PLM and social network - some ideas from the 9th international conference on PLM

The 9th international conference on PLM was held in Montreal. From the presentations I attended, it seems that one trend for PLM is that it will become more and more 'social' in the future.

One professor from Germany asked an interesting question: can product have a facebook? He proposed to use facebook as a Product Avatar representation for intelligent product. He said a product can have a facebook profile instead of a fan page. The facebook functions were interpreted as PLM functions. For example, 'in a relationship to' means 'connected', 'married' means 'constantly connected' and 'it's complicated' means 'connection with problems'. It is pretty fun seeing a set-off shaft is' in a relationship' XD. It seems that a facebook profile of products help manufacturers and customers to manage the huge amount of variations and keep all information and records up-to-date.


The keynote speaker from Dassault System gave the speech on the topic 'From traditional PLM to social PLM'. They developed a '3D Experience' platform, including '3D SwYm' for online collaboration and social innovation.


A presenter from a German company proposed informal communication in PD because this would-as she put-'improve the teamwork inside companies'.


Social PLM offers the advantages of faster information sharing, more customer interaction, more opportunities of innovation, etc. But does this mitigate complexity in PD or the opposite? Firstly, more customization adds product variety thus management may need to be improved; secondly, more information, if not managed well, will make searching very difficult and time consuming, thus good mechanism is needed to manage all the knowledge.