Managing Product Complexity: harnessing digital transformation

In today’s global market, customers increasingly demand more features and options in the products they purchase, often expecting these enhancements at lower costs. Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) are pressed to launch new products swiftly across diverse markets while grappling with unprecedented supply chain disruptions. As a result, products are becoming inherently more complex—more challenging to design, manufacture, and deliver cost-effectively.

Digital transformation provides a comprehensive approach to addressing these escalating product complexities. Managing them extends beyond mere design issues; it necessitates a transformation in how companies design, manufacture, launch, and service their products. Effective product complexity management covers the entire lifecycle of a product, from conception to market, demanding robust integration across various systems such as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Manufacturing Execution System (MES), and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). It also requires strong collaboration across engineering, manufacturing, and operations departments.

By shifting the focus earlier in the product development lifecycle and enhancing PLM platforms during digital transformations, companies can realize substantial benefits in managing product complexities. This shift helps maintain a concentrated focus on product variants and options throughout critical phases of product design, manufacturing, and support. It promotes a model-based approach to product development, where requirement specifications capture the complexities of the features and options offered. As products grow more complex, maintaining quality becomes increasingly challenging. Requirement management captures essential configuration needs, which modern PLM tools can utilize to manage product variability and options effectively. This configuration management forms the backbone of defining the Bill of Materials (BOM), from design to engineering, and onward to manufacturing and service BOMs, facilitating scaled testing and verification activities to mitigate quality risks.

The increase in product complexity also leads to a surge in documentation requirements—from customer needs to product requirements, from test cases to design, and manufacturing plans—all of which escalate in volume. The only way to manage this effectively is by integrating all elements into a single system. A unified PLM solution enables teams to instantly understand the impacts of any changes, streamlining updates across the chain. For example, changes in requirements can directly show which test cases, designs, and manufacturing plans need adjustments. This integration ensures that teams work on elements they know are affected, rather than on everything that might be impacted, thus moving quicker and with greater confidence.

Modern PLM platforms, tightly integrated with MES and ERP systems, provide early visibility into product costs, material planning, supplier collaboration, and compliance risk assessments. With support from analytics and Quality Management System (QMS), these platforms offer closed-loop quality systems that align with best practices for Design for Excellence (DFx), aiding in the management of growing product complexities.

Digital transformation breaks down previously isolated information silos, eliminating redundant efforts and wasted time, and enabling teams to accelerate their activities with the assurance that all impacts are comprehensively addressed. Flexible and scalable PLM platforms drive enterprise-wide digital transformations, crucial for managing the complexities of modern products.

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