8.8 Summary

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The case studies have shown a large diversity in requirements, in current states and future goals related to support of PLCs. There are some common characteristics, though, which might indicate that there are some current states and general trends in this area.

First of all, we can see that all companies are in a dynamic state. Most of them have a solution, but it is not completely satisfactory, and there are plans or ongoing activities for improvements. Many companies still have their own solutions with internally built tools. These tools are becoming obsolete due to various reasons, but mostly due to:

• Old technologies that have difficulties coping with the new tools used in the development process;

• Moving to a distributed development, which requires new methods and tool support for intercommunication and increased awareness of parallel processes;

• Time-to-market requirements, which in turn demand more efficient and more automated processes;

• Increased competition and demands for better contacts with customers, which requires better information access regularly implemented through the Web.

A second common remark is the complexity of the development process and information flow. Usually, several tens of tools are part in the process, and very often it is the humans who are the integrators of the information. This, in many cases, unnecessary complexity is often a result of organic increase of the company or the result of merges between companies. In many companies, there are clear needs for simplifying and improving the processes.

The improvement process (e.g., the process to improve the product development process) is of a different nature than the process for product development itself. While development of the products is very much related to the market, and the new products are clearly distinguished from the previous versions or variants, the improvement processes are of more continuous nature with less strict plans and less precise goals. The main activities in the improvement processes are related to integration—of data and of applications. The improvement processes are even more complicated due to the problems of integrating internal tools, usually built upon an old technology, and commercial tools that use new technologies. For this reason, integration requires significant effort and often expertise from the tool providers. Many modern PDM tools provide means for integration based on client-server and multitier architecture, Web, middleware, and component-based technology. However, these technologies cannot be easily integrated with monolithic applications built on old platforms.

While there is a clear trend toward integration of PDM tools with other tools used in the development process, PDM-SCM integration is still not the main issue of the improvement processes. Software companies use SCM tools as their main support for managing source code and documentation. In addition to SCM, many companies use a document management system or ERP systems. For the hardware-oriented companies, the software question is rapidly becoming more important, but many companies are in the process of or learning how to manage software. PDM-SCM integration is an increasing issue, which probably will dominate in the near future.

The companies focus on the processes rather than on the tools supporting-these processes. While the processes are fairly constant, tools are changed more often. This approach has clear advantages, even if it includes risks of introducing a mismatch between tools and processes. There is also a risk that the processes do not follow the trends being supported by modern tools.

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