Industry Research on PLM Integration
By CXOtoday Staff
Mumbai, May 14, 2008

According to Geometric, globalization and the imperatives of innovation are driving engineering, and manufacturing companies toward fully integrated Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems for seamless collaboration and information management.

In a media release, Ravi Gopinath, CEO and MD of Geometric suggested specialist solution providers having a well defined suite of innovative interoperability and integration solutions targeted at this problem can help companies achieve their goals in product realization.

Aberdeen Group surveyed over 270 manufacturers about their PLM integration plans, and evaluated them based on six key performance criteria's namely:

* Product launch dates
* Product revenue targets
* Product cost targets
* Product development budget
* Quality targets
*Life cycle cost targets.

Based on these qualifiers, the companies were classified into 3 categories -- Best-in-Class, Industry Average, and Laggards, to determine the modus operandi for efficiencies in product realization.

According to the report, the need for integrating within the PLM suite and externally with the enterprise applications is primarily driven by pressures of streamlining the PLM process, while reducing the product's time-to-market. While effectively releasing the product for manufacturing is the most common reason for integration, the Best-in-Class companies are increasing their focus to include quality management, sourcing, and costing function into PLM. They are expanding the scope of PLM to manage all product data, making it the primary System of Record (SOR).

According to Jim Brown, VP and group director, Global Product Innovation (engineering and manufacturing) of Aberdeen Group, "The results indicate that PLM is maturing from its original role as an engineering tool to become a key foundation in the enterprise system environment, therefore increasing the need for companies to adopt PLM and integrate their PLM ecosystem."


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