Part 1 of my recent blog series, Filling the Holes and Breaking Down Artificial Walls in a Process PLM Solution Set, established that the product lifecycle management (PLM) software market for process industries (i.e., food & beverage, life sciences, chemicals, paints, consumer products, etc.) has not been well-defined as compared to its counterparts in the discrete widgets manufacturing and fashion (apparel) industry segments.

Indeed, the process PLM solution market is currently a mosaic of established generic PLM providers and a plethora of specialized vendors with solutions that cater to only a part of the entire process PLM scope. The recent acquisition of Enginuity (mostly for its formula management capabilities) by Dassault Systemes only proves the point and the need for some consolidation in the market.

My post then analyzed typical workarounds to solve the puzzle of integrating these specialized solutions, most of which focus on structured data, which is insufficient for creating adequate multi-media product specifications in this day and age. 

Part 2 of the series analyzed other typical constraints of generic PLM solutions that claim process PLM expertise, such as the level of these process PLM vendors’ global enterprise support as well as available solution configuration options and ongoing change capabilities.

The series ended with the promise of separate future posts talking about some concrete process PLM add-on products that are already generally available (or that will be available soon). This post is the fulfillment of that promise.

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Part 1 of this blog series established that the product lifecycle management (PLM) software market for process industries (food & beverage, life sciences, chemicals, paints, consumer products, etc.) has not been well-defined as compared to its counterparts in the discrete manufacturing and fashion (apparel) industry segments. Indeed, the process PLM solution market is currently a mosaic of specialized vendors with solutions that cater to only a part of the entire process PLM flow.

My post then analyzed typical workarounds to solve the puzzle of integrating these silo-based solutions with their focus on structured data, which is insufficient for creating adequate product specifications in this day and age. Part 2 will analyze other typical constraints of these solutions, such as the level of process PLM vendors’ global enterprise support as well as available solution configuration options and ongoing change capabilities.

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The product lifecycle management (PLM) software market for process industries (food & beverage, life sciences, chemicals, paints, consumer products, etc.) is serviced by a plethora of solution providers, but it hasn’t been well-defined as compared to its counterparts in the discrete manufacturing and fashion (apparel) industry segments. Indeed, the Process PLM solution market is a mosaic of specialized vendors, starting with enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors with some process PLM capabilities (i.e., SAP, Oracle, and Infor) and pure-play PLM vendors (i.e., Siemens Industry Automation Division and Dassault Systemes). In addition, there are many toolset-oriented niche vendors and document management system (DMS)-oriented point solutions.

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