The power of Product Lifecycle Management in modern Product Development
In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world both people and organizations are facing challenging and unpredictable conditions that affect how we run our businesses. The Covid-19 pandemic changed our ways of working and widely opened the doors to accelerated implementation of technological advancements. Increased awareness of global environmental changes and incoming EU regulations for sustainability reports add another layer of complexity to the already overly dynamic business landscape. All these challenges have made us question if and how we can run a successful and profitable business.
So what does Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) have to do with it?
The role of PLM in the product development process
A product lifecycle is a process consisting of several stages: concept and design, development, production and launch, service and support, and finally, end of the lifecycle. All these stages of course have substages with their own processes and particular software and tools needed to perform the functions.
PLM is like a queen in a beehive which ensures that all bee castes perform their functions in coordination with the others. In the discrete manufacturing context, it means that PLM facilitates seamless collaboration among cross-functional teams, streamlines workflows, and provides real-time data for informed decision-making. With PLM, companies can effectively manage design and development processes, optimize manufacturing operations, and ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations.
Definition of PLM
At Newcore we describe PLM as a process where we integrate people, processes, tools and data, providing a product information backbone throughout the entire product lifecycle.
Integrating people. In the context of PLM, integrating people means bringing together individuals from various departments and disciplines within an organization. These could include design, engineering, manufacturing, quality control, marketing, and more. PLM facilitates collaboration, ensuring that each team member has access to the information and tools they need to contribute effectively to the product development process.
Integrating processes. PLM streamlines and connects the different processes involved in product development. It helps to ensure that workflows are well-defined, efficient, and aligned with best practices. For example, it automates approval processes, engineering change management, and quality control procedures, reducing errors and delays.
Integrating tools. Modern product development often relies on a multitude of software tools for tasks such as design, simulation, project management, and data analysis. PLM integrates these tools, creating a unified ecosystem where data can flow seamlessly between them. This ensures that design changes made in one tool are reflected accurately in others, reducing discrepancies and the need for manual data transfer.
Integrating data. Data is at the heart of PLM. It serves as the foundation for informed decision-making. PLM centralizes all product-related data, including design files, specifications, bills of materials, and quality reports. This single source of truth ensures that everyone is working with the most up-to-date information, reducing errors, ensuring consistency, and improving overall data management.
As you can see, PLM is not only about implementing a PLM platform. In our eyes, it is a holistic approach where good change management strategy (the people side) is equally important as the other three pillars (processes, tools, data). At the end of the day, it’s the people who will follow the processes and work with the new software. Therefore, our goal is to ensure that every individual in an organization understands why PLM is important and how it will impact their job.
We are taking a little bit more time here to emphasize the importance of change management because we have seen a tendency to overlook and/or downgrade this pillar when rolling out PLM programs in organizations. Our experience shows that people-driven and value-based PLM programs yield significantly better retention results than solely tool-based PLM programs.
Conclusion
We need a strong and flexible solution to survive and thrive in today's ever-changing and uncertain business world. Properly implemented and maintained PLM could solve this challenge for us. It has the power to bring together people, processes, tools, and data, creating an accurate product information flow throughout the entire company. It also has a range of additional advantages such as informed decision-making, reduced time to market, faster adaptability to customer needs and demands, as well as timely compliance with upcoming and existing regulations. That's why we at NewCore see PLM as a bridge to a more successful, profitable and circular business future.