How to Claim the Benefits of PLM

If you asked 10 people in your company to give you a definition of PLM, you would likely get 10 different answers. That's because people have very different experiences with PLM, or maybe a lack of experience with PLM. To claim the benefits of PLM there are some steps you must follow. This post will not try to mention every single step that you must follow, that would take way too long and I want to eat lunch. But, this list represents some of the key activities that you must follow in order to claim the full benefits of PLM for your business:

Education

The first step in any PLM activity is to education everyone. By that I mean the executives, the PLM team participants, and others that will be supporting your PLM initiative. Once people are education, and they understand the comprehensive nature of PLM, they will be more likely to support your efforts. A good PLM definition to start with is:

• PLM is the collaborative creation, use, management & dissemination of product related intellectual assets.

Some key aspects of PLM include the following:

• PLM is a strategic business approach, not just a collection of technologies.
• PLM supports the extended enterprise.
• PLM spans the full product life-cycle, from concept to end of life.

Once you have educated people about PLM, you will be able to have important discussions about your business on a level playing field. When everyone is on the same page regarding PLM, you will find that making progress is much easier. To claim the benefits of PLM for your business, you must educate your people.

Information Management

Managing the information within your business is one of the core features of PLM. Without managing your information (intellectual assets), you won't be able to have the confidence to make decisions. This leads to delays, mistakes, redundant reviews, unnecessary signatures, and an overall inefficient business process. Until you can manage your information effectively, and guarantee that all information is valid, complete, and available, you will struggle to claim the benefits of PLM for your business.

PLM is Strategic

Understanding the strategic nature of PLM will lead you to seek out more understanding about your strategic business objectives. Once you understand the strategic direction of your business, you can craft a PLM vision that supports your business. This leads to a long list of business requirements. This, along with other requirements will drive the selection and implementation of PLM in your business.

In order to claim the benefits of PLM you must consider three important factors:

• People - How will people be encouraged and supported through the changes that PLM will bring.
• Processes - What new processes are needed to support the implementation of PLM.
• Technology - What is the proper technology to support strategic business objectives and the PLM vision.

You cannot consider just one of these three in isolation if you want to get the most out of PLM. All three will have a major impact on the success of PLM at your company. Our experience shows us that most of the failed PLM implementation we have seen are not a result of bad technology, but more often a result of process or people issues.

Measure PLM Benefits

It is important to convince your executives, and your users that PLM has benefits. That also means that you need a way to measure and illustrate the degree and timing of PLM benefits. We recommend using a spreadsheet model that allows you to calculate cost vs. benefits and then show a valid ROI for PLM. Once you have charts and graphs of how PLM will impact you business, it becomes much easier to convince others about the value of PLM.

We recommend an early benefits appraisal analysis for feasibility to show the potential benefits of PLM. Do this early and use this to sell PLM to the organization. Then, you can gauge additional benefits as your PLM program progresses to determine the real ROI. This repeatable methodology also allows you to do this benefits analysis as often as needed. To claim the benefits of PLM for your business you will need to sell these benefits to many organizations using a repeatable appraisal methodology.

Conclusions

Making PLM successful requires education, managing your information, strategic planning, and measuring benefits. There are many other activities and plans you will need to be successful with PLM, but if you start with these key items, you will be well on your way to claiming the benefits of PLM for your business.

PLM is a Team Sport

The other night, as I sat watching Lebron James and the Miami Heat play basketball, I was reminded of PLM. Not because of the excitement, fouls and bad language, but because basketball is a team game. The selection, implementation, and continuous improvement for PLM should also be a team game. Is this the case in your company?

First, we should recognize that the PLM team leader must occupy an important place in your company. The PLM team leader should be someone that is competent and recognized as capable and tenacious. He or she should be able to get the resources needed to make PLM happen in a significant way within the various organizations of your company.

Second, the members of the PLM team should also be subject matter experts and well-seasoned members of their own organizations. They may not spend full-time on the PLM team, but they must always be available to support PLM activities. They must always be looking at how PLM can be used and enhanced in their own organizations, and bring these ideas to the PLM team for future projects.

Third, the PLM team must continue to function even after significant roll-outs and implementation activities have finished. There is always a need for continuous improvement in the PLM space, and there must always be a leading team to make sure this happens. The roll of continuous improvement cannot be assigned to one person; all members of the team, and everyone in the company, is ultimately responsible for continuous improvement.

Best practices have shown that companies with a permanent PLM team have had far greater success with PLM than companies that do one PLM project, and then disband the team. PLM is a team game after all, and you must keep working to make is successful.

What do you think? How is your PLM team doing? Who are they? Where are they?

Cheers,

Jim

5 Signs Your PLM Implementation is Headed for the Pooper

"Do you have any PLM experience?" the HR person asked. "A little", I replied. Thus began a 5-year odyssey to implement PLM at a large company that shall remain nameless.* During that time, I learned many things. Mostly, I learned what not to do when implementing PLM. I would like to share 5 things I learned the hard way, while watching my PLM implementation go right down the pooper.

Does this sound familiar: You get to work, there are numerous emails that require your attention, but the most pressing is the note that tells you the PDM system is not working. No one can check anything in or out. Then you realize that without this key ingredient, none of the other areas of your PLM implementation will work, since you are dependent on "a single version of the truth"; then, things go from bad, to worse.

That was my experience one fine day, but I digress. Below are the five things that I think will help you avoid the problems I had with my PLM implementation:

1) Ineffective Training - In our case, we trained the users, but because the initial deployment was delayed, the users mostly forgot what they had learned. The business did not see any need to re-train, or spend any money on cross-training with other users in manufacturing planning, supplier management, or service. That meant those who were trained did not know the system very well and their collegues in other organizations did not know it at all. If I had it to do all over again, I would train all business organizations about PLM, and then make sure the specific tool training was done on a more timely basis.

2) Neglecting a Cultural Change Plan - We spent very little time worrying about cultural change. This meant that when the initial system was rolled out, we had a lot of push-back. Many users did not like the new way of working, and we did not engage most of the people before-hand. The lesson I learned here is to make a cultural change management plan early in the planning process, and get many people involved early so there is not a wholesale revolt when the new system is deployed.

3) Data Migration Kicked our Butt - We listened to the vendor, and did not plan much effort for data migration. We were under the impression it would be "automatic". Sadly, this was not the case. Part of our initial delay was the lack of data we needed to run our new PDM system. If we had understood all the time it can take to do the data migrating and cleansing and testing, we would have started it long before we did. Data migration always takes longer than you think.

4) PLM Value was Not Well Understood by Management - We did not do a lot of work up-front to try and quantify the benefits we would get from PLM. We had some money, and we wanted to spend it on PLM, that was about it. We should have done a cost-benefit analysis up-front so we had a good baseline. Then we could have always shown management the benefits we were getting from PLM. As it was, we went back after the fact to try and quantify this, but it was really hard. To this day we still do not have a good handle on the benefits we are getting from PLM.

5) The PLM Team was...Me - We tried to put a PLM team together but because upper management types did not really understand the potential of PLM, we could never get any people to help. So, it fell to me to make PLM happen. I did have help from the vendor, and a few others, but I did not get much help from our various business organizations. That is one of the biggest lessons I learned: you must have a cross-functional team to implement PLM. All the people must feel like they have some "skin in the game". Otherwise, when you implement the final solution, there will be major groaning and complaining.

So, there you have it. I learned many more things during this odyssey, but these 5 are some of the highlights; or should I say low-lights. I hope it is helpful. PLM can be a great boon for your business, but you have to do it right. Take my experience, and use it to avoid your own problems.

What do you think? Have I missed anything you believe is important?

Cheers,

Jim

* - These experiences represent several people from various companies around the globe. Can you relate?

Is Your Business Ready for PLM?

Ready, set go! The race to implement PLM has started. Many people will approach PLM implementations like a sprint, when in reality it's a marathon. Successfully implementing any technology in your business is challenging, but PLM is especially tricky. That's because PLM is a strategic decision, not just software; and PLM never ends! There are also many people that must be involved to achieve PLM success.

What can you do to make sure your business is ready to get the most out of PLM? Here are some key areas that you can evaluate to see if you are ready for PLM success:

1) Executive Support - If you do not get support from a high level executive sponsor for PLM, you won't make if very far. PLM is a strategic activity with an enterprise vision, and it means that it must be supported from the very top of your organization.

2) Organizational Support - There will be many organizations that need to be part of the overall PLM implementation. If you do not have support from key people in all of your organizations, you will struggle to successfully implement PLM.

3) User Support - Do you have a good plan to involve your users in the PLM selection process, and a good Cultural Change Management Plan to continue interactions with users after the initial implementation?

4) IT Support - Like it or not, PLM technology will involve a large amount of commitment from your IT organization. If they are not on board, or if they just look at PLM as another piece of software to install, you really won't get very far with your PLM implementation.

5) Education - Are all of the people involved with PLM properly educated? If you educate right from the beginning, you will get much better success with your PLM implementation. All of the above people need PLM education so that there is no confusion about what PLM is, and how it can benefit your business.

There are obviously more aspects of PLM to consider, but these are some of the key items you must evaluate BEFORE you dash off on your PLM race.

What areas of PLM are you working on today?

Cheers,

Jim