Question

What are the unique PLM needs for a small and medium company? 1000-1500 words

Answer 1

Like larger manufacturers, small to medium-size enterprises (SMEs) are focusing their product strategy on revenue growth in combination with cost reduction – to achieve profitable growth.

Many SMEs are responding to the product innovation challenge by proactively focusing on product-related processes by planning for PLM (product lifecycle management) solutions.

SMEs that are engaged in PLM planning are looking to improve in the following critical areas:

• Control over product data and related project, product development, and program execution – to handle the increased complexity of product data and the growing size and diversity of distributed product development teams.

• Design and project collaboration – to include processes and expertise from multiple parties earlier in the design process to optimize designs for manufacturing and sourcing, reduce product cost, and support parallel work to decrease time-to-market .

However, SMEs face some unique challenges with PLM arising from their size, including the cost of implementation, the need to change business processes, and a lack of internal resources.

SMEs seeking to improve product innovation, product development, and engineering processes – in order to compete and win in the global environment – should take the following actions:

• Educate themselves on PLM including the implications of PLM outside of departmental and company boundaries, for example, with supply chain partners.

• Pick the right starting point by starting with a tangible business problem that they can solve and implementing a solution targeted to solve that problem as a foundation on which to build their full PLM solution.

• Look for PLM solutions that provide templates to common business processes and best practices and modify them if necessary, so the don’t need to rethink every business process in an attempt to improve it.

• Seek solutions that fit their industry, through specialized solutions or industry templates. Software that provides a better fit will be more readily adopted by users.

• Include organizational, process, and performance measurement considerations in their PLM strategy.

• Consider hosted or software-as-a-service solutions to reduce the technical barriers to PLM adoption.

• Take advantage of the PLM opportunity to achieve tangible improvements. SMEs that do not adopt PLM will be at a competitive disadvantage.

Also,  Strategic Actions for SMEs to Improve Product Development are

• Improved product data management. The increased complexity of product data, as well as the growing size and diversity of product development teams, creates a need for tight data controls. As a result, revision control, security management, search capabilities, and maintaining “one version of the truth” in regards to product information now comprise an essential foundation for a PLM infrastructure.

• Improved project, product, and program development execution. Faster project times, cross-functional teams, and dispersed resources require better control and communication in order to prevent mistakes and rework. Management of tasks, timelines, deliverables, approvals, and status extend core product data management with business process automation and project management capabilities to coordinate activities in addition to data. In addition to seeking better controls for data and processes, SMEs are also looking to involve more parties in their design and development activities through collaboration. Shorter product lifecycles and rapid response to market demands are critical to SMEs’ success and require parallel design, development, sourcing, and marketing activities. Collaboration infrastructure and tools allow companies to incorporate input from multiple parties early in the product development process to enhance designs and prevent rework.

• Collaborative design. The increased focus on optimizing product lifecycle impacts earlier in the design process – for example, design for manufacture and design for sourcing activities – are creating a demand for broader participation in design processes. In addition, many companies are including suppliers and other third parties in the design process to leverage external expertise. Sharing designs and gathering feedback, whether online reviews, embedded in documents, through remote access to files, or with visualization technologies, provide the opportunity to build designs right the first time – enhancing time to market, product appeal, and product quality.