According to a PLM Foresight Opinion Poll conducted by CIMData, 70% of Senior Executives in manufacturing companies saw little or no value in PLM. This is a troubling statistic as it shows that PLM is not as widely adopted and embraced as it should be. PLM can bring huge efficiency gains to an organization and prevent a lot of errors.

How can you get efficiency from PLM?  One approach is to use a Maturity Assessment. These models investigate issues related to best practices of the system been evaluated using defined “pillars” of major functionality. When their maturity of a given “pillar” is evaluated and measured, this provides current and future capability levels and can be used to identify potential improvements and goals for the system been evaluated. When a maturity model is applied to and shared by a number of organizations in a particular industry, it can provide an industry-specific benchmark against which to evaluate an organization’s maturity with respect to others in the same industry.

So why should a company assess the maturity of their PLM?  This assessment can guide companies to a PLM roadmap that will enable them to improve the state of their current sytem. The roadmap will allow them to deploy appropriate technologies, processes, and organizational changes that enhance the overall product development process from early concept through product end of life. This in turn leads to improved bottom-line and top-line benefits.

Tata Technologies have developed PLM Analytics as a framework to provide information to customers about the state of PLM within their enterprise, the maturity (ability to adopt and deploy) of PLM, and ultimately to the creation of a detailed PLM roadmap that will support their business strategy and objectives. Each component builds on and complements the other components, but can be conducted independently.

What is PLM Analytics?  A high level diagram is shown below:

PLM Benchmark  Helps triage your PLM needs and find out how you stack up against the competition. The resulting report benchmarks performance against 17 industry-standard “pillars” and evaluates the current state and desired future state with an indication of implementation priority. The Benchmark is a consultant-led personal interview with one or more key business leaders. It is toolset agnostic.

PLM Impact Builds a business case and demonstrates how PLM can save you money. Once a PLM Benchmark has been completed, a consultant-led series of interviews with multiple key business leaders can identify multiple savings opportunities. These opportunities are summarized as financial metrics, Payback and ROI. These can be used to provide validation of proposed PLM initiatives and provide decisions makers with key financial data.

PLM Healthcheck  Understand how your current PLM works from the people who use it. The healthcheck surveys a cross-section of your product design team via online assessments to establish PLM health related to organization, processes, and technology. The results identify gaps against best practices, consistency of organizational performance, and prioritize areas of improvement. The healthcheck can be used on a global basis.

PLM Roadmap  A 360°view of your PLM plus a detailed roadmap for pragmatic implementation. The roadmap is constructed from onsite interviews with senior leaders, middle management and end users across product development. These sessions focus on the specific business processes and technologies to be improved and result in a PLM Roadmap, an actionable improvement plan with defined activities and internal owners to ensure successful implementation

By using this suite of tools, Tata Technologies can put you on the road to PLM success!