PLM System was initially used in the automotive and aerospace manufacturing industries. These industries needed a tool to manage the collaboration of their resources for the development of new products. Fast forward, PLM is no longer limited to the automotive and aviation industries.
The use of the solution in other industries such as fashion and apparel has become necessary to improve the quality of products, lower manufacturing costs, and increase speed to market. If these complex processes are not appropriately managed, it can result in a waste of resources. Therefore, for the sake of efficiency, businesses need PLM solutions for the management of product development phases.
What Does PLM Mean?
PLM is the strategic process of managing the complete journey of a product from the initial stage of ideation to development, service, and disposal. In simple words, PLM means managing everything that is involved with a product.
The main purpose of what is PLM is to manage processes, information, and people related to product lifecycle. Coordination and collaboration reduce cycle iterations, there will be fewer production errors, and ultimately enhanced speed to market.
Product lifecycle management platform enables multi-disciplinary and geographically dispersed teams to work and collaborate with each other, customer, and partners strategically, using the up-to-date and trusted product information. PLM system’s data traceability and governance enable businesses to drive down production costs, deliver the highest levels of quality, and accelerate time to market.
Why Do Businesses Need PLM Solutions?
Businesses and companies that manufacture goods have to face a lot of issues other than design and manufacturing. PLM solutions mitigate all the issues related to product lifecycle and align key resources, making product information accessible to teams quickly all across the organization. It includes a large portion of the organization other than product design and manufacturing, such as marketing, partner channels, sales, customer services, and suppliers.
The early PLM solutions focused on manufacturing and helped engineers increase productivity, lower production costs, and accelerate time to market. Today’s PLM programs offer new and advanced benefits of product lifecycle management. It allows greater quality even for complex products, helps in boosting revenue, faster customer responsiveness, greater customer transparency, and gets products to market faster.
Types of PLM Solutions:
There are two types of PLM solutions:
- On-Premise PLM
- Cloud-Based PLM
1. On-Premise PLM
With an on-premise PLM system, all of the data is physically stored on the company’s servers. It is installed on the user’s machine, allowing them to monitor and manage security according to their requirements. Choose an on-premise program if you have sophisticated systems and infrastructure and desire to have total control over your own data centers.
2. Cloud-Based PLM
Cloud-based PLM system differs from on-premise in the way that the teams collaborate through the cloud, and all the information related to the product is stored in a cloud to improve product development and track processes and data. It updates product advancements and changes as they happen in real-time, allowing timely collaboration between remote teams and all departments involved in the product development process.
Impact of PLM Solutions on Product Lifecycle:
PLM application manages the entire product data during the lifecycle of the product. It brings together employees and departments involved in the production of a product in order to streamline their activities. The ultimate goal of this system is to produce a product that outperforms the competitors in the market, lasts as long as the customers demand, is highly profitable, and technology permits.
PLM system helps businesses to cope with the enhancing engineering challenges and complexity of developing new products. It helps companies shorten the product development times, knowing when to reduce manufacturing efforts and how to focus on marketing efforts.
If you are facing difficulty maintaining the PLM solution in-house, you can consult Oracle Partner vendors. One such organization is Xavor Corporation. Xavor is an Oracle partner company offering a wide range of PLM solutions, including PLM maintenance, health checks, add-ons, PLM Migration, and upgrade to a newer version.
