Product Lifecycle Management

“PLM is all about Product innovation intertwined with speed to market. A PLM approach necessitated because today’s customers are demanding personalized choices and higher product quality. This is what driving companies to bundle up together product life-cycle management, supply chain management, and customer relationship management.”

Globalization and lower profit margins are forcing companies to focus on their core competencies and requiring "buyer-vendor-supplier" value networks to evolve. Besides putting stress on innovation, the most successful companies involve all departments within their organization, such as marketing and sales, planning and production, procurement, and maintenance, as well as external parties, such as partners, suppliers, contract manufacturers, service providers, and customers, in the development of new products.

SAP (PLM) is a flexible and all encompassing adaptable solution that facilitates creativity and takes the idea of product innovation beyond the boundaries of traditional organizational constraints. It provides a holistic view of all product-related business processes and information throughout the complete product and asset life cycle and throughout the extended supply chain.

Business Benefits

• Reduction in costs by outsourcing tasks and management of cost changes by evaluating the progress of projects across product lines.
• Development of innovative products, exploring new market opportunities and gaining a higher market share with improved customer satisfaction.
• Product quality management reduction in wastage throughout every phase of the product life cycle.
• Reduction in time to market and time to volume by well integrated supply chain management and procurement.
• Plan, measure, and track equipment availability, operation, safety, and maintenance.
• Improved productivity through an easy-to-use, role-based enterprise portal that delivers all of the necessary content to workers.
• Better decision-making at all levels with powerful analytics covering areas such as portfolio management, occupational health, product safety, product quality, and maintenance management.
• Lower cost of ownership by well integrated operational systems - computer-aided design, ERP, CRM, SRM, and SCM systems.

The Solution Supports:

• Product conception
• Product design and engineering
• Production ramp-up
• Product change management
• Service and maintenance

Conclusion

SAP PLM implementation enables low total cost of ownership through an open and robust infrastructure that provides easy integration of operational systems such as CAD applications, ERP, CRM, SRM, and SCM solutions. The modular approach of MySAP PLM allows for gradual implementations that match customers' evolving needs.