[00:00:01.050] - Intro

Welcome to the Share PLM Podcast, the show that explores the vast universe of product lifecycle management.

[00:00:08.370] - Helena

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Share PLM Podcast. I'm here today with my co host, Jos Voskuil, and today we have the pleasure of having Susanna Mäentausta joining us. She is the product lifecycle management and data lead at Novartis. Welcome, Susanna.

[00:00:24.050] - Susanna

Thank you, Helena. Thank you, Jos. Pleasure to be here with you today.

[00:00:28.620] - Jos

Hello, Susanna. Good morning. Yeah, we met also in other companies. So glad to see you again. Thank you.

[00:00:35.100] - Helena

Very good, Susanna. So can you please introduce yourself and your role at Novartis?

[00:00:39.530] - Susanna

Sure,Helena. So, my name is Susanna, and I'm currently working at Novartis, a global pharmaceutical company, as product lifecycle management data lead, trying to bring a more integrated and cross functional world of PLM into the heart of our operations and how do we work together across the organization. And I've done that now in the past in other companies as well. And I'm happy to see that there's a lot of commonalities that we can leverage from the learnings across the different places where PLM is being leveraged and implemented.

[00:01:14.670] - Jos

One interesting observation, Susanna. When you say, I'm a PLM data lead, we don't meet so many data leads. We meet PLM leads. But here there is also the extra addition of data. Is this important in your situation?

[00:01:30.750] - Susanna

Well, it's a couple of perspectives. So on my current organization, I'm co leading with my enterprise process lead this journey of PLM. So my focus is more from the data and then co leading that together with an enterprise business process owner together, but also with the fact that we have a lot of focus on fixing the foundation. So putting the data into the right place at the right quality to then build upon that. So that's currently why the data is also emphasizedn in my role profile.

[00:02:05.370] - Jos

I was hoping to hear something different also, like the data is more important than the process, which some of my customers told me that if we have the data correct, then at least we can build the processes. So the data is the most important part.

[00:02:18.680] - Susanna

Yeah, I would say that's the classic that actually you can't have the data correct without the proper process, so you can't one without the other. But clearly, we also look at it from the perspective that once you make the processes that generate the data in order, then you can leverage so much around it that you can build other activities around it. So we see that as an important backbone for everything.

[00:02:42.790] - Helena

Very interesting. Susanna, you mentioned that you've already taken similar transformation as a lead. Can you tell us how you personally got into PLM?

[00:02:52.030] - Susanna

Sure. I also started elsewhere than in PLM, so my career started in chemical industry within regulatory affairs, product safety, which is also very highly cross functional collaboration in terms of you need to engage with research and development and with commercial marketing sales to understand the needs and then translate those into what is possible within the regulatory boundaries, et cetera. And through that work I actually then started to see these bottlenecks and pain points within the organization. That how the handovers and handshakes didn't really work as well as everybody hoped for and the related challenges within the organization. And as part of a larger business process transformation program, I then ended up leading the PLM transformation in my past company. And I think that's a lot to do with the fact that I was able to see the different needs within the different functions and organizational entities around the same thing product data and how do we convey the approvals, the changes and the different information across the organizational boundaries.

[00:04:04.910] - Jos

And when you started to work on PLM, what I hear from your story, it was really already an enterprise approach, not just an engineering approach. So who gave you the mission of PLM?

[00:04:18.300] - Susanna

That's an interesting question. You're correct that it was an enterprise approach in terms of we did embark on that journey from an end to end from an enterprise perspective. And part of that fact is that I worked in chemical industry, in a process industry where the engineering department and the classical PLM approach is not so prominent. We ended up actually a lot of reinventing that what does PLM actually mean? Because a lot of the reference and the legacy is from discrete manufacturing industries. In essence, whilst the challenges are still the same that you operate as a company with your offering that's consisting of products that need to be then described and managed with a backbone that is translatable and interoperable across the different organizational units. So we sort of redefined what does that PLM mean? And that was a mandate that was kind of built along those challenges. And it's difficult to pinpoint where did it really start, but it's more of a startup that you started seeing opportunities. And then once you put these opportunities together, you realize that this is actually all about implementing an enterprise PLM, meaning now business processes and the data models and governance that support the whole operations around your product data. 

[00:05:39.380] - Jos

And process companies are very transactional driven. So probably also your PLM had KPIs.

[00:05:48.830] - Susanna

Of course we had KPIs, but I think we started even with the foundation that it was difficult to measure very simple things that how much of an effort does a certain type of product change take or how long does it take. It was super hard to measure that. And the starting point was to really build the foundation that we even get a proper reliable benchmark. You had functional bits and pieces, but you never were able to get to that end to end measurable situation before we implemented the first phase of enterprise PLM processes along the technology in the background.

[00:06:24.200] - Helena

is it, Susana, that you are focusing at the moment a lot on the basics and you are trying to tackle PLM end to end. What are the basics of end to end PLM?

[00:06:38.270] - Susanna

Well, I think a lot of our discussions also within my current role come to a couple of very fundamental things. What do you understand as your PLM processes? What's in scope, what's out of scope framing that where does your product cycle really start? And especially in an industry where the development cycles are rather long, you really need to frame that. You have the stakeholders aligned with the understanding what is the start of your process scope and what kinds of events and activities are included in that process scope as well. And the other part that we're also discussing a lot and trying to create the common enterprise understanding is that what is product data, what do we understand as product data because that's different worldview from different stakeholders. And then building out of those different views what is the common enterprise core and what are then like more functional dimensions that can be governed within functional entities or alike. So it's a lot about understanding what is the common, what needs to be interoperable, what needs to be translated between departments, between functions. And out of those two, you already have a lot where you can find the common language across the different stakeholders.

[00:08:01.610] - Helena

Why do you think that it is difficult to build a common enterprise understanding of the product lifecycle data?

[00:08:09.870] - Susanna

I think it's to do with the fact that different functions, if you compare how does development interface with capturing product data, defining products, how do they see that compared to what happens, for example, in supply chain and logistics? They look at different subsets of the product data and sometimes, especially in bigger organizations, the systems are also very diverse and siloed. And if that was not described anywhere, that how do these interconnect or what data, what attributes of a product actually need to be carried through the different departments? You just don't have the common touch point. And I think that's very natural unless you take the effort that you really define what's your common core.

[00:08:58.890] - Helena

It's fascinating. I think it's all about bringing people together. Do you have any tips about bringing this alignment between the different functions?

[00:09:07.870] - Susanna

That's a tricky part because I think that's the never ending ending part of the PLM that organizations keep evolving and people keep changing. So it's part of the narrative that needs to be repeated that what is the benefit that we bring through having the common set of processes, common ways of working together and then bringing it down to individuals? So what is it that it brings to me if I'm working in an engineering department or what is it that I benefit if I'm working as a product manager? Or how would I care if I'm just developing new formulations in the development department? Why would I care what happens later in the lifecycle? So it's about making it really tangible for people. And that's usually the hardest part as well, because it takes a lot of effort to bring those stories in. But I think that's the way how you can engage truly across the organization.

[00:10:01.150] - Jos

It's interesting, Helena, when you started to talk about people, because I was thinking susanna's approach was we would touch the topic of master data management very soon. It sound very technical like attributes, properties, and that's more a technology solution to bring people together with master data management. Do you have something like master data management also in your PLM scope?

[00:10:25.430] - Susanna

Absolutely. What we're trying to bring in is that defining first of all, what are the key master data entities that we have as an enterprise product master data? And then understanding that where do we have the definitions for the processes where the data is being generated? And then matching those two together, that you also try to strive to the situation that you capture the data where it's been born, where it's created. And then you have the backbone of data models that it makes it interchangeable interoperable across the different systems. And that's coming back to you need to define what you really have as master data. You have, again, different worldviews and not everything is the same across the whole landscape of different functions and different stakeholders. Our focus is to understand who is actually creating that data, creating that accountability, that this is the data source that should be leveraged later on in the lifecycle for other activities. Otherwise we keep emphasizing that or kind of we keep feeding into the behaviors that the same data gets reinvented across the different areas over and over again. So that's why it comes so close with the master data that you need to understand where that data is actually being generated in the first place.

[00:11:45.160] - Jos

Exactly who is accountable. That's one of the characteristics of a digital enterprise instead of the owner. It's really accountable and sharing.

[00:11:54.330] - Susanna

And the other part is that with all the opportunities with technology, we're trying to also think of ways that you make it easy for people in their roles to capture their part of the story. That you try to go away from the thinking that master data sits in some great team somewhere in their specialist silo and then you hand over information for them to type in, but rather bringing it too close to the business activities and whenever possible, building, for example, workflows really user interfaces that guide you through that. You capture the key critical data along the way rather than having it as a separate data management activity.

[00:12:36.930] - Jos

When we are talking here about the user focus, how much do you believe in out of the box PLM or in customized PLM?

[00:12:45.590] - Susanna

That's a great question. Within our current program as well, one of the key foundations is that we try to customize as little as possible, so try to leverage the standards as much as possible. But then on the other side I see that there's a lot of flexibility that you leverage the standard, let's say PLM functionality, but you bring in a user friendly interface. So a layer that's kind of a nice wrapping paper around the backbone that users don't need to know how ERP system works. If you have that embedded in your business process that you know when you're actually capturing what and you have guidance, that what needs to be captured along the way. So I think that's a symbiosis of leverage the standard backbone and functionality as much as you can, but then think it from the user perspective that how can you embed it into your business process day to day as much as you can. And there are some teams who would be more savvy working in a very complicated greens and that's what they do. They might be happy with that, but once you bring it to more of a occasional or casual user groups, you need to think of how they can easily interact and interface with the parts that they need to do in their jobs.

[00:14:02.270] - Helena

Susanna, you mentioned before that one of the key success factors is making the use cases really tangible. And I see many organizations having challenges to make the PLM use cases really tangible. I wanted to ask you if you have any examples for us of those really tangible use cases.

[00:14:23.230] - Susanna

There would be probably plenty of them and some of them requiring quite a lot of context to describe. But I think there's a couple of examples that I can think of. One coming from my past roles, from the fact that you had challenges in finding quick ways to switch raw materials. So how would you qualify quickly new suppliers for raw materials? Because the challenge was that the procurement and sourcing activities were then needing to interface with regulatory compliance topics, safety topics. Then you have the supply chain setups you need to be capturing. You kind of interact with so and so many different departments to say are we good to go? Can we qualify this supplier? Is the supply speed agility there what we need? Is it meeting also the requirements for the manufacturing organization? And is it also then surely fitting into the intended design that it doesn't change any of the outcomes for the product? And out of the journey that we built these enterprise processes where you have really a workflow that these different stakeholders can bring in their views. So you have a prospect supplier and then you capture that feedback in a format where everybody can see each other's feedback.

[00:15:45.700] - Susanna

Is it recommended to go forward? Is it requiring further information? It created a platform that is easy to see who from the organization as an individual is working with your case. And then if you need to have further deep dives, you could easily grab those people together in a meeting and say how can we make this go forward. Whilst in the previous setting when the workflows were not in place, you needed a lot of that tacit knowledge who actually in this and that team is responsible for this particular area. If you were really savvy in the organization, you had been there for years, you would know who's working on that. But if you were maybe new to the company or not that long time in that organization, you had a lot of trouble even finding out who needed to be brought around the table. And that was something that clearly then later on was also measured in terms of time to process those, analyze those requirements. And that's maybe something that is not a classic PLM example because it's just from one one function. But that was one of the key drivers for that function to play along with that overall perspective as they saw that they can also benefit from that and not only them needing to provide a lot of detail to allow others to do their jobs, but also them getting benefits from that platform.

[00:17:06.390] - Jos

Susanna, one of the targets of this podcast is also to share lessons learned. And lessons learned always come when you have something coming out that you didn't expect. For example, when I worked for Smart Team, it was a toolkit. I could always say yes to the customer because I could do it. And in the end I learned that you have to say no to the customer because you cannot say yes to everything. Have you also this kind of learning moments that you can share with us?

[00:17:32.460] - Susanna

Well, there's plenty of them as well as it's a journey, it's not a single project, but it's really an organizational change journey. But I think couple of learnings that you need to think Holistically but then still move in increments. So building piece by piece but always having that end state vision in mind. Otherwise PLM can be such a big elephant in the house that doesn't fit through the door, it doesn't really fit through the windows, but you really need to think that how do you come into that vision without then exploding the whole thing within the organization on one go? And I think that's part of also building the trust and confidence that this is the right thing to do as it's complex, as it's embracing so many different parts of the organization. Think holistically, but then take it step by step. And I think it's also important to create transparency why we take a certain step at a time that there are expectations that don't get fulfilled on the first step or on the second step. But there's a reason why you prioritize something else.

[00:18:44.550] - Jos

So the PLM team is not in an ivory tower. It's really transparent for the organization. That's crucial also to build the trust.

[00:18:53.980] - Susanna

Yeah, and I think the other part is that on an ongoing governance you really need to find a place in the organization for that business governance team that's close enough to the key stakeholders that are part of the journey. And my takeaway is that different companies, different organizations are obviously different and it might not be that one size fits for all, but I think the key is that you need to find the key beneficiaries that who are the most important supporters for the whole enterprise view to stay in operational, in continuously developing mode. And then you need to build the governance in such a way that it's close enough that you keep on the pulse. So to say that you know what's really maybe not working and you have the right business partners to prioritize what are the biggest opportunities to further improve as we go.

[00:19:48.090] - Helena

I think it's a great takeaway think holistically but build in pieces. You've given us some examples of building in pieces but do you have any advice for other organizations trying to think holistically? How can they build that big picture narrative for big picture vision?

[00:20:04.450] - Susanna

Well, I think very simple advice is to get an enterprise view for product data. You need to reach out across functions, across different departments. So you need to bring people along and you can't do that in a silo. And then once you have a ready design, then go after. But you really need to engage with them. And don't underestimate the time that it requires for those conversations, because I think my experience is that matching those different worldviews that have maybe a different terminology for the same thing have a very different focus in terms of if you think of product and how you describe a product, these conversations are probably the most valuable part of it because they help people understand what's their role? How does it fit together, but they also create that engagement that kind of make people feel that they want to be part of the game, they want to be part of that journey. And I think that's something that especially when you have an engineering focused or very technology focused approach, be it then like it focused or whatnot, it's easy to kind of forget that it's a lot about the human interaction, building the stories, building the understanding. How does it reflect on the day to day? Instead of functional design documents, technical design documents and technical specifications.

[00:21:28.350] - Jos

This reflects to a discussion we had earlier. What is the PLM professional? What are the basic skills a PLM professional should have?

[00:21:35.310] - Susanna

Great question and I don't think there is one description of a PLM professional, but I think you need to be able to speak different organizational languages. So I tend to joke that I speak a little bit of supply chain, a little bit of production and a little bit of R and D and of course some commercial as well. So you need to be able to translate the feeds and the requirements from different parts into what's your holistic PLM approach.

[00:22:03.230] - Jos

I think that's a nice term I use also a translator, because you have to connect people and everyone has their own language.

[00:22:11.210] - Susanna

Indeed. And it's also part of that journey that you have an enterprise that has different departments doing a different function and different purpose within the company, but then trying to understand how that all fits together to bring that joint mission, the joint purpose live and creating that impact to the customers, to the stakeholders that's in the core of that company.

[00:22:35.630] - Helena

Susanna, what has personally helped you to become a better PLM professional? Do you have any resources, books, any mentors that have particularly been influential for you in your PLM journey?

[00:22:48.690] - Susanna

I think it would be really hard to mention a particular book or a particular resource. But I think what I get most inspiration is really hearing these journeys, how did different companies take and what were their learning? So a lot of these peer discussions on what are you doing? How did it go, what were the main obstacles, they are all different, but you can always take something back into your organization. So I would say my best learning is actually the network that I build with very different industries, with very different companies, hearing what are their challenges and what are they struggling with. And I think oftentimes there's more similarities than differences with the journeys, whilst they are still very different from the outside. But if you dig deeper into the challenges, they come to very similar topics in the end. But I would just say that get out, get networked, get to hear how others did, what were their successes and what were their struggles. That's where you can learn the most.

[00:23:50.410] - Jos

I think we are reaching the end of the time. Maybe a final question. Susanna, you talked a lot about the journey in your projects. Have you ever experienced the challenge of management that doesn't want a journey, they want a project, just implement it and do it. And where you know by heart it's a journey. And how did you balance this implementation desire against a journey of experience?

[00:24:13.970] - Susanna

Well, I think that's probably quite natural that from an investment perspective, you always want to see projects that have a beginning and an end, and that's okay. I think that's also healthy that you slice the journey into increments that you know, within the next one year, two year, this is the piece that we are going to do. But I think my advice would be don't think about those increments as projects alone, but you need to get into an alignment that there needs to be a governance already early on, because that's your engine for the journey. So once you build something, first releases or so, it's your baby that needs to be nurtured. And then as it becomes a toddler, it becomes a teenager. It helps that you have the governance in place. You have the guardian that keeps it going, keeps it consistent towards the vision, and also is ready to revise the vision, but with an intentional way. So I think the key is that there are always projects, but the journey is supported by building the governance early on, having a thought on the governance, not when the project ends, but already during the first step of the journey.

[00:25:22.060] - Jos

It's a nice analogy of people lifecycle management. I like it a lot.

[00:25:26.950] - Helena

Thank you, Susan. I think you've shared a lot of knowledge and lot of wisdoms in this podcast. I want to thank you very much for coming here and being open and sharing some parts of your journey with us.

[00:25:38.780] - Susanna

Thanks, Helena. It's been a pleasure.

[00:25:40.720] - Jos

Thank you, Susanna. And yeah, looking forward to have more conversations also in real life.

[00:25:44.840] - Susanna

Thanks. Likewise.

[00:25:48.010] - Outro

Thanks for listening to today's episode of Shareplm Podcast, where we bring PLM professionals together. Do you have any questions, topic suggestions or know a PLM person who would be a great fit for the podcast? Let us know by visiting shareplm.com/podcast.