PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) is well accepted in the large OEMs of the world – you probably won’t be able to find any leading OEM that is not utilizing PLM. But in the mid-market (the vast majority of the world’s manufacturers), PLM use is not that obvious.
Is it because the mid-market manufacturers do not need PLM?
Is it because the challenges mid-market companies face are not the same challenges as the big ones; are they not that critical to the business?
When you look at today’s mid-market companies, you will see that not only they face and are affected by the same challenges as the big OEMs, they deal with even more challenges:
· The demand for shorter product lifecycle is getting higher and higher
· Globalization of markets
· Supply chains have been changed and almost every mid-market company find itself as part of a supply chain (even outside the traditional Automotive and Aerospace supply chains)
· More complex design or distributed design environment
· Mid-market companies are developing and manufacturing more complex products than in the past
· Huge amount of parallel projects (unlike a small number of big projects in the large OEMs)
· Data reuse becomes critical for success, ~70% of the products does not start from scratch
· Competition in the mid-market is higher
· Less resources; less money to invest
If you look at the short list above (if you belong to a mid-market company I am sure you have nodded your head while reading each line…), you understand that the answer to the question in matter is very clear… YES, YES and YES.
Not only implementing PLM today gives one of the biggest ROI a critical business system can give your company, but the truth is that in today’s world, you can’t really afford not to implement PLM.
After we all understand that adopting PLM even in the mid-market is a must, a short fun exmple: “Why we need PLM…”
