Episode 22: From Documents to Data: Dr. Andreas Wank on Building a Future-Ready PLM Strategy

In this episode of the Share PLM Podcast, we are joined by Dr. Andreas Wank, Head of Department “Smart Innovation” at Pepperl+Fuchs.

Andreas is a leader in digital transformation and industrial innovation, with a strong academic foundation in production management research from TU Darmstadt. In his current role, he leads the Smart Innovation department at Pepperl+Fuchs, where he works at the intersection of business processes, technology, and people to drive sustainable and scalable innovation.
With deep expertise in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), data-driven value creation, and global process integration, Andreas focuses on building strong innovation chains that connect strategy with execution— turning complex ideas into real business impact.

In this value-packed conversation, we explored what it really takes to lead a successful PLM transformation in a complex industrial organization. From shifting mindsets from documents to data to managing people, resistance, and leadership change over a multi-year journey, Andreas offers a grounded and refreshingly human perspective on PLM — one that goes far beyond tools and technology. His insights resonate strongly with organizations striving to future-proof their innovation chains while keeping collaboration, clarity, and culture at the center of transformation.

Here are the key topics:

⚉ From Academia to Industry 4.0 Practice
⚉ Why Pepperl+Fuchs Started Its PLM Journey
⚉ PLM as a Management Approach, Not a Tool
⚉ Aligning the Entire Innovation Chain
⚉ Combining Top-Down Vision with Bottom-Up Expertise
⚉ Managing Resistance Through Communication
⚉ “Mood Barometer” as a Standout Practice
⚉ Navigating Leadership Changes During Transformation
⚉ Moving from Project-Centric to Product-Centric Thinking
⚉ Breaking Down Complexity Into Manageable Steps


CONNECT WITH DR. ANDREAS: 
⚉ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-ing-andreas-wank-38404014a/ 

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] MARIA MORRIS:
Hello everyone and welcome to the Share PLM Podcast. You might be wondering that this voice sounds a little different to the weekly episodes, and that's because I am joining the episode day as a guest co-host.

I'm Maria Morris, the Business Development Manager at Share PLM, and I'm very excited for today's episode. I know that we're going to have a lot of great takeaways from our guests today, but first of all, I want to say hi to Jos. How are you doing today? And who is with us?

[00:00:41] JOS VOSKUIL:
Hi, Maria, great to see you, and you are always in the background also, so welcome to see you now in the, in the front. Today we have a very interesting guest, Andreas Wank from Pepperl & Fuchs.

I saw Andreas presenting half year ago in The Hague, in the 3D Experience User Conference, and I was impressed by the the PLM transformation journey. All the aspects that I think are important were also in this story and I think it should be shared. Then we were again together in Paris in the PLM Roadmap Conference, where he was also, after a lot of technical discussions from others, he was the guy bringing us back to both human technology and PLM.

So we are very glad to have you here Andreas, welcome in our podcast. And first of all, please introduce yourself, who is Andreas, and then let's jump into your role at Pepperl & Fuchs.

[00:01:31] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
Thank you, Jos, it's a pleasure to be part of your podcast. I'm quite excited about our talk. So who am I? So I’m Andreas, I’m 38 years old, I have 2 young boys. Ans I started my career with a PhD in the field of mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt. And it was a quite exciting time because industry 4.0 emerged and everyone asked, so I was okay, what is it, what is industry 4.0 and where can I buy it? And then they just asked the universities.

And so we are financed by industry projects on the one side, as it is our deep project on the other side. And these was quite fantastic and because we can work up research topics and bring it into company practice. And we also had 2 learning factories with 3 manufacturing systems on our campus and my task was to bring industry 4.0 stage on top of the existing manufacturing structure. And for this we need the sensors of course for industry 4.0 use cases. And this is how my contact to Pepperl&Fuchs comes into play. And that’s why I started Pepperl&Fuchs and the field of quality management and so I’ve thought about our component traceability and how we can link digital twin to our existing physical product. And then around about 2 years later, hey Andreas what about PLM, would you like to introduce a PLM approach, and obviously it was no question, I therefore said, of course, I would like to do it. And that was the right decision.  It was a very interesting time. And now I’m the PLM program lead and I also have a team to sustainable anchor, the topic of PLM into the organization’s structure.

[00:03:22] JOS VOSKUIL:
Before jumping in the PLM, you mentioned industry 4.0, the academic world, and the real world. Currently, I'm still also curious, is industry 4.0 really existing or is it a German hype?

[00:03:45] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
Good question. But yes, I would say so, industry 4.0 was a success. Because independent of what you think about it, it initiated a lot of discussions and projects, especially in the field of how humans and systems, machines of cyber physical system should interact with each other and a lot of course, a lot of projects also failed because the prerequisite within companies to really move towards the vision of industry 4.0.

[00:04:08] JOS VOSKUIL:
Okay. Because for me, industry 4.0 is a must to be data driven. And to be model based. And that's one of the, I don't know if it's a frustration, but at least one of the things I see in the field, we are moving so slowly in the PLM domain to become data driven. So for that reason, my industry 4.0 question. But now let's go to the PLM journey of Pepperl&Fuchs. So is this the industry 4.0 journey also?

[00:04:36] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
Somehow, yes. I would say both. So in the end, we want to be part of data driven business models in the future. Okay? We don't, do not know really what are the business models because currently nearly no companies paying for some kind of data we can provide, but it'll be there, some kind of data economy in the future.

And therefore we and our PLM side, we are bringing data into the place. So we are try to get the switch from a document centric work into a datadriven work. We do it with our PLM initiative. The colleagues on the operation side also do it, for example, the integrating an MES system to have really good traceability in the end.

And then there will be a level above to connect the different data points and bring it some kind of semantic into the data, and then we really have type data, instance data, and we can export things like a digital product passport or something else and bring value into our data for our customers.

[00:05:39] MARIA MORRIS:
And Andreas, what would you say are the, or were the motivating factors for the company to begin its PLM journey? Was it to stay competitive or had analysis been done to where you realize actually we can make improvements here?

[00:05:54] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
I would say in fact it was a bit into the future. I also started last week on the conference, so as CEO started once saying, there are times you have to catch the call and there are times you have to build the fence. And now we have to build the fence that we are future proven. If you're not doing our homework now to bring really documents into data, we won't be able to provide any kind of future de business model.

And that's why we have to go this way even knowing that it's a long way because a lot of legacy systems are available, a lot of legacy documents are available. But if you don't go this way, we have so high integration cost afterwards and every ROE would fail in context of new data driven business models.

[00:06:43] JOS VOSKUIL:
And I think moving from a document driven approach to a data driven approach requires a long-term vision. How did you achieve this within Pepperl&Fuchs where started the long-term vision? Or how did you make it more concrete for everyone?

[00:06:59] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
So we started round board four years ago in 2022, and we said, okay, it's really the scope of the complete innovation chain. So we want to make our innovation chain future ready, and therefore we have to involve all 17 departments along the innovation chain. And initiated the first year where we thought about the approach, what kind of approach do we need?

We also took a look into our SS processes, so we really brought 17 departments on one table, asking them, okay, how do we do it today? It was quite interesting because we have, of course, central process is defined, but there are some truth in between, I would say. And this was the second part.

The third part was then to think about our PLM capabilities and to select a PLM vendor. And this was more or less the first year. And we did also some kind of a top-down, bottom-up approach. So our management built the bridge between company practice and the PLM strategy. Then we had our 17 directors from the 17 departments bringing content into the strategy, and then we made some kind of big service on the board up to 500, 600 colleagues.

They have seen the content and worked out by the upper management, and then they prioritized the topics. So what do we expect from PLM context of people, for example. And they said, okay, we expect that we have a better collaboration in the end. That's how we try to involve all the different stakeholders, from the experts to the upper management. And this of course how we started in the first phase, the so-called initialization phase.

[00:08:45] JOS VOSKUIL:
I think that you're mentioning, we expect a better collaboration with PLM, and then I always have the question, are we talking about a PLM system or are we talking about the strategy product lifecycle management, where we in structure manner also, I would say create collaboration. What is the PLM definition for you?

[00:09:06] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
PLM is in fact not the tool itself. It's a digital backbone. But the problem we do have currently is that we have, of course, systems in silos, but this leads to processes in silos, silos, as well as that the people have some kind of mindset thinking into silos, and therefore, with PLM, you have to address all of these dimensions. So it's really a management approach.

In context of data processes, systems with people, and this is how PLM works and for us, it's always the enablement of collaboration along the innovation chain. And this is the focus of our program, I would say.

[00:09:46] MARIA MORRIS:
Andreas, so you spoke a lot about how at the beginning of your PLM program, there was a big focus on both top-down and bottom-up communication. I think this is something that isn't always the practice at the beginning of PLM programs, typically we see it's very much top-down communication. Do you think having this bi-directional kind these channels of communication that were very much open, do you think this helped you get more out of your stakeholders and, and for them to be more open to share information with you at the beginning?

[00:10:16] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
Absolutely. So it was really fundamental in the beginning to do it in this way, I would say, because you need the commitment of the upper management. Otherwise it will really have problems afterwards. So the task for the directors was more or less to think about the business model.

So do we want to earn, how do we want to earn money in the future? And this is what the directors have to answer, right? And then we needed the expertise and the acceptance by the experts. And that's why we said, okay, they have to get the chance to bring in the expertise. Therefore, we have to give them the platform. They have to, we have to hear their voice.

And on the other side, if they have worked up the expertise, the directors can see, once again, okay, did they understand what kind of business models I need in the future? What is necessary to reach them and have did they understood what I want to have in the future? And then the final business case was then on the upper management again. Therefore this was really important to involve the different parts and to, yeah, to bring it on a pay viable say.

[00:11:22] JOS VOSKUIL:
I liked the idea that you really are first exploring what do we want instead of what are our pains? Because, what we want is creating enthusiasm and what are our pains is more, I mean, making the pain work feeling worse. Eh? But how did you, I would say understand what were the capabilities that we need for our future? How did you drill down from business to capabilities?

[00:11:46] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
Yeah, so as we had a really broad scope and we run about 200 colleagues supporting us for the SS analysis. How's the information flow today? What kind of software tools do you use? What kind of databases do you have? And so on. And then we used the 200 peoples again, to work out some kind of PLM capabilities. And in the end, we had a lot of content created. So around about 120 use cases, around about 600 features. In the more detailed way that the use cases I described.

And we also tried to link the different use cases and features authentic this phase, that also the colleagues are thinking more or less in the complete end-to-end process. And then this was the basis to go to the PLM vendors and we said, okay, we cannot just throw 600 features over the wall and then they'll give us their solution. So that's why we made 27 user stories out of it. So we brought it into some kind of stories and in the end, around about 27 user stories we ended up with.

[00:12:50] JOS VOSKUIL:
And were those user stories, were they inspiring or were they more, I would say fixing the problems? Are they future oriented or implementing the past or the future?

[00:13:02] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
To be honest it was both in the end. So the ambition was truly to think beyond existing boundaries. But this naturally require a very high level of abstract thinking. So especially in the PLM context where everything is interconnected. So people initially oriented themselves more on the existing setup but it was really impressive to see that the colleagues start to think in the end to end process along in the innovation chain, rather than just staying in their silos and this was a really very impressive team feeling.

[00:14:19] JOS VOSKUIL:
Yeah, because in particular, when you say moving from documents to data driven, that's a, that's a big transformation. And I think one of the, the one-liners I've maybe using the most in the past is, are you implementing the past or are you implementing the future? And how did you balance that? I mean is there a kind of guidance, where to go?

[00:14:39] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
I would say latest with the selection of the PLM vendor and with the decision to go into the cloud solution, we said, okay, we really want to avoid customization in the future and we are ready to overwork our processes, to rethink our structures, to be able to take over out of the box processes from the cloud.

So we also heard last week that out of the box or best practices are nearly impossible or not available. That's also right, because you have a lot of different possibilities how you implement in the cloud even. But of course you have to think things new with the cloud system as we're not able to customize things. And this was a very good decision outta my point of view because you could not make any discussion to take over structures, process as it is because the functionality is not available in the cloud. And this was more or less interesting and always, the fact to think things new because of the cloud solution.

[00:15:43] JOS VOSKUIL:
And of course when you move to out of the box or even willing to change it, it gets user resistance. How did you deal with the enthusiasm of the user or the not  enthusiasm of the user?

[00:15:55] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
It really depends on the stakeholders, I would say. So it's also very interesting that the stakeholders are different according to the project phase where you are. So in the beginning we talked a lot also, so the upper management and the directors. And now we are in front of the rollout and we are more talking to the middle management, I would say.

And okay, the experts are always on board from the beginning, until now, but in the first project phases, I would say the colleagues are more open. Because the rollout is far ahead, right? As nearer as you come to the rollout, as more resistance emerge. But most often it's case of unknown things, so they don't really know how we want to implement, how things are changing. And we always try to focus more on the benefits, but the people also are interested, what is the impact? And therefore we change a little bit our communications strategy team to also address more the impact and to, to get those stakeholders also more involved into our program.

So therefore, we always try to have a good communication. And we also have a mood parameter seeing how is the mood at the different locations. And if you see, okay, the mood at this location is quite bad, then we try really to make some kind of demonstration meetings where we also bring up our experts with us who can demonstrate from experts to experts that they cannot really see the business aspect.

[00:17:26] JOS VOSKUIL:
I love the, the mood measuring you did and then presented also in, in the conference. Can you tell us something more about where did the idea come from and how are you following up?

[00:17:36] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
So it was an idea of, of one of my employee, saying, okay, we have so many meetings with the different stakeholders, so why don't we track the mood? Always the same question. What is your basic attitude towards PLM on a scale from one to five? And this was very helpful in the end, because we have different meetings with the management, with the experts, with the different locations and so on. But we always aggregated, communicate, make a summary out of it. And then we can have also some kind of evaluation about the mood.

And this was, I would say really helpful then because if the mood is bad, you have to address it. You cannot just go under your table and wait until the mood is better. I would say that therefore you really have to address the bad mood, if it's there and if's more or less, also some kind of in indicator to see maybe you are on the wrong way because sometimes you'll lose the track to your colleagues or to your experts if you're too much in your functional problems, for example, that you forget the overall picture and therefore there's some kind of, or take care about the mood.

[00:18:46] MARIA MORRIS:
Yeah.

[00:18:47] JOS VOSKUIL:
Yeah. I think that's one of the things that stood out for me as a learning and that indeed by continuously measuring the mood of your audience and the people involved and you can't avoid it if the mood goes down as you, uh, demonstrate it. I think that's really for companies also to take into the mind, keep on measuring the mood and, and act if needed.

[00:19:09] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
Absolutely.

[00:19:09] MARIA MORRIS:
Yes, I completely agree with you, Jos. And I was, I was thinking Andreas, as you were speaking, so I think it's great that you are testing people's moods, seeing what potential resistance there is before it really comes to the surface, so you can try to combat it. But I think one of the big challenges organizations face throughout their PLM programs is when there are potentially changes in leadership positions throughout the transformation, because these typically go on for quite a few years. Have you experienced this in your transformation? And if so, how are you able to keep leadership engaged and supportive if there are changes throughout the transformation?

[00:19:47] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
Yes. So of course, on our vendor side as well as on our internal side, there were new colleagues are coming in and the management also, in our case, for example, our CEO changed, because the older one retired. And this is always, has always a big impact on the project, I would say, because they're always a little bit different.

So for example, if some of them are more KPI oriented. Some of them are more visualized. They think we need it, otherwise we, we have problems in the future. And I always try to take this as a chance. So for example, in our case, we had three years with the former CEO. Then the new one come and brought new impulses into our project or program, and therefore we also started to re-ask some things to reconsider our scope as well as how we approach things and also about the benefit and to make it also more concrete because now we are really able to do it, because you have some kind of pilot products also on, on new PLM set up available and therefore it was quite helpful.

But it's always challenging talking about really KPIs. But this was also topic of one of your last episodes, I think. So therefore I can really recommend to take a look into this episode.

[00:21:10] JOS VOSKUIL:
And another change you were talking about Andreas was moving from a more project organization to a product organization, which I think is also requiring not only methodology change, but also organizational change. Are you also taking care of that in your PLM environment?

[00:21:29] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
Yes, and this is one major challenge. We have to change the mindset because currently we are really document centric and project driven. So everything that we are doing is linked to some kind of a project number and we are creating a lot of documents, releasing it, and bring it into our document management system.

And then a new project emerges and we bring out this all documents, extract the data, and we start to link the data to another project number. And this is really a completely change because we want to get rid of this project orientation more towards a product orientation. So if you're describing a system architecture or requirements in the future, it's not linked to a project, it's linked to the product.

And therefore, if we have the lifecycle of the product or a new project they can directly reuse this information directly link it, and therefore really focus on this lifecycle and not on this project phase, how to get from requirements towards a serial product. And this, this, of course, a very wide scope in the end because you also have to consider things like quality management, like portfolio strategy and like variant management and so on.

And therefore, our first phase in our PLM program is more to bring in digital continuity, that we are able also to identify cost drivers or does it cost. So bring in a new variant, for example, also to lifecycle phase. And if you've done this, then we really focus on this part to focus more on the product lifecycle for very good product and very important.

[00:23:04] JOS VOSKUIL:
Exactly, and I also agree with you, if you are project centric, it's maybe the old way of working. It's linear and people know what to do and to drop the information to the next stage where if you are in a product centric approach, you have to connect to your portfolio. You have to connect to your services. Everyone needs to collaborate that. I mean, it's really much more collaboration need from the business than if you are in, in the project mode.

[00:23:31] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
Yeah, absolutely. But then this is also a mindset change, right? Because you have to work in this way the last 20 years and therefore it's not an easy thing to change.

[00:23:42] JOS VOSKUIL:
Yes, I've seen an example of a company that worked in a linear manner and engineering produced in the end PDFs for manufacturing. And in the end we discovered behind the PDFs there was nothing. The whole CAD structure was just every time for this single project. Something created as long as the PDF looked good, where if you work product centric, the data must be there, reusable, and shareable.

Is there a friction in Pepperl&Fuchs on this change to have more documented while working on products because that's one of the demands?

[00:24:16] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
So I would say we will see in the end. So we are not there yet. And of course we need more time for a good data quality than in the past. So the data has to be in a way that downstream processes can work with them as well. And this also means for example that we need truly good design guidelines for the mechanical engineering and also marketing can use this data directly keep data for their purpose. But I’m quite convinced that in the end it can get the acceptance of colleagues as they don’t have to create many office documents as they would today because we use some kind of a report generator that directly generates these documents out of the existing objects in the platform.

[00:25:09] JOS VOSKUIL:
Exactly. Yeah.

[00:25:10] MARIA MORRIS:
So I think we've talked about lots of different aspects across your PLM program, Andreas, and I think now is the right time maybe for Jos to ask his, his golden question that we ask all of our guests on the Share PLM podcast. So over to you, Jos.

[00:25:26] JOS VOSKUIL:
Okay. Yeah, I think the question is, is about experience. And, and in one way I understood Andreas, there is still a lot of experience coming to you. Uh, you are in the rollout of this PLM transformation, but still looking back to your past experience is what you get when you don't get what you expect. Can you share with us one of your experiences from the past that everyone should have gotten before?

[00:25:51] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
Yeah, tough question. So there’s one thing I’ve learned, this is that PLM is less about profit plans and it’s more about learning together. So things would change and complexity will remain and not everything can be predicted but if you’ll trust the team and if you’ll stay curious, and you’re willing to crawl with the changes then progress will also follow. And this is also transferable to my CV. So as my career has taken some interesting turns, I always said I would never do a PhD. In the end I did it and my path into PLM was also more unexpectedly, and that is what makes it exciting and my business part is to crawl into the role and really to learn along the way.

[00:26:41] JOS VOSKUIL:
Exactly. Being clear about the direction and then doing the small steps, huh?

[00:26:46] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
Yeah.

[00:26:47] MARIA MORRIS:
So thank you so much, Andreas, for joining us on today's episode. I think all of our listeners will have so much to learn as, especially if they're in the position of beginning their PLM programs within their organization as well.

And now's probably a good time as well to let our audience know that they will be seeing you in Jerez at the Share PLM Summit next year. So if they would like to learn even more about your transformation, and by then you'll be even further along, they'll have lots to look forward to.

And finally, thank you to my co-host Jos as always, for joining us on the episode and for our listeners for tuning in. So thank you both very much.

[00:27:28] JOS VOSKUIL:
You're welcome. And yeah, Andreas looking forward to your experience in Jerez to be updated.

[00:27:34] DR. ANDREAS WANK:
Same for me. Thank you very much.

[00:27:36] MARIA MORRIS:
Bye.

[00:27:37] JOS VOSKUIL:
Thank you.