Why You Need PLM 4.0

I started my week in talking to one of the boutique CRM/ERP Consulting organisations, who with the ever increasing demand for Industry4.0 transformation wanted to discuss Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and its take-up across SMEs and the Large Enterprise.

PLM systems have been around for years, be they in the form of a bunch of Microsoft excels, word docs, powerpoints, and various PDFs. Anything more is often deemed too big, sophisticated or expensive. Today with the ever present 4th Industrial Revolution upon us, without a thorough and compatible PLM4.0 system, no digitalization strategy will be of use.

The Manufacturing sector is undergoing a Revolution, with huge shifts in design technology across convergent modeling to generative design, with manufacturing by robots and cobots to additive manufacturing. 

The PLM world is transforming and underpins all things throughout the asset lifecycle. 

#1 Driver For The 4IR

PLM doesn't start with the product, but with knowing what your customer (B2C & B2B) thinks about your company and your products and then translating those to your future product design requirements. Frequently the solutions that collect customer data are disconnected from the design process, businesses are unable to benefit from that direct feedback.

As I detailed in my last PLM article, if we look at our personal consumer based buying demands, we go online, find the perfect product, only to find it'll take 72hrs and as statistics are now showing, we look elsewhere for someone who can deliver in 24, maximum 48hrs. Your get-to-market model needs to speed up.

One of the greatest challenges facing manufacturers is the continuing challenge of productive communications inter-departmentally further exacerbated through a silo mentality. Processes, softwares are frequently disconnected and external suppliers continue that disconnect, care of significant manual data transfer.

Without a PLM solution, businesses operate with endless manual, IT disparate processes ranging from emails, presentations, excels, pdfs, 2d and 3d drawings, BOMs, costs..

As production ramps, numerous problems are uncovered and staff run around patching and solving problems.

PLM 4.0

PLM applies to virtually everything we produce. It doesn't just help us make more products, but it helps us make better products:

• The Asset Lifecycle
• Research, Design and Manufacturing timelines
• Product Profitability

PLM technologies help companies collect data about product development and the products themselves in a time-efficient inter-departmental and supplier fashion. Each of the teams working separately on a single product might collaborate using graphical dashboards and platforms. 

Clearly, the requirements for PLM systems are changing as we need to allow an even broader user community to easily access data and functions. This requires new, cloud-based operator models that enable smaller companies to implement them quickly. They must be able to record IoT data extracted from connected products and to return them to the development process for analyzing as part of the digital twin.

With the vertical and horizontal integration under-pinned care of the PLM from supplier to factory and to the top-floor, the product is released to the market and the loop closed with Service Lifecycle Management models in place for maintenance and potentially disposal.

Production Visibility

Today's PLM solutions provide far more choice, with new functionality added to assist in the visualization of the entire Asset Lifecycle, care of Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR & VR). This enables the management of far more complex designs embedded with IoT, to validate early on product designs saving time and costs.

Speeding up the product development process with faster and more accurate quality information are important goals for PLM as the industry forges forward into the 4IR.

One of the key additions to the process is the quite recent introduction of the aforementioned AR/VR. Companies are looking to combine thinking from across the organization be that locally, domestically and even globally to quickly engage best practices and customer thoughts in a timely manner. Through AR users can "play" with a 3D model of the product both from an external and even internal perspective, throughout the different phases of development.

Autodesk VR Center of Excellence in Munich

A modern, manageable and comprehensive PLM system provides the platform for taking advantage of IoT, Additive Manufacturing and the Digital Twin. Through an entire consolidation of all product information into a single-view and twin product, the organization can ensure everyone is accessing the most up to date product, no matter where they are.

Furthermore, care of the Cloud, the manufacturer can open up to internal and external stakeholders throughout the value chain in real time.

Connected Data Complexity

Products driven by customer demand on an ongoing basis rely on a PLM platform to pull together the various data threads from across the factory and enterprise out to the customer and supplier. Connectivity is extremely complex and challenges the smartest of engineers. The PLM products need more creativity to navigate this. It's no longer about just the CAD based design, the authoring level but also about the cross-functional, cross-disciplinary capabilities and out into the after-sales maintenance phases. 

More recently PLM has seen additional functionality starting to arrive care of Electronic Design Automation portfolios and Additive Manufacturing (AM) compatibility.

Manufacturers are looking to quickly expand their use of AM, with companies looking to evolve their products' cost and performance.

Consider then the latest generative modeling techniques that take typical designs and evolve using computer models to never before consider designs using AM and embed this in your PLM closed loop business.

Pulling It All Together

PLM helps manufacturers ensure that individuals and business systems receive accurate and timely product development information, helping people make better decisions faster.

Mistakes will continue to happen and changes will be needed, but closing the loop between manufacturing, product development and enterprise business systems with PLM increases a company’s ability to learn.

PLM solutions are focused on connecting design with manufacturing processes and both product simulation and manufacturing simulation are part of connecting design with manufacturing. The cloud has become a game-changer, making PLM attainable for manufacturers of all sizes, removing technology and resource barriers and providing secure, connected real-time collaboration anywhere in the world through a web browser.

With emerging technologies such as The Digital Twin, AM and IoT, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, the nature of PLM and what it needs to deliver are changing. PLM is moving beyond just archiving data to analyzing data, learning from data, and predictive trends from the data to leverage the vast amounts of information in the product development process.

PLM integration is becoming easier as more manufacturers use the latest open standards.

It's A Passion

Ever since I saw the demand at a consumer level for faster and more personalized products and Industry4.0 being the way to deliver this, it's been my understanding that without an advanced and understood PLM Methodology and Application, the enthusiasm would be pointless.

 Let's bring PLM to a level it deserves, for the customer's sake.

 Always love to hear from you and your thoughts

Andrew

 www.dhirubhai.net/in/Andrew-Sparrow-4IR

[email protected] 

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