How can consumer products companies improve engineering productivity?
With customers expecting more from their products and stiff global competition, consumer products companies have their work cut out for them. New products must be innovative, sustainable, personalized, high quality, and reasonably priced to win over customers. Engineers are critical to successfully meet these requirements. Yet, engineers regularly lose productivity to non-value-add tasks that not only rob them of their ability to innovate, but also threaten their company’s ability to compete, differentiate, and grow. Imagine the potential of identifying and removing the most common non-value-add activities engineers face and empowering them to focus on better products.
This research examines how engineers at consumer products companies spend their time, where they lose productivity, and the impact on the business. It then identifies solutions and approaches to reduce time wasters.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor, Siemens (registration required).
This report is based off the research published in The Business Value of Reducing Engineering Time Wasters which takes a look across all industries.
For other industry-specific related research, read:
- Reducing Engineering Time Wasters in Aerospace & Defense
- Reducing Engineering Time Wasters in Heavy Equipment
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Table of Contents
- Executive Summary
- Product Development Is Critical to Business Strategies
- The Time Wasters
- Implications of Time Wasters to the Business
- A Solution to Avoid Time Wasters
- Business Value from PLM
- Extending PLM Use Results in Greater Satisfaction
- How Companies Implement PLM
- Additional Values Due to the Cloud
- Conclusions
- Recommendations
- About the Research
- Acknowledgments
Executive Summary
Engineers Impact Business Success
Exceptional products are critical to the success of consumer products. Likewise, engineers are crucial to ensuring products have what it takes to succeed in the market. Therefore, empowering engineers is key to the successful execution of business strategies.
Too Many Time Wasters
Unfortunately, engineers report spending too much time on non-value-added work with too many interruptions, taking them away from critical innovation work. Furthermore, 92% of surveyed consumer products companies say this loss in engineering productivity comes at a significant business cost due to higher costs, less innovation, and missed deadlines. To overcome productivity losses, one approach is to manage product data better and make it accessible to those who need it, when they need it.
Reclaiming Wasted Time
This report identifies substantial engineering time wasters in the consumer products industry. It explores how companies of all sizes reclaim lost time by examining the use and value of PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) solutions to centralize data across multiple domains, manage processes, and collaborate better. Incidentally, PLM users reported fewer changes due to outdated information and errors, significantly reducing non-value-added work and shortening development times. This report also examines how companies select and use PLM solutions, including cloud-based implementations.
The Time Wasters
What Slows Engineers Down?
The graph identifies the top engineering time wasters consumer products companies face. The findings highlight how much time engineers waste on non-value-added work. They need better ways to automate tedious tasks so engineers can focus more energy on meeting customer requirements. Another top-ranking time waster, too many manual processes/ bottlenecks, emphasizes this further. Yet, exchanging data is critical to prevent engineers across domains and manufacturing from working with outdated data.
Interruptions
Similarly, constant interruptions to answer questions, share data, and provide updates also slow engineers down. These interruptions break an engineer’s train of thought and take them away from the work they need to focus on.
Redoing Work
Consumer products companies also waste efforts because they have to redo work. They recreate when they can’t find needed data or must fix errors due to outdated or conflicting information. Better methods to centralize access to data would be a significant help to get that time back.
Poor Collaboration
Poor collaboration also wastes time. This is especially critical for consumer products companies given the number of domains involved and the advantages of starting manufacturing planning as early as possible.
Increasing Complexity
Innovation requirements for smarter products, personalization, sustainability, and visual appeal all add to the increasing complexity of consumer products. This increases the amount of data that must be managed and the number of people who need access to it. If not managed well, there is more risk of errors which can increase costs and cause delays.
Conclusions
Reclaiming Lost Time
Consumer products companies prioritize their future growth and sustained success on winning in the marketplace with better, differentiated products. To support this, they can significantly boost their product development capabilities by eliminating the time wasters that consume engineers’ valuable time.
Consumer products companies find that PLM can empower their engineers to innovate by significantly reducing engineers’ time on non-value-added tasks. As a result, they can enjoy a competitive advantage. In addition, technological advances, such as cloud-based offerings, can reduce implementation time, cost, and difficulty, making PLM more accessible.