Make friends with PLM

"Dream Airplane" - definitely lives up to its name. The whole process from planning, designing, manufacturing, selling, to after-sales service of this product is indeed like a dream.

New technologies and processes allow Boeing and its supplier partners to achieve a higher level of collaboration. More than a dozen of the world's best suppliers are involved in the Dreamliner project, working with Boeing from the earliest design stages. These suppliers are located in 135 locations around the world.

Boeing outsources the Dreamliner manufacturing process to various partners around the world, who in turn select suppliers to supply the required materials. This will require the constant collaboration of nearly 6,000 engineers in countries around the world, The Center for Management Research estimates.

The efficiency of these supplier partners is also increasing. Boeing will save 1,500 aluminum sheets and 40,000 to 50,000 fasteners by making the one-piece fuselage, according to Boeing's website. Overall, the entire project is expected to reduce typical development costs by 20 percent, totaling $2 billion.

Cost savings will continue throughout the Dreamliner's life cycle. The open system developed by Boeing will allow the 787 (the digital version of the Dreamliner) to be easily upgraded in the future as technology develops.

Operation and maintenance of the Dreamliner will also be cheaper for customers. Its fuel consumption will be 20% lower than comparable aircraft. The 787 was the first large commercial aircraft to make extensive use of mixed materials. These high-tech plastics make the 787 more fuel efficient and less expensive to maintain than traditional aluminum materials.

The Dreamliner's manufacturing activities can be summed up in one word: Product Lifecycle Management, or PLM.

PLM has many potential benefits. More than 50 customers have placed orders for nearly 1,000 Dreamliners worth $150 billion, according to Boeing's website. This became the most successful new commercial aircraft program in the company's history. These customers were captivated by the product's design and promised fast delivery, thanks to PLM.

Of course, PLM also brings a potential crisis. For example, in late 2007, the first test flight of the Boeing Dreamliner was delayed for three months. According to the International Herald Tribune, this is caused by a global shortage of fasteners, as the fuselage, wings and tail of the plane all need fasteners to join together. The newspaper said Boeing and its production partners had previously encountered "unexpected hurdles in the production of certain specialized parts of the plane and the programming of flight control software."

This is PLM: an important new management process with great benefits and potential dangers.

PLM: Your old friend

Sounds like Product Lifecycle Management might feel like a whole new practice. In fact, PLM is neither new nor new.

Your company has been using some PLM for a while. During the design phase, you probably used computer-aided design (CAD). During the manufacturing phase, you probably used Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) as well as some type of quality control system. When the product is complete, you may use some kind of product documentation system. To decide how much product should be produced and how much inventory to keep, you definitely want to use a sales forecasting tool. During the customer service phase, you may also use a customer database or some form of customer relationship management (CRM).

As a result, you're probably already using a variety of tools to manage your product. In this sense, PLM is your old friend.

PLM also has a new side. Maybe you've only recently started using just one system to manage the entire lifecycle of a product, and that's what PLM does. It allows you to use only one system to manage the entire cycle of each product from design to end-of-life, that is, life cycle management.

product-lifecycle-management.com defines PLM as "an approach that integrates innovation, new product development and product information management from product idea to end-of-life".

In other words, PLM is a process that helps you manage the entire life cycle of a product, from when it first started as an idea, through design and manufacturing, through sales, after-sales service, and finally recycling and disposal. At all these stages, you can use PLM to manage a product anywhere in the world.

PLM can also be viewed as an information system. This system contains all the information that affects a product. It uses technology to integrate people, data, processes and business systems. All this information, including marketing and design, is brought together and sent to the manufacturing and service stages for production and service support.

PLM was originally used in the aviation and pharmaceutical industries where safety and control were critical, and has since been extended to industrial machinery, home appliances, and other industries. Linked to such widespread adoption is a lot of money: Global spending on PLM was $13.4 billion in 2007, according to research from Daratech, a PLM market and technology consultancy.

Good friends solve big problems

Why is PLM so popular? Why would you be interested in implementing PLM? The answer is that PLM can solve a lot of problems.

Using the framework established in The Disciplines of Market Leaders, companies today face three ongoing challenges: improving customer intimacy, achieving operational excellence, and delivering product leadership.

According to authors Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema, improving customer intimacy requires understanding and responding quickly to existing and potential customers and their needs, building effective relationships with them, and providing Long-term customer value.

Achieving operational excellence requires companies to focus on efficient, effective and flexible operations, work with partners to reduce the cost and time required to deliver quality products, and meet customer needs in a timely manner.

Providing product leadership means tailoring cutting-edge products and solutions to customer needs.

All three challenges require companies to get the right product, at the right cost, to the right market at the right time.

PLM consulting firm CIMdata believes that "to meet these challenges, companies must be more innovative."

An innovative company has the opportunity to control an entire product category. Typically, the top one or two companies that create a new product/service category control 80 percent of sales in that category, according to Computer-Aided Design & Applications magazine. "That's why leading companies go to great lengths to introduce innovative products and services."

For example, Chrysler, which invented the small utility van in 1983, has continued to dominate this product segment and is today in More than 10 million small utility vans have been sold in more than 70 countries.

However, to be an innovative company, innovation in products is not enough. "Also improve the company's product production processes, as well as adopt innovative approaches to support its products throughout the product lifecycle," CIMdata noted.

Innovative demands for products and processes are the key issues to be solved by PLM.

By using PLM to gather relevant data about customers, customer needs and behaviors, companies can design products that better meet customer expectations. PLM ensures efficient communication between customers and manufacturers. The customer's knowledge of the product enables the manufacturer to extend or change product features.

By using PLM to reduce waste in activities and increase efficiency, companies can achieve operational excellence. Studies have shown that this waste can amount to half of the total operating time in a company.

By using PLM to gather information from partners around the world, companies can introduce innovative products into new markets and gain product leadership.

In this way, the problem is solved.

Good friends, good role models

The benefits of PLM can be seen more clearly in the specific examples below.

HP and Compaq had a high-profile use of PLM prior to their merger. The executive teams of the two companies use PLM to facilitate maximum synergy after the merger—“both to leverage the strengths of each organization while laying the foundation for an innovative, forward-thinking new company,” on HP’s website. An article called Product Lifecycle Management for the Adaptive Enterprise says.

The two large companies have a combined total of 200,000 products with various life cycles. The life cycle of a printer is only three to seven months, while the life cycle of a supercomputer is as long as 36 months. The two companies work with more than 100,000 suppliers.

To say the situation is complicated is an understatement.

PLM enables nascent or newly merged companies to establish a consistent business roadmap for all of these products, enabling new companies to more rapidly capitalize on new market opportunities—especially critical for products with short life cycles.

For HP customers, the benefits are reduced lead times, improved order delivery accuracy and reliability, operational cost savings, and increased product value at the same cost. "Customer satisfaction is on the rise as buyers receive the product they ordered and also receive a bill of materials that can be used to accurately audit the deliverables," HP said.

VW effectively uses PLM improves the productivity of a company's purchasing department by making it easier for employees to obtain various information about a product. At IBM, the use of an information portal shortened the order-to-delivery cycle, while increasing the productivity of the company's purchasing staff by 20 percent and improving their ability to focus on high value-added business activities.

Additionally, John Starks gives several examples in the book Product Lifecycle Management.

Orckit Communications, a leading supplier of advanced telecommunications equipment, achieved 28% inventory cost savings in the first year after adopting PLM. The company achieves this goal by reducing obsolete inventory, reducing maintenance costs and improving product quality to reduce product recalls.

NEC Computer Corporation's data show that the use of PLM has improved work efficiency and saved 30% of monthly engineering volume. The quality improvement achieved means a 39% reduction in scrap and reprocessing costs.

Rockwell Automation's goal is to achieve "design, build and support anywhere" capabilities. The results achieved by Rockwell include halving the cycle time of Engineering Change Notifications (ECNs) and reducing the cost of each ECN by $200. This saves $400,000 per year in one business unit.

The Five Stages of Good Friends

PLM has many benefits, but its implementation is a large and complex activity. How to start? Companies can initiate a PLM campaign by discovering their product and marketing requirements.

“PLM breaks down product and marketing requirements into ideas, concepts, prototypes, parts, product definitions, bills of materials, process models, and after-sales service definitions,” Cobus Oosthuizen in an interview on the ESTEQ website said he is the CEO of ESTEQ Group, a solutions provider in South Africa.

He continued, "The end result is a collection of product knowledge that every participant in the product cycle and every mission-critical application in the company's value chain can leverage to synchronize product ideas, coordinate collaboration, and make business decisions. Decision."

Based on this, PLM can be subdivided into the following stages.

·Product Innovation and Design The life of a product begins when a company discovers a customer need. This requirement is translated into a product design. CAD can be used as a PLM tool at this stage. The first is to use product data management (PDM) tools to gather information about the product.

·Material and Supplier Management

Based on the previous stage, suppliers must build the components for the product. Companies have to deal with suppliers to negotiate contracts, pricing and delivery schedules. PLM tools at this stage include supply chain management (SCM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and quality assurance (QA) systems.

·Manufacturing, Assembly Process Development

The company then develops the manufacturing and assembly processes to be used. How will the workshop be laid out? What are the operating procedures for workers? How will they assemble and test the product? PLM tools at this stage include digital manufacturing systems, manufacturing execution systems, and quality planning systems.

·Product Manufacturing and Assembly

The company manufactures and assembles products, while producing documentation. ERP, QA and manufacturing systems are all PLM tools applied at this stage.

·Product after-sales service

After the product is sold, it needs to continue to provide service. The final product needs to be recycled or discarded. PLM tools at this stage include maintenance, repair and operations management (MRO) software such as customer relationship management (CRM).

Face the Risks and Be Friends

As Boeing has experienced, companies that adopt PLM can face a serious crisis. In fact, Boeing's rival Airbus has paid even more for such a crisis.

Airbus 380 "Super Jumbo" deliveries have been delayed for nearly two years, resulting in a potential loss of $6 billion in profits. The reason for the delayed delivery was traced back to a specific production process. Christian Streif, who was Airbus president and CEO at the time, said: "There is a big problem with this production process, which is the weakest link in the chain: the electrical wiring in the front and rear of the fuselage. Installation design."

The reality is that after Airbus built the plane in Germany, the engineers on the fuselage and those who assembled the plane in France used different versions of CAD software. As a result, the fuselage could not be installed. With 300 miles of wire on each plane, this seemingly simple problem turned out to be a complex puzzle.

Just like ERP and other software-intensive applications, there is room for error in PLM. PLM systems are integrated systems that require the use of various software at the same time, so if these software conflict, there will be problems.

In addition, there is the crisis of dealing with data, especially when the amount of data is very large. For example, the data for the Boeing Dreamliner program is 16,000 gigabytes long.

The danger is even greater when this data is reconciled among the many vendors who also use a lot of software themselves.

Furthermore, errors are only discovered late in the process and are difficult to correct in a timely manner.

Nevertheless, the benefits of PLM can be overwhelming. As long as the company can manage the crisis, PLM will continue to prosper. The temptation to use a single source of truth throughout the product's life cycle is simply too great.

“This is the biggest goal of our Dreamliner program — from our customer order, to design, to manufacturing, to post-delivery service support, using only one source of data,” Boeing Vice President Kevin Fowler said. ) said, "This electronic data is invaluable in terms of its role in the entire product life cycle."

"This is the real power of PLM and the real benefit it brings."