Commentary: September 2006

By Bruce Boes, UGS Corp.

Fact 1: Small manufacturers aren’t any different from their larger counterparts. Fact 2: Small manufacturers are different.

According to AMR Research, small to midsize businesses (SMB), like their larger counterparts, need software to rapidly make design changes;  facilitate design approval processes; increase part reuse; initiate new product development processes; integrate engineering and manufacturing BOMs; easily manage multiple versions of the same product; and collaborate with customers, partners, and their own staff.

The key difference between large companies and SMBs (six out of 10 of which are part of someone else’s supply chain) is in how small manufacturers respond to these issues. Their ability to respond is often a matter of survival.

Enter product lifecycle management (PLM), which now addresses SMB requirements and more. Aside from enabling cost-saving productivity increases, PLM drives revenue by shortening time to market, improving quality, and facilitating processes that can lead to more innovative products.

PLM applies a consistent set of business solutions across the extended enterprise from concept to end-of-life. It integrates people, processes,  business systems, and information. For most SMBs this means CAD/CAM/CAE and cPDM to manage it all and facilitate collaboration. As contrasted to ERP, which manages physical assets, cPDM manages the knowledge created during the design and manufacturing process.

It is this knowledge capture and reuse that ultimately helps to standardize processes, improve access to information, reduce physical prototyping and rework, and make more efficient use of both hardware and knowledge resources.

But, you ask—PLM? What if I only have a small IT staff (if any) and few documented processes. I can’t afford enterprise PLM software or any disruption to my existing business.

Well, by leveraging new scalable architectures and industry best practices, you can now buy PLM specifically designed and priced to fit an SMB’s needs.

So what should a smaller manufacturer look for when considering a PLM solution? First, and foremost, a vendor/partner with a vision of PLM for SMBs. Second, look for an application family with characteristics that allows your company to start where you want to and grow as you need to, all while maintaining low total cost of ownership. Some of these characteristics are modular, yet integrated solutions that address your greatest pain first then add capabilities without sacrificing integration or flexibility; applications preconfigured with industry best practices to leverage the knowledge of those that have gone before;  solutions that are easy to use and deploy to minimize IT support and end-user training; and scalable applications that grow with your business and protect data along the way.

UGS has created a Web-based SMB Center—click here—to help SMBs understand how PLM can improve their performance. The center helps companies learn more about PLM, how it can be applied to improve innovation, and how templates and other industry-specific functionality can help ease implementation.

Bruce Boes is vice president of marketing for UGS’s Velocity Series portfolio. Send your feedback about this commentary through e-mail by clicking here. Please reference “Boes on PLM, September 2006” in your message.