Funny, but I don’t agree with Dilbert on this one. Better that we do both proper change management AND have sensible strategies for Asset Lifecycle Information Management system implementations. (Click the title if you don’t see the image)
Monthly Archives: October 2013
Horses for Courses
1. “Horses for Courses”
One could write a letter with Microsoft Excel or calculate a table with Microsoft Word, but both are designed for particular purposes. The same is true for systems that were designed for engineering information management from the ground up, verses systems that are designed for simple office document management. The best in class tools should be used for each requirement.
Research shows that for every author of engineering content there are can be as many as 20 consumers. However, few of these consumers are users of engineering-design and CAD-drafting tools. Many spend much of their working day using other tools to access other file types in a different information management environment.
This is why ProjectWise has been designed to compliment, rather than compete with, other information and document management systems not designed specifically for engineering content management. ProjectWise can be configured, through the use of “connectors”, to be integrated with the corporate EDMS to provide engineering content in the formats most valuable to the users of that system. This is different from third party add-ons to EDMS systems in that the engineering group can leverage the full capability of an engineering content management system, yet the system can be integrated through the use of a connector. Benefits of this approach are:
- The connector approach makes upgrading either the EDMS or ProjectWise much easier
- Through server side processes, complex content can be automatically distilled down to a single document that the EDMS is able to manage
- Engineering content can be rendered and pushed into the EDMS in a format (such as PDF) that is accessible to the users of that system
- This approach allows EDMS systems that are used for document control or records management LINK TO SOMETHING ABOUT eB to be used to manage information pushed to them from the engineering system, automatically, at appropriate milestones
Milestone vs. In-Progress
Since there’s a mountain of evidence (Search this blog for “Do you want to manage engineering”) that an engineering specific repository is necessary to support the complexity of engineering content management, engineering content review and engineering content publishing, some EDMS vendors will admit that they cannot provide all of the capability of ProjectWise, but that their systems can provide some percentage of the functionality that ProjectWise provides. Regardless of the estimated percentage, it’s the view of this author that the percentage is virtually zero.
How can that be, especially if an EDMS vendor partners with a third party to provide some CAD integration? Because without the deep application integration (In the areas of engineering content management, review and publishing), the engineering team can only use the EDMS as a milestone system. This leaves the engineering team working unmanaged while the work is in-progress. In most cases the decision on when to post information to the EDMS system is left with the user; who will also need to distill, or “dumb down” the information they are using into some simplified form the EDMS can handle.
Clearly a better bet is to use a system purpose built for EIM.
The Fallacy of the “Single” Repository
While it seems logical that having a single repository for the whole enterprise is desirable, the post “Engineering Content is Different” clearly shows that a system that is purpose built for engineering data is necessary for the engineering team and larger organization to gain benefit.
While providers of third party tools that overlay on top of EDMS products claim that leveraging the existing repository is best, there are clear pitfalls to that approach:
- Third party tools can be version specific in terms of the EDMS versions they support, making upgrades to the enterprise system problematic
- Third party tools normally lag in their support of the basic CAD tool versions they support, not to mention that they generally lack any integration with engineering applications that sit on top of the CAD platform
- Adoption of third party tools frequently require changes to the corporate EDMS repository
Finally, in many large organizations, there is typically more than one repository or database for a given EDMS even when third party tools are not in place.