When PLM makes more sense than ERP: Roman Lisičan (#195)
- Martin Hurych
- 3. 6.
- Minut čtení: 31
Digitalisation in manufacturing is often launched where it is most visible - on the shop floor. Investments are made in ERP, logistics, workflow, purchasing and planning. But what if it's all standing on its head? What if the real change starts at product design - the stage where 80% of the cost, time and competitiveness of the company is decided?
Roman Lisičan knows about it. He started as an engineer, worked his way through the software world, became a consultant, a manager, and today he is the co-owner of Technodat Group – the largest Dassault Systèmes partner for Central and Eastern Europe. He knows Czech and foreign companies, speaks the language of development, production and business. And above all: he has a vision. A vision of how Czech companies can succeed in a time when China is innovating faster than Europe and AI is changing the game in design.
We went deep in the conversation:
Roman speaks clearly, openly and with the insight of a man who has experienced transformations in many cultures. And best of all - he doesn't sell software. He thinks like you. He's looking for impact, return and common sense.
This episode should be listened to by any business owner who, has in-house development or design, feels production is going strong but results are stagnant, doesn't want another ERP system that no one will use, is considering AI but doesn't know where to start, or wants to prepare the company for a generational change and be one step ahead.
Because maybe it's time to stop "tuning production" and finally start managing what precedes it.
"PLM platforms are not an enemy but a helper. And we need to make the most of it. Because others are already doing it."
Roman Lisičan | CEO @ TECHNODAT Group
When PLM makes more sense than ERP
(transcript)
Who is Roman Lisičan
Martin Hurych
Roman is the co-owner and CEO of a group of companies called Technodat. You're an avid golfer, and we met on the golf course. What did the people around you find out about you on the golf course that you were hiding, hiding, and golf gave away?
Roman Lisičan
Probably most of all that I listen more than I talk, even though it may not seem like it. I'm very quiet, I don't try to disturb my teammates by talking, even my best friends tell me I'm anti-social.
Martin Hurych
How can an asocial lead a group of companies?
Roman Lisičan
When I'm on the golf course, I'm not the CEO of the company.
How did he get into Technodate?
Martin Hurych
You have a very interesting personal story, tell us briefly how you came to Technodat.
Roman Lisičan
My story started when I was basically quite young, because I dreamed of being a car designer. It came from where I grew up, because my dad fixed cars and my grandfather was a big
Technician. It changed only in college, back in the days of socialism, when I discovered that being a designer was basically drawing on paper and reshaping your idea. I wasn't very good at that, especially since I was at university at the time when the foundations were being broken and 1989 came and it was already known that there was such a thing as a computer. So I redefined my dream to be not one who would build cars, but one who would help those who would build them to do it differently, better, using computers. At that time we were not talking about digitalisation, but about computers.
Martin Hurych
So can we say that curiosity and partly a little bit of laziness led you to fulfill your own dream or did it outline your career for you?
Roman Lisičan
Curiosity for sure and laziness is related to that. I read somewhere that the best innovators are the lazy ones because they figure out a way not to do it themselves. I guess maybe I qualify, maybe my wife would talk about it more, but it was the fact that I was always looking for ways to do things easier, faster and more efficiently.
What has his international career given him in business?
Martin Hurych
You then went through a lot of managerial positions in many regions, what do you take from this era now to develop the Czech-Slovak group of companies?
Roman Lisičan
I went through several companies, each one from a slightly different cultural world. I started with the Canadians, with that American style of doing business in the 90s, which still resonates with me. That way of finding good solutions very quickly without a lot of questioning and thinking is something that somehow still motivates me to do it in a similar way. Then I experienced other cultures and business approaches, I was at Dassault Systèmes, a French company that has its own French specificities. People say all sorts of things about the French, but one thing you definitely have to give them credit for is that they are great strategists.
They are basically taught in schools to be strategic, even if we sometimes see them as lazy and indulgent, but that is a consequence of being strategic, not a cause. Then I was in a German company for a while, it was completely different there, it's such a classic German thing, let's go do and we don't have to think about it for a terribly long time, let's mainly do. Then I was in the Swedish culture and it was very interesting to me because it was something that could be compared to us. It's a country about the same size as the Czech Republic, but what's different is the way the people approach the whole business and life. The boldness and the drive to make it there is absolutely everywhere, you can feel it in the people as they go to work, go home and research something and come back in the morning and say they've found something and let's try something else. When I asked them why they felt that way, there were different answers.
The one that resonated with me the most was that they are perceived as the most expensive region, so they have to be VERY creative to push themselves and succeed in the ones that are cheaper.
Martin Hurych
When I did some AI research on you, the short answer was that it would have been easier to list the regions you hadn't been to than the ones you had been to. You've been through a lot of cultures, so what do you bring to the Czech-Slovak group of companies around Zlín and Trenčín today?
Roman Lisičan
What I'm trying to instill in that company culture is primarily collaboration. It may sound like everybody is talking about it, but collaboration in the context that I see it is not just that we collaborate because we sit in the same office or we are in the same company. We also collaborate with competitors, for example, if it's interesting and the result is going to be interesting for the customer, which is not very typical in this environment.
Why do they call him a "coaching technocrat"?
Martin Hurych
I found somewhere that colleagues called you a coaching technocrat. How do you imagine what he's like
the management style of a coaching technocrat?
Roman Lisičan
I'm assuming it was one of my coaching teachers, because they're both women. Coaching is a little bit of a less graspable thing, it's dealing with things that are not quite of the material world. I'm a technocrat, I'm a trained mechanical engineer, I worked for a long time doing the technical parts along with the software, programming, teaching programming. So I'm very technocratic in that notion of life and everyday processing. But I had a situation in my life where I overdid it and I basically collapsed and my values have changed a little bit since then. I've come to understand that there's something that gives a person that strength, that it doesn't all come from just that rational thinking, but something else as well.
A lot of the things we carry in our head can hold us back, by having beliefs that limit us, create fear and some strength to move on and try something new. At some point it broke in me, some may say I switched my right and Audacious hemispheres into balance, I don't know, but it is a fact that I perceive things from the more Audacious point of view as well. I give people in the company space to realize themselves, I am not the one who orders and tells them what to do, I give them freedom and responsibility and not everyone accepts that easily. But what I'm trying to put in there is that we may be a technical, technocratic company, but we still function as OUDs and we function with OUDs, so let's have some balance in between.
What does Technodat do?
Martin Hurych
I've tried to do some introduction here before the jingle, how would you describe what Technodat and all its companies do? Tell it to the general public who may not know what the different types of products are or acronyms like CAE and PLM.
Roman Lisičan
In this very simplified form, we are basically digitizing the product creation process. Mankind has been creating products for millennia and always in some way. If I were to take it from the point of view of what everybody might perceive, Leonardo da Vinci was famous for making drawings that showed different machines and designs. Strangely enough, they were drawn in 3D at the time, not 2D, and that's what the whole shift in history was, that there was some kind of communication language that was 2D at the time. Because there was no other means, just a board or a blackboard and on that some paper, some pencils, and later on some transcribing pens. The designer, the inventor of the product, imagined it in his head in 3D, but in order for others to understand it, when he wanted to have it made by someone else, he needed to somehow materialize it and communicate it.
So a standard was invented that a 2D drawing was created and using that communication language to pass it on to production or somewhere further down the line. When you think about it, you create it in 3D in your head and then you cumbersomely transfer it into 2D so that those people in manufacturing, again, can transfer it into 3D in their heads. Just from that basic point of view, it's a terribly inefficient way to work in a company that creates and manufactures products. Yet it still works and we've had computers in our company since the 90s, but it started much earlier.
What the Technodat group of companies is doing is, in different areas, trying to create a solution that would break down these inefficiencies in product creation. It could be in the mechanical part, the electrical part or others, depending on what product one is creating. Everybody knows the car, and it is a combination of all sorts of things. There is the mechanical part, some electrical, fluidic, even tailors make a living out of it because you have to have some kind of seat and so on. The way the product is made is complex and everybody can be simplified in some way. What we are doing is trying to influence that creation and that process of preparing that production and planning that production as efficiently as possible using digital technology.
Where do the Czech Republic and Slovakia stand in the digitalisation of R&D?
Martin Hurych
The Czechs and Slovaks are said to be very clever, creative and very technical. In terms of what you offer to these companies, where do we stand within the European Union, for example, are we on a par or are we still lagging behind?
Roman Lisičan
You have to look at it from different perspectives, because when I compare it from what I have experienced before outside Czechoslovakia, we are not in a bad place. But it has to be said that there are also a lot of companies that have brought culture from the West. The way of managing and achieving results is very much influenced by that, especially in the car industry. But of course there are a lot of companies that are local, have local owners and want to achieve something and have achieved a lot in the last 35 years. What I perceive at the moment is that there is a certain generational change, and that gives room for the whole company to move on again, because it is natural, it is Úudské. When something has worked and worked for you for a long time, it's very hard to give it up, and certainly not when you're a few years away from retirement. There are some people that will do it, but most of the time they don't, so I felt that in some ways that's held us back in the last few years. That caution or reluctance to go into a BIG change has somehow put a damper on it. On the other hand, when I see what is happening around us now, it is again a huge opportunity to restart everything and make the industry very progressive and competitive again.
Martin Hurych
I would actually expect that as there are a lot of foreign companies here, these tools will be suppressed by the head office. Would I be wrong?
Roman Lisičan
Some do, some don't. Again, let's not be completely under the illusion that those foreign companies are always extremely progressive. It's more so in America, because I still have good contacts in America from my former job, and when I see how business is going there, how startups are working there, it's something else. When I take it from a European perspective, if there is a good startup to really get going, it will move to America, which is a great shame. The reason is that in our country, people are afraid of taking risks and there are enough people who will put money into it, even if they are not sure they will get it back. The economic calculation that I have to know in advance what it will earn does not apply there. The dynamics there are much bigger and if it is an American company, it usually moves faster. Of course, they then try to get it to all their affiliates. In Europe it is not so dynamic, although of course there are progressive companies that are moving, but they are moving much slower from my point of view.
Martin Hurych
Do you see any correlation between the adoption of these support tools for innovation and R&D and the growth of those economies, their progressiveness and innovativeness?
Roman Lisičan
I am not an economist to make any assessment of this, but it must have some impact. I have said before, because we have gone through several crises in those 30 years, and when the world went through a crisis, within a year America shook itself up and they were gone. In Europe, it dragged on and on and on and on, sometimes we
they said we couldn't, but they had the momentum. I don't know if they still have it now, although the effort would be there, but I think anybody can do it, it doesn't have to be an American, it's just a matter of how you look at it and if you're willing to take the risk.
Who is the main force behind the digitalisation of R&D?
Martin Hurych
The tools you sell are meant to shorten the path of the idea to the production line, among other things. When I see what is happening here, how fast we are innovating and what we are discussing in the car industry, for example, and what is happening in Asia or specifically in China and in America, I would be interested in that correlation. Which departments in manufacturing companies should you be listening to right now, who are you potentially touching the most?
Roman Lisičan
The solution touches most on design and technology, but who should mainly listen is the management of that company. Neither designers nor technologists will take it upon themselves to make something that requires them to make a change. That has to be a decision from the very top spheres of management, because that's what we're talking about, that's digital transformation. Many people think of it as buying the latest software and being transformed, but that's not what it's about at all. Once you have managed to Zimplement software without the resistance of the Oudis in the company, then we can't talk about transformation.
Martin Hurych
So where is the biggest friction point that I should expect as an owner who starts thinking about something like this?
Roman Lisičan
Habit change. The way the company currently operates is how it got to where it is, but if it wants to get somewhere else, it has to do it somehow differently, there is nothing more to discuss. Doing this is not so easy, however, because many factors come into play. I don't want to annoy UUDI because they will accidentally leave me, it will cost more money and I have no guarantee that it will be a good result in the end, and various other risks that translate into questions.
On the other hand, staying where we are is not going to help us. I have not talked about China, I have not been to China, but China is extremely innovative and, if I look at it from the point of view of our suppliers who supply us with technology, who are a global leader, China is the best market for them at the moment.
China's strategy has been that let's take the best we can find in the world, learn how to do it with it, and when we know how to do it, we'll improve it. That's not quite the case here, because when I look at how business is run in our area, for example, those executives primarily want to hear who else is using it. It's not that I want to use something that nobody else has because it's going to put me a lot further ahead of everybody else, but we're playing more on the certainty that if other people are using it, it's going to be good for us.
Martin Hurych
I realised that we hadn't actually said that Technodat is one of Dassault Systèmes' largest and most valued partners in Central and Eastern Europe.
Roman Lisičan
We have more of them, Dassault Systèmes is one of them, we also make software from AUCOTEC, a German company that makes software to help electrical engineers.
Why is PLM more important for an industrial company than ERP?
Martin Hurych
It's probably unfair to say that you are a software distributor, because the way I've come to know you, you are more of a strategic partner in digitalization, from consultation to delivery and launch. You wrote to me in preparation that you think that for the group of companies you work for, something you call PLM is more important than ERP for those companies. I when I talk to a lot of people today, they've done an incredible job of inoculating people that if they're going to go digital from somewhere, they're going to go ERP. Today, if someone invests in digitalization and starts, ERP is the first thing that goes into that company. Everybody else that delivers other systems has to wait. You say that for technology, design and manufacturing companies, maybe PLM is more important. What makes you say that?
Roman Lisičan
I will say at the outset that it is definitely more important, but not more important than an ERP system. It is a fact that those companies that brought ERP to the world and those companies have done a great job in this area. Sometimes they have a good name, sometimes they have a bad name, but you have to give them credit for making that first furrow so that those companies learn that it's not just about buying software and installing it on a computer. It was at that time when 2D drawings were all that manufacturing needed. At that time the ERP system was the backbone because it took over the drawings and all the planning, production, process creation, purchasing. Everything would have seemed logical to work together there and did.
What has changed, however, is that technology has brought the ability to skip that 2D drawing and bring that visual representation in 3D all the way through to production. The engineer who has to create that 2D drawing has to study for 5 years at university to be able to eventually produce the drawings, but that person in manufacturing sometimes just needs an apprenticeship to be able to operate the machine. But they are expected to understand that drawing, yet they would appreciate it if there was a 3D model that they can see everything on, that they can turn around when they don't understand it and figure out other information. I hear very often that our students can't do this, and my argument is that if they can read a 2D drawing, they can certainly read a 3D model. But it's not easy to get it into production.
Therefore, the idea that PLM is just as important, if not more important, when we are talking about product creation, is mainly that the production could not do anything if someone had not created the product first. It is also logical that the first focus of management goes to the ERP system, because in manufacturing is where most of the money goes, because that is where the material goes, most of the resources go. But when you think about how it all comes about, in design or somewhere in engineering, it starts with someone making a proposal and an offer of how much it is going to cost and how it is going to be done. Based on that, the whole machinery is started and then once it's running in production, of course there are always problems along the way. All the consultants agreed that 80% of the problems in production have their root cause in the design and preparation of that production.
So, in the end, it all comes back to square one and it is very expensive. But the company only sees the cost in production, because the material has broken down, it goes to scrap, many hours of machinery and labour have been lost, and that is the cost. That's where the big numbers are, so it's natural for management to focus there. But if the principle of looking at the root cause were applied, then the focus needs to be put on the input when the whole thing is being designed, because it costs too little money to design it well there. The reality at the moment is that when a project is done in a company, they say, this is how much time is spent on preparing the production documentation and this is how it is done in production. If there are a lot of problems in production, the first thing that comes to mind is that we reduce the time to prepare the documentation so that we have more time in production to sort it out. That's exactly the opposite of what should happen.
Those technologies that we bring to the market give room to do in that development and production preparation, to try, to test, to simulate, to do multiple variants. It takes a little more time, of course, but significantly less than when it was done on 2D drawings, and the loss that is in that preparation is recouped many times over in that production. But it has to be taken as a whole, not in the sense that this is production and this is production preparation or design and those are separate worlds. They are not separate worlds, if we know the whole thing together, then the savings will be somewhere else altogether.
Martin Hurych
So does that mean for you that the longer the idea is in the computer or on the drawing board, in the drafting program, the more efficient the final production will be?
Roman Lisičan
Definitely. Of course, it has to be worked on, not just standing there. If I were to take it from such automotive principles, one of them is lean or different variations of it, he has one of the rules that decide as late as possible. The later you decide, the more things show up and once you have to decide, you decide and you're on your way. The better the preparation, the easier and more efficient the production will be afterwards.
What is the most common argument against PLM and how to deal with it?
Martin Hurych
What is the most common argument of mental dinosaurs against deploying these things in a company?
Roman Lisičan
There are many reasons and arguments, but personally I think the biggest concern is the change itself and the management of that change. We need to explain to the people why we are going to do this, what it will achieve, it will mean change in every area of the running of the business and it will mean more work for some and less for others. If we isolate it and say this is going to be done in some department and that is the department that has to give some more information so that the others can function, then of course they will not welcome it. They will do everything against it because it is more work for them and they want it to be done faster. But when you put it into the big picture and show what it means to the company and don't measure the individual pieces, how fast they go, but as a whole get the result, it can look very different. But that means being VERY good at leading or implementing change in the company and sometimes that requires an outside consultant.
Martin Hurych
As an owner, if I were to arm myself against these views with something positive to bring to these people, in these cases it is usually a good idea to bring a positive result faster. What is it in your case?
Roman Lisičan
In our case, it can be relatively very easy because we offer those solutions on a platform that includes applications for every area of that product lifecycle management. We can start almost anywhere, it's not going to be ideal, but we can basically take the biggest problem in that company and get it to some state in a short period of time. Everything we do will be capitalized on in the future because the data, once it's created in that environment, will already be in that environment. If it requires a process change, it will be on some smaller scale, but that company can try it out to see what it means.
On the other hand, if this succeeds, if it is given some emphasis and some of those 3, 4 months are sacrificed by the company to try it out, the result is usually positive. There are people everywhere who don't like everything, but if they really experience it and try it out, they will find that the system has its advantages, it is easy to use and the data can be found very quickly. Plus I can always go further right, left, up, down depending on what is necessary around what was the biggest problem. So the theory of constraints is very easy to apply here, because if this was the biggest problem, let's solve it and see when the next one shows up, and we can move on with it incrementally.
Martin Hurych
Now I'm wondering how you talk to a potential customer and how you sell to them. I suppose,
that he's gonna come in at this point and ask what's in it for him.
Roman Lisičan
This is a big challenge for me, because explaining well what we are able to offer them and solve is not so easy if the other side does not have that experience or any awareness of it. If we use the same words, I have a picture in my head and the other side has a completely different picture. Finding the right way to communicate this is a big challenge, so more and more we are going for solutions that are non-standard in IT. The standard has been that you go into a company, do an analysis, see how they're doing, make some kind of proposal, and start implementing it. It's an ideal in theory, but it's almost impossible to fully apply it anywhere today because those technologies are evolving so fast that even we have trouble knowing everything about what's going on. The customer doesn't have a chance to know what to ask us for, and we don't know the customer completely either.
So the ideal state is if we find such trust in each other that we form a joint team that goes to implement their problem, and that team is really joint, so that both the wins and the losses are shared together. It's not that you deliverYou deliver relationship, so do me, because we're going to learn from each other in that process. We're going to get to know that company, what they're struggling with and what they want to achieve, and they're going to get to know what that technology can enable them to do.
There's nothing worse than when a company has a clear idea of what that software is supposed to do for them and preferably in a way that doesn't change anything, like we're doing now. From that point of view, I would say that it is a completely unnecessary waste of money to throw money at that technology. If that company doesn't have the will and desire to change the way things are currently working, then investing in cutting edge technology is not going to have that effect. The result will be that they will say, we spent a lot of money for nothing. We don't want that kind of customer either.
How long does it take to implement PLM?
Martin Hurych
When we compared PLM to ERP here, ERP to deploy well in a company is at least a year, a year and a half of work. What should I prepare for with your tools?
Roman Lisičan
This is very similar, sometimes it can be faster, sometimes shorter. When I compare it to those projects where we do it in parallel with the ERP system, we have always been ready to go live sooner. But that also comes from the fact that the ERP covers that area of the administration of that business, where the money is, where all the rules that the company has to follow, legal, directive, etc., have to be followed. It requires a certain slightly different approach to the fact that it has to work, in short, as required. We are on the side of the more creative ones, which of course has its own specifics, because again they are not happy with everything, they have their own idea of how it could work and how we should work as well. We need to communicate more with them and find some consensus that will satisfy them and they will see that it makes sense and has added value and it gives room for us to move on faster.
What are the expected effects of PLM deployment?
Martin Hurych
A good owner looks at the return on whatever he does in the company. Let's say we're supposed to move from a state of having nothing in the company to a state where you're leaving and you're happy with where you've taken the company. What should I expect as an owner in terms of efficiency, return on investment, people satisfaction, acceleration of innovation cycles, whatever you have numbers for?
Roman Lisičan
Only the best. Of course, it depends on how we can get it into practical use for those People. We do our best, but the support from the management and possibly the owners is very important. If there is not that communication that this is something that the company needs to be able to live in the future, then we are talking about operational problems. We always need to get it down to a more strategic level of where that company wants to be and what it plans to be in the future and what it needs to do that. Sometimes it's EASY to quantify, we have cases where we can quantify it, but we only quantify it when that company has some data. However, it is not very common in Czech-Slovak companies that they measure something exactly and we can come out of it. When we come up with the fact that we do an analysis, business or process analysis, analysis in these parts is already a swear word.
Companies are overanalyzed and they don't want to analyze anymore, so we've also changed a little bit the way we approach it, so it's again very difficult to quantify. Then sometimes it's more about let's take it in small steps, there's less to go wrong there and start by really measuring it if it works in the first step. The likelihood that it will then work in the next ones is huge. On the other hand, the technologies we bring to market are proven in much larger companies around the world. The kind of doubt that I would like to see if it works in a company like ours is logical, but no two companies are the same. When we go on a reference visit, I can do a reference visit where everybody is happy and a reference visit where nobody is happy. It's so much more of a feeling thing, so that's why I prefer to go in saying let's try it, let's try it at your place because if I show you how that technology is being used in a company where there are completely different people, the outcome might be completely different.
Martin Hurych
I don't think I'm gonna get a six-month return from you. A lot of the stuff you buy for your company has big marketing slogans, already profitable tomorrow, but I actually like that you're resisting that. On the other hand, I can imagine that arguing in business is tricky afterwards when you don't have that simple stick to beat the customer with.
Roman Lisičan
It's not easy to explain, it's a challenge. In the world of consulting, analysis and advice is a very profitable business, which is not exactly the case here, but the data that comes out of here speaks clearly enough, even if it is in some variance. If we take the example that 2D drawings are still being used in manufacturing, those foreign consulting firms say that it is between 40-60% of the designer's time that he spends to redraw the finished product on a 2D scale. I always ask when I come to a new company how they estimate this and it matches up here. So if I just take it from
In this view, if by introducing this technology I save the designer half of his working time and I am only talking about the cost of working time, then it is already a payable technology. It will pay for itself, sure, but what that person can come up with when they have that time to make a product that takes that company somewhere else entirely is hard to quantify.
Martin Hurych
So does that mean that at this point the journey from idea to line or from task to line is cut in about half?
Roman Lisičan
We're only talking about that first run, because today it's not just important that I design it and get it into production, because there are many times along the way that I'm going to come back to square one. A brand new request comes in from a customer, when they see what that company has designed for them, they go back to the beginning again. Those customers, even if they are doing some machinery, are in exactly the same situation as when we implement digital technology for them. They also can't read exactly what the customer means, they get the requirements, they work it out, they make their picture, their design, and if they don't show them what they meant in time enough, at the end they're very surprised that it's completely different. The challenge of the times today is that change runs very fast, there are a lot of change requests coming in and what you need to shortcut is that change has to run very fast through that company. Even if it's connected directly to production, if that change comes, you stop the machine immediately in that production so that you don't take material unnecessarily.
How does AI help vPLM?
Martin Hurych
It wouldn't be Ignition if I didn't ask you about artificial intelligence. When will you not need an engineer because you tell the AI what you want and it draws it for you?
Roman Lisičan
I believe that such a situation will never arise, although there are different opinions on this. On the other hand, artificial intelligence is seriously a very powerful tool right now, even if it is not fully exploited, but we need to prepare for it. Nowadays, when you say AI, everybody sees ChatGPT, but that's only one small part of it, just that it's very visible in the population. Those AI algorithms in that engineering have been around for a long time. It hasn't been that visible, but people see some magic in it, that a machine can think, but it's basically just a statistical algorithm and it can be used in engineering.
We're doing a lot of work around that now, because Dassault has brought a solution right in the platform, where the machine learns from what's going on in the platform. For that company to be able to leverage that, you need to have the data somewhere preferably in one place and with some linkages between it. That machine needs to learn that, and if we take it from the beginning that we said that there will be requests coming in from the customer, I'm responding to those requests somehow. That means that I define some functions that will fulfill those requirements in my product, if the product is more complex, then I need to create some logical links between those functions. That's some correlation, from that some physical representation is created that can be simulated to see if it will meet those requirements, and from that the production preparation can be done. That is, I'll simulate how it's going to be produced in the virtual world and then when I've got it all done, then I'll drop it into that real world and produce it.
This information, when it's together, is data that has some statistical value and change procedures go into it. That means that the machine can see from this that when I went from here to there and ran a change procedure on it twice, that wasn't the best way to do it. The machine can learn from that, but I have to put that in there because AI brings a different idea that if the machine learns that from me, then all my competition will do it the same way I do it.
That's a challenge that needs to be addressed as well, and that's why that machine has to be in a certain way that company, that is, in that instance of that data that that company has. I think that until this year, the main question was whether or not on the cloud, artificial intelligence has solved that, it's not going to be anywhere else but on the cloud. For it to be really of real use, probably very few people would pay for that computing capacity, so the question of the cloud has gone away and if anyone wants to use it, it's on the cloud. Now the question is how to put that data about that company together as close as possible, or in some more compact form with links, so that the machine learns something from it.
We will soon bring very interesting things that will allow engineers to do those routine jobs very quickly and let the tool help them do it. The creation of those documents that go along with that product design can be more and more automated. Gathering information about what's needed in the design, for example, to be able to make it here, is information that needs to be asked somewhere, either of the technologists or that design engineer will learn it over time. The challenge comes when a new person comes into the company.
The company may be running perfectly, but a new member on the team sometimes means a ramp-up of several months to years. At a company I worked at before, we had a customer who had a new hire ramp-up time of 24 months, a design engineer, until he understood everything he needed to learn to do well. That information and the controls over that, the validation procedures, that's going to be a strong domain in a while. What will be very interesting is whether the machine will be able to produce that 3D model, but we know today that it is capable, but it needs input of course.
Martin Hurych
The input is thinking I need a gearbox from here to here with these parameters and can it actually draw a gearbox nowadays?
Roman Lisičan
If I take it generically like that, then yes, the machine is trained on general, say, engineering information. Basically, when it was presented, the idea was that we teach the machine everything that an engineer needs to know when he leaves university to end up as an engineer. So informationally he will be equipped, he can be taught internal guidelines, some know-how that is specific to that firm, and that's already an addition that will only be for that instance of that firm. Of course, it can learn from everything that that company will do in that system, that is, from how it handles the customer request, how it will transform it in the process through design, production preparation to launch into production. From that, that machine will learn and it can gradually optimize because it will start by basically being some sort of advisor. It will be telling that person that we usually do it this way in the company, or check this design for me to see if it's good, to the point that if it has the same requirements met with the same functionality, it will very EASILY be able to generate a new 3D model.
Are we going to construct in virtual reality?
Martin Hurych
When I worked at the intersection of construction and mechanical engineering, my colleagues and I used to argue about whether there would be a time when a heating and mechanical engineering designer would be a virtual plumber. That means somewhere in your helmet you'll be doing a 1:1 digital twin. Is this something where the whole design world is going, or are you still thinking about drawing on a flat screen monitor and using a mouse on a flat table?
Roman Lisičan
This technology has been around for a long time, but has not found as much interest. Firstly, it was the price, and secondly, the willingness of the Uudis to go some other way, and sometimes the system in which the Uudis work. When the main goal is to create a drawing for production, the interest in trying something new that would allow me to make a faster 3D model and make a better product than I do now is not high.
It was still about getting the drawing into production as quickly as possible. But this is definitely going to change, because even in production we don't always have Udi's who have the expertise to know how to do it. We have enough skilled Oudis in production, they will do it, but the changeover is already taking place and the new generation no longer has that experience, that knowledge and has grown up on something completely different. It has no problem doing it with a phone, but it has a problem doing it with a paper drawing.
What are the benefits of digitalisation for the engineer?
Martin Hurych
We did the whole thing from an owner and management perspective. So that I, as the eventual engineer or technologist who is there at the end and who has to use the whole thing in the end, can I find something positive in it that it will bring to me on a day-to-day basis so that I don't have to worry about it?
Roman Lisičan
If that technology is deployed to the extent that it really helps across the board in the company, then from a design engineer's point of view, they get more time to spend on design. He should be enjoying it, and most of the time he is. What they are afraid of is that they will have to do this and still do what they have been doing. That's where it needs to be well communicated that what all even falls away, what they won't do anymore. If I take it from some companies, they make a 3D model, they make a 2D drawing and they still do the BOM in Excel and then they manually transcribe it into the ERP system that they have perfectly in place in the company. Connecting that PLM world to the ERP will create something called a digital thread.
This means that from that first entry of a requirement into the system to production, there is no more human intervention by rewriting or transferring something from system to system. This means that once I have a finished product or just one component, it goes into my ERP system. Based on that, he can start purchasing, price haggling, production preparation or whatever else is involved. It doesn't have to be built on the basis that I wait until the end for design and technology to get everything ready and then I run it, but I can do it bit by bit and still have control over it. Not to mention that when I have it all in digital form, those controls that management needs to have, to know where we are, that reporting is essentially online. I'm not running some report once a week to know where I am. A lot of things change completely differently, and I as a manager can look at, say, my phone and find out about each project, where it is, or who is late, if I'm really interested.
Martin Hurych
At what size of company or design should I consider this digital transformation worthwhile?
Roman Lisičan
It depends more on what the company does than how big the team is, because we have startups where a few people have created a car or an airplane, which normally hundreds do. This is maybe one of the other aspects that the software is being developed based on the requirements of big companies, so the processes that they have been debugging for years and spending millions on are there. It's absolutely ideal for a startup because it doesn't look at history and it picks the best thing that's been tweaked at the moment and goes with it. For a company that has some legacy mechanisms in place, of course it's a change because they have to adapt them in some way to make the most of that technology.
Martin Hurych
If, for some unknown reason, someone skipped the hour or so we've been talking about and made it this far, what are the most important things they should take away from this episode?
Roman Lisičan
The first thing that comes to my mind is that the technology is not an enemy, it's an enabler, and they need to either understand it or find a partner to walk them through it and use it to the maximum, because others are doing it that way. Having said that, China is doing it to an extreme, the Americans will be no less behind it and it needs to be exploited.
Martin Hurych
Thank you very much and I wish that your help in the transformation of this country will have very quick and visible results for all of us, because if there's one thing I don't want to do, it's to build assembly plant 2, 3, 4.0 here. I would very much like to see companies being created here that have innovative ideas that are quickly brought to production. Fingers crossed that you do well and thank you for coming here.
Roman Lisičan
Thank you for the invitation as well, and that is exactly where we are heading to be the best.
Martin Hurych
If you have your own design, technology and similar professions in your company and we've conveyed something to you, we've excited you about something, we've maybe poked you in the ribs about something, then we've done our job well. If we've left something in you, leave something in me, too, maybe like, comment, or share with a friend or a friend who might find this episode useful. I'll reiterate my invitation to subscribe to My Notebook newsletter atwww.martinhurych.com/newsletter , where all it takes is a simple sign-up. At this point, I have nothing to do but keep my fingers crossed for you and wish you success not only in digitizing your business, thank you.
