The Conference has four parallel tracks. With about 60% of the speakers for the Presentation Tracks now known, the provisional Agenda includes speakers from SMEs as well as from larger organisations such as Bobst, Bombardier Transportation, CERN, EADS, European Commission, Givaudan, Merck Serono, Mettler Toledo, Salomon, Schneider Electric, SR Technics, Synthes and Varian Medical Systems.

In mid-May, we started to approach potential exhibitors. We're currently in discussion with about 15 companies, and are already finalising the details of the participation of four exhibitors. If you're interested in exhibiting, or sponsoring the Conference, please review the details here.

If you would like to attend the event, please register here.

The main function of PLM is to keep product data accessible. And, since long ago, manufacturing companies have had a special department for that purpose. It's often called "Archiving" or "Technical Product Data". That department issues standards for the formats of drawings, and for the contents of forms that must be completed before a new product can be released to Manufacturing. The people in that department check and archive all that data. Engineers consider that a dull task, but accept that if those people like to use computers for their work, and call that PLM, then that's their business.

Engineers are technical specialists who don't like their creativity to be disturbed by dreary administrative tasks, but are nevertheless willing to upload their CAD files to such a PLM system. However, filling in all kinds of metadata - that can be found in the CAD model by anyone who knows how to read it - is annoying and useless. As an engineer, I can fully understand that. Our challenge is to solve seemingly impossible problems, and our satisfaction is in finding solutions. Of course, you have to document that solution in a language that's understandable for common Production people, but don't ask us to fill in endless tables, because there are administrative people who like to do that much more than we engineers.

For a long time, I didn't understand why Engineering Managers didn't overload me with their thanks when I informed them that, if data was properly managed, the output of their people could be increased by 5 percent. I deliberately didn't say 50%, because I knew they would have taken offence. I learned my lesson when I developed an Engineering Performance Measurement method, and was looking for environments to apply it. The Engineering Managers who I approached always found excellent reasons why it wasn't a good time for such an experiment in their department. The common unspoken reason appeared to be: "Even if there are any inefficiencies in my department, I've no need for an academic report that will give that message, in black and white, to my boss."

I understand that top management only gets interested in PLM on the basis of a project proposal with an impressive ROI. However, already, in the early PDM days, we discovered that ROI calculations, based only on saving engineering hours, weren't convincing. PLM vendors may state that expensive errors are prevented by using their software, but any company will tell you that they never have that kind of error. A reduction of engineering lead time sounds nice for a ROI calculation, but the benefits are always classified as intangible, since it isn't cost reduction. Compared to PLM vendors, ERP vendors are in a much better position. Their system is the toy of the Chief Financial Officer, who needs ERP to control the flow of money and other valuable materials in the company. A proper bookkeeping system doesn't need ROI, it's obviously the first thing you need to run a business.