What is the biggest PLM challenge?

First I want to state that there are several types of definition in the world for PLM, coming from different type of organizations – I listed here two vendor independent definitions:

The Wiki definition:

In industry, product lifecycle management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its conception, through design and manufacture, to service and disposal. PLM integrates people, data, processes and business systems and provides a product information backbone for companies and their extended enterprise.

The 2PLM definition:
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the business activity of managing a company’s products all the way across the lifecycle in the most effective way. The objective of PLM is to improve company revenues and income by maximizing the value of the product portfolio

The Wiki definition gives the impression that you need to have an infrastructure to manage (store) all product data in order to serve as an information backbone for the extended enterprise. It becomes more an IT-project, often sponsored by the IT-department, with the main goal to provide information services to the company in a standardized manner.

This type of PLM implementations tends to be the same type of implementation as an ERP system or other major IT-system. In this type of top-down implementations, the classical best practices for project management should be followed. This means:

• A clear vision
• Management sponsorship
• A steering committee
• A skilled project leader and team
• Committed resources
• Power user involvement
• Communication
• …… and more …

The following passage is worthwhile:

Instead of being able to implement new concepts or new technology, the implementation became more and more vendor monolithic as other capabilities and applications do not fit anymore. This is against the concept of openness and being flexible for the future. I believe if PLM becomes as rigid as ERP, it blocks companies to innovate – the challenge for big companies is to find the balance between stability and flexibility.

The flexibility is an important topic. It corresponds to some of my previous blogs: PLM out-of-the-box: Missleading or Focusing? and PLM Model: Granularity, Bottom-Up and Change. The ability to deploy pre-configured solution and make an easy change by manipulating multiple elements of PLM infrastructure in a granular way is one of the most important technological aspects related to most of successful PLM implementations. I think Jos nailed these topics in the list of PLM challenges. Here is the list:

-PLM is considered complex to implement
-PLM is a huge IT-project
-PLM requires change and structuring – but what about flexibility
-Where is the PLM value and ROI – user acceptance
-PLM for the mid-market – does it exist ?

Earlier, this year, I had a chance to run Beyond PLM panel discussion during Aras Community Event (ACE). Navigate to the following link to see my presentation and read more comments. Look on the slide from my presentation shows the list biggest PLM challenges as I see them:

What is my conclusion? PLM as it today introduces a significant level of changes in an organization. It can be considered as an organizational improvements and impact organization for the future improvements. However, in many cases, this change is burden organization and people. It is also coming with a significant cost. So, to decrease PLM implementation and future changes cost down is the top priority for all PLM vendors. This is a time to innovate. Just my thoughts, of course.

Courtesy : Oleg,Jos