In an earlier post, What Does the “P” in PLM Really Mean?, I discussed what the word “product” means in  product lifecycle management (PLM). In this post, I am going to move onto the next letter, “L” for lifecycle.

According to Merriam-Webster, one definition of lifecycle is “a series of stages through which something (as an individual, culture, or manufactured product) passes during its lifetime.” In a typical manufacturing environment, these stages include conception, design and development, manufacture, and service. Ideally, a PLM system should manage the entire lifecycle that covers all the stages. Originally, however, the concept of PLM was designed to address product definition authoring and, later on, define data management issues for the design department. Not every stage receives equal attention under the PLM umbrella, and the application maturity of each stage is not yet at the same level. Read the rest of this entry »

We all agree that being “green” (more environmentally conscious) is great. But businesses often struggle with exactly how they can get closer to this wonderful color. To a certain degree, product lifecycle management (PLM) can help manufacturers with their “green initiatives.” There is an excellent Green PLM blog series—written mainly by Kate Bourdet, at Dassault Systèmes—explaining what PLM has to do with green, more or less from a product lifecycle activity point of view. In this blog post, I will provide some complementary writing from a slightly different angle.

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What does the “P” in PLM really mean? The question seems ambiguous since PLM may refer to many different things (such as an airport, a university, a railway company, etc.). Okay, so let me clarify what I mean. The PLM I’m talking about here is product lifecycle management. Now, the answer seems quite simple. However, my purpose is not to trick you with this silly question, but to explore the true meaning of “product” under the PLM setting.

So, what is a product in the light of product lifecycle management? Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I attended a product lifecycle management (PLM) seminar hosted by PTC and its North American Windchill Partner of the Year award-winner BRT Solutions. The main topic of this seminar was about how small & medium businesses (SMBs) can start and advance their PLM practices. After the seminar, I kept thinking about what the PLM industry can offer for SMBs. PLM used to be a luxury for large enterprises. Is the PLM industry ready to accommodate the increasing demands from SMBs?

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Recently, I touched on the idea of building a vendor portfolio to help manage risks associated with software outsourcing practices in the article Should North Americans Send More Software Development Work to China? I’d like to use this blog post to give some complementary readings for those who read the article and felt the vendor portfolio idea interesting.

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Disclaimer: The idea behind this post is strictly based on an assumption that has no scientific proof—and an approach that is very simplified. Thus, the results and conclusions should not be used for any serious purpose.

Recently, as a member of the TEC Green Team, I went through over 20 enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors to examine elements within their offerings that help companies tackle environmental issues. During the research process, I got the impression that there seems to be a relationship between vendor size and the greenness of their offerings. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the context: You’re selecting an ERP system. Your office is standardized on Windows and MS Office Suite. Should you select MS Dynamics and become a full-fledged “MS shop”?

We’ll look at three reasons you should lean toward MS Dynamics—and then look at why those reasons might be less compelling than you think.

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The year 2008 is approaching an end, and we still haven’t seen any major acquisitions taking place in the product lifecycle management (PLM) world. Truly, after a series of acquisitions during the years 2006 and 2007, there are not many acquisitions left to happen except the one between SAP (the one likely to be a buyer), and PTC (the one likely to sell itself). So, should SAP buy PTC?

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When I first learned that Lawson had acquired the product lifecycle management (PLM) software division of Freeborders, the Oracle-Agile acquisition came to mind. Ten months prior to the Lawson-Freeborders deal, Oracle President Charles Phillips said “the addition of Agile, which will serve as the foundation of our PLM offering, will further Oracle’s strategy of delivering industry-specific enterprise applications and allows us to offer yet another strategic application to SAP customers.” By completing the acquisition, Oracle was able to jump to 5th  place in 2007 in terms of PLM revenue, according to a report released by CIMdata. Read the rest of this entry »

In the discrete manufacturing sector, the bill of materials (BOM) is a fundamental piece of product data that exists throughout the major stages of a product’s life cycle. According to Wikipedia, BOM is the term used to describe the raw materials, parts, subcomponents, and components needed to manufacture a finished product. Simply speaking, BOM is just a list of all materials needed to be assembled together into a product. The concept is clear and simple, and it doesn’t seem to be a difficult task to manage BOM, especially when we have a powerful tool—software—in hand. However, this is true only when the product structure is so simple that not much collaboration is needed to develop the product, when consumers are delighted to have the same products that everyone else has, and when design, engineering, and production are performed under the same roof. The truth is, during the past few decades, the landscape of the manufacturing sector has changed dramatically, and it is still changing at a rapid pace. Read the rest of this entry »

Hi, my name is Kurt, and I am a new member of the Research Analyst Group at TEC. Before contributing anything else to this blog site, I’d like to briefly introduce myself.

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