most concerned about isn't our technology... It’s what our technology enables – a completely unique business model compared to other PLM solutions. By its nature, PLM 360 can be setup, and rolled out to hundreds of locations without additional effort, you simply log in. The technology allows us to bring this product to market at a cost that can’t be touched with their solutions. The technology facilitates business process consulting where customers see results of their efforts within months if not days. It's the entire business model that is made possible via the cloud. Our competitions' technology cannot support this type of business model, and if they aren’t concerned… they should be.
How specifically does the technology enable this business model – in short, instantly available, zero infrastructure costs, no additional modules to buy, insanely configurable, process oriented rather than data model oriented, natively mobile, etc. These are the things that are motivation enough for people with on premise PLM solutions or not to pick up the mouse and visit our website and purchase PLM 360. Within minutes they receive their login information and at first login they are immediately presented with a tutorial on how to start configuring their instance of PLM 360. Oh and did I mention that it’s $75 / user / month?
Let’s talk about a couple examples. SMI Group implemented task management, project management, estimated vs. actual cost, employee performance, and work allocation in one month’s time. ElectronVault was searching for something like this for over two years and after 6 weeks they have implemented Project Management, EBOM, MBOM, and starting on their APQP project. Six Weeks!!!
Here's another thing that we would all do well to think about. PLM is not PDM. If you have a PLM solution today and all you are doing with it is CAD management, Engineering Change Management, and some engineering BOM stuff... dude... I'm sorry. We can do that with Vault. It's awesome to me how the others are doing benchmarks of their PLM solution with customers against Autodesk Vault. It’s like comparing AutoCAD to a parametric 3D modeler – not apples to apples son. So in comparing Vault to PLM what you are saying is that you don't really do PLM...? Is that how I'm to read that? Oh, but it costs what? 3, 4, thousand...oh, no not thousand - hundred thousand....no, not that either - million!!!? Why?
Yeah. Why?
-Rob
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"On Tuesday Carl Bass talked about how disruptive technology is often dismissed."
What's really disruptive and has been dismissed for years now by Autodesk is fully integrated CAM for Inventor. Perhaps it's long past time for Carl Bass to stop dismissing CAM and for Autodesk to do something about this huge problem for Inventor.
Autodesk already has the employees to make their own powerful CAM inside Inventor happen. Autodesk employes someone who was head of Gibbscam R&D for many years and before that had many years experience creating CAM for CATIA. There are also several companies with excellent toolpath technology that Autodesk could purchase.
Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
http://cadcamtechnologyleaders.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Jon Banquer | 03/30/2012 at 11:38 AM
John,
I appreciate you promoting your blog on mine, nice... ;-) As I've said before, and will continue to say until you give me something new to talk about... your position on this topic is WELL documented.
Let me bottom line this for you and I won't get into an endless discussion on this topic. Market spend on PLM - ~8 bn
Market spend on CAM - ~2 bn
But more importantly - as Carl and Buzz have stated, the primary reason we entered into the PLM market is it is what our customers are asking us to do as a higher priority.
Prioritizing is pretty easy when you look at it that way Jon. I think you'll find that CAM is without question part of a products lifecycle and an important piece of technology no doubt, but from a business standpoint, the opportunity defines itself pretty clearly.
Posted by: Rob Cohee | 03/30/2012 at 12:39 PM
"WELL documented" doesn't solve the problem of Autodesk not having their own fully integrated CAM for Inventor.
"WELL documented" doesn't mean a realization on Autodesk's part that not having their own powerful CAM has given and continues to give SolidWorks a huge market advantage over Autodesk Inventor.
The fact is that Autodesk has ceded the market to SolidWorks on a silver platter by not having their own fully integrated, powerful CAM for Inventor.
The priorities are wrong for Autodesk Inventor and they need to be changed. Priorities would be much easier to see for Autodesk if management at Autodesk took their head out of the cloud and planted their feet firmly in reality. Reality is SolidWorks owns the market and one of the reasons is because of so many CAM choices that run inside of SolidWorks.
Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
Posted by: Jon Banquer | 03/30/2012 at 01:20 PM
I have seen no evidence that anyone in upper Autodesk management understands the difference between a design solution and a manufacturing solution which targets users who wish to design products that can be manufactured.
One of the reasons Missler Software TopSolid CADCAM 7 is starting to really take off, despite no real marketing in the US, is that they do understand the difference. The same can be said for SpaceClaim except they have much better marketing and have now started to target manufacturing. While SpaceClaim has no CAM of its own, one independent solution was announced yesterday. I think we will see more CAM that runs inside of SpaceClaim announced this year because SpaceClaim upper management truly understands what the problem is and what needs to be done about it. Design software has failed a large part of the market and will continue to fail a large part of the market because it doesn't put the focus on how the part will eventually need to be made.
Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
Posted by: Jon Banquer | 03/30/2012 at 02:06 PM
Jon,
Thanks for the history lesson on something that has nothing to do with the post. What are your thoughts on baseball? Politics? Religion...? Please share with us how that relates to CAM as you have an incredible talent for turning all conversations unrelated into a discussion on CAM. It's a talent, really.
If your posts don't have anything to do with the topic, they will be removed. And you can take your rant to Twitter as I'm sure you will... :-) Have a nice weekend Jon.
Posted by: Rob Cohee | 03/30/2012 at 02:19 PM
My posts will most likely be removed from your blog because they deal with the reality that both you and many at Autodesk can't handle.
My comments won't be removed elsewhere, as many know I'm right and many Inventor users aren't very happy with how Inventor gets developed... for good reason.
Your threats of removing my comments don't bother me as I know that truth is going to win out. The truth is that SolidWorks has won the market (for now) because Autodesk upper management doesn't want to provide the real world tools that are needed by many.
Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
Posted by: Jon Banquer | 03/30/2012 at 02:45 PM
Cam guy is nuts
Posted by: Johan Schmidt | 03/30/2012 at 03:58 PM
Rob, you've been talking about EBOM / MBOM stuff in PLM 360 vs. some BOM stuff and engineering change management in PMD Vault. Talking about "apples to apples" what is the difference? Thanks, Oleg
Posted by: Oleg Shilovitsky | 03/31/2012 at 10:57 AM
Oleg,
My take is Vault PDM is EBOM, that gets passed to PLM 360 as a Read Only BOM. It can then be leveraged and modified as an MBOM by the manufacturing team as the Product evolves and becomes more defined throughout manufacture.
Cheer
Scott
Posted by: Scott Moyse | 04/02/2012 at 06:49 PM
Rob, is there a stock MBOM template in PLM 360? I see EBOM, but not MBOM.
Posted by: Evan Yares | 04/04/2012 at 10:09 PM
Hey Evan / Oleg,
Scott is spot on here. The EBOM (E in this case being engineering) can be and I'm going to stress CAN be, because as we know this is different for everyone... It can be evolved into the MBOM (manufacturing) inside of PLM 360. That MBOM could then evolve to the Purchasing BOM, Assembly BOM, As Built BOM, ect. The bottom line is that if you choose to allow everyone in the lifecycle to iterate on a BOM, then its no longer solely a EBOM.
That's a bit of a change in the way we look at who is ultimately responsible for updating the BOM. Why do we force changes to go through an engineer when no engineering work was required to make the change? Why? Because we force engineering tools to manage the BOM. Not the case with PLM 360. If you open up the BOM to evolve at the same pace the actual product does then "ownership" of the BOM evolves over the life of it as well.
Just so I could say it one more time. BOM. Good thing I'm not on a plane typing this right now.
Posted by: Rob Cohee | 04/05/2012 at 01:26 PM
Rob,
What you are saying about multiple BOMs (EBOM, MBOM, Purchase, Assembly, Bult) is really interesting.
Can you give me a reference on how I can organize multi-BOM structures in PLM360? I've been trying to build few, and I stuck. The workspace has only one BOM structure, and I don't want to use what called general relationships (I'm not sure I captured this name "gen rel" right from our last talk). So, does it mean I will need to build multiple workspaces for EBOM/MBOM/PurchaseBOM/AssemblyBOM/AsBuiltBOM? If so, how I can inherit data between these workspaces?
I'd like to reference you to two of my posts. One post is 3 years ago - Seven Rules towards Single BOM -- http://plmtwine.com/2009/10/14/seven-rules-towards-single-bill-of-material/. I'd be interested how Autodesk Vault / PLM combination can follow these rules?
Another one is a modern version of the same post :) -- Cloud PLM and Bill of Material Question. http://beyondplm.com/2012/03/09/cloud-plm-and-bill-of-material-question/.
Thanks, Oleg
Posted by: Olegshilovitsky | 04/07/2012 at 09:32 AM
We love you Rob.
Come to Israel and show us the PLM light :)
Dan
Posted by: Dan Margulius | 04/27/2012 at 06:48 AM