PLM Workshop 2011, PLM Formalisation, Value of PLM/ERP Integration and Collaboration (4)
2PLM NewsletterJohn Stark Associates January 3, 2011 - Vol13 #20 |
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Welcome to the 2PLM e-zine This issue includes :
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| PLM Workshop 2011 : A Concentrate of PLM Knowledge by John Stark |
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Going into 2011, do you feel confident that you know everything that you need to know about PLM? If not, could you benefit from attending a state-of-the-art PLM Workshop? The PLM 2011 State-of-the-Art Workshop aims to help participants quickly understand the PLM State of the Art, identify high potential areas of PLM that are key to achievement of business benefits, and plan the next steps of their PLM projects. It's based on a decade of PLM experience, and answers frequent questions about PLM and about PLM projects.
The Workshop is in four parts: |
Participate in the Workshop and:
For more details of the Workshop, contact John Stark at pdm@2pdm.com.
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| PLM Formalisation by Roger Tempest |
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As we start work again in 2011 it would be good to set some PLM goals for the year. For example, by December:-
These two goals will be of benefit to everyone. Users will achieve more with the same resources, and the leading companies will take PLM into advanced areas that have previously been left for "some time in the future". The key to this is formalisation - collating the extensive PLM expertise of many countries to create straightforward standards, tools and manuals that hit the key points of PLM implementation. Everyone knows the main PLM barriers. You want to be able to go to the bookshelf and find a best-practice solution to each one of them. These standards and tools do not need to be complex. They simply need to be neutral, effective and directed at the "points of pain". Each time that a standard methodology can be followed in a real-world, complex situation it saves time and effort, and produces better results. This process of formalisation has already started. One long-standing barrier to PLM is the difficulty of getting CEO and VP involvement. The CEO Briefing Document (which was published in December as the Q4 2010 Issue of the PLM Journal) provides the understanding that the board needs, and allows PLM managers to concentrate on the merits of their projects without being sidetracked. |
Other publications in 2010 covered PLM Dashboarding (how do you display your PLM configuration and metrics to the rest of the company?); and the first instalment of the PLM Manager's Handbook. More tools are needed, and these will be generated by international collaboration during 2011. A global series of events will highlight current best practices in the main PLM regions of the world, as described using the 'PLM World Cup' analogy in the 2PLM November 22 and December 06 issues. This will create a train of PLM improvements that will run throughout the year and formalise the best PLM knowledge in Europe, the USA, and Asia. By the end of the year the PLM industry will have made a significant move forward. Experienced users will see their ideas embodied in neutral, international standards that can be applied throughout their customer and supply chains; and new adopters will have a much clearer implementation path to follow. We will also have generated a framework of neutral metrics based on PLM success stories in different countries that will provide a more effective basis for PLM project justification.
Roger Tempest is co-founder of the PLMIG. Membership of the PLMIG is available via membership@plmig.com.
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| Maximizing the Value of PLM/ERP Integration and Collaboration (4) by Dick Bourke |
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| Preface In the last column, before the holiday hiatus, I reviewed basic Collaborative Product Development (CPD). That previous discussion will now be expanded for manufacturers of configurable products, and also enterprise resource planning (ERP) collaboration with CPD. Configurable Product Manufacturers The essence of a Configurability Strategy - briefly stated - is to take advantage of proven methods of product development to achieve greater customer satisfaction at lower costs. These methods include:
Product modularization makes viable the efficient use of configurator software and the delivery strategy known as postponement. Configurator software creates, maintains and uses electronic product models to define the available options and variations for a unique end-item, eliminating the predefining of all possible combinations with individual part numbers and bills of material (BOMs). An efficient configurator will meet all configuration needs: sales, engineering, manufacturing and delivery for demand-driven products and with a minimum of data entry. One of the values of configuration software is to wipe out the inefficiencies commonly found in non-integrated processes. These inefficiencies include, extended quotation lead-times resulting in excessive costs and time to validate configurations. Eliminating these inefficiencies will result in significant cost reductions. Thus, for manufacturers of configurable products, configurability methods must be inherent in CPD activities. As stated by Peter Drucker, "effectiveness is doing the right thing." An efficient (do it right) Configurability Strategy also extends well into the realm of ERP processes. |
ERP Collaboration with CPD In the Introduction to this series, I stated "successful users of PLM systems cite "Time-to-Market" as a strategic value for implementing PLM. However, achieving "Time-to-Volume" and "Time-to-Profitability," highlights the need for effective PLM/ERP integration and collaboration." No finer example of CPD and ERP working together exists than the top management process called Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP). One of its prime purposes is to coordinate the new product introduction (NPI) activities of CPD to ensure optimum use of enterprise resources from product launch, manufacturing, delivery and on-site maintenance of the product. The key is balancing the forecasted demands for new products with the available resources to get products to market. For configurable products, identifying product modules for S&OP planning purposes is vital. The goal is to meet the demands for innumerable unique configurations, but with just the right mix of these building block modules in the manufacturing pipeline. Numerous software capabilities support S&OP processes, some quite sophisticated, for instance, providing continuous simulation of alternate plans. However, a recent survey by AMR Research (now a part of Gartner) highlighted again that software is not the only critical factor. Achieving efficiency with the S&OP process is critical - but dependent on trust among enterprise personnel with different attitudes, values and conflicting objectives. For instance, product development personnel may not have the same outlook on desirable new product features as marketing. Cultural aspects will be as significant as software capabilities in supporting enterprise-wide collaboration. Furthermore, Web-based social tools, such as Facebook, are generating major interest for enhancing collaboration. As with any new technologies, their use in business environments has yet to be fully understood, defined and used efficiently. Nevertheless, it seems obvious that these social tools will have a significant impact in collaboration processes. Collaboration in its many modes, such as CPD and S&OP, has sparked a great deal of attention as the need to compress product development and delivery lead times and costs remain a major competitive factor. For more detail, see Additional Sources of Information
Contact Dick at dickb@bourkeconsulting.com. |
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