Episode 3: Start With People: ABB's Engineering Approach to Digital Transformation

Come join Share PLM for another podcast episode with Issam Darraj as he shares his thoughts on human-centric digitalization. Issam talks us through ABB's engineering perspective on driving transformation and discusses the importance of putting your focus on your people. 

Transcript

[00:00:02.050] - Claire

Welcome to the Share PLM podcast, the show that explores the vast universe of product lifecycle management. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Share PLM podcast. I'm your host, Claire Weingartner, here with Jos Voskuil. Helena Gutierrez. And today we'll be talking to a very special guest, Issam Darraj, a technology leader and business transformer with over ten years of experience working with digital transformations. Issam, would you mind introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about your role at ABB?

[00:00:28.820] - Issam

Hi, Claire. Hi, Helena. Hi Jos. Thank you very much for this invitation. Yeah, I'm actually, at the moment, the head of engineering applications at ABB Electrification, and my main responsibility is to lead the digital engineering transformation, where I have the accountability to establish, let's say, digital thread as preparation or a foundation for digital twin. So we are really responsible to establish global teams, processes, applications and services to ensure effective and secure operations for our business.

[00:00:57.810] - Claire

Very cool, very cool. And how did you start getting involved with A, B and B and with their PLM implementation?

[00:01:05.710] - Issam

Well, it's a long journey, what I had at ABB. So I started first as a process consultant in this project. It was a really nice story because I came originally from a company called PTC, where I was very new to this sector as well, because usually I have my background in mechanical engineering. I studied mechanical engineering in Germany, and I was working in the energy sector. And the start of this journey was when we were at that time in a company selecting a kind of a PDM system to share data across different projects and locations. And then I got to know PTC, where PTC offered me, let's say, a job to jump as a process consultant. And after three months of training in Munich at PTC Center, I was allocated to ABB project just for four weeks to gain some experience. And to be honest with you, I was mad at that time because I was living in Nordrive, Westphalia, in Germany, and ABB was a little bit far away from my home. So I came to ABB just for four weeks, and it was clear that I will not stay there because just four weeks, they had the settler team there and everything was good.

[00:02:14.760] - Issam

So I started the journey at ABB as a process consultant. And the first activity, or the first task, was assigned to me to migrate the location in China to, let's say, analyze the processes, their process, to map to the global and changing release process, to analyze the data, cat data and the normal data. So it's clear that, okay, I will gain some experience and go somewhere else. Three weeks later, at that time, the project manager contacted me and said that, hey, one of our employees at PTC is leaving. And then we spoke to ABB and they like the way how you are delivering if you want to stay. So I stayed with them for one more year as a process consultant. We had a lot of rollout, a lot of projects where I took the responsibility. It's like mini project management plus process consulting, until ABB came back and say, hey, do you like to take over the project management or the product management of the overall program at that time? They spoke to PTC as well, and then I took over the overall program management. After one year of engagement in the product management, a lot of changes I have made.

[00:03:19.020] - Issam

Then ABB offered me a job and said, do, would you like to take the role as a digital solution manager for PLM? Then I said yes. And then we started this journey. We again made a lot of stuff. We had a very, very good ABB internal team. I mean, at that time, the CIO was also very, very supportive. I came to him with the idea that PLM is not a tool. PLM is a strategy. If you want to build or let's say design your transformation on as a bedbone of PLM, we have to do a lot of changes, and then we ticked off those change. He believed in my capabilities. He supported me fully. And then after two years, I was nominated to the position where I am today as the head of engineering applications, where we are now also ahead of the journey of transforming. We have also a lot of changes with all the CIOs I have worked so far. Everyone believes in this transformation. Everyone believes in the importance of PLM, and we are on a good way. So this is the story of my engagement with ABB so far.

[00:04:24.340] - Jos

So many questions from your introduction, Nissan. Thanks for that. First of all, you are head of engineering apps. And for me, I always try to keep PLM away from engineering, because then you're put into the corner as engineering apps. How do you feel by that? Is the name still covering enough, or is it more enterprise wise?

[00:04:46.820] - Issam

Well, it's more enterprise wise. I mean, what we need to understand, Jos, is that if we like it or not, in many industries, the history of PLM was always seen as a tool. That's why PLM was always addressed under one. This is one of the misconceptions of PLM, that people think it's mainly for engineering or mainly for CAD designer in general, especially when we speak about digital engineering and digital threat transformation. PLM is not only an engineering application. PLM is a product lifecycle management platform which actually covers the whole lifecycle of a product from the first idea till even the retirement from the market, which is really an enterprise wide application and platform actually there to enable or speed up time to market. And when you say time to market, the only possibility to speed up time to market is to consider PLM as an enterprise platform, not only as engineering. Because if you want to specify it only to engineering, then you cannot speak about time to market, you can speak about time to release to manufacturing or time to release to other departments. But I fully agree with you. PLM is much more than engineering, has a larger scope, and is actually a backbone for all, from my point of view, for all departments and all actions throughout the whole product.

[00:06:07.750] - Issam

Lifecycle management.

[00:06:09.170] - Jos

Exactly. I think we agree on the history of PLM, that it's often put into the corner of an engineering tool and then expand maybe to the enterprise. And that's often also one of the mistakes I've seen in the past. Also making PLM implementations, we start to implement that engineering, we do everything they ask. And then the system became too complex for the rest of the organization to roll out or extend it because they were not involved, not only for the.

[00:06:37.090] - Issam

Rest of the organization, even within the engineering department. One of the mentality that people are facing through the implementation of PLM is that everyone wants to change to the best, everyone wants to get something new, but they want this new things to function similar way like the old system. And you often seen, and I've seen a lot of customers where this mistake was followed. I mean, they are just deploying the old system and the new one only because of the usability and the ways of working for the employees, which is completely wrong.

[00:07:09.610] - Jos

Exactly. Are you implementing the past or are you implementing the future?

[00:07:13.310] - Issam

Exactly.

[00:07:14.120] - Jos

That's my favorite one liner.

[00:07:17.130] - Helena

I have one question for you. I'm curious, Issam. How is it different to be a PLN consultant than to lead an enterprise wide PLM program and digitalization program?

[00:07:32.670] - Issam

Well, in general, it's not a big difference because my journey as a PLM consultant gave me the possibility also to talk to end users, to understand the problems. If you want to see that it's actually a good development. What I had, and this is really helping me a lot, because I didn't also only deliver, let's say, made the role as process consultant. I was also able to deliver trainings, I delivered also end user trainings, I delivered pre users training. I was in the frontline and discussions with the business as well. And this gives me a lot of insight about what are the problems that the users are facing, the real problems and challenges, what are the concerns. And now as a leader, where I'm defining the strategy and the vision for the next X years, this has helped me a lot because I'm approaching this or this gave me, let's say, the opportunity to understand that top down is not only everything that you need to focus on, especially when you define on the vision. So what I'm trying to do is now is kind of unifying the top down and the bottom up means I do understand from the high level, from the management of ABB, from where do we want to be?

[00:08:41.850] - Issam

What's our vision for the future? What is motivating us more, what's motivating us less? Where do you want to spend? Also what are the external factors that I need to understand in terms of my vision definition? You are talking today about sustainability CO2 you are talking about a lot of stuff which is externally driven but also internally. We want to for example, enable smart products or we have already some smart products on the market. So this is from the top down as my role today where I understand the vision where they want to be, but also from the other side. Now I'm able also through my experience in the past and through the engagement with the users, really to sit with the users together and understand what are the real problems. And here I'm saying the real problems because I'm not going to talk about I want to have this in green or in red. I'm really talking about let me understand your end to end process, not only the engineering part but really from the idea till the recycling, let me understand what are the problems that you have, what could be the best situation and how we can get there.

[00:09:42.670] - Issam

So this is the difference between process consultant I was able in a restricted area to provide kind of a recommendation, understand the problems but when you come also with this accountability to make a decision, then you can unify between both so that you have the balance between where the company wants to be from a vision perspective and strategy perspective. But also what are the use cases and the problems that our users have and our business partners have in order to get there where they want to be. So this is actually the balance of what I have in my role and the difference between the process consultant role and to be the head of this organization.

[00:10:25.430] - Jos

Some interesting point you mentioned the real problems of the users. Can you give some examples of what are the real problems that you are dealing with?

[00:10:34.970] - Issam

One of the real problems that users everywhere has is that easiness of accessing the data and enabling this single source of trust because when we speak about PNM, we always say single source of trust. But the fact and the reality is that you have a lot of empires in place like Arprmes, where you are replicating data, you have also a lot of integrations where you are also replicating data from one source to the other even if PLM is still the main source but you don't have the full control. And this is one of the issues when we speak about digital thread, is that me as a user, one of the use cases is I want to just go in a system or in a dashboard, or I don't know, you call it user interface where I just to put in the number of the products or the name of the product and I should be able to see the different aspects from the different systems just pulled up together. For me, I don't need really to spend a lot of time in searching the data. Another problem that you also often hear is about, for example, collaboration with externals I want to collaborate or even internals I want to collaborate in a very simple way.

[00:11:47.590] - Issam

You have always policies, you have always guidelines that are restricting you in terms of collaboration. And this topic is becoming more and more very critical, especially when you are now not talking anymore about mechanical CAD designs. Today, as you know, software is getting a very big portion in the product development. ECAD, MCAD, all of the three are today working in Silos, right? Or in the past we're working in Silos. And one of the challenges and one of really the wishes and one of the problems the users are really facing is that how can I ensure that I have always access to the latest data among the three departments so that I'm always able to take the decision based on the relations that I have. Now, if you want also to make it more complex, we can speak even about the requirements, we can speak about the functional and logical test. Those are the topics or the main problems that we are facing today. And I think every company is facing as well.

[00:12:55.030] - Jos

Although I think we also have to deal here with expectations. I mean, historically this single source of truth was a mechanical idea in the PLM system for the mechanical data. Then, as you mentioned, electronics came and software came with different life cycles and speed. And you see that more and more people now say we need a kind of access to the most reliable truth. So don't try to have everything in one place anymore because you have too many updates. But make sure that you have access to the right environment with the authoritative source of truth, as we call this. Is this also your idea? Are you trying to combine software, hardware, lifecycles in one environment?

[00:13:40.790] - Issam

I'm not sure if we will be able or it's easy to combine in one environment. The reason behind that is because here we are not talking only about the data migration, we are talking about a conceptual change or even organizational change, as you know, since everyone was working in different Silos. So the data structure is also different and the software flexibility or even the required frequency of changes in software is much more higher than CAC component or ECAT component. Now, I am not sure if managing the full data in software should happens in PLM, but at least what we should have is that we have one bomb. Especially our products today have the three components of software, ECAD and MCAD. So the idea is that you have always this at least in one repository where you have one bomb, the full bomb of the product containing all three.

[00:14:38.270] - Jos

So in your situation the software is part of the bomb?

[00:14:42.770] - Issam

Definitely.

[00:14:44.650] - Jos

And is the software dynamic or is it, I would say built on the mechanical releases?

[00:14:51.550] - Issam

Both situation. This is what making the story a little bit more complex because again, it's not just one use case you need to deal with. You have different use cases. Sometimes it's dynamic, sometimes it's built out of the built on the MCAD. So it's really a little bit difficult.

[00:15:11.650] - Helena

I have one question to what you mentioned previously about marine the top down and the bottom up approach because I've seen that these two groups of people seem to speak a different language. What tips do you have for other companies who are trying to unify the different approaches?

[00:15:33.150] - Issam

So, first of all, what I would really recommend them is that don't consider PLM as a tool implementation because if you consider this in that way, you are going to fail disasterly. What they don't understand is if I go back to your statement before, if you see the history and the development of PLM started in the 90s, it was only CAD data management. Now through the evolution of PLM, we have at the moment like four waves of evolution. We moved completely from CAD photos to more enterprise and customer photos where you have now a lot of technologies in place. Now we can debate about do I need all the technologies in the PLM or not? It's a different story. But what I would really recommend to the companies is that consider this project, this implementation, I will not even call it project, consider this transformation as a very big transformation and focus on change management. Organizational change management is very, very important there, especially if you want to unify between the two levels. Because not only the top down and the bottom up are speaking different languages. Helena also the different departments speak different languages.

[00:16:42.850] - Issam

Every department is interested to complete their job at the end of the day. So they have specific information that they are interested in or something to read from the whole bomb. They don't go through, for example, or attributes or the structure sourcing or procurement has different interest than quality, has different interest in testing and validation, has different interest than CAD engineers or ECAD or even software engineers. So what I would really recommend them is that if you are planning to introduce a PLM strategy, you require significant organizational change because you need to involve not only establishing processes and roles and responsibility, you need also to have people who are willing to drive this change. You need people who need or they have to lead to reduce the resistance of different departments. You need to manage this change effectively. You need to obtain the buy in from the different stakeholders. You need really to work. You need this active collaboration and active communication work because what happens if Department A works against Department B, what happens if Department B works against Department C? You need to get everyone together.

[00:18:01.450] - Jos

So here you touch an interesting point. A chicken or the ECA. Should you first change the organization and make the PLM work for the changing organization? Or should you implement PLM approach and push the organization to fit into it?

[00:18:16.720] - Issam

Well, you can try. I mean, you can do both, definitely. But I am always a fan of creating the sense of urgency. Let the people understand why they need the system. I mean, in some cases you have for example, if you see the old structure, they sometimes had a kind of a document management department. This document management department had only the task to ensure that the documents are passed between the departments. Now, when you push this PLM, people might resist because they think they might lose their job. Right? And this is why I think if you want to do something like this, you need first to drive the change. Let the people understand why you are doing this. Let them understand the big picture, let them understand their role in this change and how the company can benefit from their expertise and their roles today in the context of this transformation. I mean, you can also do it differently. As you mentioned, Jos, it's also possible you can just come from top down and say we will implement it. But I can guarantee you that if the implementation usually takes with a proper change management, like the first implementation, because it's a continuous project, but if it would take six months with such an approach of top down, I would not even say double.

[00:19:33.760] - Issam

You need to multiply the time that you have planned malfive, plus all the resistance, all the small reasons that people will find just to stop this implementation or try at least to delay it. Exactly.

[00:19:47.440] - Jos

I think that's the challenge we have in the PLM world. For ERP, there was no alternative. So it was possible to push ERP top down in the organization as an execution system for PLM. Yeah, we are much more depending on individuals creating data and their willingness to share. The big challenge of PLM is sharing.

[00:20:07.550] - Issam

Right? I mean, this is really simple. Talk to the people, let them understand what is going on. Let them understand the motivation for change. That's also the pioneer that you have to support this idea because at the end, when you create this kind of champions in every location, then they will be your ambassador in terms of transformation. Provide the needed training, provide the needed adoption. Because to be also honest with you, even if you have a big support and the whole organization is willing to adopt the new technology, the moment that you introduce a new platform, at the beginning you will have a kind of a drop in the productivity. And the reason behind that is very simple, because people were used to work in a specific working methods. Now you are introducing something new to them. So you will have a drop in productivity for a specific time and then until the people feel confident with the new platform or system. And then suddenly you will see again a jump in your port until you reach the maximum where the people become an expert. And now the role of the management or even everyone involved in this transformation is to really reduce the lead time for this adoption to fasten, let's say the adoption time and let the people become confident in the system or in the platform as soon as possible.

[00:21:20.680] - Issam

And this is what CRM is doing, for example, with us, right?

[00:21:25.130] - Helena

Yes, and Issam, you have mentioned chains enablement and I know you have a lot of experience in managing chains in your career. What are the main lessons that you have learned from managing chains so far?

[00:21:39.100] - Issam

First of all, let the people understand the whole picture. Let the people understand why we are doing that. The second thing that I have learned is that since now, you know, the market requirements are really changing very fast. So we need really to build a kind of a resilient organization. We need to invest in our people. For me, people are the key of the success. Without having the knowledge, let's say the buy in, without having the skills, I mean, you can try to transform whatever you want. You will not succeed because transformation is usually not only driven by top management. The key enabler of such a transformation are the people that you have. So that's why if you see my strategy, my foundation for the transformation is people. So we need to create a kind of organization that it's really able to adapt to changes. And you can do only this through a lot of mindset changes, cultural transformation. Let's take a very simple example waterfall versus agile project management. This is the very simple example that we can speak about. In the past, users were, let's say, resistant to go live if they don't have each and every function enabled.

[00:22:52.750] - Issam

Today, in this agile way you can divide your cake in some tranches, which we call sprints and then you can go life with one sprint and then the other functionality will come with the time and you can always change retrospectively the sprints based on periods and based on the lessons learned. Now go to a location where you have people that are, for example, short for retirement. They are just doing now their job for the next five, six years and try to convince these people about the importance of agile working. This is why I'm always telling you people you really need to understand your users, you really need to understand your users need, you need to build a kind of a persona and understand what's the motivation, what are the fears that those people have. So first, people focus on your people, build your people, give them trust, let them understand the big picture, let them understand their role in this change. And then you can drive on top of that or build on top of that whatever you want, because the next level will come. Then the business components. When you have the people understanding, when you have the people buy in, where you have the supporters, where you build the skills in your people, then you can come and say, okay, this is my vision.

[00:23:58.930] - Issam

Then I would like now out of my vision to understand how can I build my strategy and out of the strategy, usually you come down to the processes and then you have because when you speak about process, you want to establish end to end process. Not only as yours mentioned at the beginning, not only engineering, you are talking about the whole value chain from idea till retirement. And you need the collaboration, the effective collaboration. You need to communicate to your people. And then this comes back to some data structure and It infrastructure. But then you see the value that you are getting for the business and also start small and iterate don't boil the ocean. This is very important, especially when you are talking about change management. One of the use cases I have seen in different companies is that everyone thinks that the transformation of such a platform is like implementation of a tool. People will be able just to follow what we define. But the reality is not like that. Really start small and iterate start with the problems that you have. When you have for example a workshop with different locations and you see someone has gaps and he is willing to support and start with those people.

[00:25:09.620] - Issam

Take them as use cases and scale this use case. Create your own champions, create your own success stories. So this is actually what I would really recommend. Change management is all about this transformation. You need to understand that PLM, it's not just a software tool, it's more a strategy. It's similar to ERP in manufacturing. ERP everyone knows, as you just mentioned before, there is no alternative. People are still complaining sometime about the UI and the experience they have, but everyone is going to follow it because there is no other alternate. The same for PLM, you need the binding kit which you can connect requirement to model based system engineering. Model based system engineering to CAD, CAD to I don't know, to Ebomb embomps. You need also now we're talking about the movement from document based to model based system engineering. And really you need this binding kit. You need this platform where you can connect everything. Another recommendation is that also to the companies as you ask Helena, don't consider PLM as one time implementation because the moment you start in this journey, there will be an ongoing process that you need to adopt. As I mentioned today, you are now in PLM 40, maybe tomorrow we will have PLM 50 and 60 and I don't know how many levels we will reach.

[00:26:30.800] - Issam

And you will be always an ongoing investment. And it's not only for large enterprises, it's for small and mid sized business as well. So, all in all, this is my recommendation to everyone. And the last statement maybe based on the discussion so far, PLM is not only for engineering or manufacturing.

[00:26:52.610] - Jos

So is especially when we talk about agile. I think historically PLM systems were not designed to be agile. You go by face by face by discipline and you synchronize to your PLM environment. Now you say okay, we are implementing PLM in an agile manner. How do you educate and keep people motivated? For what is the vision where we are heading? Because in Agile you start step by step. But can you give the full picture where we are in five year? Or do you say we have an horizon from half a year or for a year for the end users? How do you manage those two differences?

[00:27:31.810] - Issam

Well, first of all, we are not implementing PLM in an agile way because in our case today we are in a very mature level. I mean, our PLM journey started twelve years back. It's not like we are now starting from scratch. What we are doing in a more agile way is the transformation. Because also agile is not always fitting every time the business needs because depends on the maturity of your platform, depends on the clearness of the requirements. Sometimes it doesn't make sense or to go in Agile, for example, when it comes to transformation, then I think especially because of the transformation has a lot of unclear situations. Yet then what we usually do is show the vision, we communicate the long term vision, where they want to be. So we start from where we are today and where they want to be, according to the assessment we did with the users, the assessment we did with the top management. We come back to the top down and bottom up and then we show the high level. Then we understand or we align together on the priorities. What are the priorities we want to implement?

[00:28:32.630] - Issam

And you cannot always plan like five years because it's also too much. You don't know what will happen on the market. And as you know, the market is expanding really very fast. So what we do is a kind of a quarterly planning to understand, okay, in this case, this is now what we want to deliver for the next quarter. This is what we want to deliver, for example, in the short term until one year. And then you always see in this short term planning also when you speak now about the delivery, you see, okay, what have you achieved? What are now the changes on the market? What are the external changes that you are forced to adopt? Let's. Take an example. The European Union came with a rule that starting 2024, for example, 65% of your energy generation should be through renewable energies. So this is something you could not incorporate in your five years vision, for example, two years ago. Now the question is how can we adapt, how can we change? And this is what I mentioned before. We need to build a culture, we need to build a kind of really mindset that we are very resilient and we are able to adapt to changes as soon as possible.

[00:29:39.610] - Issam

And this is why we first plan on a quarter level and then we can always every quarter review and the line with the business on the priorities. And then we can either continue with our original plan or we can adapt according to the need, the business needs or the market needs. Exactly.

[00:29:56.060] - Jos

I think everyone sees PLM as a journey, you know where you're heading, but a lot of things can happen on the road. I want to come back to one of the strategy points you mentioned. In the beginning, time to market was crucial for the management. And digital transformation is also one of those enablers to reduce time to market because you can connect your ecosystems, your suppliers. How do you, in your PLM environment incorporate suppliers at this stage? Do you already have them connected or are you still interfacing in a traditional way with them?

[00:30:28.100] - Issam

No, we have them connected. I mean, in our PLM system we have also an integration of our external suppliers and the people who are working with us and design. So we don't send anything per email or, I don't know, SharePoint or something like that. We have a full integration of the customers now. Definitely. If you ask me, are we very satisfied with the solution, what we have? I mean, the answer would be definitely no, because you have always possibilities to continuously improve. But we don't collaborate with our suppliers or externals partners through the old way. We have everything under control in the PLM system. We can see the changes, we can share with them, they can also work on the design, they can check it in back. We have also the traceability in the track. So in terms of collaboration with externals, we are very good, let's say positioned at the moment. But definitely we have also a way to go to improve, especially because when we speak now about the revolution or the change of the structure, we need also to engage our customers as well as our partners in this transformation as well.

[00:31:31.860] - Jos

Exactly. I remember in the past with suppliers that they found data driven approach, non file based approach, they found it too complex. They used to send emails and files.

[00:31:44.030] - Issam

Well, this is part of the stakeholder management because your partner and your customer or even your designer or the third party that you are working with are stakeholders as well. Right. And that's why we need to ensure that we get their feedback as well as part of this transformation definition. Otherwise, as you mentioned right now, you will start in a point where people will start working against you, not with you.

[00:32:06.020] - Helena

Issam, we are coming to the end, but I have one question. Based on what you told us previously about the evolution of PLM, how do you envision the future of PLM? What are some of the emerging trends that you are keeping an eye on?

[00:32:20.570] - Issam

This is a very good question, because let's come back to one of the points that I mentioned before. I mean, to be honest with you, there are a lot of technologies that we are putting in place. One of them is, for example, artificial intelligence, which is becoming now very popular on the market. But just for your information, we were starting evaluating this already since 2019. The first use case I've seen about artificial intelligence, how it can help design your product, was on a PTC Live Works back in 2018. And since that time we're evaluating the benefits. But in general, everyone is today. I mean, I don't want just to throw some buzzwords because I don't like this. Just use the same buzzwords everyone is using. But if you want really to be realistic, there is also one article on your blog about digital twin technology and digital twin is really gaining traction PLM. But also to understand that to be able to generate a kind of a virtual representation of your physical product or system that will allow you a real time monitoring, collaboration, simulation, et cetera, you need to do a lot of changes until you get there.

[00:33:26.790] - Issam

It's not like you press button and then suddenly you are there. So digital threat is very, very important. Internet of Things is also very important integrations, since we are talking about a kind of connected products today, smart products. I will not even mention the cloud based PLM because I think it's not any more trend now people are talking about SaaS PLM. I have a little bit doubt on SaaS for big enterprise, but it's a different story. AI, we just mentioned AI and machine learning, augmented reality and virtual reality as well. We have some use cases which has been proven in the service area, in the manufacturing area, and the assembly and the training of people. But I have not yet seen any use case for engineering, apart that you have sexy technology use. You have this HoloLens and you can see the products. I have not yet really seen any use case or the real value or benefits for at least in our sector. I don't know about the other sectors, but I spoke to different companies and I couldn't see any use case where it says, okay, if I invest in this technology, there is really the value for the business and this is a game changer.

[00:34:36.310] - Issam

But I think AI, internet of things, digital twin. Those are, from my perspective, use cases. That where we need really to focus on and also the extended collaboration ecosystems, as mentioned by Jos before. It's also something that where we need to invest in terms of development of the PLM features and capabilities.

[00:34:58.750] - Helena

Very interesting. And I see that you have embedded some of these trends into the introduction. So it's getting real for you.

[00:35:06.660] - Issam

This is true. We're exploring, right?

[00:35:09.160] - Jos

And this comes to my final question. I currently have with a lot of people discussion on what is a PLM consultant? What skills does a PLM consultant need to have? Is there a school for PLM consultants? Where can you learn PLM or is the topic maybe too broad? What is your opinion about that, about PLM skills? How do you get them?

[00:35:29.040] - Issam

At the university I had the first course about PLM where you understand the basics of PLM. And then when I went to PTC, I understood the PLM from a windshield perspective. But to be honest with you, the real learning was by doing so when you go to the customers. What I think a PLM consultant should be able to do is really to understand the business relations. For me, the soft skills are very, very important because I have also seen a lot of use cases where people were not even able to communicate with their customers. I mean, I remember also some of the workshops where the business didn't want anymore to talk to the specific consultant, not because of the skills of the consultant. They were very, very, very capable in terms of PLM understanding, product lifecycle management process. But the soft skills were completely missing. I think it's not only a matter of understanding the product lifecycle management concept, which is for me is critical. It's also more a communication skill, soft skills, it's more of really being able to connect the dots. Because you will never be in a workshop where you have everything working very smoothly.

[00:36:35.160] - Issam

You will always have people doubting. And you need to be able to adapt, not to get out of your mind, just really try to understand the position of the others. So for me, maybe soft skills training or I don't know if you can call it training, but really being able to understand your counterpart, being able to connect the dots, being able to understand business relations on top of your concept of product lifecycle management understanding. And definitely when you are talking about a specific tool, you need to be able to understand the tool's capabilities as well and having the possibilities to be able to say no to the business, because this is also not easy to say no. Not everything that the business is willing sometimes makes sense. To be implemented as a process consultant, you need to be able to challenge, to try to understand the why and also provide options and make it clear to the business what's the best way to go because at the end this is the role of the PLM process consulting. It's not only implementing whatever we want, it's more than guiding us through the right path to get there where we want to be in the best way.

[00:37:43.380] - Issam

So this is my point of view.

[00:37:45.890] - Jos

To conclude on this, I think we agree on the fact people process tools. So you start from the people, from the processes. How important are then in the end still the tools? Does it make a difference which tool you select?

[00:37:59.160] - Issam

No, for me, at the end the tool is a different I mean, to be honest with you, the tool is for me, the last point I will consider. Definitely. Sometimes you need also to think about scalability and flexibility. You need to think about the features because you cannot build the vision of you want to change the world. And then you can start with, I don't know, with something which is not even flexible or scalable enough. Definitely some measurement that you need to consider. But for me, really, before you start about talking about the tools, you need to build the skills and the people, you need to define the strategy where you want to be. You need to define the processes that you want and then you need to implement that in the tools, not define your vision and the strategy based on the tools capabilities. This is my approach. Some others see it maybe differently. Some people say okay, I will now just implement the tool and then we can adjust later on. But this is not how I usually work.

[00:38:52.410] - Claire

Issam, I have a question.

[00:38:53.800] - Issam

Go ahead.

[00:38:54.320] - Claire

Have you always worked like that or has your style, and especially your leadership style, has that changed over the years?

[00:39:00.580] - Issam

No, this has changed over the years, definitely because you are always learning something new. I mean, what I learned in Germany is the structure. So about the structure is something I gained and I was always applying also during my study. But then when you move through those different steps and level and when you actually learn some of the challenges that the business is facing, then you understand that the life is not always black and white. You always need to find the balance between what you need and what the business needs and what is the target state, the state where you want to achieve. So actually, I went through a lot of very nice stories in my experience, where at the end, it's also a kind of mindset change where you say, okay, now you need to take a look from a different perspective to the things. And then this is the result of all the experience I have went through in the previous years. Maybe tomorrow when you speak to me tomorrow, maybe I will also have different perspective because you don't know. Now in this transformation we are learning a lot of stuff. And me as a leader, I need to be a role that showed the people.

[00:40:07.720] - Issam

That doesn't necessarily mean that what we are talking about right now is always the best. Tomorrow we might learn something new where we need to adopt and I need to be the first to change and adapt to the new working methods.

[00:40:20.550] - Helena

Issaman, I want to mention that having worked with you and knowing you, it's very interesting how you have that German structured way of thinking or of doing things, but then you also have this more southern empathy coming from your culture. So I think it's a very powerful combination, the structure and then the empathy and the focus on the people.

[00:40:43.790] - Issam

I always say to the business, I mean, what is your target? You want to grow, right? In order to grow, you need to focus on your people. If your people are happy, you will automatically grow. If your people are unhappy, whatever you do, you will not even being able to grow 0% because people either will leave you or people will just work against you. So I think if you make your people happy, if you take care about the people at the end, we are talking about human beings. Be human, be kind, support the development of the people, support their growth, and you will see the result very automatically generating growth and happiness.

[00:41:21.770] - Helena

Thank you very much Issam, for this inspiring conversation.

[00:41:25.530] - Issam

You're welcome, it was my pleasure.

[00:41:27.440] - Jos

Thank you. Issam, it was interesting to hear your broad approach about a PLM transformation and knowing also the difficulties of going digital and connected.

[00:41:38.340] - Issam

Yeah.

[00:41:38.650] - Claire

Thank you so much Issam, for joining us and I hope we can see you again soon on the podcast.

[00:41:43.770] - Issam

Thank you very much. I hope also the same. Have a nice day.

[00:41:48.770] - Claire

Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Share PLM podcast where we bring PLM professionals together. Do you have any questions, topic suggestions or know a PLM person who would be a great fit for the podcast? Let us know by visiting shareplm.com/podcast.