Data Migration for PLM systems

Application migration is one of the most common phenomena in PLM applications as company’s moves from legacy application to newer applications as per their changing business needs; however their need to share data with suppliers and customers remains the same.

The challenges to migrate the data are huge from one application to another are huge:
a) Data needs to be reformatted as per target (new) application need.
b) Data cleansing is required.
c) New business rules needs to be written as per new business requirements.

Approaches to support data migration
ETL data migration approach: This is so called one of the best practice methodologies; it involves using various tools for individual parts of data migration. However it is not a holistic approach that maximizes the business value of the information that is migrated to the source PLM systems.
Customized Data Migration Strategy: It involves using various practices to migrate data from source system to target system depending on the amount of data that needs to be migrated plus the time constraint in which data needs to be migrated

Migration Strategy
• Data Profiling: Data present in legacy systems needs to be checked before it is moved to source system as data may be redundant, similarities and discrepancies.
• Understand Data: Need to understand the complete structure of the data.
• Review of dependable data sets: Review what data sets are dependent on other data sets.
• Data Cleansing: Data needs to be cleansed to remove redundant, similarities and discrepancies.
• Select a Migration Strategy: There are two approaches that be used here:
o Migrate complete data at one go: Complete chunk of data is taken from source system and is migrated to the target system and source (legacy) system is completely shut down.
o Migrating Data in Chunks: This is often known as phased migration approach in which data from legacy application is migrated to target application in various phases, legacy systems are not shut down completely.
• Maintenance of Data: Original data needs to be maintained till the validity of the migrated data is tested properly, need to run the legacy and source system in parallel for some time.
• Test the Migration Process: Test the migration process on small chunk of data that is migrated. To get information about how time it will take to test the complete migrated data.
• Train the Users: Users needs to be train regarding how the data is present in the new system, so that they can use the data once the migration is completed
• Perform Data migration: Migration needs to be done in the most disruptive manner. If the system allows co-existence then migration can be performed in chunks without disturbing the business.

Data migration needs to be a repeatable process

Single Answer to all Business Needs:PLM

Product Life cycle management help manufacturers to engage their Partners,suppliers and customers in the process of innovation,capturing new ideas,providing a platform to validate them and bring them to market quickly and in a cost effective manner.

New Generation PLM products helps manufacturers in the following ways:
PLM products helps in establishing Open and Secure Digital Environment for product development through which all the people in the company including strategic partners and even customers can take part in product and process improvements by comparing balancing and optimizing different products, directly linking the performance and manufacturing considerations with design intents. It takes care of following things

·Digital Product Development:
New product development and introduction approach that captures
knowledge and reuse it in a managed environment.
·Digital Manufacturing:Helps in knowledge management with improvement in processes in a virtual environment that let companies optimize the quality,process,plant ,resource and simulation aspect of their manufacturing process.
·Digital LifeCycle Management:Helps organizations to engage all the parts of their business in the introduction of successful new products. Keep track of all the processes separately in each and every
stage of the product and also the changes made to the product in each and every stage.

New Product Development and Introduction
PLM products help in Design, simulate, validate and manufacture innovative products by establishing real-time,global collaboration among people and processes in R&D, product planning, sourcing development and launch.
It helps in various ways
PLM enables success in this initiative by providing the means to:
· Reduce cycle times and speed new products to market
· Support an environment for global product development
· Help evaluate innovations and develop related products
· Accurately identify the demand for new classes of products

Synchronization of Supply Chains
PLM products respond effectively to global demand by optimizing the exchange of ideas as well as product and process information among all players at every stage of the supply chain.Supply chain synchronization establishes the basis for a design anywhere, build anywhere global strategy. It helps companies gain the needed visibility to collaborate across the value chain. Engineering and procurement
are integrated with suppliers.

It helps to achieve this initiative by it's ability to
· Quickly align strategic partners for success
· Connect global suppliers to synchronize cost, quality and availability
· Align partners and suppliers to minimize cost and maximize quality
· Manage requirements in a global partner environment

Enterprise Data Management
PLM products helps in leverage physical and intellectual assets for greater competitiveness by managing and providing secure to critical product and process data over the life of the product.

PLM enables success in this initiative by it's ability to:
· Unify people, processes and products to support rapid and strategic decision-making
· Control and share product and process data globally
· Institutionalize best practices and minimize non value tasks
· Manage, analyze and track all product and process requirements

Knowledge and IP Management
PLM products continually improve product and process development by capturing and automating the knowledge of experts employees.

PLM enables success in this initiative by helping companies:
· Eliminate time-consuming redesign cycles by leveraging corporate-wide knowledge
· Secure corporate IP across a global environment of partners and suppliers
· Reapply corporate innovations in new product environments
· Enforce consistency and quality of company innovations/brand attributes

Regulatory Compliance
PLM products helps to mitigate risk and achieve compliance by ensuring adherence to environmental, safety,financial and governmental regulations early in the design cycle and by automating data collection and reporting.

PLM enables success in this initiative by helping companies:
· Quickly design-in and validate for compliance
· Develop product variations to meet regulations that differ by geography or industry
· Re-use previously certified parts and processes
· Create a compliance audit trail through quality document tracking

How facebook features can help in Product development and Product Innovation

Gone are days, when once you say bye to your college friend on the college annual day and then he is out of the picture. In today’s world, wherever you are, you still can connect with your old friend and what so ever you are doing, can share with him.
Thanks to Social networking sites like facebook, twitter etc. Today’s slogan Stay Connected where ever you are.

These sites offer various features. One of the features I found useful is Tagging.
So how tagging people can help in product development and product innovation?
For this we need to know what tagging feature is all about

We can say tagging is associating a person with content, like in facebook people are generally associated with the uploaded snaps. Tagging not only tells us who is there in a particular snap. But the power of people tagging comes when associating the person to the context allows the tag to be followed to see or learn more about the person tagged.
This thing can be better explained with an example-:
One day ,my friend has mentioned in his status message on a Social networking that they were going to attend Delhi daredevils match this Saturday with two other individuals and that person tagged those two people by including their “@” codes. I recognized one of the names and I followed the link to profile and I found out that guy was the same guy whom I once met in gym and I need to talk to him regarding some supplements. In short, through that message I increased my network by two people and I also went for the match and met that guy.
How this will help in product development-:
Let’s take a quick example of Status Reports. If a status report mentions that @Engineer is working on a problem, I might read that status report and have something to offer. I could instantly click and connect with the tagged person (with some security settings in place) and offer my advice. Or, perhaps it is a year later and I am facing that same problem. I might search on the issue and find this old status report. Then, I see that @Engineer faced this problem a year ago. I could follow the link and find additional content related to the tagged individual that might help me with my problem, or connect to ask for advice.

This feature is only an example to illustrate the benefits of how social computing sites can help in Product development. There are many other things that can be included in product development Software to enhance the development process-
• Improve and extend Global Product development collaboration through social computing techniques.
• Take advantage of social computing and Web 2.0 capabilities to improve product development performance, while maintaining focus on protecting product IP and other special requirements addressed by specialized product development solutions.
• Develop a strategy for social product development that enhances value and minimizes disruption and risk, adopting a gradual, measured adoption of social computing.


*So this is how trends are changing, product development process is being improved by using concepts that are innovated by young guns like you and me and is used to generate big bucks.

I just want to say
Keep innovating; Each and Every idea is small in the beginning, once implemented and marketed properly can bring the change.

PLM Definitions from various sources and what I think about it.

Product Life cycle Management
There are many definitions available on net for Product life cycle management-
Some of them are –
· Wikipedia: Product lifecycle management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its conception, through design and manufacture, to service and disposal. It is one of the four cornerstones of a corporation's information technology structure. All companies need to manage communications and information with their customers (CRM-Customer Relationship Management) and their suppliers (SCM-Supply Chain Management) and the resources within the enterprise (ERP-Enterprise Resource Planning). In addition, manufacturing engineering companies must also develop, describe, manage and communicate information about their products (PDM).
· Cimdata:
o A strategic business approach that applies a consistent set of business solutions that support the collaborative creation , management ,dissemination, and use of product definition information
o Supporting the extending enterprise (customer, design and supply partners, etc.)
o Spanning from the concept to the end of a product or plant
o Integrating people, processes, business systems, and information

· Siemens PLM: At Siemens PLM Software, we view PLM as at once an information strategy, an enterprise strategy and ultimately a transformational business strategy. We see it as a comprehensive approach to innovation built on enterprise- wide access to a common repository of product information and processes.
· Dassault Systems: A business strategy that helps companies share product data, apply common processes, and leverage corporate knowledge for the development of products from conception to retirement, across the extended enterprise. By including all actors (company departments, business partners, suppliers, OEM, and customers), PLM enables this entire network to operate as a single entity to conceptualize, design, build, and support products.

· Definition: According to me we can define PLM as an approach that can be applied to improve companies' processes based on their business model for accomplishing current product innovation requirements. PLM is all about providing support for optimal development of products; ensuring fastest time to market; lowest development and production cost and highest quality.
It encompasses PPPI model:
· Product –It provides complete support for the product
· People - products only exists through the people’s effort
· Processes – we have to follow them to give dependable and consistent results
· Information about the Product – One of the core thing with which PLM deals is data