Shape the PLM Market
As Riff sees it, CIOs should cultivate relationships with key PLM vendors to ensure their companies' needs are being met in follow-on products - such as was the case in the early days of ERP software. Ford maintains partnerships with its PLM vendors, IBM, Dassault Systemes and EDS PLM Solutions, through which it gives input into the evolution of their products. By working closely with vendor MatrixOne, Johnson Controls merged its initial PLM implementation, which was essentially a custom-built toolkit, with the software company's packaged application suite. This linkage made MatrixOne's suite more useful for the automotive industry as a whole, Johnson Control's Kampe says.
Procter & Gamble has also leveraged its connection with a vendor to get the PLM customisations it requires. Robert Dixon, vice president of IT for P&G's Baby, Feminine and Family Care division, was one of the initial sponsors of the company's early PLM efforts. He talked up EDS's PLM group to other P&G divisional CIOs and top management. As a result of its work with P&G, EDS PLM Solutions recently came out with a version of its PLM suite tailored specifically to consumer-packaged goods makers. "We wouldn't have the relationship with EDS today without [Dixon's advocacy]," says Tom Massung, P&G's associate director for IT business solutions PLM. "And we'd still be hunting and pecking, buying 2000 to 3000 licences at a time and spending more money." As a result of the partnership with EDS, P&G plans to increase its current installed base of more than 8000 licences of EDS's TeamCentre PLM offering to a potential 20,000 users during the next five years, Massung says.
At GE Industrial Systems, the concerted campaign by CIO Scott to promote PLM has led to a multistage implementation based on MatrixOne's product. After the PDM foundation was put in place, Scott, with guidance from a PLM steering committee, began work on a document management system for coordinating more than 18 million purchase orders, intellectual property licences, contracts, correspondence and the like. Next up is integrating sourcing applications and project management capabilities. There are numerous other possibilities to explore, he says.
Scott's enthusiasm for PLM derives not from the technology but from the implications for the business. He's now the official promoter of PLM to GE's divisional CIOs. "There's opportunity there if CIOs can open their eyes and look at PLM as a change management issue, not an engineering drawing control issue," he says.
PLM: Defining a New Acronym
PRODUCT LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT is an integrated, information-driven approach to all aspects of a product's life, from its design through manufacture, deployment and maintenance - culminating in the product's removal from service and final disposal. PLM software suites enable accessing, updating, manipulating and reasoning about product information that is being produced in a fragmented and distributed environment.
Another definition of PLM is the integration of business systems to manage a product's life cycle.
SOURCES: UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PLM DEVELOPMENT CONSORTIUM, ARC ADVISORY GROUP
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