PDMLink and CMII

[unknown1]

We are currently looking at a number of different PLM tools. One of our
primary considerations is whether the tool in question is CMII certified
or not. (CMII may not be important to many people, but it does represent
a thorough and well developed configuration/change management strategy.)




Some of you may be familiar with the drama surrounding PDMLink and its
on again off again CMII certification. From what I have been able to
gather, after losing their CMII certification, PTC did in fact develop,
in collaboration with ICM, the functionality necessary to achieve
recertification, however they did not make that functionality available
in the final product and thus lost certification for the second time.



My question is this. How close is PDMLink to the CMII methodology? What
are its exceptions? It would seem to me that PDMLink is missing some of
the more powerful tools/functions required for CMII. Is that true in
practice? Has anyone successfully customized PDMLink to achieve a "near
CMII" compliant environment? I know there must be some users/consultants
out there who have CMII experience.



I appreciate any insight.

Thanks,

John Frankovich

The GSI Group

[ptc-571495]

John,



There are several people at my company, including myself, who have both
extensive Windchill Change Management functionality experience and have gone
through ICM's 6-course training program. I was also surprised when I
discovered that PTC lost CMII certification; especially since I can not
figure out what in the functionality makes it non-CMII-compliant. My
opinion is that Windchill PDMLink (ever since Rev. 6.2.6) is more than
capable of fulfilling the promise of CMII for the following (not an
exhaustive list) reasons (CMII-requirements in italics):

* PDMLink has 3 inter-dependent closed-loop processes (Problem
Reports, Change Requests, Change Notices)

* PDMLink uses Change Administrators to own the change process

* PDMLink uses the method of revising documentation before
performing the work (e.g. parts, models, drawings) within the Change Notices
and enabling a comprehensive Implementation Plan before the Change Notice
can be completed.

* PDMLink manages part level effectivity.

* PDMLink's Change Monitor dashboard includes a pie chart showing
the ratio of Full-Track to Fast-Track changes. CMII advocates that a
well-running change system have 80% -20% Fast-Track to Full-Track ratio.

* PDMLink also uses the CMII concept of two owners for each
documentation (e.g. part, model, drawing, document): Author and Designated
User.

In many years of consulting on change management processes, I have seen most
clients, customize the PDMLink CM process not because it did not meet CMII
standards but because they were un-willing to operate to CMII's (and PDMLink
adherence to) disciplined process.



Best Regards,

H. Lewis Kennebrew, II



Vice-President

Operations

ProductSpace Solutions, Inc.

2021 Midwest Road, Suite 200

Oak Brook, IL 60523 USA

[avillanueva]

I am currently taking a CMII course. We are on PDMLink 8.0. I don't think I know the official story. Why is PDMLink no longer a certified CMII compliant tool? It has a lot of the features but what is it missing? Will a future version be certified?

[DeanBarrick]

I attended the CMII courses in 2006 and asked the instructor why Windchill was no longer CMII certified. I was told CMII raised the bar on requirements and PTC failied to submit evidence that the software was still compliant. Here are the minimum requirements per the CMII Research site

http://www.cmiiresearch.com/tools.htm

• Baseline format, fields and functionality per the CMII model
• Able to identify baselines by model or an equivalent ID number
• Provides work flows that emulate the closed-loop change process
• Includes forms and decision points per the CMII model
• Uses field names and terminologies per the CMII model
• Uses items, documents, forms and records as key information handles
• Enables co-ownership of each document per the CMII model

In my opinion Windchill is more than capable of meeting the requirements and we are currently re-eingineering our Product Change process based on CMII and will enable it using Windchill. We have found no reason to customize the Windchill objects. We are using some Windchill API's to create our own user interfaces. Maybe the reason is more political than technical ???

[DaveEngel]

I asked my rep the same question. Maybe another PTC rep will
chime in. He said that they did have/were maintaining CMII
certification; however they made a decision to not maintain
certification.

Evidently it was costing PTC a lot of money and resources to
keep PDMLink CMII compliant, yet most of their customers were setting up
PDMLink in a non-CMII compliant way.

In other words since most of their customers choose not to run
PDMLink in a CMII compliant fashion they saw no reason to bother with
the certification.

Now does that mean that just because you use one of these tools
your processes are CMII compliant? (None even have 5 stars)

[ptc-147635]

It all comes down to Cash. CMII certification cost money. I'm guessing PTC doesn't want to pay just to say they meet the requirements of CMII. If they don't currently meet those requirements they must be very close to doing so. I also attendedthe conference held in Tennesseea few years back. We have sent a few of our employees to their class to get certified.

David Silorey

[jfrankovich]

The lack of certification was a big issue to management here, so I kept pressing until I received answers from both PTC and ICM.

PTC's explanation was centered around the idea that ICM changed the requirements and PTC did not want to keep chasing a moving target when they believed that their software represented a best practice. Furthermore, PTC believes that CMII is just one option for CM and that other standards exist that are more open and widely accepted. They also criticized the subjective 5 star grading process from ICM.

ICMs explanation was quite different, but did give some insight into the underlying truths. I won't get into the exact details of functionality or timing of events, but according to ICM, PTC developers were able to add all of the required CMII functionality to PDMLink. The problem was that PTC, after considerable coordination with ICM on development, did not deliver that functionality OOTB in the shipping product. Also, the moving target of requirements indicated by PTC was a clarification of existing requirements and form layouts. This left little room for variations.

So at that point it was clear that PDMLink can follow the CMII process, and also that CMII behavior and forms would not follow the processes or forms that I had seen in PDMLink's CM. So here are the questions that naturally follow:
"Has anyone other than PTC made PDMLink CMII compliant?"
"How much work was involved?"
"Was the process and form change worth the effort?"

I did find that PDMLink had been made compliant outside of PTC. Some parts were easy to change and some were more involved. The driver for this effort seems to not be the "internal" requirements of the companies involved, but the need to be CMII certified as an organization. The vast majority, however, do not seem too concerned with the process not being 100% CMII compliant. In fact, in our organization, although a CMII tool was of the utmost importance, we altered the CMII process to better fit our business!

John Frankovich
The GSI Group