Product Life cycle management
Quality, Efficiency, innovation and responsiveness to customers are the pillars on which survival of manufacturing companies depend in today’s cut throat competitive environment. Companies strive to bring quality products in the marketplace through the innovative ideas of their research and development teams so as to grab new opportunities in the marketplace and maximize their market share for long term sustenance. It is through operational efficiency that costs are minimized so as to maximize return on investment. It is through supply chain management that operating costs are further reduced integrating operational aspects of a product binding suppliers, manufacturers, logistics companies, channel partners, retailers and finally the customers, through judicious application of software tools like ERP and CRM increasing responsiveness to customers. But that does not take care of product costs involved in introduction of new products and enhancement. To economize on costs related to new releases of products and their enhancement with new features, product life cycle management (PLM) is the answer.
PLM manages the entire lifecycle of a product from its conception, through design and manufacture, to service and disposal. Releasing more products and product enhancements with new features has to be a continuous and dynamic process to survive the onslaughts of competition for manufacturing companies but without standardization, doing it all over again and introduce new products can increase direct and indirect costs substantially killing profits. Product life cycle management helps in cutting down product costs and increase in new product investments. By taking advantage of existing technology and by building in flexible business processes and solutions, manufacturers, with their integrator partner and PLM software vendor, can infuse more exacting standards into their product life cycles to reduce time to market, cut down on product costs, and increase yields on their new product investment. PLM integrates people, data, processes and business systems and provides a product information backbone for companies and their extended enterprise.
Benefits
· Reduced Time to market
· Improved product quality
· Reduced prototyping costs
· Savings through the re-use of original data
· Reduced waste
· Savings through the complete integration of engineering workflows
· Ability to provide Contract Manufacturers with access to a centralized product record
· Maximizing revenue by beating the competition to market with products that justify premium pricing.
· Delivering first-to-market advantages that will hike sales.
· Cutting down on costs by reducing operational expense by curtailing unnecessary rework, implementing lean initiatives, rapidly adjusting to changing compliance regulations ,and reducing material, structural, and warranty costs.
· Extending the profitability of product lines by economically delivering alternatives and spinoffs.
The core of PLM (product lifecycle management) is in the creations and central management of all product data and the technology used to access this information and knowledge. PLM as a discipline emerged from tools such as CAD (Computer aided design), CAM (Computer aided manufacturing and PDM (Product data management) but can be viewed as the integration of these tools with methods, people and the processes through all stages of a product’s life. Within PLM there are five primary areas viz system engineering ( SE),Product and portfolio management ( PPM),Product Design, manufacturing process management ( MPM) and product data management ( PDM).
PLM can be thought of as both a repository for all information that affects a product, and a communication process between product stakeholders: principally marketing, engineering, manufacturing and field service. PLM may also serve as the central repository for secondary information, such as vendor application notes, catalogs, customer feedback, marketing plans, archived project schedules, and other information acquired over the product’s life. The PLM system is the first place where all product information from marketing and design comes together, and where it leaves in a form suitable for production and support. What a PLM integration plan allows a manufacturer to do is to capture all knowledge, from tacit to explicit, and leverage it in a life cycle process that improves the efficiency of the product from start to finish. With a true integration plan of attack, a PLM plan becomes a product innovation strategy.
When speed to market is of the essence, a properly integrated PLM solution allows manufacturers to quickly design and validate products and processes in a virtual environment, rather than a physical one. Working in a virtual environment will truly cut down on time and will create a setting where innovation can occur almost overnight.
Companies need their people, processes, and intellectual capital to work together and not against each other in an effort to accelerate new product development while at the same time reducing operational costs. Finally PLM will digitally transform the life cycle used to conceive, design, manufacture, service, and improve product offerings.
During the era of takeover and mergers in the corporate world, product life cycle data repository helps to gauge the suitability of such options as a single point information is made available to the new enterprise. Further as demand for green technology is catching up, products can be re-engineered faster as entire information of product life cycle in form of useful data is available to research and development team in a capsule form. Supply chain management and product life cycle management shall co-exist both emphasizing on cost reductions, one emphasizing on reducing operational cost in the value chain in a broad manner while the later reducing costs in core areas related to introduction of new products together with their enhanced features required by a new generation of very demanding customers with highly customized solutions related to their individual needs. Market place is going to be very exciting in time to come both for suppliers and buyers.
Prof. Akhil Chandra
National Head, Institute of Logistics
