PDM PLM technology has become an umbrella term for a great many tools. Every month another software vendor claims they have cornered a new PLM niche. They might provide an insightful new way to access a legacy database, relate important attributes across silos of information, or enable multiple views of a product's bill of material.
There is tremendous value in technologies such as these, but how do you go about quantifying their value to your organization?
In this article, we examine data management applications. These are the applications that store, relate, and index data so that you can better collaborate around it. There are three primary ways in which data management systems deliver sustainable, long-term value to your business operations. We'll refer to these value drivers as: Find-Filter, Ready-Prepare, and Process-Relate.
We'll take you through each of these "sources of value" and brief you on what questions to ask when evaluating a data management system.
PDM PLM Find-Filter
Your organization spends a great deal of time and effort creating data. It would probably take years to go through it all. Research by analyst firm IDC finds that engineers typical spend 6.5 hrs/week searching for and recreating product data costing $9.7M annually per 1000 workers.
To find out if a new application adds value, ask yourself:
Does the new application help us get to our data more quickly and completely than the current system does?
- How much time does our organization spend looking for data? What could be saved with the new capabilities?
- How much duplicate effort and data re-creation do we estimate is occurring? What could be avoided using the new functions?
PDM PLM Ready-Prepare
Even if you find the data you still may need to prepare it for further use. If it's not in a format you can immediately use then you might introduce errors when trying to "fix" it. Giga Group (part of Forrester Research) finds that employing PLM technology typically reduces errors by 50% in product development.
To test for possible benefits in this area, find out:
Does the new application help us avoid more manual manipulation of data than the current system does?
- How much time do we spend to translate, transcribe, or modify data (including corrections, repairs, and edits)?
- How many errors do we think are introduced? What scrap and rework can be attributed to poor data quality?
- What part of this rework could be eliminated using the additional features and methods enabled by the proposed system?
PDM PLM Process-Relate
So you've found the data, got it in a format you can use, and created something valuable from it. All that's left to do is to share your new work so that others can build upon it. But how do you do that?
In some companies, coworkers must travel to collaborate effectively- an expensive proposition depending on how far and how often they go. CIMData estimates that travel is often reduced by 50% with the right PLM systems.
Think about how significant this might be for you by asking:
Does the new application help us process new work and relate it to relevant data in our existing knowledge base more effectively than the current system does?
- How much time and effort do we spend to collecting, gathering, and packaging information?
- How much time do take to route, approve, and distribute information?
- How much effort is needed to notify people of updates and changes?
- What effort could be saved by applying additional automation and traceability to these tasks?
These activities impact your costs a lot more than you think. Look at them with a critical eye, assign them real costs, and estimate what reductions you could drive using the capabilities and functions of the new application.
My own experience consulting with clients and implementing PDM PLM technology all over the world has shown that data management applications can increase the time an engineering department spends creating new knowledge by more than 100%.
Use these methods to evaluate the real cost of your product development environment and the potential benefit of data management. The "hidden capacity" you find might surprise you!
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