PLM
HOW PCO Innovation DEFINES PLM
PLM is a business strategy that includes processes and software tools.
Its main objective are :
- To optimize innovation;
- To support collaboration, and;
- To create, maintain, and share product definition through its product's lifecycle.
This business initiative includes the following :
- Complete lifecycle management : from requirements to product end-of-life.
- Managing all components of complex systems : mechanical, electrical, electronic, hydraulic, software components, ...
- Supporting related processes : requirement management, design processes, manufacturing process management, configuration management, maintenance and repair, project management,…
- Managing all product data : documents, BOM, manufacturing process data, configurations, efficiency, CAD, CAI, CAM, simulations, processes,...
- Support extended business: customers, partners, subcontractors, and suppliers.
Approach
This PLM strategy must be supported by a project that includes key fundamentals:
- Opportunity study
Define objectives and challenges, scope, and feasibility.
- Requirements
Analysis of existing situation, business process re-engineering, identification of best practices, identification of business case.
- Concept definition and selection of PLM solution
Description of the target information system architecture, Identif / Evaluate / Select a PLM solution.
- Functional specifications
Acceptance scripts, preparing business transformation, definition of training and communications. At this stage, a COTS (component on-the-shelf) solution is preferable in order to minimize integration activities.
- Integration
Detailed specifications, coding and testing, integration
- Acceptance and rollout
Business approval of components and interfaces, performance testing and load balancing, setting of production environments, help desk preparation.
- Migration
Migration strategy, migration tools, support during data loading and cleansing.
- Operation
Administration of environments, performance audit and optimization, help-desk support, maintenance, bug resolving, deployment of new release, non-regression testing
Key success factors
Business transformation management
A PLM project is a business project, and it can be very structural. This transformation is supported on different levels: business process, organization, data and business object model and tools, …
- Anticipate and manage stakeholders' resistance to change.
- Support the right level of communication during the change process.
- Manage education to ensure an appropriate use of the product based on specific training materials.
- Coach and support : change must be measured efficiently.
Convergence
The success of a PLM project also involves the use of best practices and the solutions that support them, primarily an OOTB approach: out of the box implementation of PLM software (as opposed to customized software). This approach entails the need to support convergence of business needs to best practices in order to be as close as possible to standard PLM solutions.
- Adapt business processes to avoid heavy customization.
- Iterative prototyping to validate compliance with the PLM tool.
- Prepare organization to reduce the risk of rejection by en- users.
Migration
In most cases, the success of this kind of project relies on the migration of existing data into the PLM solution (totally or partially). Usually, the target object model differs from the existing one. This makes the migration strategy essential.
Prerequisites to deploying a new PLM :
- Define a migration strategy.
- Select data to be transferred.
- Scope and size of data that will be migrated.
- Define migration methodology.
