Episode 2: Bridging Silos and Building Communities: Insights on PLM & Transition Management with Christian Barlach

In this episode of the Share PLM Podcast, we are joined by Christian Barlach. Christian is an accomplished Product Development Leader with over three decades of experience in developing complex software products and managing large-scale projects. A proven track record in designing and delivering innovative solutions across diverse industries and continents. His last position was working as a Business Process Reengineering Manager at ISC Consulting Engineers but previously worked at Dassault Systèmes as the director of R&D Solutions for the shipbuilding industry.

In this episode, we are discussing:

⚉ Unique Challenges in Engineering to Order (ETO)
⚉ Role of PLM in ETO
⚉ Key People in PLM Projects
⚉ Proliferation of Tools in the Engineering Space
⚉ Integrating Tools to Streamline Workflows
⚉ Challenges in Building and Sustaining Communities
⚉ Generational Dynamics and Incentivizing Collaboration
⚉ Transition vs. Change Management
⚉ Transition to Modern Systems: From CATIA V5 to 3D Experience
⚉ Leadership and Innovation Culture


CONNECT WITH CHRISTIAN:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-barlach/ 


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

[00:00:11] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Hello everyone and welcome to the SharePLM podcast. I'm Beatriz González, CEO of SharePLM. And today we are kicking off the series three. As always, joining me is Jos Voskuil. Hi Jos, how are you doing? And who is with us today?

[00:00:27] JOS VOSKUIL:
Hi Bea. Welcome back in series threes. It's good to be back. And today we have a special guest from Denmark. It's a Christian Barlach, who I knew from the past from his katia skills. And when we met in person in the Inovia user group in paris last week, and its last role was Business Process Reengineering Manager at I. S. C. Christian Barlach. Christian, please introduce yourself to the audience.

[00:00:51] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
Yeah, thanks, Jos. Yes, my name is Christian Barlach, and I have the, as I mentioned, working as business re engineering at ISC, and I have many years with the company, and I began a long time ago, really, on the CAD, and then it was gradually transferred into the PLM. So mainly in the engineering to order to speak the mechanical language, but really project oriented products.

[00:01:22] JOS VOSKUIL:
Right. I mean, here you jump first already on the engineering to order. I mean, that's I think a challenging area for PLM because people just want to have the job done. And why do you need PLM? So why do you need PLM in the engineering to order environment?

[00:01:39] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
Well, maybe you don't need the PLM in the context where it's mostly known, but there is a lot of sub processes that is also used in Engineering to Order just by history. It's not like Engineering to Order don't do any changes. They change all the time. The only difference from Engineering to Order is that we have been smart to also being paid for our mistake.

[00:02:07] JOS VOSKUIL:
Exactly.

[00:02:08] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
But you have so many of the process embedded into the PLM that is also used in engineering to order. But of course there is a big difference when you think of it, that, that we built prototype that has to work. So it typically never get perfect, but it gets good enough because you only built once.

So you can say. Of course, nobody will really admit it, but quality is also always for sale because there is a budget and it has to work and it has to be good enough. And that of course, very different from a traditional product development.

[00:02:49] JOS VOSKUIL:
Exactly. Your prototype has to work at once. That's the idea of engineering to order. And when I try to sell a PLM to this type of industries, that was more also about connecting the dots because the tools are there, but then they have to be connected.

[00:03:08] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
Yeah. And we will also see, because for a period of time I was also involved in selling what was developed by one of the big architects, Gary technology software. And of course, we learned there, not so, so surprising for me, but it's a completely different vocabulary. It might be the same, but they call it something completely different. And maybe sometimes this is misunderstood and you will see that, why are you talking to me? You don't understand my industry. But the issue is you probably do understand it much better. You just use a different language for it. So my hope is that eventually everybody would realize that more or less we are doing the same.

[00:03:55] JOS VOSKUIL:
Exactly. I think yeah, we, as generalists, I mean, you have been working in different industries. I've been working in different industries. We see, I would say that the commonalities,

[00:04:05] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
Yeah.

[00:04:06] JOS VOSKUIL:
But uh yeah as I always say the challenge to speak the right language with the right audience. And how how important are the people in the role of PLM implementation?

[00:04:17] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
I think it's very important to have people that know the tools and the functionality. But it's also very important to have some of the people, and they're the people you typically meet during benchmark. They are the smartest people of the company that can understand the question and the challenge.

And, and, you know, you move higher and higher until you reach a decision. And then you have to land the plane again because now you have moved so high in the sky that nobody else in the company would grasp it, but you need to have ideally somebody from the company that can build the bridge between the traditional understanding and also grasp what tools are made for, because most of the tools, to be honest are coming out of the, I would say, the product development for, for, this. Of course, you have a vast forest of tools in the construction industry that has solved some pinpoint issues, but you don't really see one tool being able to solve it all today, really.

[00:05:29] JOS VOSKUIL:
Exactly uh if you talk about the construction industry or also also the EPC contracting often, yeah every skill has their own tool sets and they bring it back together in, in documents most of the time.

[00:05:41] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
And I remember in the past, we were all so hungry for tools to visualize the 3D model. And I remember a tool coming out of IBM that was actually, I think it was created only to test graphic card. They wanted to prove that graphics were better than OpenGL. That this tool was probably the only one on the market not very smart name, call it 3D IX, because that a lot of issues.

But today, when you look on tools for 3D viewing, I don't know. I think I can mention 20 or more. So the problem is not that we don't have the tools, but we have too many. And that is some disturbing the industry to come on board because they rightfully complain that they cannot be forced to know all the tools that is different on all the projects. It's actually, this is a situation where it's actually bad to have too much but that has impact.

[00:06:41] JOS VOSKUIL:
So many tools. Okay.

[00:06:43] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
Too many tools that of course is not synchronized, so it doesn't have the same keystrokes and everything.

[00:06:50] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
And Christian, you were talking about also the language. And now that you are mentioning that there is a lot of tools in the markets from your experience that you have been in, like, in the software side and later on the business side. The barrier of communication usually is very, very big there because the technical people needs to simplify the language. So it's understood by the business and the top management.

How was your experience and what are your, your advice for the technical people that needs to convince the business or not convince, but yeah, communicate the benefits of these tools?

[00:07:23] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
I would say the common experience and the most efficient way is unfortunately to wait for a small disaster. And then you pick that one, you try to avoid saying, I told you so, but then you come in and sort of recommend how to avoid it. This is unfortunately the sad truth that this is helping.

But I would generally recommend to identify a commonly known pain point. And I can say from the industry I work with, it's a lot of consulting engineering. The problem is top management will tell you that we don't make mistake.

[00:08:09] JOS VOSKUIL:
Exactly.

[00:08:10] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
And as I learned a long time ago from a very smart book that told me that you cannot sell a solution if there's not a common agreement of the problem.

[00:08:23] JOS VOSKUIL:
Right.

[00:08:24] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
It's so right, because if you go to senior engineers that are many times so smart that they could do it in the weekend, if they had the time. Then it's difficult to come in and say, you know, I can do this better, especially if you are in an industry that is paid by the hour, then doing better is just meaning less money. And that's where the industry come from. We come from paid by the hour. That is somehow, when you say you're paid by the hour, then the customer is always right, even if the customer is wrong.

So who has the interest of being more efficient? It only comes in when you begin to have fixed price, then there is a sentiment to, to be efficient. But I think it's finding a pain point and trying to show how that can be avoided in a simple case I would say that's best. And also when you deploy tools it's important that you have somebody there to be your champion in the company. And then they should also help bridging to the users.

[00:09:35] JOS VOSKUIL:
Right, so here, I have a question also coming back to the beginning that you say we, we work, when we do a project, we work with the subject experts, the smartest people, often they are the firemen in the company. As you said they live by the errors and fixing the, the errors where we want to be proactive.

We want to be in control of our, how do you motivate those people? Or do you recognize them? Do you, uh, look at their behavior?

[00:10:04] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
I think it's always difficult to really recognize the expert because many times it has to do with that very much their personality. So maybe you can identify here is somebody who I would say likes to share more than build up experience. And unfortunately that would, but it's also naturally, it's not the youngest people who has the most experience.

But I know as myself in the beginning, when you start engineering first, you work a lot, then you got the expert, and then you had a couple of years where you felt it was good to be the one everybody asked. But then when you realize that 24 hours is not enough for a day, then you begin to say, you know, I need to get more on board.

So the way I have deployed, and especially lately where we had the tools to support it. It is, we have used these community approach and created communities on specific subject, identify a good candidate to be the owner of this subject, and then get them motivated by sort of sharing.

And when it comes to sharing, of course, the younger generation is better because they're used to it.

[00:11:23] JOS VOSKUIL:
Exactly. Yeah,

[00:11:24] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
Older Generation, they don't share because that's their knowledge, the job security. So I think it's a mix of different people and then they will see each other that if they share something, I also need to share something.

And then, then hopefully you will be able to get these individual community. And you can say it's the community on the silo. But hopefully, because you can look in the other silos, hopefully that would break it down a little bit, at least we have been able to it, but it's always difficult to get one discipline to accept that if you do it a little bit less efficient, it's going to help the other ones.

That's almost impossible because they are very, you know, true to their silo.

[00:12:10] JOS VOSKUIL:
Exactly. Because this is the way they are paid and measured also individually.

[00:12:15] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
It's also something that blocks us to be more efficient, but we can take it later when we talk about the steps we are taking to make it more efficient.

[00:12:25] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
How do you measure Christian and the success of a community? Because, uh, this is something that we also do for our customers and some people is worry that how we can keep the community life. You were mentioning an owner and young people commenting.

[00:12:39] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
We have a community owner and of course they can share the ownership if they prefer to. But I would say unless you want to, to read through all the posts, count the likes, et cetera, you can probably only rely on the numbering. I would like an additional enhancement where you sort of rate the value of the post and also have that.

So I always imagined we could have something like an, an eBay rating that, uh, you know, if this post was like by so many, it's rated higher, et cetera. I understand you are concerned that if all of a sudden everybody thinks they have what they need, then, uh, they stop using the community. But then you have the luck that the vendor comes with a new release and then you have to start the community again with the changes.

[00:13:35] JOS VOSKUIL:
Right. Yeah.

[00:13:36] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Yes, that's true.

[00:13:38] JOS VOSKUIL:
One of the big challenges I see with communities, and of course I'm moderating also the PLM Global Green Alliance, is that people need to have time to a browse through the community to, to learn the information. And if you don't set the time apart in your day to day business, you will not just browse and look if there is something else.

I mean, is this something you see happening in companies that they mandatory push their people to, uh, take time to learn or to innovate?

[00:14:09] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
I can almost say that, of course not, because, uh, time is money, so work, work, work. But I think I would put it under the umbrella of lessons learned. This is somebody most companies talk about. I don't think many do it very systematic. But it's part of the building and just look at the Chinese, the way that gets smarter, it is that they learn from others sometimes too hard.

But if we don't go back and we learn and we are curious on the on all the things we don't do and that's the same when you do a a design review. The best feedback you get is from the discipline that has no idea of what you're doing because they come with a sort of honest comment. So, how do you ensure that people are curious?

I don't know if you have an idea, please let me know. I think it pretty much have to do with with the personality. But I hope the younger generation that was brought up in Facebook and all that, they come with a more natural sharing, I would say, experience, so hopefully the younger generation would share a lot.
Then the more senior generation gets fear of falling out and then they will also start sharing. Hopefully.

[00:15:34] JOS VOSKUIL:
But then the younger generation shares one minute and that's the length of, uh, of oversharing.

[00:15:40] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
I know. I know. So we feel there so I'm thinking.

[00:15:45] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
And somehow the, the music industry should learn that they should only do songs of less than a minute, because nobody hears anymore.

[00:15:54] JOS VOSKUIL:
Yes.

[00:15:56] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
No but I think that if it's promoted from the top management that sharing is and and for companies like the engineering company will say only value they have is knowledge.

So it's in the company's interest that that knowledge is not kept in people's mind, but it's put on paper owned by the company. Because then it don't go away.

[00:16:21] JOS VOSKUIL:
Talking about the young generations, what is the average age of the, of the people in the projects you're, you're dealing with?

[00:16:28] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
I would say it's straight out of school to senior people and, and we mix them on project. And I think they are very good. The younger generations are very good to learn to each other. And we still get a big value out of people sitting in close areas physically. Of course once you are into the project more, I'll say senior, you can also work for home.

But it can be a challenge to get inspired just working from home and the tools we have, all the digital tools, they're not so, they are good, but you don't share an idea as easily as you do with the coffee machine.

[00:17:08] JOS VOSKUIL:
But I think in the ETO industry you're paid by the hour and every sharing hour or, uh, not billable hour is a challenge.

[00:17:18] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Yeah.

[00:17:18] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
Yes, but that's where it takes a true leader to make that happen and to be, knowing what the people are doing.

[00:17:27] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Yeah, this is also a very good point, because when we mentioned communities, we think that it's only online, but it doesn't need to be only online. You can organize some events, even online, but also physical if you have around. So it doesn't need to be so frequent, but sometimes people get to know each other and then it’s like so.

And also, I think what you were mentioning, like doing analytics, what posts are helping to the people. So at the end is managing, managing the change. So being like having a strategy in the change, how the people is reacting, how we can communicate, how we can connect and talking about change, you were mentioning your link.

And there is something about the transition management. And we were curious about what's the difference between transition management and change management?

[00:18:14] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
Well to be honest I will say it's pure marketing because change management is, is large because you can say from the very technical people, change management can be on a part that change. On the high consultant, it can be the organization that change. So change management by itself can be very small, but also very big.

When I came back to, I see here, I would say 13 years ago, we was changing from one version to another version. And also the word change management was not very precise. So we were saying more, let's transition because then we don't necessarily challenge the processes because we're saying we're just moving the processes to something different of support.

So it's, it's more to comfort the engineers that this is just a transition. Don't worry, no changes, but I agree with you. It's very much the same.

So it was more like, it was more acceptable for the organization to to see it as a transition. And you can say we are always in a transition. So it's never ending.

[00:19:31] JOS VOSKUIL:
Yeah. Although I'm a purist in, in words, I like the word transition because it really means you go from one point to another point. And where I would say. Change is always happening. And change doesn't necessarily need to have a target where transition, I have in mind that you also have a goal and I think that's why the term is, is good.

[00:19:54] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
I can say transition to you and you can think it's from here to here. And for me, it's from here to eternity. You know, so.

[00:20:03] JOS VOSKUIL:
I saw that you were active in a big transition from a Catia V5 traditional environment to a 3D experience integrated. I'm curious about, uh, because we talked about communities and what are the big difference for the people and do they like the change from this transition?

[00:20:22] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
I have to say, and this is probably hard for people like share PLM that focus so much of people's well being, but the most successful transition, because I've also done it from before to five and honestly also for three to four. But the most efficient thing is really to have a project and put people on it during the transition.

Because then they don't have enough time to complain that it's different. You can say it's hard for the people, but it really helps because then you feel like now we are all in the same boat now we have to get to work. And I think especially from the V5 to the, no, we should not say V6, from V5 to the 3D experience, it was also from a, just a pure file management on a Windows server to a database.

So I think the first part was really to get people comfortable by the fact that they could not see that data in the same way. Once they accepted that, then there was, hard to say, but it was only joy and the biggest, I would say, feedback we got, what they were most happy about was the fact that you were not dependent on file names.

It's things you forget, but for people that has been living, changing file names in a file based environment, it's been a nightmare.

[00:21:56] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
I totally agree with this approach. I have seen because we started only with the people side and we realize if you don't put it in a project, it doesn't make sense because the people activities need to be very in relation with the technical activities. You need to know in which point of the technical project you request the business input and how it make it easier for them.

So this is why we believe in this important to having one technical program manager with a business program manager that knows change management, that is expand that. This is when we find that the transition is success.

[00:22:32] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
And I think probably every time we moved or we evaluated other systems, there was always this, I would say, idea from the management that now we run a pilot on the new system in parallel with a pilot on the other system, but it never happens.

They start and all of a sudden they are just on one. So I think sometimes, and this is probably very much coming from the Nordic where we are so, I would say social that everybody has to agree and all that, so it takes forever.

[00:23:06] JOS VOSKUIL:
Exactly.

[00:23:06] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
When I was in the US it was much easier. They say, yes, sir. And they just do it.

[00:23:12] JOS VOSKUIL:
Yeah. So I think we are both talking about same when, uh, you have to put people in the project because that's when the change really happens. And it was also one of my conclusions in 2018 when at conferences I start to say, stop with proof of concept.

Start doing in an MVP, start learning because being in communities being connected is different. And you have to experience if you cannot do it in a proof of concept because then uh after proof of concept you would say it feels uncomfortable let's go back to what we did.

[00:23:48] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
And I know for instance because unfortunately uh our deliverables are typically only paper. So meaning drawing. And if you do a proof of concept or things like that, you always skip drawing because that's the boring part. So you never get tested what many times are really the, the measure point So I think it's, it's important to have something with real milestone that forced you to run the full process as it is expected from management.

[00:24:18] JOS VOSKUIL:
And you should get the time to learn.

[00:24:21] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
Yes.

[00:24:22] JOS VOSKUIL:
I think that's somewhat often also, yeah. Even if you do PLM projects, they have to do it in their spare time or extra time because business goes on.

[00:24:31] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
Yup. But it is It can be tough to change the rail system when the train is running.

[00:24:39] JOS VOSKUIL:
Right.

[00:24:42] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Okay, so I think we are coming to an end. Christian, would you like to leave it our listener some, listener some advice?

[00:24:51] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
Yes, I think a lot of time and energy is wasted, because companies tend to not stick with, I'll say one solution. Of course there can be reasons, but if too often there is a doubt whether the current tool set I use, and you want to start another one, you are losing so much on the people side.

Because management doesn't really understand that this is not just a tool like Word. You know, people, if they have to be efficient, they have to sort of think of it. And I always, visualize our tools like this Blade Runner, when you have a disabled legs that this is an extension to what you do.

You do the same, but now you have some tools that can make you go even faster.

[00:25:47] JOS VOSKUIL:
Exactly.

[00:25:48] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
And of course I think tools, depending on vendors can do the same, but if you're going too much force and back between the tools, you will lose the people because it's hard and throw people from one tool set to another one.

Yes. In principle, it's the same, but, it takes time to get into the tool. And I will say in ISC, we were just, I would say lucky to select the strongest host, maybe back late eighties and nobody knew at the time. We could also have been selecting the, you know, I don't know, some was the tools that is no longer here, and then the, we would have the change.

But I would say the tools are one thing it costs, but it's only a fraction of what it costs to have your users and community being able to master it.

[00:26:41] JOS VOSKUIL:
Okay. And maybe I have a final question, Christian. I mean, you're an experienced guy and experience is what you get when you don't get what you expect. What was your biggest experience in your career?

[00:26:54] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
I've been thinking a lot about that question and I think I have to go way back, and I'm so lucky that I can still remember it, way back in university when I first realized That I could get this box to work for me. I said, the first time I realized putting together a software program that actually do something on your behalf.

I would say that, that was like a big AHA! experience. And of course there's many ever since, but I think this is probably the most critical. The things I've recalled the most that I could see a lot of potential here.

[00:27:36] JOS VOSKUIL:
Okay. This was the moment. Welcome in the world of software.

[00:27:40] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
Yes, you know, uh. Yeah. And I think then up and down and things seems actually come together in the end. But I also have my share of failures don't worry. We are so good and I think that's a human thing, we are so good of remembering bad things. For instance I cannot remember being a boy scout that it was ever raining but we all remember that Christmas is white, right? But that's how the human mind helps us.

[00:28:16] JOS VOSKUIL:
Yes. We remain relaxed. Thank you very much, Christian.

[00:28:22] CHRISTIAN BARLACH:
You're welcome.

[00:28:22] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Thank you very much Christian. And thank you listeners for joining us.