Key takeaways:
- When faced with rapidly changing business needs, glueware and gap-filling technologies can be a valuable addition to a company’s PLM strategy.
- Standard information models can be used to create glueware solutions that cover the entire lifecycle of a product and can be reused across the enterprise to solve gap issues in a manageable and governed manner.
- It is critical to embrace and govern the use of glueware solutions while ensuring that they can deal with scope changes, and ever-changing relationships with business partners and suppliers, and can run with great performance and security in a multiuser environment.
- ShareAspace is an example of a glueware solution that can connect business-critical information by breaking down data silos.
Are you in a situation where you officially and openly announce that you have a clear PLM strategy? The vendor is selected, maybe many years back, and this is your public PLM story – The choice of your PLM vendor is seen as a strategic decision, and you stick to the choice almost regardless of what happens.
On the other hand, business is changing a lot, maybe not during a single year but certainly over a decade. Your market is disrupted by competitors, your supply chain is disrupted, or a global pandemic causes problems you could hardly have imagined. Although, it could be less dramatic such as a merger or a move from yourself, with innovation trying to outpace your competition. Or even less dramatic – you are forming a new division or business entity that should be better integrated than before.
Whatever is your situation from the above, your PLM system is not designed to be that agile. It rapidly becomes as much of a burden as it is serving the business well. To still do the job, people in your company rise to the challenge and start developing rapid response software solutions outside the PLM software that you strategically chose. Instead using tools like Microsoft Excel and Access and delivering value to a specific problem at a specific moment. These “mushroom” solutions are soon everywhere increasing in number and scope. And the knowledge is with the people that once designed the application.
You can try to limit this development but in reality, that becomes a big risk for the operations. They get a life of their own.
So, what if:
- A glueware solution is accepted and identified as a strategy, embraced and encouraged, but also governed?
- It is based on standard information models? These standard models cover what you need including the product’s complete lifecycle and the same glueware application can be reused across the enterprise to solve gap issues in a way that can be managed and governed.
- The glueware is selected by end-users and IT as a strategic choice to enable an agile enterprise ready for technical and process innovation?
- The glueware is designed to deal with changes in scope, with ever-changing relations with business partners and suppliers?
- And last but now least this glueware can be run with great performance in a multiuser environment, with large volumes of data and with a high level of security?
This is why we have developed ShareAspace and the values we deliver with our solutions.
Learn more about ShareAspace and how it completes the digital thread by breaking down data silos and connecting business-critical information: https://www.eurostep.com/digital-thread/
Executive summary:
Glueware and gap-filling technologies can be critical components of a company’s PLM strategy, particularly in situations where business requirements are rapidly changing. Glueware solutions can enable an agile enterprise that is ready for technical and process innovation, and they can be built on standard information models to cover the entire lifecycle of a product. It is critical to embrace and govern the use of glueware solutions to ensure that they can deal with scope changes and ever-changing relationships with business partners and suppliers. As well as, perform well in a multiuser environment while maintaining a high level of security. ShareAspace is an example of glueware that can complete the digital thread by breaking down data silos and connecting business-critical information.
