Can PLM Measurably Increase Revenues?

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Can PLM Measurably Increase Revenues?

As a business owner for 30 years, I’ve developed a few guiding principles about making business decisions.  One of these principles is based on understanding the impact of a decision on the P&L, and visa-versa, identifying what proactive steps I can take to affect changes to the P&L.  A recently published white paper by Accenture parallels this idea (see next article below).  It speaks to the benefits of PLM by highlighting its effect on time to market, reuse, scrap, quality, etc.  It is informative, yet it prompted me to be more definitive.  Can we map the contributions of PLM to the P&L … and what would that look like?  So, I decided to take a stab at this.

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The Business of Engineering and CPQ

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The Business of Engineering and CPQ

The spirit of the Business of Engineering is to focus on broader strategic issues.  The steadily increasing complexity of product development fuels the need for coping with products developed across multiple disciplines while driving profitable outcomes.  So when we received the question, “why not run CPQ as a standalone application?” it seemed like an ideal time to integrate CPQ considerations into the Business of Engineering theme.

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Liberate Revit Data through “Intelligent Parts” to Drive Company-Wide Efficiency

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Liberate Revit Data through “Intelligent Parts” to Drive Company-Wide Efficiency

You missed the webinar and that's OK.  Watch the recording.  The rigid and siloed structure of Autodesk’s Revit data has been a long-time source of frustration for companies in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) space. Revit projects and family data rarely “play nice” with enterprise-wide solutions such as ERP, product lifecycle management (PLM), or even simple document management. While many AEC companies have invested heavily in enterprise solutions, it has proved difficult to seamlessly harmonize with the Revit environment. 

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You Can’t Scale the Business without PLM

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You Can’t Scale the Business without PLM

Structuring Data for Reuse and Establishing Repeatable Processes - Look at the diagram below, a generic data structure that highlights that part and product data are comprised of numerous components.  What’s not shown are the ongoing changes that occur.  Parts change along with associated documentation, specifications, calculations, and so on.  Hence, there are revisions and rolled up versions.  In reality, this should be a three-dimensional image that reflects changes over time.

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Wrangling Engineering Change Orders

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Wrangling Engineering Change Orders

Earlier this month, Desktop Engineering published an article by Brian Albright that provides a refreshing perspective on a familiar topic – engineering change.  Albright suggests that many of the strategies and techniques used to manage engineering change (EC) are quickly becoming obsolete due to increasing product complexity and market demands.  While this concept is not new, the article looks at the root causes of this issue and explores actionable solutions.  The urgency of the problem is highlighted by thoughts and comments from industry experts and day-to-day EC practitioners.  These perspectives represent a range of organizations, including Arena, M-Files, Omnify, Oracle, Synergis and others.  It quickly becomes clear that a new approach to information management – whether it be PDM, ECM, or PLM – is key to modernizing EC.  However, Albright is careful to avoid picking sides.  Despite this impartial analysis, PLM seems to break away from the pack.

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The PLM Maturity Quadrant Explained

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The PLM Maturity Quadrant Explained

The vdR Group has recently formulated the PLM Maturity Quadrant as illustrated in the diagram below. The quadrant is comprised of two simple parameters.  The x-axis is referred as the Data Cohesion variable and the y-axis characterizes Process Repeatability.  The top right-hand quadrant represents the ideal PLM environment.  The Data Cohesion variable considers how well data is connected.  The expression “single source of truth” is often associated with the goals of PLM.  This suggests that users seeking to access part and/or product related data can go to ONE place.  The data doesn’t have to be in a single repository, but linkages need to be in place.

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