Product Lifecycle Management Selection

This technical evaluation and supplier selection guide will help organizations select the best product lifecycle management software for their business requirements.

Industrial Manufacturers Require Product Lifecycle Management for Optimized Processes and Better Products

Choosing the right suppliers for product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions is of paramount importance for manufacturers. PLM encompasses the entire lifespan of a product, from conceptualization to retirement, and efficient management is crucial for success in today’s competitive market. Selecting reliable and technologically advanced suppliers ensures that manufacturers have access to the right PLM tools and expertise, enabling them to streamline processes, reduce time-to-market, and enhance product quality. 

Solution providers support the critical central role product lifecycle management plays in their customer’s success. They are continually enhancing their solution portfolios and today’s PLM goes well beyond traditional product authoring and testing applications (CAD/CAM/CAE).  Modern PLM suites include powerful support for every stage of the product lifecycle. Product design has become tightly integrated with manufacturing and service processes and powerful collaborative environments are enabling complex, global networks of partners to freely collaborate in product innovation, development, production, and support activities.

Moreover, a strong supplier partnership fosters collaboration and innovation, allowing manufacturers to stay ahead of market trends and continually improve their product offerings. Successful manufacturers look beyond their investments in PLM as merely buying a set of applications and tools for product development and to improve engineering efficiency. Rather, they embrace the objective of enabling more effective and collaborative global business processes.  Achieving this goal requires an understanding of a company’s business strategies and processes, and the engineering resources and IT infrastructure requirements they impose.  PLM solution selection can then follow as a rational process of matching these requirements to individual solution capabilities.

Product Lifecycle Management Selection Strategic Issues

Explore the Benefits of Virtual Simulations and Digital Twins    

The use of digital twins is becoming more of a standardized component of an overall digital transformation strategy. Many industries are recognizing that the implementation of digital twins is important in implementing predictive and prescriptive analytics to optimize operational performance. In discrete industries, such as automotive A&D and manufacturing, a digital twin can be implemented to connect all product data throughout a new product development cycle. One way to envision such a digital twin is as an information model that forms associations between all the tools or methods used by engineers to design, test, and validate a product. These include design requirements, 2D/3D models, virtual simulations for test and validation, and real-time functional field data, leading PLM suppliers to offer all these technologies, including platforms and solutions required to implement digital twins across a range of industries.

Advanced virtual simulation technology is an integral component of the digital twin. Comprehensive simulation platforms can simulate and validate the functionality of product design concurrently, enabling the designers to validate their designs as they go. In the context of the digital twin, real-time sensor data can be used to populate simulation applications that then emulate the physical product and enable design improvements.

Foster a Cross-collaborative Culture    

Now that a clear vision has emerged to digitize the product lifecycle from design through the manufacturing, successful manufacturers need to integrate an end-to-end solution involving multiple constituents within an organization. Leverage relationships between people inside the organization and outside the organization. Product complexity is driving a need for more collaboration as PLM developers are approaching new territory with their product development. Companies must now pair their internal experts in collaborative relationships along supply chains, consultants, and their customers.

Explore Options When Selecting Deployment & Licensing Models   

For deployment options, companies are presented with on-premise data centers, on-premise private clouds, hosted data centers, hosted private clouds, and public or hybrid cloud options, each with its own set of benefits and drawbacks. The three primary payment structures are either high-cost perpetual licenses with recurring maintenance fees, subscription licenses that include updates and support services, or curated Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) packages. 

For companies considering moving to the cloud, most PLM suppliers are already set up to provide managed cloud services. This can be hugely beneficial for companies that lack the IT infrastructure or expertise to host the software on premise. Even large companies, which have previously invested in the necessary infrastructure, are realizing the benefits of moving to cloud computing. Cloud computing and related services empower companies to deploy projects faster and companies can scale as needed. 

This deployment option also eliminates the capital expenditure required to install or upgrade a server infrastructure. Lower maintenance cost associated with hardware and necessary IT staff is achieved through economy of scale; so is greater resiliency and redundancy of the data center. However, despite all the benefits of cloud computing, on-premise solutions are still viable and sometimes preferable. 

The primary advantage of on-premise deployment is control. With on-premise solutions, companies can work with PLM providers to customize the software to meet their specific needs. Because PLM solutions are integral to the operations of an engineering organization, the customization and broader functionality offered with on-premise deployment can sometimes outweigh other deployment options.