OK, you know you should implement best practices when you implement PLM. That sounds straight forward enough, right? But how do you go about that? How do you include your own, unique practices where appropriate? How do you leverage the embedded best practices in your PLM solution? This was one of the questions we set out to answer in a joint PLM implementation survey with PTC Global Services. I will share some highlights here, and then feel free to read my full thoughts on my guest blog post on the PTC blog, Managing Process Improvement for PLM.
First, if you would like an overview of the research process please watch this episode of Tech-Clarity TV. It explains that the key to the study was identifying which companies were able to improve their business more with PLM, and then comparing the way they implemented PLM with others.
From a process perspective, we asked which of the following best reflects their implementation approach:
- Existing business processes drove software customization
- Business processes and software functionality were developed concurrently in an integrated fashion
- Business process changes were based on software-defined processes
- Business process changes were made independently of software-defined processes and functionality
The short version of the results is this – The top performers focus on defining new processes, but they do it in context with the capabilities and processes supported by the software. This is not the only way to implement PLM, but those that got the most from PLM were more likely to take this approach, so it’s good advice to consider. See more in the guest blog post.