Many Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Return on Investment (ROI) analyses are based on soft-savings such as efficiency gains and time-to-market improvements. While these are incredibly impactful, possibly transformational, they are also hard to measure and can be less meaningful to some CFOs who are looking for harder savings opportunities.
PLM has been demonstrated to cut manufacturing costs in multiple ways. Industry benchmarks are often cited by PLM vendors and industry analysts, but of course mileage will vary.
What variables affect this mileage?
- Level of current reliance on paper systems. The heavier the reliance, the greater the opportunity of improvement through automation
- Reliance on point systems vs. integrated systems
- The level of complexity of products. More complex products tend to have more expensive parts and manufacturing processes and therefore the greater room for scrap or waste
- The quality and robustness of the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution and MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems)
- How the Supply Chain is involved in the process. For example, a heavy reliance on complex custom parts that are outsourced
- Level of litigation and regulatory exposure faced by the company. For example, how sensitive are client products to recalls or similar based on manufacturing mistakes.
- The culture of the Client. How much reliance is there on tribal knowledge and rock star performers?
Included in this white paper are metric claims from various industry sources and a discussion on how PLM can make an impact on these.
