I’ve been reading C. Sven Johnson’s reBang blog and strongly recommend you give it a read. I’m especially taken with this post on PLM and machinima.
In it, Sven asks:
While I may not believe that factories have much of a future in a rapid-manufacturing world, I do think we’ll see a stage, perhaps a long one, where virtual technologies are integral and vital to their design and operation.
Hmmm…where would stuff get made in such a world? Clearly, we agree that improving factories by reusing 3D design data to create not just animations (machinima-lite?) but the bills of materials and manufacturing processes themselves is much more likely to be the case.
But its hard for me to grasp Sven’s assertion that PLM is the basis of the factory-less future. We often beat up PLM as too big, too heavy and too consultant-friendly to deliver much to enterprises that (attempt to) install it. It’s no surprise that we’d doubt that it could drive a factory-less system…and I am not at all sure that even PLM’s biggest advocates would suggest such a thing.
Still, reBang is making some fascinating points and proposing ideas worth considering. And, if you stretch the definition a little (OK, a lot), you might even be able to call the animations Seemage produces little machinimas.
Thanks for the plug, however, I need to clarify that I’m not saying PLM is the “basis of the factory-less future”; I’m suggesting the advancement of fabrication technologies will be the eventual demise of factories.
What I’m suggesting in that post is that PLM will increasingly become gamelike as it incorporates those elements that videogames and simulations do well. So, for example, a behavioral NPC system as shown in the Euphoria demo could be used by plant managers to help with simulations (e.g. hazardous material scenarios). Imagine using the HR data available, plugging psych profiles into NPC’s, mapping those into Euphoria’s character behavior system, then doing the same with physical attributes, and then testing a containment/escape plan for a particular workshift. A plant manager might discover that fireteam members working that shift are physically unable to do a task in the manner expected. That could lead to any number of changes to both human resources (e.g. swapping workers among shifts to achieve a better balance of capability) and the factory (e.g. changing the factory layout).
On the PLM side, I could see people in R&D running simulations using the DMM system from the other, related post on this subject. But that has less to do with factories (and the quote you posted above) than with product development issues.
btw, in the event you’ve not read it, a post of mine from some time back might be relevant and of interest to you: http://blog.rebang.com/?p=577