Tech-Clarity

Making the value of technology clear

Product Portfolio Management in a PLM Strategy

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Issue in Focus: Product Portfolio Management in a PLM Strategy – Closing the Loop on Product Planning explores how engineering-centric businesses can take a more closed-loop approach between Product Portfolio Management (PPM) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) to extend the value of PPM. Discusses the benefits of closing the loop between theoretical plans and actual

In Search of a Standard PLM Definition

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What I learned this week was that we could use a good, common PLM definition and scope, but we will not get one. The discussion (a lot of discussion in multiple forums, actually) came from my post SAP, Too Much or Too Little Credit for PLM Efforts and another called Who Will Disrupt Entrenched PLM Vendors?

Going Social with Product Development

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A quick peek into some research on … how manufacturers are taking advantage of social computing and “Web 2.0” technologies to raise the bar on product development performance in my new report Tech-Clarity Insight: Going Social with Product Development: Improving Product Development Performance with Social Computing. The paper discusses the intersection of social computing and new product development (NPD) processes and tools. I have posted frequently about the intersection of social computing and PLM and product innovation, and this research provides some examples on how these strategies are starting to play out for manufacturers like Microsoft (think PC hardware and game consoles, not Windows) and Pitney Bowes.

Exponential Times – What Does it Mean for Manufacturing and PLM?

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What I learned this week … came from watching the Did You Know 3.0 Video and asking myself what it means to the world of manufacturing and product lifecycle management (PLM). The answer? Quite a lot. If you haven’t seen the video, it is worth 5 minutes of your time to give you an entertaining and informative look into the times we live in. The part that really caught me was that we live in “exponential times.” Things are changing rapidly in our personal and professional lives, and manufacturers need to consider the ways the world is changing in order to be relevant with the right products (and the right processes) to capitalize on the future.

What I Learned: Is Innovation or Product Pipeline Killing Profitability?

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What I learned this week … came from Bill Poston at Kalypso in his reply to a Business Week article titled “Innovation Interrupted – The Failed Promise of Innovation in the U.S.” Bill’s commentary really got me thinking about a really fundamental question. Do companies have too few product innovation ideas, or are we just not good at turning those ideas into profitable products? It also made me ask a separate question, “is this really a U.S. -centric issue or is this a global issue?”