PLM Benefits and Challenges

Product lifecycle management (PLM) has evolved into a solution that’s now widely accepted as an essential component for helping accelerate the product development process to bring products to market quickly.

PLM’s adoption has been further advanced by growing trends like the globalization of manufacturing, transitions to cloud solutions, and new and emerging technologies.

As more companies use cloud-native PLM solutions to meet challenging product delivery targets or faster, efficient design innovation, PLM is helping companies reinvent how they bring products to market.

While implementing a PLM solution presents many benefits, there are some challenges to successful adoption.

Let’s take a deep dive into some important benefits and challenges PLM solutions offer:

BENEFITS OF PLM

Improving collaboration

Collaboration is the lifeblood of every organization—it ensures everyone is working together to accomplish the same goal. When it comes to collaboration with dispersed or global teams, cloud-native PLM solutions provide a single unified platform where all product-related information can be managed, so teams have ubiquitous, real-time access.

Three ways PLM improves collaboration:

  1. Centralized location: PLM provides a single source of truth for all product-related information. A centralized approach ensures everyone across the organization is working with the same information, which is crucial for effective collaboration.
  2. Enhanced visibility: Visibility into product designs, engineering changes, and supply chain issues enhances project coordination and eliminates costly delays, scrap, and rework.
  3. Customer feedback integration: PLM helps companies build stronger relationships with their customers by incorporating customer feedback into the product development process. This ensures that customer needs and preferences are considered in future product iterations, enhancing overall satisfaction.

Additional Resources

What is PLM?

Key PLM Capabilities

PLM Benefits and Challenges

PLM Integrations With Other Enterprise Systems

Best Practices for Cloud PLM Implementation

Most Frequently Asked PLM Questions

Image-Team of Engineers Collaborating on Industrial Design

Increasing efficiency

PLM solutions streamline the management of product information and processes across the entire organization—from design to manufacturing. Keeping all stakeholders on the same page reduces errors, saves time, and speeds innovation.

Many companies are realizing the competitive edge of integrating PLM with other upstream and downstream solutions like computer-aided design (CAD), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and manufacturing execution systems (MES), creating a seamless transfer of information.

Some ways PLM boosts efficiency:

  • Automates repetitive tasks and processes, eliminating redundancy.
  • Enables real-time access to ensure everyone is working with current information.
  • Reduces time to market by streamlining product development stages.
  • Identifies inefficiencies and areas where costs can be cut.
  • Manages compliance with industry standards, reducing the risk of noncompliance and associated penalties.
  • Supports management of new ideas ensuring they are effectively captured, evaluated, and implemented.
  • Integrates with upstream and downstream systems so data can flow seamlessly between solutions and processes.

Better compliance and risk management

Ensuring compliance with regulations should be a top priority in every organization. By integrating compliance into PLM processes, companies can save time and effort in addressing issues and reduce the risk of regulatory complications. Using templates, automated workflows, and reports can significantly streamline compliance efforts, making the entire process more efficient and effective.

Benefits of PLM for regulatory compliance:

  • Centralized documentation: PLM systems store all compliance-related documents in one centralized location, making it easier to manage and retrieve information during audits and inspections.
  • Regulatory integration: Compliance checks are integrated into the product development process, ensuring products meet all necessary safety, quality, and regulatory standards.
  • Traceability: Teams can track materials and components from suppliers to the finished product. In addition, PLM provides a full audit trail on all product record activity. This is crucial for industries with stringent regulatory requirements.
  • Ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements across the product lifecycle minimizes risks and strengthens customer trust, while cloud-native solutions streamline processes.
  • Automated compliance management: PLM can automate tasks such as generating compliance reports and alerts for noncompliance issues, ensuring consistent adherence to regulations.

Cost savings

By optimizing processes and reducing inefficiencies throughout the product lifecycle, PLM helps create cost-saving opportunities.

PLM reduces company costs by:

  • Reducing waste with improved accuracy and real-time accessibility.
  • Identifying errors early on in product development to reduce scrap and rework.
  • Automating routine tasks to reduce labor costs and speed time to market.
  • Supporting design reuse to reduce the need for new part sourcing.
  • Monitoring quality checks throughout the product lifecycle to help reduce defects and associated costs.

Innovation, quality improvement, and customer satisfaction

PLM is essential in helping develop innovative products, especially as business conditions and technology shift with customer demands. PLM can seamlessly integrate with new and emerging technologies creating an array of benefits and opportunities.

Quality management system (QMS) software solutions let organizations systematically control quality policies, procedures, and documentation to comply with regulatory requirements like FDA, EU MDR, and ISO. QMS connected with PLM can improve an organization’s efficiency, compliance, and collaboration.

PLM brings it all together by:

  • Standardizing processes: A structured framework for managing projects from inception to completion is essential for delivering consistent results and value which are vital to maintain a high standard of quality.
  • Supporting sustainable design: Companies can design with sustainable concepts in mind, create a circular economy, or integrate green technology into their platform.
  • Identifying issues early: PLM manages product data and processes, enabling teams to identify and resolve issues early in development, ensuring higher quality designs and products.
  • Facilitating collaboration: Collaboration is vital for innovation as it allows for diverse ideas to be integrated and refined leading to more innovative solutions—PLM facilitates collaborative feedback.
  • Reducing costs: With a framework for planning and innovating, companies can spend less time on prototyping and avoid costly mistakes.
  • Quality assurance: Utilizing quality assurance strategies that define and measure standards, along with ongoing monitoring, ensures the final product meets quality benchmarks.
  • Timely updates and replacements: Companies can effectively time product updates or replacements by managing the entire product lifecycle in parallel with customer feedback.

Image-Engineer operator controller working with manufacturing system computer screen.

CHALLENGES OF PLM

Resistance to change

Implementing a new PLM solution comes with its own set of challenges and rewards; however, selling PLM to the company can get personal—there are many reasons why employees, teams, or companies are resistant to change.

Responding to change through clear communication, comprehensive training, and involving team members in the implementation process can help mitigate resistance and ensure a smoother transition to PLM.

A few general reasons for resistance to change include:

  • Familiarity vs. uncertainty: It’s perceived as easier to work with familiar systems and processes, rather than going into unknown territory like a PLM solution.
  • Lack of understanding: PLM can get abstract. If people do not understand why change is needed or see how it can benefit their job, they may not be open to adopting a PLM system.
  • Cost and effect: A collective understanding of the trade-offs between the current system and the new one needs to be established.
  • Misaligned expectations: Teams needs to understand the role of PLM so there are no conflicting expectations from other parts of the company or resistance to use the new solution. Lack of communication can lead to conflicting expectations and resistance.
  • Training and support: Without adequate training and ongoing support, users can feel overwhelmed or frustrated.

Cost and complexity of traditional on-premises or hosted solutions

The cost of PLM can vary, ranging from less than $10,000, to several thousand, and up to millions of dollars depending on different variables such as the number of users, technology platform (on-premises, hosted, or cloud-native), consulting requirements, and any customizations. Traditional on-premises PLM solutions introduce additional IT costs, and overhead can be complex to implement and integrate with existing systems and may require significant time and effort to fully utilize all features.

Data migration issues

Migrating data and information can also be a source of resistance to change, especially as implementing a new PLM solution often involves migration challenges.

Some common issues include:

  • Data compatibility: Ensuring that data formats and structures from the old system are compatible with the new PLM system can be complex. Incompatibilities can lead to data loss or corruption.
  • Data integrity: Maintaining the accuracy and consistency of data during migration is critical. Issues like naming conflicts, duplicate records, and incomplete data can arise, affecting the integrity of the migrated data and information.
  • Legacy data: Deciding what legacy data to keep, toss, archive, or remain accessible for compliance or historical analysis can pose a challenge.
  • Integrations with existing systems: Integrating the new PLM solution with other enterprise solutions like ERP or CRM can be complex and may require additional customization.

Ongoing maintenance and support

Ongoing maintenance and support for PLM solutions can present several challenges. Addressing these issues effectively requires a proactive approach, including regular system audits, user feedback, and a dedicated support team to handle any problems that arise.

Common maintenance issues include:

  • System updates and upgrades: Keeping the PLM solution current with the latest software versions and patches is crucial for security and functionality.
  • Data management: Ensuring the accuracy, consistency, and security of information across the PLM solution is a continuous task. Poor data management can lead to errors, inefficiencies, and compliance issues.
  • User training and adoption: As PLM systems evolve, ongoing training is necessary to ensure that all users are proficient with the new features and functionalities.
  • Integration with other systems: There are many advantages to integrating a PLM solution with upstream and downstream systems. Ensuring seamless integration and data flow between these systems can require continuous monitoring.
  • Customization and configuration: Many organizations customize their PLM systems to meet specific needs. Maintaining customizations and ensuring they work with new updates can be challenging and resource intensive.
  • Performance and scalability: As the volume of information and number of users grow, maintaining system performance and scalability becomes critical. This requires regular performance tuning and infrastructure upgrades.
  • Compliance and security: Ensuring the PLM solution complies with industry regulations and standards is an ongoing task, and protecting sensitive data and information from cyber threats requires continuous monitoring and updating security measures.

Scalability concerns

Scalable PLM solutions enable companies to adapt product development processes and data management to changing market conditions, expand product lines, or enter new markets, achieving rapid growth without major disruptions or significant infrastructure overhauls. It’s important that a PLM system is scalable and can grow with an organization.

Some scalability challenges:

  • Data volume and complexity: As companies grow, the volume of data and information managed by PLM increases. Handling large datasets efficiently without compromising performance can be challenging.
  • System performance: Ensuring the PLM system maintains high performance as the number of users and the amount of information grows is crucial. Poor system performance can lead to delays and inefficiencies.
  • Cost management: Scaling a PLM solution can be expensive, especially when considering the costs of additional licenses, infrastructure, and ongoing maintenance.

Cloud-native PLM helps overcome challenges

Cloud-native PLM has significantly impacted the market by enabling time to value, improved collaboration across global teams, streamlined processes, and reduced costs through cost reductions associated with low to no IT investments and overhead. PLM enables companies to quickly adapt to changing market needs and innovate more efficiently.

A cloud-native solution offers several advantages that help overcome common challenges in PLM systems:

  • Lower total cost of ownership: Cloud-native solutions eliminate the need for significant upfront investments in hardware and infrastructure. Operating on a pay as you go model enables companies to scale resources based on demand resulting in cost savings.
  • Reduced IT overhead: By utilizing a cloud-native solution, companies can off-load maintenance, updates, and security management to their PLM solution provider. Plus, IT teams are freed up to focus on more strategic initiatives.
  • Faster time to value: Cloud-native solutions are designed with user-friendliness in mind such as intuitive interfaces and comprehensive support which makes them easier to implement and use, speeding time to value (TTV) compared to traditional on-premises solutions.
  • Scalable: Cloud-native solutions are typically scalable. They can handle increased workloads and data volumes without significant changes to the infrastructure. Having the ability to scale ensures the system can grow with the company’s needs.
  • Simplified integrations: Cloud-native solutions provide robust application programming interface (APIs) and integration tools that make it easier to connect with other enterprise systems like ERP, CRM, and MES. Having this kind of integration capability ensures seamless operations across different platforms.
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PLM, the impetus for business transformation

Organizations are looking for ways to leverage the power of technology to do more with less—less resources, less time, less cost. Companies considering implementing PLM should realize that embarking on any new enterprise software implementation presents its own array of benefits and challenges.

By using a cloud-native PLM solution, companies can reduce common challenges and implement a solution quickly to breathe new life into their products with improved innovation or go-to-market strategies, capturing greater market share.

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