Products and services offered in the marketplace must meet a wide range of requirements simultaneously. Of course the customer should always come first, but there are additional stakeholders with needs to be addressed. With more criteria to meet, it makes sense to consider them as early in the development process as possible. The notion of concurrent engineering, which emerged in the 1980s, addresses those needs; it is in sharp contrast to the more common waterfall approach to development commonly used at that time.

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) emerged as a strategy to support product and process development, enabled by software technology and services. Ideally, companies manage products from concept to retirement as part of their PLM strategy. Aiming to reduce the environmental impact of products in both production and in their use, sustainability has become a common rallying cry for manufacturers. However with product retirement, many regions must deal with landfills at capacity, toxic materials in the environment, and the ultimate waste of natural resources embedded into products that cannot be reused or recycled.

Some believe there is a better way. We have made great strides in design for the disassembly, recycling, and reuse of materials from many common products. PLM strategies and enabling solutions have played a significant role in the successes to date. But what if we could have zero impact? What if everything we took out of the ground, or created, could be infinitely reused and repurposed? This is but one notion of the “circular economy,” a radically new approach to thinking about most of what we do, build, and use. Meeting this more stringent need will require new PLM enabling solutions and services to help companies adapt. Solution and service providers already focused on enabling sustainability may have an edge, but there will certainly be new market entrants.

In essence this new approach involves systems thinking, looking at products in a truly holistic way. Systems engineering (SE)offers a framework to adopt this broad view and an expanding set of tools can help navigate the necessary planning and development tradeoffs. Adopters will need services from specialists—service providers who focus on this approach.

The circular economy will impose new requirements on simulation & analysis (S&A). Reusing materials repeatedly can change their properties; will they stand up to one more reuse? While we can see the benefits of applying more S&A in the early stages of the product lifecycle, these solutions are compute-intensive. Can we simulate in a more circular-friendly way? Most of the large S&A companies provide a broad range of services, but are there new opportunities?

Product data management (PDM) solutions are often at the core of PLM strategies. Recent CIMdata research in the aerospace & defense (A&D) sector showed that leading companies want to move far beyond just data and process management. Our industrial consulting has showed this same phenomenon in other industries. This will create new opportunities for specialist providers and services organizations who can deliver the subject matter expertise required to support the broader adoption and implementation demanded by this new thinking.

Organizations already spend significant resources on on-premise PLM-enabling tools. The last few years have seen increasingly more of these solutions enabled for cloud delivery. Understanding what is available, what is to come, and what else might be required will help smooth the path to a circular approach to IT utilization. Many of these tools will expand delivery onto mobile platforms, bringing capabilities to the “deskless,” and to other remote users. Mobile and cloud are changing the relationship between solution providers and their SI/Reseller/VAR partners. Are you ready?

Based on the discussion to this point, thinking in a circular fashion is really outside-the-box thinking. Similarly, PLM has created and consumed the same type of “raw material” for several generations, namely files. What will get PLM to look outside of that box? Several new trends and the actions of some leading companies are pointing to a new way to store and communicate information, as objects, creating files only as needed to support certain processes and use cases. What are the implications of this change for the PLM Economy?

CIMdata’s 2014 PLM Market & Industry Forum, the leading event exclusively for solution and services providers in the PLM economy, is a key deliverable for our PLM Community members. This year’s Forum will provide insights on the current economic climate and trends and examine their effects on the PLM economy, focusing on the issues highlighted above. CIMdata’s perspective on the current state of the PLM market and trends for the future will be presented in detail, as will the first public release of CIMdata’s 2013 PLM market analysis results—including extensive analyses and forecasts regarding market growth across PLM domains, industries, and regions, and the performance (by revenue and market-share) of leading PLM solution providers. CIMdata views these sessions as an opportunity to learn more about solution provider requirements to meet PLM Community needs.

Participants in CIMdata’s PLM Market & Industry Forum should expect to gain a solid understanding of the current PLM market and the dynamics impacting it, and develop realistic expectations for continued market evolution. Attendees will gain further insights into opportunities they can exploit and approaches they can use to navigate the PLM market environment in the year to come. This event also provides the opportunity to network with other professionals in the PLM Community, including competitors, collaborators, and potential partners. To register for this program, please visit www.CIMdata.com.

Dates and Locations

North America	Thursday, April 3, 2014
	Sheraton Hotel
	3200 Boardwalk Drive, Ann Arbor, MI 48108
Europe	Tuesday, April 8, 2014
	Steigenberger Hotel
	Kaiser-Friedrich-Promenade 69-75
	61348 Bad Homburg (Frankfurt) Germany
China	Friday, April 11, 2014
	Shanghai, CHINA – Location TBD
Japan	Wednesday, April 16, 2014
	Tokyo, JAPAN – Location TBD

China PLM Market & Industry Forum

Venue TBD

Shanghai, China

Beijing China

Friday, April1, 2014

Morning Session

8:00 a.m. – 8:30 a.m. Registration and Breakfast

8:30 a.m. – 8:45 a.m. Welcome Pei Huang, Chief Executive Officer, e-works

Pei Huang, CIMdata’s Representative in China, will introduce the Forum and provide an update on the firm and its direction, for 2014 and beyond.

8:45 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. The State of PLM—Today’s Market and Leading Trends Peter Bilello, President

This session will review the current state of the PLM industry with particular emphasis on trends and issues, including the circular economy, that are critical to PLM technology and service providers. CIMdata will present its views on these trends and the impact they have on participants in this increasingly challenging market.

10:00 a.m. – 10:15 a.m. Networking Break

10:15 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. 2013Market Analysis Results Stan Przybylinski, Vice President of Research

Recognized for many years as the best source of comprehensive and accurate insights into the evolution and direction of the PLM industry, CIMdata’s annual PLM Global Market Analysis is first revealed at this Market and Industry Forum.

12:00 p.m. – 1:15 p.m. Lunch

Afternoon Sessions

1:15 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. China Market Numbers Pei Huang, Chief Executive Officer, e-works

In this session, CIMdata will present and discuss its analysis of the China PLM market, including 2013 PLM market revenues and our forecasts for the future. Focus segments include collaborative Product Definition management (cPDm) and Simulation & Analysis (S&A).

2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. CIMdata’s Research Agenda Update

In this session, CIMdata will lead discussions on several topics pertinent to our Practice areas and our PLM Knowledge Councils’ research agendas for 2014.

2:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Systems of Systems; Way Beyond the Product

The circular economy is well represented as a system of systems. Product concepts now consider perspectives well beyond the physical product’s definition (hardware, software, and electronics) to include many other factors, including production, logistics, installation, ongoing maintenance throughout its useful life, and ultimately, retirement from service and recycling. This session will examine some of the ways that systems engineering can support the circular economy. In addition, CIMdata will present early results from CIMdata’s new systems engineering maturity model, a way for industrial companies to understand their preparedness for this new circular economy and for solution providers to help their clients decide the best course in moving forward with SE initiatives.

3:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. imulation’s Role in the Circular Economy

The circular economy will bring forth new requirements, and simulation can play a critical supporting role by validating that these requirements are fulfilled over the product lifecycle. New materials (composites), new manufacturing techniques (3D printing of functional components), and new regulations (e.g., conflict minerals) in the circular economy pose questions outside the sphere of our previous experience and tribal knowledge. This presentation focuses on how simulation supports product decisions over the entire lifecycle to enable sustainability objectives in the circular economy.

3:30 p.m. – 3:45 p.m. Networking Break

3:45 p.m. – 4:15 p.m. End-User Focused Research Topics

In 2014, our research agenda will also include several other topics of interest to manufacturing companies in multiple industries. These short sessions will highlight each area and seek inputs from the audience that will help sharpen our focus on these topics in 2014 and beyond.

3:45 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. A Weather Update: Cloud Status

Companies are increasingly relying on the cloud for many important business functions, most notably customer relationship management (for instance, CRM, as delivered by Salesforce.com). But PLM and other more technical domains have been slower to adopt this approach to delivering capabilities. In this session, CIMdata will provide an update on cloud in PLM, including some exciting work from the AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction) space.

4:00 p.m. – 4:15 p.m. Update on Mobile Applications in PLM

Mobile is often cited as one of the four driving trends in the IT space, but it has been slow to take off in PLM. This is beginning to change, as some new applications from PLM and AEC solution providers are starting to show the true power of mobile technology. This presentation will provide an update on current and soon-to-be-available mobile applications.