• Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • Supplier Directory
  • SCB YouTube
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • Logout
  • My Profile

  • CORONAVIRUS
  • LOGISTICS
    • Air Cargo
    • All Logistics
    • Express/Small Shipments
    • Facility Location Planning
    • Freight Forwarding/Customs Brokerage
    • Global Gateways
    • Global Logistics
    • Last Mile Delivery
    • Logistics Outsourcing
    • LTL/Truckload Services
    • Ocean Transportation
    • Rail & Intermodal
    • Reverse Logistics
    • Service Parts Management
    • Transportation & Distribution
  • TECHNOLOGY
    • All Technology
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Cloud & On-Demand Systems
    • Data Management (Big Data/IoT/Blockchain)
    • ERP & Enterprise Systems
    • Forecasting & Demand Planning
    • Global Trade Management
    • Inventory Planning/ Optimization
    • Product Lifecycle Management
    • Sales & Operations Planning
    • SC Finance & Revenue Management
    • SC Planning & Optimization
    • Sourcing/Procurement/SRM
    • Supply Chain Visibility
    • Transportation Management
  • GENERAL SCM
    • Business Strategy Alignment
    • Education & Professional Development
    • Global Supply Chain Management
    • Global Trade & Economics
    • HR & Labor Management
    • Quality & Metrics
    • Regulation & Compliance
    • SC Security & Risk Mgmt
    • Supply Chains in Crisis
    • Sustainability & Corporate Social Responsibility
  • WAREHOUSING
    • All Warehouse Services
    • Conveyors & Sortation
    • Lift Trucks & AGVs
    • Order Fulfillment
    • Packaging
    • RFID, Barcode, Mobility & Voice
    • Robotics
    • Warehouse Management Systems
  • INDUSTRIES
    • Aerospace & Defense
    • Apparel
    • Automotive
    • Chemicals & Energy
    • Consumer Packaged Goods
    • E-Commerce/Omni-Channel
    • Food & Beverage
    • Healthcare
    • High-Tech/Electronics
    • Industrial Manufacturing
    • Pharmaceutical/Biotech
    • Retail
  • REGIONS
    • Asia Pacific
    • Canada
    • China
    • Europe
    • Latin America
    • Middle East/Africa
    • North America
  • THINK TANK
  • WEBINARS
    • On-Demand Webinars
    • Upcoming Webinars
  • PODCASTS
  • VIDEOS
  • WHITEPAPERS
Home » The Future of PLM: From 'Engineered' to Collaborative Environment

The Future of PLM: From 'Engineered' to Collaborative Environment

March 5, 2015
SupplyChainBrain

The PLM siloed approach: Sometime around 2003 the technology area known as product lifecycle management (PLM) started to crystallize out of a series of point solutions, most notably computer-aided design (CAD), which is the original and historically most successful piece of PLM still today! CAD tools are fantastic in isolation, but they weren’t designed to support processes either as fast or as collaborative as those required now.

Overcoming the isolation of CAD tools is a key purpose of collaborative product data management (PDM) as the central repository for product information across the enterprise. In most large organizations, PDM generally takes the form of long-established legacy systems that effectively handle detailed information about bills of materials and design specifications. Nevertheless, many companies remain frustrated with PDM systems that lack the flexibility they need to keep up with the pace of change in innovation today. Where these systems fail, the problem often is unwieldy procedures that users are forced to follow to maintain an accurate product system of record, which can hinder creativity.

The core of today’s PLM footprint stack is project portfolio management (PPM) which represents the decision making environment around the entire product innovation domain, including the decision support tools that should allow organizations to sensibly keep or kill individual development initiatives that fail to pass a stage gate. Although most of the largest vendors offer PPM capabilities, the most heavily used tools in this area are Microsoft Project and Excel, which arguably fail to create a decent decision-making environment.

It is our opinion that leading PLM vendors still have a lot to do to create a truly integrated platform. The fragmented nature of today’s PLM applications organized around the CAD-PDM-PPM construct mirrors the traditional siloed approach of new product development and launch processes in the manufacturing industry, where product development, supply chain and manufacturing are separate organizations with independent processes. With leading manufacturers heading to an integrated approach to new product development and launch – which will see a much higher level of collaboration and integration of product development and the supply chain than today –  technology vendors will have to make sure they align with customer needs.      

The Outlook

Looking ahead to an idealized next-stage PLM foundation, better, deeper, cloud-based applications may offer more effective collaboration processes both internally and externally to the enterprise, across a number of global R&D centres and along the supply chain. New sources of data, may justify heavier investment in big data analytics, search engines and social capabilities to support product develop processes that do not constrict creativity too heavily into a rigid “engineered” process.

RELATED CONTENT

RELATED VIDEOS

Product Lifecycle Management Supply Chain Planning & Optimization Technology Food & Beverage Industrial Manufacturing
KEYWORDS Food and Beverage Industrial Manufacturing manufacturing excellence Pierfrancesco Manenti portfolio management product data management Product Lifecycle Management Research SC Planning & Optimization SCM World supply chain management: product data management Supply Chain Planning supply chain solutions Technology Vice President
  • Related Articles

    Power of One: Collaborative Planning and Execution across the End-to-End Supply Chain

    What Can Chess Teach About Big Data, End-to-end Visibility and the Future of Supply Chains?

SupplyChainBrain

NRF Supply Chain 360: A Preview

More from this author

Wake up to live
“Supply Chains in Crisis”
updates and the latest Supply Chain News!

Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter

Timely, incisive articles delivered directly to your inbox.

Popular Stories

  • digital work

    Supply Chain Managers Are Quitting in Unprecedented Numbers

    Coronavirus
  • North Jakarta, Indonesia

    Physical, Financial Visibility: A Dual Approach to Supply Chain Resilience

    Supply Chain Planning & Optimization
  • Diversity in the Workplace

    Supplier Diversity Certification Is More Art Than Science

    Sourcing/Procurement/SRM
  • shopping

    Want to Put a Stop to Counterfeit Goods? Take a Picture

    Supply Chain Visibility
  • Amazon

    Amazon Aims to Sublet, End Warehouse Leases as Online Sales Cool

    Logistics

Digital Edition

Scb may 2022 sm

2022 Supply Chain ESG Guide

VIEW THE LATEST ISSUE

Case Studies

  • 3PL Doubles Productivity With Robots to Fulfill Medical Supply Orders

  • E-Commerce Company Cuts Order Fulfillment Time by 40%

  • Fashion Retailer Halves Fulfillment Time With Omichannel Automation

  • Distributor Scales Business by Integrating Warehouse Automaton Software

  • Fast-Growing Fashion Brand Scales E-Commerce Fulfillment With Whiplash

Visit Our Sponsors

Yang Ming Alithya Barcoding
Blue Yonder BNSF Logistics Generix
GEP GIB USA GreyOrange
Here Honeywell Intelligrated Inmar
Keelvar Kinaxis Korber
Liberty SBF Locus Robotics Lucas Systems
Nvidia Old Dominion Parsyl
Redwood Logistics Saddle Creek Logistics Schneider Dedicated
Setlog Holding AG Ship4WD Shipwell
Tecsys TGW Systems Thomson Reuters
Tive Trailer Bridge Vecna Robotics
Whiplash    
  • More From SCB
    • Featured Content
    • Video Library
    • Think Tank Blog
    • SupplyChainBrain Podcast
    • Whitepapers
    • On-Demand Webinars
    • Upcoming Webinars
  • Digital Offerings
    • Digital Issue
    • Subscribe
    • Manage Your Subscription
    • Newsletters
  • Resources
    • Events Calendar
    • SCB's Great Supply Chain Partners
    • Supplier Directory
    • Case Study Showcase
    • Supply Chain Innovation Awards
    • 100 Great Partners Form
  • SCB Corporate
    • Advertise on SCB.COM
    • About Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact Us
    • Data Sharing Opt-Out

All content copyright ©2022 Keller International Publishing Corp All rights reserved. No reproduction, transmission or display is permitted without the written permissions of Keller International Publishing Corp

Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing