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.

Following up on the last entry on IBM’s Jazz software, I came across Jazz Technologies, a company founded by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and two other former Apple execs. Last fall they acquired a company called Jazz Semiconductor whose mission statement lists three key values that resonate with the objectives of IBM’s Jazz:

Innovative
We create breakthrough solutions for silicon technology and business processes that result in product successes for our customers.
Innovation can happen in a more predictable manner than invention, with a shorter time-to-profit
Key components of innovation are motivated people plus an open environment
Our ability to innovate is tested daily by our customers

Collaborative
People are the foundation of our organization. We empower teams to be business owners, foster boundary-less organizations, and embrace diversity. We enjoy working in partnerships, both internally and externally.
Working together toward collective goals
Being a “team player”
Working with customers and for customers to achieve optimal solutions

Agile
We are quick, resourceful, and adaptable; completely focused on meeting customer needs. We do this by:
Listening to customers and doing our best to meet their needs
Being flexible in business negotiations to create mutually beneficial partnerships between Jazz and its customers
Thinking “outside the box” to arrive at creative solutions for our customers, their end products, and their design needs

This synergy isn’t surprising given the close relationship between hardware I recently posted on in The Roots of Hardware. Wozniak, the hardware genius behind the original Apple computer appears to be very involved, holding three positions:

• Executive Vice President
• Chief Technical Officer
• Chief Visionary Officer

Very interesting given the musical relationship between the counterculture of the 1960’s and technology - Apple was born out of that counterculture .
Jazz

Wozniak

Apple

In other blogs, I’ve quoted Alan Kay’s statement that “hardware is just software crystallized” and I’m about to do so again(the link will show up in the comments) because as more and more hardware companies move into software, people are realizing where the real value is. Consequently I though it might be valuable given the pending release of the iPhone, to revisit how this transformation began and what the driving foces are. I covered that topic in the first few pages of Jazz and the Future of Global E-Commerce which follow.

Read the rest of this entry »

Four years ago in the preface of Jazz and the Future of Global E-Commerce, I described how the increasing significance of the role and value of information has been transforming engineering and manufacturing, leading to the need for the new discipline of Rhythmeering. Today, as it becomes more widely recognized that there is real value in virtual objects people are beginning to see that:

“The actual is the new virtual,” Sterling said in an interview with Wired News. “The virtual identities of objects and plans for objects will become more economically important than the actual things.”

Wired

This is, as detailed in the above-mentioned preface because:

The design, construction and operation of light, aerodynamically efficient, high-performance vehicles is an information-intensive process. From composite materials for cars and planes to microchips to nanoscale devices, the amount of material per dollar for products is shrinking.

With the cost of 3D printers dropping into the upper end of consumer pricing($20K), more and more companies like Fabjectory will emerge along with the need for methodologies and tools of Rhythmeering.