I wanted to respond to these statements in the post:

1. “Yes, there is design rework .. and hours of reprinting and late issue. But user adoption is faster, as they control the data”.

I can’t see this as “flexibility”. This is the root cause of high cost and inefficiencies that PLM is supposed to target. Yes, indeed, the traditional work flow is faster from the user perspective–because they know how to do it. They’ve been doing it for years. Any change requires learning time and breaking into. No one can expect to have PLM adopted overnight and a slow-down and some degree of disruption is inevitable. Management’s responsibility and commitment should be to provide enough resources for user training and “mentality change”.

2. “PLM actually is increasing designer work load. First reason being despite eliminating excels and silos .. business rules and methods cannot be eliminated overnight. Example part revisioning and master … If options to maintain adhoc numbering are not closed .. we still end up in situation where it takes time to search”

Again, this is not PLM problem. The required changes have not occurred. If this happens it means that PLM overlapped with old processes. As Jos says in his blogs, and I couldn’t agree more, PLM starts with “change”–in people thinking, in process structure, etc.

While I have seen a case of large OEM where in the intent has been right to get business value.
The examples you mentioned data accuracy, reducing search time, removing duplicate entry by retiring multiple reduant systems etc … Eliminate excel for BOM .. all other host of silos … to get single version of truth.

However midway through the implmentation of BOM information in PLM we are seeing the reverse trend .. PLM actually is increasing designer work load. First reason being despite eliminating excels and silos .. business rules and methods cannot be eliminated overnight. Example part revisioning and master … If options to maintain adhoc numbering are not closed .. we still end up in situation where it takes time to search..

Another aspect is flexibility … In some ways I see flexibility and accuracy as two balancing goals.. With excel and system without forced rules .. things go faster because it is uncontrolled .. Yes, there is design rework .. and hours of reprinting and late issue. But user adoption is faster, as they control the data.
With PLM and enforcement of rules .. it becomes a efficiency problem (locally) as they loose ability.. This is especially true in cases PLM is phasing out legacy systems and upstream is stil un controlled.

Finally .. as you mentioned .. time is the key. To realize .. full circle and broader picture, perhaps we need to wait … and maybe by then people move on to next big thing !

Thanks,
Mahesh

Mahesh thanks for your real-life feedback – yes it is always the balance between the short-term (user acceptance) and long term (more balanced and reliable work) The fact that PLM means a change for the organisation and the way people should work cannot be neglected – even with the highest usabillity – it is about changing tasks people need to perform and reward and measure them in a different manner too.

success Jos

Vijay hi,

Jos

Thanks Dave and hi. In one way we are all looking for ROI justification, but as Oleg told me this morning: “What is the ROI on buying an iPhone” Apparently there we do not need to justify

Jos

Keeping aside the Financial parts of ROI – we can see many Non- Financial Benefits or Indirect Benefits or soft sides of PLM Implementation.

1. “Knowledge Capturing” – Many organizations are facing problem of Employees near to their retirement. They will retire with huge experience & knowledge with them gained in many years. In Asian region problem of higher iteration rate? – Employees swap organization very frequently.
Capturing the experience & knowledge of such Employees is must for any Organization. with PLM in place some part of their knowledge can be captured & put in process.

2. QS/TS/ISO/CMMI certification – If Organization is going for these certifications in that case they have to do lot of documentation work; to prove they are following unified & standard process in their organization, – with PLM in place there is very less documentation needed even – certification review- interview are smooth.Benighted – getting certified with less effort. In other terms it gives confidence to go for these certification [If PLM is followed religiously... ]

Thanks Bhushan. Regarding your first point I agree on that as an important driver, however the discussion there is beside storing it in PLM, how do you make it retrievable ? This often requires in addition a more strict way of working (mandatory data to add / to link) which the current workforce is seeing as a pain. Also I agree on your second point, having PLM installed and in-practice should be a sales argument for these companies to promote their quality and control of their products. Best regards Jos

I have been working on collecting such evidence of the ROI that have been created by a PLM implementation. The output have been pretty surprising since they happens to be where we didn’t expect them at first : accelerate the change management process by more than 30 % and reduce the rework on the tooling before launching the production.

For both of this area it has been relatively easy to go from % to $. However what is important there is that PLM does not come of a defacto ROI because it there. It should be seen by the management as a very powerful tool that allow a company to measure and improve their ability to execute their change management process during the life cycle of their product.
Regards,
–yml

Hey Yann, welcome back and you bring indeed two interesting points to the discussion. Like Oleg mentions the benefits you measured were on the change process and the second topic I liked a lot is that PLM is an enabler to measure and improve the company’s processes

many thanks – Jos

Oleg hi, investigation is on-going – i am somehow in the middle, so hard to conclude, but a first thought might be that often mid-market companies focus too much on their departmental ROI and indeed often the benefits are organization-wide as that is where PLM has impact