Insights on PLM, variant management and software-defined products — from practice, for practice.
An AI agent took my DIY robot to a buildable design. Lesson: tech stack and rules aren't enough. Quality needs an operating model: method, platform, governance.
At PALM Forum, Simon Gäde, Fabian Quentin and Sebastian Holtfoth presented BHC's user enabling portfolio, from trainer-led courses to AI enabling assistants.
A colleague reminded me this week: describe the desired outcome to the AI, not the path. I still set my own guardrails for my robot project, for good reasons.
An AI agent develops a small DIY robot autonomously, from specs and architecture to CAD and simulation. I only set the framework and requirements.
Interview on a vacation project: a self-sufficient E-Ink family calendar built with an AI coding agent, the simulator trick, debugging, and what stays human.
Neither blind trust nor total control: how companies can delegate AI in engineering properly – task-specific, based on observation and revocable.
Robot demo from CAD data, real microcontroller code and physics simulation, built headless with AI on a vacation afternoon, with no CAD suite at all.
Instead of family events, the e-ink display suddenly shows webinar dates. Between microcontroller quirks, calendar APIs and rain jackets on vacation.
An E-Ink display with an ESP32 is meant to become an automatic family calendar on vacation: events and birthdays via CalDAV and CardDAV, with an AI agent.
The use case decides, not the tool: where does AI create real business value in engineering complex products, and how does it fit PLM/ALM? With live demo.
AI is changing consulting itself, and it is what we advise clients on. The second strand is producing an AI maturity assessment for engineering and lifecycle.
This week I burned my Claude quota in minutes – with Haiku, not Sonnet or Opus. Cause: heavy subagent use on research. Three lessons on token overhead.
Most configuration methods start from a maximum (150% BOM) and then filter down to 100%. What if you modeled the delta to a base variant instead?
Sunset, good spirits and the best colleagues you could ask for. We simply laughed off the brief rain shower. Impressions from the BHC GmbH rooftop summer party.
Experts know the 150% BOM inside out, but few can name the other two methods or when each applies: additive, subtractive and parametric configuration.
Over 40 terms now live in the Variant Management Glossary, from Additive Configuration to Zombie Variants. What is a zombie variant, and why check the glossary?
After confessing that a “vacation project” got a bit out of hand, here is the presentable version of the story: variantmanagement.com is officially relaunched.
“PLM is dead,” people say. PLM suite versus PLM discipline: monoliths are under pressure, but configuration management and traceability matter more than ever.
Vacation is for relaxing, but with too many hobbies you end up rebuilding your variant management site. How a legacy CMS became a full Astro migration.
“Can't be done because of GDPR / MDR / TISAX” – and people drop it. Yet most regulations contain no hard ban, just a call to engage seriously with risks.
Chain LLM calls without framework overhead, GUI or vendor lock-in: JuPipe defines workflows in plain text files, with local models and cloud APIs.
Change management is an unloved duty, mostly because impact analysis gets stuck in hallway talk. What a chatbot needs to answer that question reliably.
After long hesitation: a 13-inch Nvidia RTX laptop for local AI experiments. Hands-on with what I advise on, no subscription, API key or privacy question.
Official program over, trade-show laptop on: two Digital Thread experts spend the evening of the ivip Symposium on a private hackathon around AI and PLM.
Day 1 of the prostep ivip symposium: IPAI and Schwarz Digits in Heilbronn, why the real transformation is not technical, and a new SUMS and security initiative.
Updating a test vehicle to the latest hardware is costly and slow, and often unnecessary. You just don't know. How hardware exchangeability cuts process costs.
The best proof: the prostep ivip Symposium in Frankfurt. A digital lapdog, a LEGO Mars rover and plenty of soldering-iron nostalgia: impressions from the booth.
When AI lets anyone build tools, who looks after the big picture? Vibe coding is Excel-tool culture at a new level and makes information architecture matter.
Why do AI projects really fail, why is “dumping data into ChatGPT” no solution, and how to build AI-enabled data architectures? Preview of prostep ivip 2026.
A study by Lünendonk & Hossenfelder: 83% of companies see the geopolitical cloud kill switch as a relevant risk, yet only 14% have a solid exit strategy.
Read the media these days and you might think Germany is finished. A plea for more optimism – and against the self-fulfilling prophecy of doom and gloom.
With CIM Database Cloud on STACKIT, CONTACT Software brings PLM to a European cloud platform. Proof it's not “Europe vs. USA”, but freedom of choice.
Digital sovereignty had no common yardstick until now. The EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework adds eight dimensions and five SEAL levels, but the real work remains.
Digital PLM/ALM sovereignty as an end in itself isn't helpful. The CIA triad from information security offers a grid for rating an IT solution.
Moving PLM workloads to a sovereign cloud takes verifiable requirements, not labels. Airbus's digital chief sees an 80/20 chance. Europe should make it 100/0.
Besides the vendor's origin, the operating model decides how sovereign a PLM/ALM solution really is. Vendor SaaS, on-premise and managed hosting compared.
A PLM/ALM vendor's origin helps determine its legal jurisdiction. An overview of the main vendors, and why origin alone isn't the whole story.
Design data, software, BOMs, architecture models: industrial DNA lives in PLM/ALM systems, while more solutions move to the cloud. Start of a research series.
Langdock has no standard CalDAV integration yet, so I built one: an open-source hobby project linking mailbox.org or Nextcloud calendars to the AI assistant.
Synology Drive Client not syncing? The logs live in a SQLite database. Here is where to find it and how to analyze sync problems.
SDV Europe day 2: from shift left and model first to the prostep ivip SDVxMBSE initiative. The challenge is no longer tooling, but collaboration.
At SDV Europe in Berlin, the term MBSE doesn't come up even once. Do shift left and model first dominate the discussion now? A status report after day 1.
An FAZ article on choice overload nails a familiar topic from PLM/ALM and variant management: too many options sound customer-centric but overwhelm.
Software-defined products like SDVs hit their limits fast without sound systems engineering. Why a continuous Digital Thread across the whole lifecycle is key.
Is ALM a management approach, a tool category, or both? I untangle the term, place it next to PLM and systems engineering, and show what matters in practice.
Fresh off the press: the new book on Model-Based Product Line Engineering (MBPLE) by Marco Forlingieri, Tim Weilkiens and Hugo Guillermo Chale-Gongora.
Without understanding real customer needs, you build past the target or keep complexity lean and miss the customer. Why a good product navigator matters.
Variant management is about more than reducing complexity. Almost every definition leaves out the customer focus. Here is why it is essential.
Traceability is not all the same. My Traceability Navigator helps you define the right requirements and implement them in the PLM toolchain.
Choosing an ALM tool is a decision for years. As a vendor-neutral consultant, I show 5 aspects that really matter, beyond the demo videos.
“Configuration” means three different things in projects, all at once. Here is how to spot and resolve this confusion of terms in meetings.
MiniZinc is a practical entry point to SAT solving. Here are the first steps for modeling variant spaces, easy to follow even without a math degree.
What is a SAT solver, and why does it matter for variant management? A plain-language look at the core technology behind product configurators.
Pumpkin Lifecycle Management: what do pumpkins have to do with variant management? A Halloween-style look at PLM and product variety.
How do you describe billions of variants? With set theory — surprisingly intuitive. I show it using car variants in a parking lot.
Long-lived products need sustainable update strategies. I show why business model, product architecture and ALM have to fit together.
In mid-May I joined BHC and PROSTEP at Siemens Realize LIVE in Las Vegas: a talk, a Mars rover demo and a week of international exchange. A look back.
With BHC and PROSTEP, we are heading to a major PLM vendor event again in 2024: SIEMENS Realize LIVE, May 2024 in Las Vegas. We will see all the news on site.
Thanks for the invitation to the Ecatalog Conference 2024. KiM GmbH and 4PACE have some great variant configuration offerings 👍😃 ... from AI to VR 💯
Does the Easter Bunny run variant management for its Easter eggs? A playful look at PLM and “variare” — the Latin word for “to color”.
“Configuration” means three different things in projects. I clear it up: variant configuration, configuration management, parameterization.
Alumni reunion of the model railway club at my old school in Heilbronn. My “Dösle” was still there, the ultimate patent-worthy (😂) helper tool.
In May 2023 I was at PTC LiveWorx in Boston. A few impressions.
Designing an optimal PLM/ALM integration with systems engineering methods: the BHC talk by David Whitney and me at PTC #LiveWorx 2025 in Boston.
100% PLM and 100% ALM – that is what PROSTEP AG and BHC GmbH stand for. As a BHC crew member, I experienced the latest PTC trends at #LiveWorx 2025 in Boston.
I'm looking forward to speaking with David Whitney about integrating PLM and ALM at PTC LiveWorx 2025 😃 The talk covers the role of systems engineering.
Together with my colleagues at BHC GmbH, I wrote a whitepaper on traceability. Find out what traceability involves and how to put it into practice.
The BHC GmbH crew at the Mercedes-Benz AG Digital Product Forum 2022. It was great to see so many good contacts in person again.
At the ivip Symposium I ran into a bar-mixing robot. Its gripper comes from my former employer SCHUNK. Instant nostalgia 😉
After 12 years at SCHUNK: a look back at a formative time and ahead to the new chapter as a PLM/ALM consultant at BHC Consulting.
