In the US, late night talk show host David Letterman retired this May after 33 years. Famous for an eccentric approach to comedy, his lasting contribution to humor will likely be his nightly Top Ten lists. The subject matter was all over the map, from current events (“Top Ten Final Words of Osama Bin Laden), to family life (“Top Ten Signs Your Kid Had a Bad First Day at School”) or just straight up comedy (“Top Ten Rejected James Bond Gadgets”).
Despite hours of agonizing research, we are unable to confirm if David Letterman ever made a Top Ten list about engineering data management. This is obviously an oversight on the part of Letterman and his writing team, one which we are happy to rectify. So, here’s today’s Top Ten List, “You Might Be Having Product Data Management (PDM) Nightmares If...” If you suffer from one or more of these nightmare scenarios, follow the associated link to the solution Synergis Adept provides.
Number 10: You might be having PDM nightmares if file names mention days of the week or children recently born to employees.
Number 9: You might be having PDM nightmares if the recycling truck in your neighborhood is in charge of delivering engineering transmittals.
Number 8: You might be having PDM nightmares if employees amuse themselves by “repurposing” stacks of CAD drawings into old fashion animation flip books.
Number 7: You might be having PDM nightmares if your corporate spam filter gets confused by the high volume of document attachments and starts hiding attached spreadsheets and CAD files.
Number 6: You might be having PDM nightmares if staff members are uploading confidential CAD documents to a free viewing site that installs a “custom” browser interface.
Number 5: You might be having PDM nightmares if the person who walks around the office gathering Engineering Change Notice signatures is also selling lottery tickets at a discount.
Number 4: You might be having PDM nightmares if you have visions of cats running helter skelter when somebody says the words “audit trail.”
Number 3: You might be having PDM nightmares if people think “metadata” is an inarticulate reference to a Star Trek character.
Number 2: You might be having PDM nightmares if, when you talk about vaulting, someone says, “I never can remember, is vaulting a men’s or women’s gymnastics event?”
Number 1: You might be having PDM nightmares when you realize surveys show up to 40% of office worker’s time is spent managing unstructured data, and 20% of an employee's time is wasted searching for a document.
If you’re interested in finding out how Synergis Adept solves all these challenges, check out our latest eBook “The Answers to the Top 10 Challenges of Engineering Data & Document Management.”
Randall S. Newton is the principal analyst and managing director at Consilia Vektor, a consulting firm serving the engineering software industry. He has been directly involved in engineering software in a number of roles since 1985.
