The competition in the manufacturing sector is growing fierce day by day. With the world growing smaller, customers are demanding more and more customization from services as well as products. This demand, fuelled by global competition, is forcing manufacturers to offer a variety of options and configurable features that satisfy customers. The increasing product features results in intricate designs, R&D expenses and rigorous testing, which in turn challenges product delivery schedules. To stay profitable, manufacturers need to streamline these activities and keep expenses to a minimum. Take the example of a mobile phone. About three decades back, when mobile phones were just introduced, they were bulky, and offered limited functionality. The displays were black and white LCDs, and all you could really do with your mobile phone was to make and receive a phone call. And maybe send text messages. Compare that with today's smart phones. Today's phones not only allow you to make and receive a phone call; they have cameras with features that rival a professional camera, incorporate browsers that let you surf the internet, enable e-commerce activities, seek directions, and allow you to attend virtual meetings. Even the basic phones of today allow you to exchange not only text, but even images, PDFs and video via social media apps. You can also stream movies or listen to your favourite music online. From simple black and white displays to highly complex Super AMOLED, TFT and IPS displays that produce true to life colours, the advances in the features that a mobile phone offers is mind boggling when compared to mobile phones a scant decade back. What is more, they are extremely sleek as compared to the bulky phones of twenty years back. Consumer demand and the need to be one step ahead of the competition has spurred the growth in the features and performance of mobile phones. Of course, all this runs into tremendous amount of money pumped into R&D. All the biggies of the world have invested a pretty penny in making all such advances possible. Such increase in complexity is true of all products, from mobile phones to automobiles and from industrial machinery to healthcare equipment, and managing this complexity is an arduous task. This is where product lifecycle steps in.
The Product Lifecycle
A product lifecycle defines the entire process of manufacturing a product – from its conceptualization to its obsolescence.A product lifecycle mainly consists of four phases: inception, growth, maturity and decline. It starts with the inception of a product - say a laptop. Once the company decides to manufacture a specific model of a laptop, it develops prototypes and refines the model till it is confident that the laptop will find takers. It then launches the laptop model, promoting it by means of advertisements and other marketing collateral. Even after a laptop model is launched, the company that manufactures the laptop continuously works on refining it by adding new features, or fine tuning its performance. Once the laptop gets customer attraction, sales start gaining momentum. This is the growth phase. Once this happens, competition begins to launch similar products, forcing the manufacturer to reduce the price. At this time, the market for the particular model of laptop is saturated, and it is in the maturity phase. This is when the company itself or its competitors launch a newer laptop, with better specifications like a faster processor and advanced clock, more disk space, etc, and the product sale declines. The company then stops manufacturing the model. This product lifecycle continues incessantly, as everyone keeps on refining their products, with processors that are faster, disks that are bigger and speedier, USB ports that are faster, etc. While electronic products like laptops get obsolete very fast, in some cases, say automobiles, the growth and maturity phase for a popular model can span many years.
Product Lifecycle Management
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a software or a suite of software that keeps an electronic record of all the aspects of a product, right from its conception till its production. PLM allows managing information and processes developed and conducted through the product lifecycle, connecting everyone involved in the product irrespective of where they are geographically located. PLM is supported by technological platforms which provide the means for performing the engineering processes in a collaborative way. A PLM software links together all of the processes required to design, build, deploy and maintain the product.PLM is an integrated business approach to manage the creation, validation, dissemination and application of engineering data throughout an enterprise. It is a strategic approach for creating and managing an organization’s product-related intellectual capital, from its conception to retirement. PLM software models, captures, exchanges and uses information and data in all PLM decision-making processes.
PLM solutions help companies in
With the mushrooming of PCs, engineering companies gradually migrated to CAD / CAM. Product Data Management (PDM), a process that kept track of the CAD data generated during the design process, also came into existence since the 1980s. PLM evolved from PDM, and in addition to storing CAD data, PLM involves a work associated methodology and incorporates other areas of the company (not just engineering) that contribute or require information related to the product. Additionally, PLM includes within its operation, the information generated throughout the entire product life cycle.
Just like ERP solutions help companies in backend resource administration and planning, PLM solutions are the backbone of companies’ R&D and manufacturing operations management, administration and planning. PLM systems manage all the data, processes and resources right from product design and validation stages through to manufacturing. Further, PLM solutions help companies plan and streamline ideal product development and manufacturing processes, thus enabling them enhance their working efficiency.
Why is PLM useful?
Understanding the product life cycle is critical both for product and marketing teams, as well as the broader organization. The four stages (inception, growth, maturity and decline) help teams understand what level of investment a product should be receiving ata particular level, which products in a company’s portfolio should have the most focus and investment, and which products have the most opportunity for growth, revenue, and profit. In other words, a PLM system links together all of the processes required to design, build, deploy and maintain the product. PLM has been considered for more than a decade as the ideal method to most effectively and efficiently manage a product throughout its life cycle. The duration of each life cycle phase can be controlled using PLM software. This is particularly true of the Growth phase: this is the most important one to extend from a financial point of view because this is the period when the product is at its most profitable.
PLM Software
Since products usually have a limited time span and go through the concept, growth, maturity and decline phases, each phase of the PLM presents the enterprise with a set of opportunities and challenges. While each product requires different efforts for its design, development, and marketing, all of them end up passing through a product life cycle. Industry 4.0 is the buzzword today, and not without a reason. Along with IIoT, it is touted to be the next disruptive technology in the manufacturing sector, changing the way the products are manufactured. Industry 4.0 banks on the huge Big Data collected from the internet of things (IoT), machine learning, AI, and digital twins to automate production, and PLM software is adept at processing this product data. PLM software is therefore destined to continue playing a stellar role in the future by being a central repository of data for everyone involved with the product – from the design team till the end customer. Plus, the growing presence of PLM from the cloud offers enterprises new opportunities to provide newer and faster, more agile services, less up-front investment, and/or a subscription-based model.
PLM software is useful in assisting decision making in all phases of a product's lifespan - from design, development, production and maturity. PLM software enables real-time, online global collaboration that allows for working between distributed teams. By managing complex product information, engineering and manufacturing workflows, PLM software reduces the cost and time to market.Industry standard PLM system like Windchill from PTC seamlessly integrates with ERP, MES, CAD, AR, IoT technologies, and more. Cloud based PLM software empowering product lifecycle management for digital transformation of industries. As cyber-physical systems and cross-functional processes will continue to surge, the need for PLM software will only increase.