Product Data Management (PDM) is table stakes for today’s manufacturers. Effectively managing design data is mandatory for even small development teams to control, access, and share their product data. These basic PDM capabilities deliver significant operational value by keeping design teams organized and efficient. The PDM backbone, though, is also the foundation for even greater strategic value with Product Lifecycle Management (PLM).
How can manufacturers gain more business value by extending their PDM product data backbone with PLM? We offer five practical ways to increase the value of PDM with PLM.
Please enjoy the full research courtesy of our sponsor, Autodesk. For more information on expanding the value of extending PDM please visit Autodesk’s PLM page.
Table of Contents
- Leverage PDM as the Foundation for Greater Value
- Chart a Course to Extend PDM Value with PLM
- Take Advantage of the Basics
- Go Beyond the Basics
- Communicate and Collaborate
- Enrich and Extend
- Review and Release
- Projects and Processes
- Adopt Cloud PLM
- Conclusion / Call to Action
- Acknowledgments
Chart a Course to Extend PDM Value with PLM
Take Advantage of the PDM Backbone
PDM is a valuable asset for any company that designs and/or manufactures products. It creates a central repository of information and controls design data to improve efficiency, prevent errors, protect intellectual property, encourage reuse, and manage design complexity. Our research consistently confirms the value of PDM, finding that Top Performers use more structured, collaborative data management solutions.1 As a result, Top Performers spend 25% less time on nonproductive data management tasks.
Tap the Added Value of PLM
Getting design data under control in Engineering sets the stage for more significant business benefits. Manufacturers can get more from PDM by adding PLM capabilities on top of their existing infrastructure.
PLM extends the value of product data and PDM by expanding data and processes to a broader range of people outside of Engineering, effectively transforming PDM from a departmental efficiency tool to a cross-departmental product development and innovation platform. The value increases as the foundation of trusted product data moves from a departmental view toward an enterprise and supply chain perspective. PLM gets PDM data to more stakeholders to speed up product development, enhance innovation, increase product quality, improve sustainability, drive down cost, and enhance traceability and compliance. In fact, our research shows that Top Performers are 65% more likely to view PLM as a strategic platform that supports the enterprise as opposed to a tool that supports a single department.
Set Your Path to Value with PLM
Growing value to the enterprise level from a PDM foundation can seem overwhelming. Where should manufacturers start? First, it’s important to take an honest assessment of your current PDM and/or PLM maturity. You should understand how you collaborate with internal and external stakeholders and how you manage product-related processes. With solid PDM basics in place and knowledge of your current capabilities, you can set the course to leverage the foundation and adopt incremental improvements that provide new value along the way to more significant, strategic business value.
Take Advantage of the Basics
Respect the Basics
Now that we’ve discussed the business value of extending PDM with PLM, let’s discuss what that means from a practical perspective. First, it’s important to acknowledge the importance of PDM. PDM basics allow engineers and other designers to operate effectively despite increasingly complex product and product development environments.
Our PDM framework includes three key capabilities that should be in place in any PDM system. These include the ability to control, access, and share product data. We won’t go into detail on these in this eBook, but it’s important to understand the starting point:
- Controlling CAD files and data to make sure that data is not lost, overwritten, or corrupted
- Providing efficient access to information, allowing engineers to quickly find design files so they can update or reuse them
- Sharing designs with others, typically within Engineering at this stage, so people can work together on different aspects of a product
Go Beyond the Basics
Recognize the Potential Beyond the Basics
These core PDM capabilities provide the data backbone for significant improvements. Our research finds four primary ways that manufacturers can extend the value they get from PDM data:
- Communicate and collaborate around product data, moving beyond designers to others in the organization and into the supply chain
- Enrich and extend product data to capture a broader view of the product beyond CAD and technical specifications
- Manage processes to review and release design data, including revisions and change management if they aren’t already in place
- Expand scope to include processes and projects to coordinate design and product development efforts in a broader context
These improvement opportunities are broad, and many manufacturers may have started down the path on one or more of them. Within each, there are a lot of ways to achieve value depending on what problems you are trying to solve. We’ll review each one and provide tangible examples of how manufacturers have grown their PDM benefits to a new level.
It’s important to recognize that these aren’t sequential steps with any particular order. These focus areas can be pursued in parallel, and some improvement opportunities may require expansion into more than one of them. For example, expanding PDM access to the supply chain would likely involve adding new information about products in addition to enhancing communication and collaboration activities.
Communicate and Collaborate
Improve and Extend Collaboration
Many companies start their PDM journey because they need to control data. They face overwritten files or revision control problems that result in lost work or version conflicts. However, the data in PDM is the heart of the design and product development process and is far more valuable as it is shared.
Companies typically start by collaborating inside the Engineering department. This helps multiple designers coordinate their work, for example on a multi-part assembly. They may also extend collaboration by connecting engineering organizations across design disciplines, locations, or product lines. Companies get more value as they share PDM data beyond Engineering further into the enterprise to those who need product information to do their jobs. Sharing data from PDM ensures everyone is working on the most recent information and nobody is waiting for someone to gather and send them the data they need. It also prevents people from interrupting engineers whenever they’re looking for a product image or a design specification. Further, setting this data up for self-service allows engineers to focus on engineering instead of spending non-value-added time preparing data for others.
Potential Focus Areas
Where should companies start getting more collaboration value with PLM? One approach is sharing designs with Manufacturing and Sourcing so they can get a jump start on manufacturing and vendor selection. They can start by automating the creation of neutral 3D formats on check-in and make them available to others downstream so they can view them without the need for a CAD tool. They can also extend this collaboration to design partners or suppliers that need selective access to product information. In some industries, companies may also choose to share data with regulators for audits or submissions.
Enrich and Extend
Expand the Product Model
Most companies begin to use PDM to store CAD models and drawings. They create a central repository to help engineers and others access designs. This is high value, but PLM can incorporate much more than CAD and metadata.
PLM allows companies to develop a much more valuable digital product data repository. One of the highest value transitions companies can make, before adding any new data, is to make existing data trapped in drawings, scanned documents, or spreadsheets more usable. Information like bills of materials (BOMs) and tolerances that are embedded in drawings are much more valuable if they can be accessed and shared independently of the drawing or the need for a person to interpret the data.
PLM can go far beyond design data to support more departments. Downstream departments that create derivative information like product documentation or supplier data can store that information in context with the design in PLM. Managing these relationships makes it easier to find information and understand the impacts of a design change on this important information. This helps companies get more value from their existing PDM system by coordinating activities to improve quality and improve time to market.
Potential Focus Areas
Where should companies start getting more value by extending their product definition in PLM? One way is by managing CAD from design disciplines beyond mechanical design. They can incorporate electrical design, PCBs, wire harnesses, or even software revisions into their product model. Another way is to expand the view of products beyond design further into the product lifecycle, for example, managing manufacturing or services BOMs contextually with the engineering BOM.
Additionally, companies can enrich and extend product data to support new departments and processes alongside Engineering. For example, they can use PLM to manage quality processes and data alongside product definitions to track return merchandise authorizations (RMAs), nonconformance reports (NCRs), or design failure mode and effects analyses (DFMEAs) in context.
Review and Release
Implement Review and Release Processes in PLM
Many companies start by sharing released product data in PDM with a simple, state-based representation of its product lifecycle status. Having a common view of the release state is valuable, but PLM can do more by managing review and release processes themselves.
Sharing released product data downstream is valuable, but there is even more value available by implementing bi-directional collaboration. Manufacturers can not only share designs with downstream departments for their review but also capture valuable design feedback. Getting downstream perspectives, for example on manufacturability, helps validate designs and prevent errors. This can improve quality, reduce cost, and prevent design rework through better design decisions based on understanding downstream impacts. Storing the review feedback in PLM provides an audit trail and a knowledge base to learn from for similar products.
Release management can also enhance control by better managing the product lifecycle. PLM allows companies to move beyond managing CAD file versions to more comprehensive product revision releases that consolidate multiple updates. This sets the stage for PLM to manage engineering changes and roll them out across the company and supply chain. A well-defined, effective engineering change management process ensures a smooth rollout, prevents mistakes, and improves quality. This helps companies get more from their existing PDM system by improving product quality and speeding time to market.
Potential Focus Areas
Where should companies start getting more value through design review and release processes with PLM? One potential improvement is to adopt a formal “DFx” program that incorporates downstream input and feedback to “Design for” aspects like cost, sustainability, manufacturability, and more. This gives downstream resources advanced visibility to designs and design decisions so potential issues can be identified and mitigated upfront.
Another valuable option is to implement or enhance change management by taking a more comprehensive approach to where-used and impact analysis to manage downstream impacts. This can help determine the effects of an obsolete part or component, or a design change required to meet new regulatory requirements. PLM can help manage and coordinate changes to BOMs, sourced components, test specifications, product documentation, service procedures, marketing documentation, and more.
Projects and Processes
Expand the Value of Data with Tasks and Workflows
PDM typically starts with data management. As companies expand, they may add some ad-hoc collaboration. The transition from PDM to PLM, however, involves expanding from a data-centric view to one focused on the intersection of data and processes.
PLM is designed to help companies implement and execute repeatable, automated digital tasks and workflows. Digital processes can be managed, standardized, enforced, and continuously improved to drive quality and continuous improvement through automation and repeatability. PLM-driven processes can also improve efficiency because digital processes can be contextualized with links to the right PDM data so designers or downstream parties, organization-wide, can immediately take action on them. Managed processes also set the stage to provide visibility and transparent reporting to executives.
Workflows can be further enhanced to manage projects and monitor product development processes, projects, and programs. A comprehensive PLM system allows companies to define dependencies and manage activities by role, making sure all activities are sequenced and have resources assigned. It can also provide better coordination across teams, departments, and the supply chain to further improve efficiency and time to market in new product development, or it can be used for other projects like LEAN or continuous improvement efforts.
Potential Focus Areas
Where should companies start getting more value from PDM by managing processes and projects with PLM? One possibility combines some of the other improvements mentioned above into a more efficient workflow. For example, PLM could automatically route a designer’s changes downstream for review. The PLM system could send the changes to another engineer for a standards review, to Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) for compliance and sustainability feedback, to Manufacturing to ensure it can be produced on existing equipment, and to others. Managing tasks with PLM is not only more efficient but the process can be monitored for delays so they can be expedited, for example, if someone is on vacation.
Adopt Cloud PLM
Take Advantage of the Cloud
Keen observers probably noticed that we only introduced four of the five ways to enhance PDM value with PLM. The fifth is to take advantage of the cloud. Managing product data and processes in the cloud extends the value of PLM to more people across the business and into the supply chain, allowing companies to instantly share the right data, with the right people, in the right context. That’s important because our research shows that 40% of companies waste valuable time because they use outdated or wrong data.
Cloud PLM enhances PDM because it allows suppliers, customers, design partners, and others to access the latest information without downloading new applications. Providing cloud data access also enhances security because designs are kept in a secure location instead of being shared through uncontrolled methods like email, and provides a clear audit trail of who accesses which designs and when.
Cloud Momentum
Manufacturers are transitioning to cloud PLM at a rapid pace and are willing to replace their existing solutions to achieve cloud benefits. Companies are moving applications to the cloud to gain value from:
- Implementation benefits like reduced cost and lower barriers to entry
- Operational benefits like improved security and scalability
- Business benefits like supporting digital transformation
At first cloud PLM transition was slow. But now, about three-quarters of manufacturers favor, prefer, or mandate the cloud for their new software selections. In fact, only 4% of responding companies say they do not consider or allow the cloud.
The Cloud Drives Better Performance
Beyond the general benefits of moving systems to the cloud, there are proven benefits unique to PLM. For example, manufacturers report many common product development tasks, such as collaboration, are made easier by the cloud. Companies that want to get the most out of PDM can enhance the value with cloud PLM. In fact, our research shows that Top Performers who are more successful at product design and development are now more likely to use the cloud for PLM.
Conclusion / Call to Action
Add Strategic Value to PDM
PDM provides significant operational value to engineers and their teams. It helps them control, access, and share product information in a trusted, secure way. An effective PDM implementation helps improve engineering and design efficiency, quality, and speed.
In addition to PDM, PLM offers the ability to expand value to a broader context including product innovation and new product development. PLM expands PDM value in four functional areas, including:
- Extending communication and collaboration
- Enriching product data
- Reviewing and releasing designs
- Managing processes and projects
Each of these ways offers a significant path to get more value from PDM with PLM.
Extend the Benefits with the Cloud
Beyond functionality, companies can drive higher business value by making PDM data available more broadly across the enterprise and the supply chain with the cloud. Companies should look for a variety of benefits from the cloud including implementation, operational, and strategic advantages. The cloud has gained in popularity, the solutions are available, and we now recommend that companies investing in PLM should ensure their software provider offers a path to the cloud.
Get Started
Companies should make sure they have a strong PDM underpinning and expand the value through the five approaches identified. These are not sequential steps, but complementary approaches to achieve more value. The first step, in fact, is to audit current product development processes and identify problem areas such as time wasted on non-value-added tasks, bottlenecks, and visibility issues that cause disruptions across your organization. Then, continuously improve to eliminate these issues. Each initiative should add value, and the benefits from that activity should be able to justify further improvements.