Small engineering teams have many of the same challenges as larger ones, but have fewer resources to address them. How can small design teams manage product development complexity through better collaboration and design data management and the cloud to meet their design targets?
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Siemens (registration required).
Table of Contents
- Managing Complexity and Meeting Deadlines
- Understand the Status Quo
- The Business Perspective of the Status Quo
- Move Beyond the Status Quo of PLM
- Take PLM Value to the Next Level: Collaboration
- Focus on Multi-CAD Challenges
- Take PLM to the Next Level: Multi-CAD
- The Benefits of PLM Impact All Companies
- The Benefits of PLM
- Get PLM Business Value with the Cloud
- Next Steps
- About the Research
- Acknowledgments
Managing Complexity and Meeting Deadlines
The Importance of Design Data Management
Over the last two decades our studies have consistently shown that managing design data is essential for manufacturers of all sizes. Effective design data management is critical because it prevents common challenges like difficulty finding the right designs, working on outdated information, or overwriting CAD files. It also helps encourage design collaboration and reuse. As a result, proper design data management makes engineering more efficient and helps product development teams hit their due dates.
Impact on Smaller Companies
How does design data management impact smaller design teams that have grown to more than a handful of engineers but don’t yet face the organizational complexity common to larger enterprises experience? Our experience shows that these smaller companies face many of the same challenges but lack the resources to address them. According to our research, product complexity – not company size – drives data management challenges. Further, these companies often face unique challenges because of their role in a broader supply chain.
The business challenges and complexity can have a bigger impact on these smaller product development teams because they rely on speed, innovation, and agility to compete against their larger competitors. We surveyed 245 companies to see how better design data management can help these smaller companies overcome the challenges and impacts to meet their aggressive product development deadlines despite product complexity and fewer resources. Let’s take a look.
Understand the Status Quo
Wasted Engineering Time
First, let’s understand the typical scenario in a smaller manufacturing company. We find that smaller companies, similar to larger ones, waste a significant amount of engineering time. The survey shows that, on average, their engineers spend 19% of their time on non-value-added data management. That’s the equivalent of one day every week. A lot of valuable time is lost, and only about one-half of their time is spent on design, innovation, and engineering.
Data Access and Control Problems
Engineering time is wasted in various ways. The most common time waster is having to fix errors caused by old or incorrect information. When engineers can’t access the appropriate file to start from, they spend valuable time and energy modifying their starting point to reflect reality. Similarly, they waste time when they have to recreate designs because they can’t find files. They also lose productivity when it takes them too long to find information, another commonly reported challenge.
Design Sharing Issues
A large percentage of respondents indicate further inefficiencies related to sharing data with others. Almost one-half indicate they lose time to poor or inefficient collaboration. Poor data sharing wastes time in multiple ways. For example, engineers report losing time to interruptions such as phone calls, answering, and preparing data for others. These time wasters are further symptoms of poor collaboration capabilities.
Multi-CAD Complexity
One interesting note is that the final three issues, all experienced by about one-third of participants, relate to multi-CAD issues. We’ll drill down further into the impact of multi-CAD challenges later.
The Benefits of PLM Impact All Companies
PLM Improves Data Control and Access
From the information above, we conclude that PLM is valuable for both Top Performers and Others. In fact, all of the companies using PLM or standalone PDM report business improvements from their solutions. For example, the vast majority of PLM users, 85%, say PLM or PDM system helps them find data, almost three-quarters say it helps with more accurate data, and over two-thirds enjoy more timely design data.
PLM Improves Product Data Sharing
Beyond data management, over two-thirds say it improves collaboration and about the same number say it improves their workflows / processes. PLM not only helps manage product data, it helps put the data in context and into action.
Next Steps
Break Free from the Status Quo
Engineers in smaller manufacturers only spend about half of their time on design, engineering, and innovation work. This is due in large part because they waste about a day a week on non-value-added design data management. The consequence of wasted time is missed design project objectives including deadlines, product cost, budget, innovation, and quality. Smaller manufacturers can’t afford this inefficiency, especially considering they typically compete on agility and speed.
Implement PLM
Top Performers are better at hitting these deadlines than Others, and spend less time on non-value-added tasks. One of the primary ways they do this is by managing design data with PLM. Although Top Performers are more likely to use PLM, manufacturers don’t have to be in the top percentile to get value from it.
The survey shows that PLM helps companies of all performance levels with significant operational benefits such as ease of finding data, more accurate and timely data, and better collaboration. These operational benefits lead to highly strategic business improvements, including better speed, efficiency, quality, cost, innovation, and sustainability.
Take PLM to the Next Level
Top Performers point the way to get more from PLM. First, they go beyond managing design data to control lifecycles through design release. They also use PLM to enhance collaboration both inside of their company and with their value chain. Finally, they better manage multi-CAD complexity through the use of 3D visualizations and CAD-neutral formats. These approaches help them better hit their key product development goals that help them compete, drive market share, and increase profitability.
Enhance the Value with the Cloud
It’s easier to achieve PLM design data management benefits than ever. PLM is moving to the cloud, providing valuable benefits from implementation, operation, IT, and business perspectives. More companies are adopting cloud PLM and gaining significant value.
Get Started
We believe that effective design data management is essential for any manufacturer. They need PDM and/or PLM to control, access, and share information, but more importantly, to remain competitive. Smaller manufacturers need to focus on speed and agility. To support this, they must lock in data management basics, manage releases and lifecycles, expand on collaboration, and better manage multi-CAD using open approaches. Now, they can take advantage of the cloud for even more value.
*This summary is an abbreviated version of the ebook and does not contain the full content. For the full report, please visit our sponsor Siemens.
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