Digital Transformation

How New Work is shaping the development of CONTACT Elements

You are probably familiar with this scenario from everyday work: an experienced engineer retires, taking decades of undocumented product knowledge with them. At the same time, the position remains unfilled for months. Meanwhile, young talents applying for the job expect modern work tools and a high degree of flexibility. The key challenges our customers face in engineering are skills shortages, employee turnover, and a lack of young talent. Digital transformation is a crucial step towards overcoming these challenges and ensuring long-term competitiveness. But technology alone is not enough:

“The introduction of new technologies is only the first step. What really matters is the ability to align technological innovation with human needs and the demands of a dynamic work environment.”

This is exactly where we at CONTACT Research come in. To actively address these challenges, we are exploring the trends shaping New Work. As a global megatrend, New Work is already influencing your teams on a daily basis. Since we develop the software your employees use every day, we need to understand the new demands New Work places on PLM systems.

Society is changing the world of work

Behind the shortage of skilled workers and the changing nature of work lie profound societal developments:

Demographic Change & Knowledge Loss: An aging workforce requires significant investment in occupational health, ergonomics and continuous training and reskilling. At the same time, growing competition for skilled workers is driving up recruitment and retention costs. As the baby boomer generation retires, the available workforce is also shrinking considerably. This puts valuable expertise, often undocumented and based on years of experience, at risk of being lost forever.

The Expectations of New Generations (Gen Z & Digital Natives): These generations expect flexibility, flat hierarchies, and psychological safety. For them, work is about more than simply earning a living; it needs to provide a sense of purpose. As a demographic shift, these digitally savvy generations are essential to securing the skilled workforce of the future. Companies therefore need to align their employer value proposition with the values and expectations of these potential employees.

Structural Gender Inequalities & Diversity: Unequal treatment based on gender in the labor market is not simply a matter of personal preferences. It is rooted in deeply ingrained structural barriers. This is particularly evident in STEM fields, where the term “leaky pipeline” describes how qualified women disproportionately leave technical professions as their careers progress. Factors such as the systemic gender pay gap, unpaid care work, and difficulties balancing family and career prevent companies from tapping into this valuable talent pool. By actively breaking down these barriers, companies can attract and retain key talent amid skills shortages while also demonstrably strengthening their own capacity for innovation.

Holistic Health & Resilience: Today, health is viewed holistically. Mental resilience and healthy integration of work and personal life are essential to employees. Excessive workloads and monotonous work environments reduce motivation and increase absenteeism.

How can New Work address these challenges?

The practical measures can be grouped into four key areas:

Work Models: Establishing hybrid, remote-capable structures and using modern communication technologies enable the flexible integration of global teams. Flexible working hours and locations, such as flexitime and working from home, as well as project-based work, help attract new talent and retain experienced professionals in the long term while maintaining their productivity.

Shared Values & Culture: An active cultural shift is driven primarily by leaders who set an example by fostering an open culture of feedback and acceptance of mistakes . Leadership is based on mutual respect and trust, with empowerment taking precedence over control. Diversity also acts as a driver of innovation, while a clearly defined corporate purpose strengthens employees’ sense of identification with the company.

Knowledge Culture: Digital skills needed for the future are systematically developed through innovative and creative learning formats. To break down information silos, business-critical knowledge is captured and structured on digital knowledge platforms. Agile microlearning formats also make continuous learning an integral part of everyday work.

Well-being & Working Environment: Preventive occupational health management lays the foundation for a healthy organization. Varied tasks that offer opportunities for development, consideration of employees’ individual life stages and a culture of appreciation all help strengthen their mental and physical resilience.

How CONTACT Elements can support New Work

Let’s be honest: No, CONTACT Elements cannot change your corporate culture on its own. Only you and your teams can do that. However, software that employees use for many hours every day can play a significant role in helping you tailor work tasks, workflows, and organizational structures to their individual needs.

That is why we at CONTACT Research are exploring practical concepts and developing demonstrators in the following areas:

Efficiency & resilience in engineering: When software makes it easy for employees to share personal feedback on their work environment, it can boost motivation and help optimize processes.

Increasing efficiency in the product development process: Designing tasks in software around people’s needs can make a tangible difference in employee satisfaction in everyday work.

Maintaining quality throughout projects: Software that allows work to be organized with individual needs in mind helps strengthen employee engagement.

Resilience on the shop floor: Flexible, workforce scheduling tailored to individual needs helps conserve resources and promotes the physical and mental well-being of your teams.

CONTACT Elements new work is an internal research project by CONTACT Research. Do you have questions, ideas, or even a healthy dose of skepticism? We’d love to hear from you! Get in touch and let’s work together to shape the future of PLM and create more sustainable, people-centered work environments.

Shipbuilding meets digitalization: two years in the SEUS research project

Two intense years in the European research project SEUS are now behind me. Our shared goal: to drive the digitalization of European shipbuilding forward. The need for this remains as pressing as ever. The EU continuously funds research and development projects in the maritime sector to strengthen Europe’s position in global competition – which is vital for survival given the low-wage countries and extensive subsidies in markets outside of Europe.

Although European quality is highly valued in the maritime industry, cost pressures are forcing even this traditional sector to achieve massive efficiency gains and optimize its processes. This is exactly where we at CONTACT came in: as an integral partner in this research and a driving force behind the transformation, our goal was to provide the crucial data backbone required for successful digitalization.

A floating city – and what it has to do with PLM

First, we had to dive deep into the complex requirements and processes of shipbuilding to truly understand them. Through intensive discussions with shipyards, in-depth analyses, and a thorough review of the current state of research, we were able to build a comprehensive foundation of knowledge.

What really impressed us was the meticulous care with which the shipyards in this project process enormous volumes of information, collaborate securely across disciplines, and confidently navigate strict classification requirements. This involves tens of thousands of pages of test reports, calculations, manuals, and technical specifications.

What is being built here is nothing less than a small, self-sustaining city floating across the oceans – a construction process that never fails to fascinate. This is just as true for classic cargo and container vessels as it is for highly specialized cable-laying vessels, complex research ships, or military vessels.

The data backbone: connecting the maritime world

The greatest challenge lies in efficiently managing and transparently controlling the diverse information generated across all disciplines, engineering phases, and construction stages. To address this, we developed a data model specifically tailored to shipbuilding that connects all types of information, including project schedules, CAD models, simulation results, engineering designs, and supplier contracts.

Viewing the ship as a “physically massive and complex system” is crucial here. This means that instead of a few individuals keeping track of the entire vessel, a large number of engineers divide the work into smaller areas of responsibility. Depending on the engineering task and phase, they look at the ship from different angles. For example, while designing the propulsion unit focuses primarily on the architecture of that specific system, designing the ship’s hull centers on spatial layout.

A traditional product structure, which hierarchically organizes parts and assemblies based on how they fit together, cannot meet these demands. There is not one “true” product structure; instead, there are multiple viewpoints: systemic, spatial, production-centric, and module-oriented.
Many shipyards and engineering offices use a centralized system structure, as a large portion of the work involves designing, engineering, and integrating systems of all kinds. In Europe, the “SFI Group System” has established itself as the de facto standard for this purpose. This three-level standard catalog contains 4,080 entries for systems and subsystems that can be found in any type of vessel.

Schematic Diagram of Shipbuilding — CONTACT’s data model expands the standard catalog with additional perspectives.

Our IT architects designed a data model that systematically maps these other perspectives around this standard (for details, see our paper on Zenodo). In early-stage ship design, systems are first roughly dimensioned using placeholders. For example, you might specify that an engine is needed, but not yet which particular model. These placeholders – referred to below as “items” – are organized according to the SFI Group System catalogs.

As development progresses, we link these items to additional structures that form the basis of the other perspectives. Using the previous propulsion example, this could mean selecting a specific engine for that item. In addition to relevant documents, requirements, specifications, and project tasks, a CAD model can also be linked. Our partner Cadmatic enables this through a deep integration of CAD tools.

Although the project is not yet complete, a shipbuilding-specific PLM backbone, the flexible and modular CONTACT Elements platform, and the deep integration with marine CAD software already form a solid foundation for further application-level development. The sheer scale of these projects highlights why this is so critical: if even ten documents, such as specifications, CAD files, analyses, manuals, and test reports, are associated with each of the up to 4,000 possible subsystems, you quickly end up with massive amounts of data that would be uncontrollable without structured management.

On top of that, each of these documents goes through its own lifecycles, reviews, and approvals that must be coordinated both internally and with external partners. Seamless, traceable document management across corporate boundaries is therefore absolutely vital, and thanks to an extension in CONTACT Elements for shipbuilding, it is fully achievable.

To learn more about the background and the partners involved, check out the SEUS Annual Report 2025.

Digital transformations & organizational change management

What do climate change, pandemic developments, and statistical risks have in common with the impact of digital transformation on an organization’s people? Short answer: There’s a well-documented human tendency to ignore or underestimate complex or abstract risks. And what does that have to do with organizational change management? I’ll explain it all in this blog post.

A classic example of statistical risks involves the impact of a lack of exercise, nicotine, or alcohol on the increasing risk of cardiovascular diseases. When organizations embark on a digital transformation, they face a staggering 70% risk of failure. So, where’s the connection?

In both scenarios, there are recognized and effective solutions to minimize these statistical risks. When it comes to digital transformation, that solution is the consistent application of organizational change management. It’s not enough to be perfectly set up technically and methodologically. The human factor – the people who are the target of the change – must also be a central focus.

What is organizational change management?

Organizational change management is a systematic approach. It actively manages the human side of change in an organization. This includes a range of processes, technologies, or strategies to support people through change and thus achieve the desired outcome.

“Managers assess that 69% of transformations fail due to insufficient change management.”

– Change Management Compass 2023, Porsche Consulting

Sounds familiar?

In my consulting practice, I often find that anecdotal or psycho-educational examples help people tap into their own experiences, sparking memories of similar situations. I often hear reactions like, “That’s exactly how it is for us too,” or “I can totally relate to a project like that.” That’s the exciting moment when things suddenly click, and connections are seen in a whole new light. Let me give you two examples:

1. Unclear direction

In one instance, the stated vision for a change program was simply: An 8% EBITA increase. However, employees in their day-to-day work couldn’t grasp how their efforts, directly or indirectly, contributed to this vision, which, let’s be honest, was more of a metric target.

They had no idea when or how this would be measured, what would happen next, or what it meant for them personally. They also didn’t know the consequences of either falling short or exceeding the target. Ultimately, this vision was a pretty ineffective way to provide direction.

It’s rarely just one missing piece. More often, it’s a combination of several underestimated or misunderstood situations and actions that, together, negatively impact the outcome far more significantly than any single one would appear to do.

2. Lack of Sponsorship

Understanding is fundamental to the willingness to support a change project. Employees must recognize that this change is important and urgent and that the consequences of ignoring this fact really must be avoided.

Part of this understanding is that the situation naturally commands adequate management attention. Someone needs to be at the helm, actively and with clear commitment, steering the ship around these critical shoals.

Here are the three most common misunderstandings about sponsorship I’ve encountered in projects:

Top management views its sponsor role as something done exclusively behind closed doors, in steering committee meetings. Result: No one sees anyone actually steering.
Responsibility for the change is delegated to a management level that lacks the necessary decision-making authority. Result: Someone is handed a tiny paddle and told to steer a supertanker.
The entire topic of sponsorship simply hasn’t been formally clarified. Result: The steering wheel just spins wildly on its own.

Unclear visions and a lack of sponsorship are just two of the top drivers that can derail change initiatives.

Where skepticism and resistance brew

The human brain automatically fills in missing pieces. When intentions are opaque, information is scarce, and one’s own role in the changing landscape remains unclear, people instinctively fill those gaps with their own interpretations and explanations. These ideas spread like wildfire through the organization’s fastest communication channel – the rumor mill – where they’re vetted for plausibility. This includes things like ideas for better solutions, anxiety about no longer being seen as an expert, fear of losing the security that comes with familiar processes and tools, or the firm belief that “we can just keep doing things the way we always have.” Prominent themes are also appreciation, future prospects, and the fear of job loss.

To cut to the chase: we humans generally don’t like change. In fact, we often go to great lengths to preserve the status quo, or even to restore it if it’s been disrupted.

What role plays organizational change management?

At its core, organizational change management has three main goals:

Accelerating adoption by boosting user acceptance and reducing resistance to new solutions or ways of working.
Maximizing utilization by ensuring people consistently and effectively use new tools, processes, or systems, rather than reverting to old habits.
Optimizing efficiency by empowering users to work productively with new solutions and unlock the full potential of the transformation.

Organizational change management: your path to success

Humans are a critical component of any digital transformation. Organizational Change Management is a critical success factor for any change project, ensuring that technological investments actually deliver their intended value.

And as I’m sure you’ll agree, there are indeed parallels between climate change, pandemic developments, and statistical risks, and the impact of digital transformation on an organization’s people: The more abstract and complex a danger or risk is, the more likely people are to underestimate or even ignore it. To minimize the significant risks posed by human factors in digital transformation, the consistent integration of organizational change management isn’t just helpful – it’s absolutely essential.