Product Lifecycle Managment and Engineering Systems(ES) are key components of Rhythmeering. Already a major force in engineering systems, Siemens purchase of the world’s leading PLM vendor UGS moves us all further down the road to Rhythmeering.

The acquisition also clearly sets a new agenda for the entire PLM industry. Customers across manufacturing and process industries will now able to benefit from the integration of the physical world, through Siemens’ leading automation design and production technology, and the virtual world, through UGS PLM Software’s leading factory design, product design and digital collaboration software.”

Press Release: Siemens Acquires UGS(emphasis mine)

So what’s the next step along this road? In a word - storytelling. PLM and ES have come from and remain largely focused on products manufactured from bulk materials. The growing role of software has shifted this somewhat towards bits, but these bits are still mainly about material processing. Products are created to play some part in human activities which are best described by stories. Besides, as noted in the Roots of Hardware, dematerialization is reducing the amount of bulk material in products. Nanotechnology is accelerating dematerialization. In addition other “products”(services, media, financial) and human activities(arts, sports) are already dematerialized. By design, Rhythmeering integrates storytelling processes at a fundamental level in ways not found in PLM or ES.

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