Business Intelligence Extending PLM Value: PLM Maturity Enables New Value from Analytics points out the significant value that has accumulated in PLM systems as implementations and usage have matured, and how manufacturers can tap into that value with business intelligence (BI) solutions.
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Table of Contents
- Introducing the Issue
- Mining the Value from PLM Data
- Sources of Value from BI in PLM
- Special Considerations for BI in PLM
- Conclusion
- Recommendations
- About the Author
Introducing the Issue
Like other enterprise applications that have come before it, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) has reached a level of maturity where it contains a tremendous amount of valuable business information. Unfortunately, like earlier applications, the data is frequently locked away and not leveraged during early phases of adoption. Now, PLM has matured in two important aspects:
- Manufacturers have moved forward along the maturity curve with their PLM implementations.
- PLM has evolved and expanded to incorporate more valuable, business-focused data in addition to technical information
Most manufacturers that invested in PLM have accomplished the first objective of their PLM implementations – getting their product data under control. Now, they have expanded on that and are developing the “one source of truth” for product data that leading manufacturers envisioned in the late 1990’s. As PLM implementations have matured, manufacturers have leveraged the core capabilities and extended PLM to new sources of value. The scope of PLM has expanded to include more people, more parts of the product lifecycle, and more aspects of the product. The solution has also grown to support more business processes such as product compliance and service management. At the same time, the information included in PLM has expanded to a much richer view of the product, now frequently including commercial information in addition to technical specifications. This evolution has significantly expanded the potential value of mining this information to make better business decisions.
The perfect storm of application and implementation maturity has set the table for significant value to be unleashed from PLM. The data currently buried in PLM systems is an untapped source of value for manufacturers. Now, companies are turning to Business Intelligence (BI) in order to tap into the wealth of product knowledge generated and available in PLM repositories. And like ERP, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and other enterprise applications have proven in the past, there is strategic and tactical business value waiting to be delivered.