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Leveraging PLM for manufacturing excellence
As end-to-end IT becomes an imperative for Indian industry
in an era of globalisation, Sunil Takalikar explains how Product Lifecycle
Management can make a difference to users
PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) is a business approach for deriving maximum
benefit from the product data during the entire life of the product. PLM initiatives
are increasingly being adopted in many industries. This article introduces the
reader to the basic concepts and aspects of PLM. Factors that influence selection
of a PLM solution are reviewed and the major benefits are enumerated. A broad
roadmap for PLM implementation is also illustrated.
Need for PLM
The need for the PLM approach and software products has arisen due to prevalent
business challenges. These include:
- Shrinking product lifecycle: Continuous product
innovation, a necessity in today’s highly competitive markets, has led
to dramatic reductions in product lifecycles. Businesses have to introduce
new high quality products and upgrades much faster and more frequently to
survive in a market overflowing with choices for the discerning customer.
- Mass customisation: Intense competition has forced businesses
to achieve differentiation in the market by providing highly customised products
catering to specific customer needs.
- Increasing outsourcing: The current trend in the manufacturing
industry is to outsource parts or operations from specialised vendors who
provide more cost effective and/or quality products than those manufactured
in-house.
- Globalisation: Business alliances have to be forged on
a global basis to derive maximum benefit from location advantages like cost,
quality, proximity to raw material or markets.
These factors have driven the need for better utilisation and management of
product-related data, across the supply chain and throughout the lifecycle of
a product.
Introduction
According to CIMdata, “PLM is a strategic business approach for collaborative
creation, management, dissemination, and use of product data across the extended
enterprise from concept to end of life—integrating people, processes,
and information.”
PLM ensures that maximum benefit is derived from the high investments made in
all the product development phases. The PLM effort has to keep evolving with
the vision of the company. As a software product, PLM is ever expanding its
functionality to include all functions or processes related to a ‘product’.
An overlap of functionality can be observed between PLM products of different
vendors in areas like engineering and ERP.
As portrayed in Figure 1, different PLM components deal with all types of product
related data.
- Collaborative product design: Deals with the product
and manufacturing process design.
- Product Data Management (PDM): Enables functions that
manage and publish product data.
- Direct material sourcing: Handles product data related
to suppliers and vendors.
- Customer needs management: Handles product data related
to customers.
- Product Portfolio Management: Manages reporting and presentation
of product data
As depicted in Figure 3 (page 23), essential product information
differs according to the businesses and core customer values for different industries.
As per this product information, PLM products with a specific industry focus
will be preferred in different industries. For example, in the automotive industry,
which is in the business of making cars, performance of cars is the core customer
value. To ensure performance by consistently producing high quality products,
a high degree of geometric control has to be enforced in all manufacturing processes.
This demands the use of advanced CAD/CAM tools. Thus, the automotive industry
will typically select PLM solutions that have a special focus and robust interfaces
with such CAD/CAM systems.
PLM products from such CAD/CAM vendors will have an advantage over typical PLM
vendors from the ERP space, whereas in the case of the pharmaceutical industry
ERP vendors will try to leverage their existing client base.
Benefits of PLM
PLM initiatives have to be customised to derive a specific benefit. Some of
the major benefits of PLM in a product development process are:
Reduction
- Time-to-market: The length of time it takes to
get a product from idea to the marketplace would be reduced due to better
co-ordination between various product related functions.
- Product development cost: Many expensive trial and error
processes like prototyping are avoided due to PLM, which brings down the cost
of development.
- Rework and rejection rates: PLM helps collaboration to
supports the philosophy of ‘Do it right the first time’, which
greatly reduces rework and rejection rates.
Improvement
- Product quality: Product design tools, Manufacturing
Process Management CAD /CAM/CAE, Visualisation tools help to ensure product
quality.
- Customer satisfaction: Lower lead times helps businesses
satisfy changing customer needs with quality products.
- Design reuse: Integrated management of product related
design data enables its efficient reuse.
- Revenue generation: All
the above improvements result in efficient processes, which correspondingly
improve revenue generation.
A Road map to implement PLM is customised to align PLM with
the company’s specific business goals and requirements.
PLM realities
Product Data management (PDM) is increasingly seen as the
repository of all product data, which is utilised in PLM. Implementation of
PDM is the starting point for most PLM programmes Some of the other realities
related to PLM are:
- The prime focus of most PLM initiatives is to improve
product data control and enable faster engineering change management.
- Smaller companies prefer to implement PLM only in significant
but crucial areas in which an urgent need for a PLM solution is felt.
- While configuring PLM solutions, users mostly adopt a
best-of-breed approach, in which different PLM products are used in different
functional areas of the product as per their perceived superiority along with
some legacy applications.
- Integrating PLM with other enterprise information systems
like ERP and MRP is emerging as key issue in any PLM initiative.
- PLM deployment is found to be more successful where cross-functional
ownership is adopted.
Future trends
According to emerging trends in the manufacturing industry, advanced software
tools are increasingly being used for carrying out functions like process planning,
Factory modelling, operation simulation, assembly sequencing line, cell design,
and shop floor documentation. This has vastly improved the efficiency and effectiveness
of factory management. Factory modelling and simulation has enabled managers
to validate manufacturing processes before they are introduced on the shop floor.
This helps the company avoid costly prototyping processes to a great extent.
Analysis of the manufacturing flow can help to optimally utilise factory floor
space, identify and alleviate bottlenecks, address quality issues and reduce
rework and scrap rates. Two or three dimensional factory simulation models are
being used for conducting virtual factory tours. All such manufacturing process
management tools are emerging as key components of PLM solutions.
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Aerospace and Defence |
Automotive |
Consumer electronics |
Pharmaceutical |
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Businesses
Core Customer
Values
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Airplanes
weapons
ships,trains
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Cars, commercial vehicles
Performance
Geometry
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Appliances,
photography
cellphones
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Formulation,
bulk drugs
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| Essential |
Reliability |
Manufacturin+-g Contro |
Simplicity |
Trust |
| Product
Information
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Geometry,
Engineering
compliance
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features
Change Management
Mfg. Speed
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Patents
Trials Compliance
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Incumbent Vendors
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CAD/CAE |
CAD/CAM
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CAD/ ERP |
ERP |
The author is senior manager with the PLM
Practice of KPIT Cummins Infosystems, Pune. He can be contacted at Sunilt@kpitcummins.com
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