Episode 9: Narratives of Change: Grundfos Transformation Tales with Björn Axling

Come join Share PLM for another podcast episode with Björn Axling, Head of PLM and part of the Group Innovation management team at Grundfos with a mission to drive a Group-wide, cross-functional transformation into smarter, more efficient, and data-driven ways of working through the product lifecycle from ideation to end-of-life.

In this episode, we are going to talk about:

⚉ Björn's professional experience and perspectives
⚉ PLM transformation at Grundfos
⚉ Digitalization and people
⚉ Value drivers in PLM
⚉ PLM and business strategy
⚉ How to drive change while bringing people together
⚉ AI in PLM
⚉ Listening and communication in PLM
⚉ Culture in a global company and communication programs
⚉ People, processes, and tools
⚉ Tool compliance with processes, tailored setups, and customizations
⚉ Key takeaways for listeners 


MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
⚉ Grundfos - https://www.grundfos.com/ 
⚉ Einride - https://einride.tech/ 


CONNECT WITH BJöRN:
⚉ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjornaxling/ 


CONNECT WITH SHARE PLM:
⚉ Website: https://shareplm.com/ 


Join us every month to listen to fascinating interviews, where we cover a wide array of topics, from actionable tips, to personal experiences, to strategies that you can implement into your PLM strategy.

If you have an interesting story to share and want to join the conversation, contact us and let's chat. We can't wait to hear from you!

Transcript

[00:11:00] HELENA:
Hello everybody. Welcome to Share PLM's Podcast. Today, we have a very special guest with us we have Björn Axling from Grundfos. He's the head of PLM at Grundfos. Welcome Björn.

[00:24:14] BJORN:
Thank you very much. Great to be here.

[00:27:18] HELENA:
Could you give us some short introduction to yourself?

[00:32:24] BJORN:
Yes. Sort of spent the past 20 years working in innovation, product development, PLM and done that from basically three different types of company settings. I've been in big corporations. I've been in management consulting and I've been in sort of startups and scale ups of them.

I've seen these type of challenges relating to PLM from quite a large number of different perspectives.

[01:03:03] JOS:
Sounds interesting Bjorn, so you're not really a techie, you have also seen the business side of PLM?

[01:09:10] BJORN:
I think that's really the thing to it, that I'm an engineer by training, but I've always been focusing on that intersection between new technology, between customer needs and to make it into a viable business opportunity. And I think PLM goes as, as any innovation oriented type of subject matter, it needs to sort of cover all those three areas.

But I do have a lot of value focus and a lot of business focus in my sort of normal way of reasoning around things.

[01:38:40] JOS:
Okay. So we are fully aligned. Nothing to ask anymore. 

[01:42:47] HELENA:
Björn, I want to ask you a bit about your current role at Grundfos. Can you tell us a bit about the PLM transformation you are undergoing at the moment at Grundfos?

[01:51:57] BJORN:
Yeah, so I have two parts to it. One, which is a really great team that is sort of driving the here and now parts of the PLM setup. And then we have a PLM program driving towards sort of the next generation of PLM capability. So it's both taking care of the steady state and driving, sort of value and productivity improvements as we are organized right now, but we are also then lucky enough to have this very sort of strategically prioritized initiative to drive, drive towards the next level of capabilities. So it's super, super exciting times.

[02:31:44] HELENA:
Sounds exciting. Is it this kind of bimodal way of working that Jos loves to discuss in his blog posts?

[02:39:54] BJORN:
I think that is always the thing because when you're in a big company, you always have a legacy. And you always have an existing business, and the existing business is what puts food on the table or money in my budget. And, of course, we need to be very good in both catering to their needs as well as taking the lead in identifying what do we need to change.

And how can we do that without disrupting too much of the existing operations? It is a difficult challenge to manage both, both these parts.

[03:14:32] JOS:
Yeah, and maybe to clarify a little bit, bimodal was initially a Gardner terminology for more for IT oriented that I talk now more about the hybrid approach. And yeah, I think six years ago, you could still see mass big banks from one system to the other, technology upgrade, but not really the transformation in the ways of working. And I think now we are also in the phase that people are they're working differently because there is digitalization and especially my question for you, Bjorn, about the new program capabilities, are they focusing on digitalization?

[03:52:11] BJORN:
For sure, but that is the backbone and as we all know, sort of the, the gradually maturing use of a more comprehensive digital thread is of course an enabler for the bigger digital transformation at large. So I think that what we're working with here touches on a PLM. As a general concept, it touches on so many areas of the company.

So I think that it's definitely a key driver of digital transformation. But it also, as you're saying, the times where you could do this massive bing bang shifts, it's not possible because the scope is too big.

[04:30:54] JOS:
Right. And what about the people? Are they also in the digital mood?

[04:35:01] BJORN:
I would say so, most definitely. We're, at heart sort of a traditional product company, we're coming from a hardware background. But I think that as any other traditional product company, we're sort of going through this digital change right now. And you don't have to go further away than how you act in your daily life.

Everyone is using different new digital solutions and apps all the time. And I don't think a company is different. It's just that it needs to be introduced in a controlled way so that it's, it doesn't just become curiosity for the sake of curiosity, but actually seeing how do you actually create value by driving this shift as well?

[05:16:45] HELENA:
It's getting super interesting, but before we go forward, I would like to go back a bit to the, to your past, because I think your past is very, very interesting as well, and probably shaping a lot of what you are doing at the moment. Can you tell us a bit about what you did previously, Bjorn?

[05:29:02] BJORN:
Yeah, I've had a number of different types of roles. I think One of the really big ones that has led me to where I am today at Grundfos is that I was in charge of the PLM and the master data and sort of the more internally focused processes, the innovation processes, et cetera, at Husqvarna Group. That was a very interesting journey to start off that change there, the PLM strategy, but also linking it to all the changes in the ways of working that was needed, selling it and creating the commitment towards group management and sort of making it come to life in terms of examples on where will the company actually improve by going forward with these type of changes. 

So I think that is an extremely valuable, sort of experience for me in this. But I think just as well when I've been in roles most recently before joining Grundfos, I was at the a unicorn startup called Einride.

So we were doing electric heavy-duty trucking. So driving the shift from diesel trucks to electric trucks, but also driving the shift in the future towards autonomous trucks. And there I was, setting up the autonomous business there. So sort of that type of being the receiver and user of the output from a lot of these enabling PLM capabilities from a business perspective as also sort of colored me quite a lot in terms of how I reason around what are the, the value drivers that we need to see here.

[07:09:55] HELENA:
Very interesting. What are those value drivers? What do you think?

[07:13:59] BJORN:
I think that is always a question that is a little bit individual, depending on which company or which part of the company you're in. 

But in general, it's sort of how can we be faster to market with what we want to do? How can we maintain better control and traceability of everything we do, especially if you're in an industry which is exposed to more and more regulatory, sort of rules and compliance issues. How do you create a smoother cross-functional collaboration going all the way from the upstream portfolio management to the product development to industrialization to having stuff out on the market? 

I think the servitization part of actually truly understanding not only what product model have you sold and installed that at which customer, but what specific configuration of that product individual do you have there?

Do you can really maintain that control of during its lifetime as you are pushing over the air updates on software and digital, et cetera, that it has expanded so much from just understanding what spare parts to use, but actually how do we push these digital components and modules out and keep track of what we are actually serving our customers with throughout the lifetime of the physical product.

[08:31:27] JOS:
So, Bjorn, a question on that topic. I think on PowerPoint, it's very nice to create an end to end story from, the beginning, from the portfolio to the products and services, but how do you deal with this when you have this infrastructure in the organization, are you also bringing people together?

Do you change your ways of working because of those capabilities? 

[08:52:51] BJORN:
Definitely. I would say and I think leaning this initiative then we're driving at Grundfos right now but sort of also having done it in the past. I think that if you want to drive change you need to start with the people. You need to start with the people who will be exposed to these changes.

Listen in to what are the current pain points? What are the future ambitions? How can we, and to be honest, it's a, the PLM function in Grundfos, it's a service function. 

I am not going out directly to the customers. I'm not engaging in driving stuff directly in manufacturing or in product development.

So I'm providing And enabling capability for them to be better. And, I think there I need to be very sort of keen on listening in to what will be in it for them in this journey and if we don't, if we're not able to meet their expectations, the whole change will sort of grind to a halt if not at least slow down significantly.

So I think that bringing people together and understanding their drivers in this is crucial.

[09:57:01] JOS:
But does it mean that you let your business drive your PLM strategy, or are you also, I would say educating your business and creating opportunities for new ways of working? Is it a bi-modal or bi-directional approach?

[10:12:16] BJORN:
That's always the trick, right, Jos? Of course we need to be business driven and strategy-driven. So going from the, from the company strategy down to the individual functional strategies is one thing to make sure that we have good receivers of what we're trying to do and that fits into what they want, but at the same time, they are not PLM experts.

They are not the ones on the cutting edge of understanding what's new out there. How can we apply new technologies in ways that they might not be thinking of. So I think we have a huge responsibility in being a global center of excellence to also balance that pull with, with a fair amount of push from our side also to, to help them understand how this could improve

[10:57:04] JOS:
Okay.

[10:58:05] HELENA:
I love your people-first approach and how you position PLM as a service function as Grundfos. You can spell it very well, and I think you can sell it very well. Is that something you have learned at the startup world?

[11:10:19] BJORN:
Both there but I spent 10 years as a, as a management consulting and innovation management as well, and I think they're working with large amount of different types of customers, of course, is then it's comes, it's a standard tool in the toolbox to be able to create a strong narrative.

And I think that's, that's equally important here and with any company where you want to actually achieve something, you need to get people to become emotionally invested in what you're saying. If it's just logic, then it might sort of prove to be true, but it doesn't become very exciting.

And I think that that excitement and that being able to relate to what specific issues or value opportunities are we targeting that needs to sink in. Within the people who are in the end taking the decisions and not just come up as a row in a P& L or in a PowerPoint presentation.

[12:02:20] HELENA:
And how, how is that? Because I think it has this two directions to more to the top and, and also to the bottom. When you go to the top, do people at Grundfos understand the message? Do they buy the message? Or is it something that still needs to be a bit work upon?

[12:23:39] BJORN:
I think that the reason that I'm here is that they have made a clear commitment to that this is a prioritized area. So of course they understand, do we, as an organization in general fully understand what this will require? No, I think that's the case in any organization and that's a lot of what we're focusing on now to make this an area that, that is as complex as, as PLM touching on so many different functions and activities throughout the life cycle of a product.

Being able to describe that in a way that a non expert can understand and buy into it that that's really the challenge. I don't say that we've done it perfectly yet. I think there's always room for improvement, but I think that knowing that that's where we need to be and having great colleagues around me, not only on the PLM program, but also in finance, in product development so that we jointly can shape this narrative, I think is, is critical for us to, to move this forward.

[13:25:49] HELENA:
And how do you get your people to shape the narrative in a way that's understandable for the rest of the world because that's also something that we see very often when you are working with companies and these people are super passionate but also super technical and sometimes it's difficult to coach them to simplify their message.

Do you have any tip there?

[13:47:14] BJORN:
But the way that I've always done it is that I've always, as a starting point, I've started with sort of creating a vision towards what is our North star here? What is it really that we want to achieve?

And then you also need to be able to describe what is the starting point, where are the pain points, what is the untap value opportunities that we would like to be able to explore better.

But then I think that in this day and age, and things are moving so fast I think you also need to bring in some other perspectives to this. You need to bring in the megatrends of what's happening in the world.

What's happening from the compliance perspective. What's happening from the technology perspective. What's happening from financial expectations in the ecosystem around you. It might be customers. It might be owners. It might be. partners or others. And how do you weave this into, to create this burning platform for change?

I think once you get there, outlining what to do, when it's not as, as hard you can split it up and slice this elephant in, in many different ways. But I think that you need to understand where are you starting from and what's the North star towards which you're heading. And then just be able to argue for what's a logical next step in this journey, still keeping your eyes towards the horizon.

[15:09:47] JOS:
Okay. I want to reflect on some of the points you were saying, Björn. First of all, I think I'm fully aligned with you that PLM like a journey. You need your North star. Maybe this is a Scandinavian approach, where you're closer to the North star. 

We also often talk about the top of the mountain and having a target in the long reach and through different ways you're, you're going in, in that direction. But you also were talking about this burning platform. 

I think this is one of the critical things that a lot of companies don't realize that the old ways of working are slowly killing them. It's not burning enough. How do you make it visible in your storytelling? How do you motivate people to leave the comfort zone?

[15:29:39] BJORN:
I think that's, that's just it. We've been talking a lot with our partners in the divisions of Grundfos to understand sort of what that actually means in terms of pain points and aspirations moving forward. 

But then what, what I'm trying to do also is I'm trying to put this in the perspective of if I'll use this as an example, although I always say that don't look at it as an IT project because it's really not, but when you're working in an IT environment, you might have something that's very clear, which is an end of life of an application that you know that.

By this date, we need to have changed because they will stop serving it. And then that becomes super clear that, okay, then we can plan accordingly. And by date X, we need to have shifted over to the next generation of a platform. It's not that it's more abstract for us because we don't have that end of life threat nailed down in that way.

But what I'm trying to do right now is to come up with similar type of end of life threats in terms of the way that we're working. So when do we have an end of life for not having sufficient control, digital product passport being one very specific thing. When that hits the market and becomes a mandatory thing, that is the end of not having control of these things anymore. 

There are certain milestones that we can see already now that serves as an end of life for some of the old ways of working and, and I'm trying to sort of visualize them so that we can be more clear on what capability level we need to have at which point in time, basically.

[17:42:31] JOS:
Right. Yeah. You're mentioning digital product passport and one of my favorite topics in the sustainability area. I recently had a discussion also on, on Roche with companies, and you see that even the hazardous materials, which existed ruling since 2006 are still done with documents and separate people, very inefficient. And since it's a small regulation, it doesn't kill the organization so much, but now we've improved product passports and other regulations that you need to be data-driven.

[18:10:01] BJORN:
For sure.

[18:11:01] JOS:
...having already, uh, preparation sessions for that?

[18:14:05] BJORN:
Oh yeah. No, but that's on the agenda and has been since, since it came out. And that's also one of the benefits, of course, being in a big company and a global company such as Grundfos in comparison to a smaller startup is that we have experts in all these areas. So we are able to have a really good understanding and point of view in terms of when will this hit us and in what way.

So that means, of course, that my, my life is, uh, is a bit easier because I don't need to be the sole ambassador for sort of highlighting these events and what could be a risk over time, actually teaming up with the others to jointly come with another, to why this is crucial to have reached certain capability levels at certain points. I think that's, that's of course a huge benefit of being in a company that sort of has all these other support functions to drive these insights.

[19:08:01] JOS:
Okay, that's great to hear.

[19:11:05] HELENA:
How long does it take a company the size of Grundfos to define the narrative and start with the practical implementation? What do you think?

[19:20:14] BJORN:
We've been on this path for a couple of years. I joined in July, so I've only been on board here for a few months. But I think it's also we did a major change in how we address this during the start of 23 and say that it's taking us up until now.

And of course, there has been a lot of other things ongoing in parallel to this saying 6, 9 months to really be able to be out and engage with people and summarize sort of the motivations to it. To what we want to achieve, what, why we want to change, et cetera, is probably a decent time period to get to a fairly strong narrative, but then it never ends.

And  as we all know, also markets change, it goes up and down. And if you are lucky, you are starting something like this in the sort of the best of times where money is almost freely available for all these type of strategic initiatives. Or things change where all of a sudden budgets are challenged and then you need to be able to be agile and adaptive to taking on different approaches. So, and that's always the thing. Favorite quotes, uh, from Mike Tyson, a plan, uh, is only sort of good until you're punched in the face, or something like that. Sort of, it's, uh, you need to be able to adapt and change all the way through, through a transformation journey. So…

[20:51:59] JOS:
Bjorn, we have been focusing now a little bit on the project and the PLM itself, but now if we focus on your skills, what do you think are crucial to be a PLM leader in a company? Which skills do you need to collect and where do you learn them? That's my point of interest.

[21:07:16] BJORN:
I think that what you need of course you to be sort of very interested in leadership and change management. I think you need to be a little bit of Jack of all trades when it comes to understanding technology. You need to understand the business, you need to understand the underlying IT backbone and infrastructure.

That's sort of a little bit of a generalist, but also being a specialist in terms of understanding more in depth what is PLM and what is it not? 

Because when you start to talk about these things and you go from ideation and you go into quality management, and then you come in to sales and servitization and deploying service technicians on the market, it, it can become so deep in so many areas and you need to know just enough to be able to engage in meaningful conversation and dialogue with these stakeholders without trying to sort of take it over because it's still, it's still their responsibility to drive the improvements in their domain. But it's my responsibility to understand how can I, through the digital thread, through the digital twin, through sort of, accurate accessible, sort of intuitive use of data make sure that they can do a better job. 

I think that you need to have a true interest in how does the company actually work and then being able to apply a sort of these more expert PLM skills across that wider range of areas. 

[22:37:57] JOS:
And as you mentioned that things are going very fast, what are now the areas where you are learning? Which areas are new for you at the moment?

[22:45:05] BJORN:
I think that, I have a great personal interest in sort of up and coming technologies. So how over time, and I think we need to be very clear on why and what we expect to get out of it, but how will AI impact, sort of the whole, PLM area. And will it be, we had a conversation when we met here at the conference in Paris, I was talking to some people.

To what extent is it really embedded AI in the digital thread or the digital web of PLM? And to what extent is it AI that is deployed into a certain function or step in the product lifecycle? 

And I think the latter is fairly easy. And we did that looking back on, on stuff that we did in Tuscona five, six years ago, where we deployed sort of a AI-based vision in the paint shop in manufacturing to be able to quicker identify certain quality assurance or quality issues and things like that.

That has nothing really to do with the sort of overarching umbrella of PLM, you couldn't deploy that anyway. So that's where I'm still, and I think the whole industry with me are still searching for how do you actually deploy this in this extremely intricate, complex ecosystem that, that is the digital thread

[24:10:40] JOS:
Yeah, AI is really on top of the hype at the moment. I think everyone is trying to get an understanding of it and a different type of application.

[24:20:51] HELENA:
I have one question for you, Bjorn. If you could go back in time, what, what advice could you give yourself when you first got into the, into the PLM world.

[24:29:02] BJORN:
I think that one trying to do this without truly understanding the business is really hard. How does it work today? What is the flow of information? What is the flow of the products? How do you need to, to understand how the different functions engage with each other over, at least where I've been doing it, at Hoosquarna most recently and now here.

How does that require us to understand that that impact on different sites. We have websites all over the world. And driving an implementation when you have sort of one team at one place, everyone can more or less stand up in a room and shout loudly enough to ensure that everybody's heard it. That's really not the case in a big company.

So I think getting that initial understanding of what are these information highways throughout the company. That's a really good starting point, because that's where you start to understand where do you have bottlenecks, where do you have disconnections, between the obvious thing is, is of course to look at systems, but at the end of the day, it's really cross functional collaborations, where do you have these manually sort of bridged solutions that forces people to do copy paste or rely on that someone actually told you something and where can you rely on, on going down and sort of accessing a single, single source of truth. That gives you a lot in terms of understanding the magnitude of, of the challenge.

[26:03:52] HELENA:
I love that. And I love this listening approach. How can I imagine it in a big corporation like, like Grundfos? Is it you or your team traveling to different sites and talking to different people? Or do you have some kind of listening methodology or listening tool to engage with the different sites and functions and get their voice?

[26:24:12] BJORN:
From my side, I am fortunate enough to have people on, on five different sites. I have in my team, we're deployed and in Denmark, of course, but we are in the U. S. we're in, in Germany, we're in Hungary, we're in China. So being close, having someone in the team, being close to the business stakeholders makes life a lot easier.

[26:50:42] JOS:
I think this brings me your favorite part point that you for global company, the culture. How do you deal with this culture? Is this your, your team that is serving local or…?

[27:02:56] BJORN:
I would say a bit early for me and in the Grundfos world to have fully grasped all these things. I think that in general, I'm from Sweden, originally, Sweden I think is probably the most extreme country when it comes to sort of having to drive consensus, in order to get the decision, I perceive Danes to be a lot more decision-oriented.

[27:25:24] HELENA:
It's true.

[27:26:25] BJORN:
So that's a good thing because people actually, they do want to get to a decision and do want to get moving. So that's an interesting thing that there is a very forward leaning culture in Grundfos that they, they want to drive stuff. 

And that makes it of course, easier if you can only make sure now that we are aligned on, on what to drive, and make sure that all these strategic priorities are aimed in the same direction, that's something that we can embrace and take advantage of so I feel that the company is really open for, for change. 

And I think that, uh, the most important thing now is to also to put the narrative to that change that people understand how things are hanging together and what the value at the end of the day is.

[28:06:23] JOS:
Do you have a kind of a communication program for that?

[28:10:26] BJORN:
Yeah, we're having, it's everything in terms of, sort of mixed media type of communication. Of course, we're communicating, we're, setting up things on the intranet in terms of being able for people to go in there and look at things that we want to communicate.

We are having a lot of, on different levels, sort of, steering groups that drive communications down to different stakeholders or putting together videos or we're putting together sort of newsletter, like things that we send out. So I think it's, it's a lot, we did a really interesting thing here just a couple of months ago with the line organization of the PLM team that sort of was a product information day.

Where we then sent out and invited people on our sites both in Denmark, in Hungary, and in China, where we had sort of these, like a mini convention, if you will, to really show what is it that we're doing and how can we continue to support people around the organization. So it's really a lot of different ways to try and drive this communication.

And then we have set up these booths and explaining what do we do right now in configuration management? How do we work with technical documentation and visualization and 3D renderings, et cetera, et cetera, to get the more relaxed, informal setting to really get people engaged and involved and for us also to get first-hand information on what can we do more?

What do they expect? What do we do well? What don't we touch enough at all. So that has all be given and that was a couple of months ago now uh we're using that, of course, very actively in the roadmap and priority planning for 2024. 

So I think it's, it's all about being, and as you said in the beginning, you have a certain amount of pull from the business stakeholders where they say that this is what we need you guys to do.

And a certain amount of push from us and saying, yeah, but knowing sort of being experts in this area, this is also what we think we need to do in the overall roadmap. So I think that's, it's an interesting combination of trying to engage on many different levels. 

[30:20:16] JOS:
Right. So we always say people, process, and tools and the final question, and we haven't asked it so many times. How important are the tools? 

[30:29:26] BJORN:
Of course they're important. Also for people, it's to a large extent what they see as a more tangible output when you're doing updates or implementing a new platform or stuff like that. 

But it's really, this is never an IT project. It's never the implementation of the tool, and that, that's as easy just looking at if you don't change and dig into the, the data.

It will be shit in, shit out because it will be, regardless if you have a new tool, if the data is, is not good, you won't get a better output. 

If the processes that you're working according to are not properly defined, no tool in the world can, can save you because they will only, the tool will only reflect the, the processes as as they are defined.

Setting up governance, at the end of the day, it's people who are deciding on what to do and sort of pushing through engineering changes or priorities, et cetera. So the tool is, is one part of the puzzle, but it's, it's not more than that. And I would say that it's might be the most visible thing, but it's, it's not the most important thing.

[31:31:37] JOS:
So you mentioned one point where I always have to react when you connect tools and processes. I mean, when I'm advocating PLM at companies, I say make sure your tools are independent of your processes. So that you can, uh, change your processes, that you don't need to have a tool change. It's about the data.

And I think you also said the same. You have to own the data, the tools, the people, and they can change. 

[31:58:06] BJORN:
Yeah. And they will change. That's the only thing we do know. If we do this in the right way, of course, it's a massive investment to onboard a new platform and setting up all the integrations to other system because we're looking at the PLM, we're looking at the ERP, the MES, the CRM, sort of you have this backbone of strategic core platforms that you need to be able to tap into. And those you don't want to change very often. 

[32:23:33] JOS:
Exactly. 

[32:24:34] BJORN:
But processes need to be adapted to the reality of the business. So I think that that you're very good point there Jos that those things need to lead. And then the tool needs to be flexible enough to adapt to the needs of the business and the needs of the, the ways of working.

[32:39:52] HELENA:
Hm but I'm not sorry if I fully agree with you guys here because sometimes the tool can really guide the processes well. And if you want example, at Share PLM we are introducing now a CRM system, which is a different type of system. But we are not maybe so experienced in the system so we just follow the best practices and basically the process it's a bit been defined by what's given by the system. 

And I think that happens as well in PLM in some of the capability areas where you have a good process embedded into the tools that you can use as a basis as well for your processes. 

[33:13:27] JOS:
I'm happy to disagree. I consider CRM and ERP as transactional systems and transactional systems. They are very much process-driven, the flow of data. Where PLM, it's so much is unplanned, it's collaboration, it's bringing information together and making decisions that you cannot define up front.

Once an SAP manager told me, engineers are resources that don't want to be planned, but we will get them. That was the mindset. 

[33:43:00] BJORN:
I'll probably position myself somewhere a little bit in between you guys, because I think that one of the really convenient things with a good tool is that you can make people be compliant with the process without even thinking about it, because as you use the process through the tool, people are just flowing through the process Because it's the natural flow of things in the tool.

And that takes away a lot of the change difficulties that, that you would have otherwise. You could have a process in a binder on a shelf. If people are just disciplined enough, they will follow that to the letter. It requires an active choice from them to actually follow it. I think that using system support in order to get people to follow the process, of course, makes it easier.

But what I really agree with you Jos, is that one of the key things with companies having a very clear view on how they want to drive their processes, that might lead to very tailored setups in the tool, which over time can make it both more expensive and really tricky to change. 

One of the things that I will fight for quite fiercely here in Grundfos throughout this journey is to make sure that we stay clear of those very nitty gritty customizations because that I think will not provide us with the agility that we need over time as we understand that we did not perhaps create golden standard best practice solution at the first attempt. Things will need to change.

[35:12:37] JOS:
Maybe to give a practical example of this rigid processes is historically PLM has been mechanical focused. And a lot of change and release processes are based on mechanical processes. But with software changes can be done within a day and you cannot do the same rigid processes for software changes. And that's where I think everyone now is struggling to be flexible in those processes. 

[35:39:07] BJORN:
Yeah, and I think that  difference in cycle time, uh, is super interesting because you have in the development part, you have a certain cadence of change for mechanical parts. More interestingly so once you have actually delivered a product out to a customer, what's the cycle time of doing embedded software or sort of the digital service layer updates, which can be done an infinite number of times throughout the life cycle. 

And also, how do you keep track of those updates as the digital and the software parts are seen on the same hierarchical level as a hardware module to make sure that what is the actual configuration of this specific product individual that is installed at a certain customer site.

I think that, that increasing clock speed is probably not something that was considered when the vast majority of the PLM platforms were designed from the start.

[36:33:06] JOS:
So software is not part of the BOM anymore, huh? 

[36:38:16] HELENA:
Guys, it's been super interesting. We are coming to an end, but I have two last questions for you Björn. The first one is we are always looking for guests here at the Share PLM podcast. Do you have any recommendation or would you like to see someone here at the podcast discussing their experience? Do you have any names that you can share with us?

[36:58:38] BJORN:
One person that I am respecting very much in terms of his skills in this area is Olaf Tellefsson, he's now at Husqvarna. As I had moved into slightly different roles and eventually left Husqvarna, he stepped in and is now driving that entire program.

I think he also has probably a lot of interesting experience. He has a long background at Volvo as well. Volvo groups and not the cars, but more of the trucks and the buses. So really good insights in terms of driving change in these, uh, this big, big, uh, product oriented organizations.

[37:31:22] JOS:
Which brings me to a very quick intermediate question Helena. Do you need to be old to be a PLM expert?

[37:41:32] BJORN:
I would say that that's never the case. You never need to be old to be an expert in any area, but a backpack of experiences and knowing pitfalls and having seen a number of things is valuable. What I think is even more valuable is curiosity and the ability to unlearn because the worst thing I think is when you're old and are rooted in how things worked before.

And if you're not adaptive to how things will need to work in the future, then you're lost. So I think that experience is great, but adaptability is even more important. 

[38:19:14] JOS:
It brings us back to the PLM professional discussion in the past. 

[38:23:18] BJORN:
Yeah.

[38:24:20] HELENA:
And finally, what do you hope listeners will take away from this podcast episode, Björn?

[38:30:27] BJORN:
I hope I've been able to trigger a few ideas. As a PLM leader, am not sort of the nitty gritty technical guy. I see myself very much as a business leader. I think that, that hopefully sort of provide some more motivation to people to drive this from that type of direction.

And as always, I love to collaborate with people. I love to learn from people. If I can contribute something to their learning as well, that's great. So anyone who's listening and thought that this was interesting, by all means, feel free to reach out. I'm always open for a digital coffee or a conversation around challenges in the area of change management or PLM or driving a sort of business improvements in general. So feel free to reach out.

[39:15:22] HELENA:
Thank you very much, Björn. It's been a pleasure to have you here.

[39:18:25] JOS:
Yeah, thanks Björn. It was really a pleasure.

[39:21:27] BJORN:
Likewise, thanks for having me.