Episode 19: The PLM North Star at Moba: Building Trust, Data, and Configure-to-Order with Jaap Holweg

In this episode of the Share PLM Podcast, we are joined by Jaap Holweg, PLM Manager at Moba and a passionate, hands-on leader who thrives at the intersection of people, processes, and systems.

With an entrepreneurial mindset, he combines a people-first approach with a drive for efficiency and value. 

He’s worked across ERP, CRM, and PLM projects, helping teams turn strategy into action and navigate complex challenges with clarity. Jaap has a knack for connecting diverse perspectives, aligning IT and business goals, and building strong collaborations that drive real results.

Whether he’s integrating systems after an acquisition or sparring with fellow executives on strategy, Jaap brings curiosity, balance, and a genuine passion for continuous growth — both for the business and the people behind it. 

In this conversation, Jaap shares practical insights on anchoring PLM transformation around a clear “why” that people truly believe in, using modularity and configure-to-order as the backbone for scalable enterprise PLM, and building trust and momentum through small, consistent steps rather than big-bang change. With that foundation, let’s dive into the key topics explored in this episode:

⚉ Understanding Moba’s Complex Product Landscape 
⚉ Why PLM Is a Clear Priority for the Business 
⚉ The Shift from Technical Solutions to People-Centered Change 
⚉ Driving Engagement Through the “Why” 
⚉ Balancing Top-Down and Bottom-Up Transformation 
⚉ Configure-to-Order as a Strategic Foundation 
⚉ Integrating Service into Modular Product Thinking 
⚉ Preparing the Ground for AI in PLM


CONNECT WITH JAAP: 
⚉ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaap-holweg/ 

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

[00:00:12] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Hello everyone and welcome to the Share PLM Podcast. My name is Beatriz Gonzalez, CEO of Share PLM, and today as always, I'm with my cohost Josh Voskuil. Today we have a very important guest. So Jos, how are you and who is with us today?

[00:00:28] JOS VOSKUIL:
Hi Bea. Good morning. Yes, we have an important guest or a very special guest because Jaap Holweg, Jaap sounds also very Dutch. We know each other from the early days of PDM and data management. When I met Jaap the first time, he was a student in our data management team. And together we learned about the smart team, the Dassau ecosystem. And Jaap has been active for a long time also on the implementation side. And now he's leading the PLM group in Moba and he will tell us more about it.

So first of all welcome back Jaap, we see each other now from your side. And please introduce yourself and your journey into the PLM world.

[00:01:08] JAAP HOLWEG:
Well, thank you. I'm glad to be here. I always listen with a lot of enjoyment to the Share PLM podcast. So that's great. I started back in 96 already, uh, in the product data management department of Greenock, as a software development because I studied computer engineering. And from there on I thought that, especially industrial manufacturers were very fascinating. So I studied industrial management, growing into, from a software development perspective, growing into a consulting role in a PLM area, and gradually changing also to build PLM propositions in different roles, doing some business, general business management. So basically seeing all kinds of, uh, of aspects of PLM.

Within Moba, I think that especially all those different combinations of roles, I can combine over here. Since Moba is a mid-sized company of about 900 people, I can basically do it all, connect to the IT department, but also to the business, understanding what makes changes stick.

[00:02:13] JOS VOSKUIL:
Okay. Can you tell us a little bit about what the kind of products, uh, Moba is making and what are their challenges in, in the PLM world?

[00:02:20] JAAP HOLWEG:
Sure. So if you zoom out enough we simply put X into a tray, and that sounds very simple. I also thought it was very simple, but apparently it's not. There's a lot of technology coming in with the latest and greatest AI and vision software and all, all kinds of stuff.

And if you imagine that we can do a couple of hundred thousand acts per hour, handling those acts very gently. Putting it in the right trays for the right supermarkets, sorting them, detecting cracks, all kinds of stuff. It's, it's really amazing. And the machines are quite big, half a soccer field, usually they take. And we serve customers across the globe. So we've got about 70% of market share.

[00:03:04] JOS VOSKUIL:
Okay, so that sounds like a small company with a, a big challenge or a lot of things to, to solve. And is PLM also on their radar or are they more interested in the machines?

I mean, often you see engineers, they say, spare me the PLM I'm doing my, my job as a, as an engineer. How is the, the mood in, in Moba related to PLM?

[00:03:29] JAAP HOLWEG:
No, I think everybody sees a lot of benefits. If you do not organize things in an optimal way it'll bite you in the end, right? And that will obviously come back to the beginning.

So if you look at R and D department, for example, if they would take shortcuts and not register stuff properly, they will get questions from manufacturing or service. So there's a big motivator in structuring things correctly, upfront. And that goes, especially since we do a lot of configurable other work. So there's not that much project engineering, uh, in the company. So that means that basically most of the information you can supply upfront, and if you don't that, yeah, that gives issues. And with issues, usually it takes twice the amount of time, right? people are very motivated to do this correctly.

[00:04:16] JOS VOSKUIL:
Okay. The logic is there. And I think also when, when we both come from the technical side we have fantastic plans how to implement PLM. And then also I think we both, when we were in the field we realized it's also the people that you need to take on your journey. Where did you make that switch? What was the moments that you say, Hey, we have people also in in the game.

[00:04:38] JAAP HOLWEG:
Usually, if you think of technical solutions that indeed make good sense there's quite a lot of thinking about it already. And you go, you go in circles, right? Sometimes it's very clear and then it's less clear. And you, you talk with a few people about it. And in the end, with a small team you're involved with, it's very clear.

And then when you actually start introducing new ways of working, it turns out that the other 850 people they don't have the same clarity, right? Because they don't make, they haven't made the same thought circles. And sometimes it's frustrating and you get back to the initial beginning, and by yourself you think, Hey, why is this happening, right? And if it happens a few times, then you start thinking, okay, it's not frustrating, it's quite logical to them, that it, well, they haven't made the same thought process. So if we spend a little bit more time on that in the beginning, obviously that will also make the rest of the process smoother for everybody, basically.

[00:05:34] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
And do you follow some methodology or how you make sure that the people is engaged along the transformation?

[00:05:41] JAAP HOLWEG:
Yeah. So there are a couple of elements in our approach that we always follow. So obviously it begins with the, the why, right? Why would we want to change anything at all? Because if you can't clearly define what's in it then obviously that's not a good situation to be in.

And the why is different for different people, right? On the top line, it means that there needs to be a business case with financials. But for people it also needs to be, hey, what's it going to be? What's in it for me? Right? And not necessarily that they get less work or can do things better, it might also be the overall picture for the entire company as long as they understand how they contribute.

So we spent quite a lot of time explaining why we want to do things. And then the other aspect is also, if people understand why something needs to be changed, the other thing is how and there's a lot of trust to be gained there because, what you see a lot is, is if you want to change things have been tried in the past already. So they say, well, we tried, that didn't work, so can't be done. Right?

And then the question is, uh, why didn't it work in the first time? And that's usually small steps. So what, what has changed since the last time? What's different in our approach now? And then also do regular reviews with people so they can see small steps and gradually build trust. And that, you know, three steps from now, it'll also lead to the end. And obviously that's not something that we, that is done overnight. It needs consistency over a long period.

[00:07:17] JOS VOSKUIL:
Right, you, you're mentioning trust. I think that's one of the most important factors in, in this kind of organizational changes. And actually there are always two processes. You have the, the bottom up change, people asking for, uh, fixing tools, doing things more efficient. And you have the management that have, has maybe a top down view of changing business. What do you see as the, as the most challenging? Do you have both in, in Moba or in your experience?

[00:07:45] JAAP HOLWEG:
Yeah, of course, both aspects are here. I think they're both challenging, but in a different way. The top down challenge is that often people ask you, okay, so how much gain do we get? How much time do we save? How much cost do we save? How much more turnover can we get? And with a lot of things that's very difficult to measure, simply because there's a lot of inefficiency in processes that inefficiency isn't measured. There's nobody writing hours on some kind of inefficiency task, right? It's somewhere hidden in, in all the other stuff. So that makes it a bit difficult, means that you have to make assumptions. And up to a certain level, obviously you can make some assumptions and get some ballpark figure. But that's the difficult part there.

On the bottom up side it's more a matter of appreciating the things that people actually put on the table. Sometimes it's very subjective. That doesn't really have value. But most of the time there's something underneath it, it's just not, not well articulated. And you try to connect it to, to things, right? So we want to change. For example, one of the big topics at Moba is configured to order. And then you've got people who want to get rid of an Excel sheet. The they are connected, it's just that they seem to be very distant from each other.

[00:09:07] JOS VOSKUIL:
Right. And when you mentioned moving to configure to order, that is one of the topics that a lot of industrial manufacturing companies have, which means more thinking upfront because it's not just doing what is, uh, needed. Do you have any methodology on that?

[00:09:22] JAAP HOLWEG:
Yeah. So we started, I don't know, probably 10 years ago already with configure to order. So there is a methodology on how to build our products, to clearly define functions of our machines, put them in, in modules with clear interfaces. So a lot of groundwork has been done already.

On the other end, if you look at the processes and the tooling, there's still a lot to gain, because configured order doesn't end with R and D who's structuring the functions and the interfaces correctly. But it's also about if you get a configured product, how do you actually transfer the information to manufacturing, to service, to our project engineering where they still need to do some changes, right? And you see a lot of, a lot of legacy data. We also got machines that predate 2015 area where we started with modularity. So those machines are not built in a very modular way. But still we do sell those machines and we do still earn about with them. So the approach also needs to facilitate that part of it.

So introducing the product configurator from a bottom up perspective on existing modules and building machines out of modules is one of the important parts for that. Whereas for new developments, we start with a top down approach with system architecture to see what kind of variance could be there and how do we actually shape the ideal world.

[00:11:31] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Services, businesses, important revenue for Moba. And are you planning to include the services in the modularity of the configure to order product?

[00:11:40] JAAP HOLWEG:
Yes, so service is a very big part of us, in turnover, but even more in revenue. There's certainly room for improvement there. And that's also part of the modularity part of it because in the past a lot of customer specific configuration was done. Whereas with modularity, obviously you get less variance, more combinations, but the products themselves have got less variance. It means that you can also better optimize for service. And that obviously brings clear benefits to our customers because we can better predict how machines are operated, when service is needed, how to get the maximum yield of it. And that's a key aspect indeed for our system architecture already to take that into account.

[00:12:28] JOS VOSKUIL:
And then of course, if you move to a more modular and serviceable product, you also have, I would say the knowledge transition. You historically, those companies, they are built on experienced, engineers that know to fix and firefight everything. Do you have a processes in place to have this knowledge transfer also from, I would say instead of going to the firefighter or the expert to make it more explicit.

[00:12:53] JAAP HOLWEG:
Yeah, it would be great if we could hire new people with already 10 years of mobile experience. Right? But that's obviously not possible. So indeed with the modularity approach, like I said, it started in R and D, but we're transferring that now also to manufacturing and service.

And it also means that a lot of handovers that were in the past were based on tested acknowledge indeed. So why do you combine this module with that one? Well, somebody within project engineering knew which combination was working right? And towards manufacturing, they just knew that this mechanic would be assembling the machine and, and he had the knowledge. So there was no need for an additional model to illustrate how that's being done.

You see all kinds of issues open up there with aging workforce. But also, for example, hiring some external companies to do assembly of our machines, right? So with the configurator, a lot of information we want to collect upfront and basically generate towards downstream deliverables. So the manufacturing model, the service model, all the things are generated from the product configurator by enriching the, you know, the information upfront.

And also change management is very important there because issues that are found either during manufacturing or in the field have to be transferred back. But there was no real good place to actually put that information in. Now there is, since we all tie that to the model in, uh, in the beginning.

[00:14:23] JOS VOSKUIL:
Okay. And if you look at the current implementation of PLM at Moba, are you already in on the enterprise level or are you still close to R and D and engineering?

[00:14:34] JAAP HOLWEG:
So the, the biggest project that's running at the moment is the introduction of configurator and the manufacturing bomb and bill of processes. And that's about to happen around now. From a project implementation point of view, that's almost finished. And that means that in the next half year or so we're going to create product configurators for every product that we sell. And then introduction of bomb and process plans takes a little bit longer, so we do that product by product. But that, that means it's really spanning sales in what they sell to R and D, project engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain.

Service is partly connected, but that's basically part of the next step on the roadmap when we work on two topics that are important to them. One of them is installed base management. So which exact configuration did we ship? That's now recorded in all kinds of documents, but we want to store that in data as well, and the service bill of material. So I think then basically, we closed the loop and it's, it's truly, um, enterprise wide.

[00:15:42] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
It's very interesting journey. Do you have in mind already how many years it could be needed for install waste, for example, for install waste management?

[00:15:53] JAAP HOLWEG:
Yeah, so there's, there's a difference I think between, uh, having the process and the systems ready versus what benefit does it bring and, and how do does it really work for everything? Because if you look at our machines, once we sell a machine, we guarantee that we can maintain it for at least 10 years. In practice, it's more,

[00:16:13] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Mm-hmm.

[00:16:14] JAAP HOLWEG:
We usually sell machines for at least 10 years. So when the last machine is sold, it takes another 10 years to service. Right? And then what we usually do, those machines we get back and it goes to a Moba refurbished, and we basically refurbish it and sell it again, usually in a different market. So that easily makes a machine go for 30 years. Now, once we got a process in place to better store the data for machines that we deliver, that starts counting for new machines that we deliver, right?

So in 30 years, we know exactly what's available everywhere. But in a year or so, I think we got the process and the systems in place, we got no data yet, right?

[00:16:57] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Mm-hmm.

[00:16:57] JAAP HOLWEG:
So that will gradually build up, so it depends on how you ask the question. For process, it's pretty, pretty fast. I think for the data it takes pretty long.

[00:17:08] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
And do you have this long term vision in place that you communicate to the users in order to support them through the chain so they understand the why also in the minimum and long term?

[00:17:20] JAAP HOLWEG:
Yeah. So we do have a PLM roadmap. We do have some conceptual presentations on what's the end goal, where do we want to move to? Obviously if you go down a few years, then things are less, less clear than, than the things that we will be working on next year. Right? There might be changing priorities. So the roadmap is a kind of a guideline. The projects on the roadmap, might be reshuffled depending on priorities. And also the end, the end situation where we got total clarity of all the data connected there are still a few questions, for example, on how are we going to do field service? And now there's a big field service functionality in our ERP system might also be some model system, right? So obviously the details need to be filled in. But the idea that in a mainly configured to order company that we built a model upfront and then configure variants that ultimately generate as built and as maintained data, that is key to the concept.

[00:18:24] JOS VOSKUIL:
Okay. When we talk about the roadmap for Moba, do people get excited from it or is it a, a technical roadmap that says, this is what we are going to do?

[00:18:36] JAAP HOLWEG:
Now people get very excited. They say, I want to have it all today. Right?

[00:18:40] JOS VOSKUIL:
Okay.

[00:18:41] JAAP HOLWEG:
Because there's real, real benefit in it. Well, we haven't really quantified it, but it's many, many, many people that do laborious tasks, repetitive tasks that basically would not be needed if you set it properly. Now we're not going to fire those people because we are a growing company. There's a lot of of stuff to do, we don't have enough people. So if you remove all those tasks and automated because the information is available upfront, they can actually do things that matter more.

[00:19:143] JOS VOSKUIL:
And here I see now people saying this is AI, AI agents are going to help. How do you see this happening in, in Moba?

[00:19:21] JAAP HOLWEG:
Yes, probably, but that starts with, uh, structuring the data from, because otherwise AI has got no quality data to, to operate on. Right? But for sure if you look at transferring customer configurations from sales to project engineering, to manufacturing, to service, basically there's a lot of repetitive tasks at the moment. And if the data is correct, we will certainly automate it to a very large extent. And one way or the other, AI will certainly help with that.

[00:19:52] JOS VOSKUIL:
Exactly. Yeah. I think one of the discussions recently also in the PLM Road Map conference was that AI in the first step can bring a lot of more user efficiency, like we introduced email in the beginning. Also, email was an efficient way to communicate, although now maybe we might think different. But at least, I mean, it was user performance and it was not necessarily company performance. I mean, for that, as you said, yeah, you need to have a secure data infrastructure that you can, uh, build upon.

[00:20:24] JAAP HOLWEG:
Yeah. And also in the configuration of a product and handovers to manufacturing and service, there's no physical logic there, right? It's all exactly defined. On the other hand, analyzing, uh, all kinds of data, connecting the dots, there's a lot of potential for AI, I think.

[00:20:43] JOS VOSKUIL:
Okay.

[00:20:44] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Yeah. Okay. So we are almost at the end of the episode. Jos, do you want to make your golden question?

[00:20:51] JOS VOSKUIL:
Yes, I'm curious because I always ask about experience and when I met Jaap the first time he was a, a student. So now experience is what you get when you don't get what you expect. And you also have a long time already in this world, Jaap. Can you share one of your biggest experiences?

[00:21:09] JAAP HOLWEG:
Basically it's a bundling of a, a lot of experience, I think, which you find every time, every now and then. It's about that you always find people that are really brilliant and I got a lot of respect for them. But what you find every time again is that, no matter how perfect the plan is, in real life things never go according to plan. So you always need to make sure that you plan for contingency. You always have a plan B at hand, so that, in war terminology, you lose a battle, but you don't lose the war. Right?

And you have to stick to that, to the plan because 80% of the work requires 20% of the effort and the last 20% to really make it count to, to actually implement it, that needs perseverance.

[00:21:56] JOS VOSKUIL:
Exactly. Yeah. I mean the 80/20 rule is, uh, very known.

[00:22:00] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Yes. And I think when you mentioned it's very in line with everything you have talked about during this podcast because it seems that it's very easy for you to transmit the why. Why you are in the PLM journey and what are the benefits for, for the people. And it's also related, like having a north star that you don't need to follow the plan exactly, but knowing why and what are you heading to. So it's really interesting.

[00:22:23] JAAP HOLWEG:
Yeah. North Star is a, is a good term. Yeah.

[00:22:28] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
And yeah. The last question for the episode, what would be the key takeaways for our listeners that from this episode?

[00:22:37] JAAP HOLWEG:
I think that the North star or the why question, that's the most important part. People need to believe in the end goal. And also think that the path towards it is achievable. So, um, not just some visionary talk, but it can actually be achieved. Anytime you invest in that, to make sure that people actually start believing that or truly motivated because they think there's a lot to gain, all the time invested in that is, that will pay off big time. Yeah. Because people will work with you instead of against you.

[00:23:10] BEATRIZ GONZALEZ:
Thank you very much Jaap for joining us today. It was an amazing and very insightful episode. And thank you very much, our listeners for tuning in.