Episode 5: Making PLM Work for Engineers: Gregory Yow on Process, Adoption, and Impact

In this episode of the Share PLM Podcast, we are joined by Gregory Yow, Senior Director of R&D Centralized Engineering Services at a global animal-health company. 

Gregory is a senior engineering and digital transformation leader with more than two decades of experience spanning R&D, PLM, CAD, and enterprise systems. He currently holds a senior director role at a global animal health company, where he leads centralized engineering services and drives efficiency, consistency, and adoption across a large, regulated R&D organization. Gregory is known for his user-centered approach to systems and process design, focusing on removing constraints from critical business processes to accelerate improvement at scale. 

Let’s hear Greg’s practical perspective on these topics.

⚉ Why PLM Became a Passion 
⚉ Reducing Administrative Burden for Engineers
⚉ PLM in Regulated Industries
⚉ Working with Scientists in R&D Organizations
⚉ Time-to-Market in the Pharmaceutical Industry
⚉ The Role of AI in Engineering and PLM
⚉ The Importance of Stakeholders and Communication 
⚉ Choosing the Right Implementation Partner 
⚉ Why Organizational Change Management Matters


CONNECT WITH GREGORY: 
⚉ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregyow/ 

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 GUTIERREZ:
Hello everyone and welcome to the Share PLM podcast. My name is Beatriz Gonzalez and co-founder and CEO of Share PLM. And today, as always, I'm here with my cohost, Jos Voskuil. Hi Jos. How are you doing?

[00:00:24] JOS VOSKUIL:
I'm doing fine Bea and I'm today very curious because we have a new guest. Who is it?

[00:00:29] BEATRIZ GUTIERREZ:
Yes. I'm very happy to have this guest today. He's Greg Yow. We met some years ago and we have been working with them in the PLM implementation since three years, so thank you very much for joining.

Greg is a director of R and D in the animal health industry, and he has really quite experience in PLM implementations in this other industry. So, Greg, welcome and please let us know who you are.

[00:00:55] GREGORY YOW:
So my name is Greg Yow, as you said, I'm a senior director of R and D, a degreed mechanical engineer. I've been involved in PLM since around 2005, and it's been a passionate of mine you know, since then I've had a career in design and, and simulation and even a career in IT at some point in my career.

I've also presented at various PLM conferences at Oracle. And then my current vendor, I also presented earlier this year at their conference as well. Today though, my responsibilities are much more than PLM. It's how they started, and I manage a team. They manage, it's doc management PLM, test engineering, reliability engineering, metrology compliance. So it, it spans, uh, quite a few disciplines of engineering. And so, you know, how we utilize our systems to become more efficient and effective for the organization.

[00:01:49] JOS VOSKUIL:
Interesting. You are mentioning, Greg, you have a passion for PLM. Sometimes people say, how can you have a passion for PLM? Share us your passion. What makes it so specific for you?

[00:02:01] GREGORY YOW:
Yeah, I guess it's kind of hard to explain. I don't, there's something about it that I've always been drawn into the business process. I feel like, as a design engineer, you know, the things that design engineers love more than anything else. They worked on this thing and they actually see it in the market being utilized, whatever market that might be.

And for me, while I enjoyed that very much, I enjoy the aspect of having a bigger impact to how the business operates. The way I always look at my role is I want engineers to be focused on solving the hard, difficult problems. That hard, difficult problems should not be the administrative part of releasing your changes and getting them implemented because we pay them a lot of money to solve difficult problems. And so I enjoy being able to make a difference to the lives of engineers of trying to get their work done.

[00:02:52] JOS VOSKUIL:
I think this is a, a challenging statement. I mean, often people say engineers have to do their work and they should not be bothered by PLM. How are you trying to achieve this?

[00:03:04] GREGORY YOW:
The way I look at it, and I came across this, uh, my most recent role where it was, hey, they did the drawings and then let handed them off to the next organization to figure out how to do it.

And the way I look at this and explain that is, hey, that's, that's not your role. Your role is much bigger than that. You have to understand how it impacts manufacturing. So if, for example, you're gonna obsolete a part, you have to understand where are all the assemblies that you are hitting that part, hitting that, right, because if we cannot execute and get that released and get that updated for manufacturing to continue to produce, then what are we here for? Right?

We're here to drive revenue for an organization. Then we're in the best position to say, Hey, you need to obsolete here, and these are some those, but you can keep as an example. But you can keep going in these assemblies, right? Because you're the engineering organization, you, you're the one that have the knowledge to do that. We're the ones that need to think through those things in order to get it done. So that's just part of our job.

But utilizing a system to go and type in all that information and put it together and get it approved, we want that to be as easy and straightforward as possible. And so we need to consider those things. Because we're all here to make revenue for organizations at the end of the day and be as efficient and effective as possible.

[00:04:26] BEATRIZ GUTIERREZ:
Yes. And Greg, if we come back to the early years of your career, how have those experiences has saved your current career?

[00:04:36] GREGORY YOW:
I guess it's, it's the use of the systems that have frustrated me. Like there has got to be an easier way. Kind of along with the lines of what you said, Jos, that hey, you know, the engineers just wanna do the work and not have to really deal with PLM. It's been, in a way, a similar experience. Like, you know, I just, I wanna get this thing done so I can move on to the next problem.

Engineers love solving problems. That's why we go to engineering school. That's why we're very, you know, I always call it it or thing, centric, oriented, how something works. Put it together, take it apart, and figure it all, all out. Right? That's the fun part of the job solving problems. The fun part of the work is not solving an organizational problem or a difficult process problem, business process problem.

And so I guess it was that frustration of I know there's an easier way to do this. So that's how I look at it and I just enjoy, enjoy that aspect. Getting people together and figuring out how we can make this thing happen and the satisfaction that folks get from an easier system and making a difference in everyone's lives.

[00:05:38] BEATRIZ GUTIERREZ:
So how important is for you, the people in those implementation and to make the processes efficient, and how do you treat different type of persons?

[00:05:52] GREGORY YOW:
I think when it comes to implementing any new system, regardless of what it is, there's always a level of resistance or caution that you're always gonna get.

So the identification of stakeholders are really important. I mean, and that's part of an OCM process, and those stakeholders might be resistant. And so how do you get them on board is a big part of that work to make it happen. So you, in other words, if you have got folks that are very important stakeholders to the process, but are resistant to rolling out this platform, in the case we're talking about PLM, you, you can't ignore that.

You gotta get them involved and find a way to say what's in it for them, what do they get out of it? And it can be very challenging at times for sure. And sometimes it just requires building personal relationships so that they trust you to say, all right, I know you're not seeing it yet, but just trust me. I'm listening to you. Let's get it up and running and let's see what you think. 

Another part of it is trying to understand what is making their life difficult. And what can you do to make that easier for them? And sometimes the response is, Hey, I'm happy with everything I have. I don't need to bring in something else.

But it's still that persistence to be determined to work through and identify the opportunities and, and sometimes it means that it may take time for an individual to realize what those benefits are. 

[00:07:26] BEATRIZ GUTIERREZ: 
Yeah. 

[00:07:26] GREGORY YOW: 
And just being patient and not giving up. 

[00:07:29] BEATRIZ GUTIERREZ: 
Yeah, this is what you were mentioning at the beginning also why it's important not only for you, but also for the company at the end that it goes well. Hmm. 

[00:07:38] JOS VOSKUIL: 
Yeah. Maybe zooming in on the PLM frustration, that means you get only frustrated when there is a PLM. Was PLM a top-down decision, or was it you that said, okay, I seen from other variant we need to do PLM, and you got frustrated because there was no PLM. How did it happen in, in your case. 

[00:07:56] GREGORY YOW: 
Well, I've involved in several PLM implementations. So my very first one back in 2005 was actually an SAP project. And SAP had said, oh, they had sold it to the executives. Oh, we can manage CAD and everything. And I was a little concerned with that approach. So I had proposed implementing a PLM system to manage our CAD data interface to SAP, and the executive sponsor bought into that. And it was actually a fairly straightforward conversation once it was brought to him as a proposal. And so in that case we got, you know, identified an issue, got the executive sponsorship moving forward. 

In the latest case, it was, as you mentioned, I work in a pharmaceutical organization, and so it was a top down initiative to make it happen. At the same time, it was very challenging because pharma industry is very process centric, not product centric in terms of change management. And so there was a lot of work to get stakeholders bought in and getting moved into an organization that is so adjusted to very particular processes and tool sets, and even the people that are involved in day-to-day change management is a lot different in the pharma world than it is in a, what I call a device or hardware world.

So it, I, I guess I've had a span of experiences in PLM, whether top down or kind of a bottom up realization that we need to get this thing implemented. 

[00:09:28] BEATRIZ GUTIERREZ: 
Do you see also differences dependent if the industry is very regulated or it's not how the people behave to this kind of system implementations? 

[00:09:38] GREGORY YOW: 
Yes. It's an interesting interaction I've had experience. Because I've seen the both extremes, meaning it's regulated and they would identify PLM as a preventative action against maybe a kappa that they had open. But then I've also heard at the same time, again, from different experiences, it's regulated.

Therefore we don't want PLM, which, you know, so I've seen the, seen the both the views on it. That's not my view. Because it's regulated and you get the full traceability out of a PLM system, it's gonna give you far better benefits than, let's say a document management system or paper system, whatever gets you, to me, that's part of not understanding and resistance to change that you gotta break through.

[00:10:29] JOS VOSKUIL: 
In the early days of my career, I was working on an FDA toolkit for smart team at, at that time the CFR 21 part 11 came out and the biggest challenge I saw there was moving organizations to a more digital environment and especially in, in, in healthcare. And uh, is that the same in your environment, moving from documents to data? Is that an additional challenge when you are in a regulated environment? 

[00:10:55] GREGORY YOW: 
Additional challenge. In what way? 

[00:10:57] JOS VOSKUIL: 
I mean, you have your process focus and not your product focus and, and now also the process content instead of documents, it becomes more and more data sets, more granular, more detailed. Is it happening also?

[00:11:11] GREGORY YOW: 
I think it depends on the part of the organization that you're talking with. If I talk with R and D, it's an easy conversation. We generate data, like there's no tomorrow, literally petabytes of data per year. And so data management is a fairly easy, straightforward understanding of what that means. And generally you're talking engineers and scientists who deal with it all the time.

I think when you get into the manufacturing organization, I don't think they see as much of the value in that metadata. And yet I try, so I actually focus on, hey, what data can I provide them that they normally wouldn't have had access to? That they start to see, realize benefits from. So even if they're not bonding initially, that all that data and that tracking is needed, say for example, yeah, metadata around a particular part so that you reuse the same part again and again, rather than creating a new part number for exactly the same thing.

What other data can I provide them to make their lives easier? So as an example, we implemented an integration into a third party tool that actually has supply chain information on our electronic components so that we can be proactive on part obsolescence than reactive. And I think to me that's a huge thing from any manufacturing organization.

There's nothing like being under the gut if you don't get this change implemented by this time, we have to stop. So it's that what I'd call an unrelenting focus on what kind of data would benefit them. You know, an organization who doesn't see the value in it initially. 

[00:12:47] JOS VOSKUIL: 
Are the products you are, uh, managing, are they a mix of hardware and software or are they pure hardware?

[00:12:54] GREGORY YOW: 
They are a mix. It's much more mechanically oriented, I would say, but there is certainly software. The software teams actually they see a benefit. Because you can tie the software release into the state of the hardware at the time that they validated it. So again, if you ever wanted to go back to where you were and do problem solving, you know, what the state of the device was at that time.
 
[00:13:57] BEATRIZ GUTIERREZ: 
Do you think it might be maybe a trigger for them, the implementation of, of AI so that AI has access to the data? So they have the, really, the data would save the store to organize accurate in systems like PLM or other systems. So, so it's more like not time to market, but also AI so they can also research over the, that data that could be maybe a trigger for them?

[00:14:23] GREGORY YOW: 
You're talking about for the pharm side? 

[00:14:25] BEATRIZ GUTIERREZ: 
For the scientists, or for everyone at the end right? 

[00:14:30] GREGORY YOW: 
Well, like I said, we generate, RD generates a lot of data, so the use of AI to help collect and analyze that data as quickly as possible is absolutely an important piece. When I look at AI and PLM, that's, we could talk about that some more. I think that's a different animal. The types of data and the amount of data is a lot different. 

[00:14:55] JOS VOSKUIL: 
Are you already doing some experiments with AI or. Is it still, I would say not fixing the, fitting the process? 

[00:15:03] GREGORY YOW: 
Um, well just on the PLM side, I would say yeah. I mean, we've got regular large language model AI, like, you know, like a chat GPT or whatever to help people with their day-to-day work that can utilize it for anything from writing an email to a test report, you know, whatever that is.

We haven't developed any AI. And PLM specifically at this point. But you know, we do see in the horizon that that's eventually gonna be a valuable tool to integrate that more into our processes. Again, what can we do to make a life easier? If I think of as an engineer, I'm sure a lot of them like are not exactly, Hey, let's write an ECR, you know, if the system can write that ECR and do the impact analysis and, you know, get it at least 80, 90% there, I think that's gonna be a big win for engineers to make their lives easier. So that's, you know, initially that's where I see the, the benefits for AI and PLMI see more things down the road. 

[00:16:08] JOS VOSKUIL: 
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, that's where the discussion currently is in, in PLM, that you have this kind of agents that help you do your job, the more efficient, they don't bring the intelligence, they just bring the, the methodology in an uh, easy, digestible way. Huh? 

[00:16:24] GREGORY YOW: 
Yes and no. Yeah. But once you start getting AI integrated into, if you think about it spanning across the enterprise, it starts reaching into CAD and it reaches into your ERP system and it reaches into PLM and it reaches into the content of the documents and it's looking at history, it's looking at marketing conditions, whatever that is. I think it starts to look at a bigger picture. I think it can get to the point where, you know, you wonder what does the future of PLM look like in 10 years? If you have AI executing the whole end, end process, for example. 

[00:17:02] JOS VOSKUIL: 
Yeah. It depends, I think where you put your, your real knowledge. I mean, is the AI also creating knowledge or is it helping you to discover knowledge and you still have to judge if you watching the truth or not. The hallucinating of AI is a topic we discuss, uh, a lot also with large language models. 

[00:17:20] GREGORY YOW: 
Yeah, for now. That's what it looks like. Yeah, it's right. It's like you said, that's not creating that knowledge. Like you said, it's discovering and summarizing it for you, but I mean, it's going to create things.

There's already a specialized AI products that do that. Like, um, there's a product from Google called Alpha Fold, which is for protein folding. So that in essence is creating, you know, protein designs. And again, it's a very specialized product, but I can see that happening down the road. 
Same thing with CAD. I mean, where is the future of AI and CAD? Is it gonna eventually be able to create your designs for you? Uh, I'm sure it will eventually. 

[00:17:58] JOS VOSKUIL: 
I think so too. Yeah. I mean, we already see some examples popping up in that direction. 

[00:18:04] BEATRIZ GUTIERREZ: 
Okay. We are coming to the, to the end of the episode. Last question from my side, Greg. What advice would you give to the organization starting their PLM journey? 

[00:18:13] GREGORY YOW: 
The first thing I would do is measure where you are today. As much as you can, try to dig out as many metrics as you can from whatever systems and processes you have. And some people might think, well, I don't have any processes.

Uh, you do, they may not be written down, but you've got them. Start doing everything you can to measure them, because that's gonna be such valuable data to show before and after. Especially for the folks that were still may be on the edge of not believing that PLM is gonna make a difference and it's gonna add overhead. And then keeping those metrics current and always reporting out on them are very important. So that's one thing. 

The second thing, as I mentioned earlier, is identifying stakeholders so that you need everyone's perspective on their challenges, and you need their needs input into the system. You know, PLM is a cross by nature. Especially once you get into products that are on the market, extremely cross-functional, right? If you're regulated, for example, you need regulatory in there, you need manufacturing in there, you're gonna need engineering in there and so on. And the last thing you wanna do is feel like you're imposing. It may be there whether you like it or not, but some folks may feel like it's imposed on them, but if they're not involved at all, they definitely rightfully will feel imposed upon.

So getting involvement in stakeholders are coming up with a communication plan. Another important aspect that makes people nervous and I, my view AI probably makes people far more nervous is, Hey, this is my job today after my rollout, what does it look like in the future? Do I still have one or does it look like something else? And so that's also an OCM aspect to make sure you take on of what does your role look like before and after. And people feel better about, oh, I'm still here. My job is this now it's gonna be this. 

And I think the other part is just doing the due diligence on the system, making sure your implementation partner is going to be absolutely essential to a success. Each PLM software has its own strength and weakness. So you know, you gotta figure out what works best for your particular organization and your needs, but that implementation partner at the end of the day is really gonna make or break your success because it's not just, Hey, we got it up and running and live. You gotta a system to maintain after that. 

And so setting that expectation of it's not just a static system. And we're live and we're done with it. You gotta make sure you got a team in place to not just an IT team, but a business team to continue to do continuous improvement on your processes, continue to expand your processes into the platform, do everything you can.

Going back to my earlier part about making it easier for everyone else, that's the goal. Those are things I would recommend doing. 

[00:21:11] JOS VOSKUIL: 
The point you mentioned about, uh, the partner is, is so crucial. I mean, I see often that partners at least have a much broader experience from different type of customers where if you have to invent everything once in a while in your own, uh, private project, you are probably lacking the experience.

[00:21:26] BEATRIZ GUTIERREZ: 
Yeah, Greg. Yeah, agree totally with you, that your implementation partner is critical, also, your team, how they coordinated all the activities and, uh, what about your OCM partner? 

[00:21:38] GREGORY YOW: 
My belief, OCM is the most underappreciated and undervalued aspect of projects. There's been a number of projects that I've been involved in where they're like, um, well, we need to save a little bit of money, and the first thing they cut, OCM. I think that is a shame. 

I think OCM, in my opinion, it is the most important discipline to get involved in all of anything that requires change. And if you think about, I'm gonna take an extreme example of AI that is gonna transform everyone's job. AI is very expensive. You're gonna invest in PLM. Why would you not want to invest in an organization that you spent, you, you just spent millions of dollars, potentially hundreds of thousands, at the very least, on whatever it is they're implementing. So in the case of PLM, you know, depending on the scope, hundreds of thousands to maybe a few million. 

If that adoption fails or is slow, then your return on investment isn't realized. So your ability for an organization to be agile, meaning to adapt to change. It's critical. And OCM is the primary tool in your toolkit to make that happen. And that means if you have an ability to keep up and change and adapt quickly, that means you're gonna have a better chance of keeping ahead of your competition, as well as the startups who may start from the very beginning with all of this stuff in place. And you have nothing in place and you're in a way trying to catch up to them. I would not cut if you're thinking about from a cost perspective, that money and investment in OCM, which is usually not that significant, frankly is, is well spent. So definitely invest in a good OCM partner and program and don't think of OCM as training. It's a lot more than that. 

[00:23:31] JOS VOSKUIL: 
Greg, you talked a little about also the borders of the, of the partner and OCM. I think there we are fully aligned. And I think also the, the partners they have experience and, and this brings me to the, the final question as usual experience is what you get when you don't get what you expect. And I was curious, can you share one of your major experiences from your PLM career? 

[00:23:52] GREGORY YOW: 
I guess one of the fortunate experiences that I had and I was able to leverage in my current role, was that I worked in it for seven years, so I transitioned from R and D to IT, because we actually had a PLM project. I was the business process owner for one aspect of that implementation. And then when it went live, I had the opportunity to manage and build a team to support the PLM platform we had rolled out in that organization. Because, and I would kind of even say this about your implementation partner. 

My experience has been is when you work with an IT organization that is all technical, you end up with a lot of problems, frankly, because they haven't lived your world. They may know how to do things in the platform like very well, like, you know, whatever that is. But if they don't understand your life, your problems, they have a hard time interpreting and how to proactively think about solutions to make your life easier. 

And so on the other hand, when you're on the business side, you're always thinking, why does IT take so long? Why do I have all these processes and all this other stuff? So I, you know, having that view of the world from both sides of the fence helped me be more effective. I also, the IT organization ends up interacting with every single function in a company. At all levels in the company. And then they also get involved in business acquisitions. 

So in my case, I ended up being the kind of the black sheep, 'cause I was pretty much part of an ERP team and I was PLM, not ERP, but I learned an enormous amount of information around our, our ERP systems execute, which at the end of the day, it's how your business operates. So then you start thinking, well, how can I make sure that when I think about my PLM, which is containing your BOMs, your interfaces, and how that connects over to ERP, to build solutions to make it easier, that was valuable experience for me and I was able to leverage it here.

So as an example, when I started my, at the organization, if they needed to, they started, they had like revision specific parts. It's like, no, you can't do that. Your ERP system is revision agnostic, so that was forcing the manufacturing organization to segregate inventory by revision, and it created all this other manual tasks. It's like, no, we're, that's not what we're doing. If that's the case, if they're not interchangeable, we'll create a new part number. And now with PLM, you can quickly and easily create numbers, swap 'em out on the bills and materials. And move on and make it, make that life life easier. And then what does that look like in SAP, in our case?

So understanding all that stuff to me provided an invaluable experience I was able to leverage. So I guess I would just say whatever your experiences are, the more experience you can get across the organization, whether it's marketing, manufacturing, engineering, I think cross-functional experience is really important to help you be successful because you need to understand and put yourself in someone else's shoes. Get their perspectives on again, you know, how to make their lives easier. That's how I see my mission is just making it easier for the organization. 

[00:27:17] JOS VOSKUIL: 
Exactly, yeah. The mix of being IT and business, I think that's the ideal combination that we are always looking for. 

[00:37:25] GREGORY YOW: 
And I think these days, I mean the technology pace is only accelerating. Right? And every CEO that exists in any, you know, any large organization is gonna have to have some level of technical knowledge, even though they're not executing to understand how leverage their technical organizations to make a difference, to be competitive, it's just becoming more and more essential. And AI is only making it that much more so. 

[00:27:48] BEATRIZ GUTIERREZ: 
Yeah, totally agree. And this is why in the next podcast system we want to invite also our C levels so they can also share what this, the point of view in respect with technology and, and change in the organization. So looking forward to it. Thank you very much, Greg. It's been a pleasure to having you in the episode. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. 

[00:28:09] JOS VOSKUIL: 
Okay. Thank you. 

[00:28:09] GREGORY YOW: 
And yeah, thank you. Appreciate the time.