Digital Paradigm
PLM is a digital paradigm. Under the PLM paradigm, products are managed across the lifecycle with digital computers, digital information and digital communication. - John Stark
Definition of PLM
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the activity of managing a company’s products all the way across their lifecycles; from the idea for a product to its retirement by the company and disposal of units used by the consumers. PLM is the management system for all company’s products.
The business objectives of PLM is to increase product revenues, reduce product-related costs, maximise the value of the product portfolio, and maximise the value of current and future products for both customers and shareholders.
Lower prices provide value to customers and lower costs provide value to shareholders.
Management of products includes activities such as planning, organisation and acquiring of resources, allocation and co-ordination of product-related resources, decision-taking, and control of results. A product must be managed in all phases of the lifecycle to make sure that everything works well, and that the product makes good money for the company.
Scope of PLM
Objectives and Metrics
Organisation and Management
Activities
People
Products
Product Data
Product Data Management System
PLM Applications
Facilities and Equipment
Methods and Techniques
With the PLM Paradigm, the activities of managing a company’s products are organised, defined and documented in cross-functional business processes across the product lifecycle. The processes fit into the company’s Business Process Architecture. Wherever possible, tasks are run in parallel to reduce cycle times.
With PLM, top managers understand and can formulate the need for effective product lifecycle management. They define the key metrics and also participate in developing and approving how the activity will be managed.
Strategic Benefits
Cost Reduction
PLM enables a company to reduce product-related costs. It’s important to reduce product costs. Otherwise the customer will choose a competitor’s product that costs less than the company’s product. Product-related material and energy costs are fixed early in the product development process. PLM provides the tools and knowledge to minimise them. And PLM helps cut recall, warranty and recycling costs that come later in the product’s life.
Cost Reduction Over Life Cycle (Product Industrial Engineering)
PLM enables the value of a product to be maximised over its lifecycle. With accurate, consolidated information about mature products available, low-cost ways can be found to extend their revenue-generating lifetimes.
Issues in the Traditional Product Development and Engineering Environment
Among the main issues in the traditional environment were serial workflow, departmental organisational structures and piecemeal improvements.
Waste to be eliminated (Recognized in PLM environment also)
transportation
inventory
motion
waiting
overproduction
non-value-adding processing
defects
Business Processes in the PLM Environment
A business process describes how the company wants to work on a particular activity.
Business processes related to products contain all the company’s knowledge about how to design, manufacture, support, use and recycle a product. Errors and/or waste in these processes can cost millions of dollars and waste months of time.
Process
The ISO 9000 Introduction and Support Package: Guidance on the Concept and Use of the Process Approach for management systems document defines a process as a “set of interrelated or interacting activities, which transforms inputs into outputs”.
Process Mapping is the activity of documenting an existing process. The other terms, Business Process
Mapping, or Process Charting, or Process Flow Charting also describe the same activity.
Process Modelling
The term Process Modelling, or Business Process Modelling, is usually used to
describe the activity of creating models of future processes.
Business Process Management (BPM) is an overall approach to the improvement of
a company’s business processes. It includes process mapping, process modelling, process measurement and process improvement.
Use Case
A Use Case describes, from the user viewpoint, the interaction between a user of a system and the system. The interaction is made up of many individual actions. A Use Case can be used, during system design, to show expected behaviour and to clarify requirements.
A process approach (different from department approach) is one of the eight principles for a company’s quality management system (QMS) recommended in the ISO 9001:2008 Quality management systems—Requirements document.
Business Process Architecture has a hierarchy of business processes, processes, sub-processes, sub-sub-processes and activities. At the highest level of the hierarchy are the business processes. A correctly-organised, coherent process architecture will enable effective working across the product lifecycle.
Processes may be divided into three groups. These are operational processes, support processes and management processes. Operational processes create value for external customers. Support processes create value for internal customers.
The three main operational processes are Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management, and Product Lifecycle Management.
There are six product-related processes that are found in most companies. Five of them correspond to the five phases of the product lifecycle. These are the Product Idea process, the Product Definition process, the Product Realisation process, the Product Support process, and the Product Phase Out process. The sixth one is Product Portfolio Management process.
Revenues Result from Processes (Effectiveness is given by the processes)
The product, the source of company revenues designed and manufactured by the activities of the business processes. This means that the quality and cost of the product are functions of the processes.
Waste is possible Results from Processes (Inefficiency gets designed in)
Disjunctures, superfluous steps, and inefficient activities in business processes all contribute to unnecessarily extending lead times, increasing costs and rework. And, the elapsed time between the first idea for a product, and the moment that the first customer receives the product, depends on the efficiency and effectiveness (first time right satisfying the requirements) of the processes.
Understanding and Improvement
Unless processes are understood, there’s no way of improving them, no way of
improving “how the company works”.
Methods are used across the product lifecycle. Examples include Activity Based Costing (ABC), Concurrent Engineering, Design for Assembly (DFA), Design for Environment (DFE), Design for Recycling (DFR), Design for Six Sigma (DFSS), Design for Sustainability (DFS), Design to Cost (DTC), Early Manufacturing Involvement (EMI), Early Supplier Involvement, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA), Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), Group Technology (GT), Life Cycle
Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Design (LCD), Open Innovation, Plan-Do-Check Act - Study (PDCAS), Poka Yoke (Mistake Proofing), Quality Function Deployment (QFD), Reliability Engineering, Roadmapping, Robust Engineering, Simultaneous Engineering, Stage/Gate methodologies, Taguchi techniques, TRIZ, Value Analysis (VA) and Value Engineering (VE).
The methods mentioned above have all met with success in one or more companies,
and should be understood by companies embarking on PLM initiatives.
Phases of the Product Lifecycle (Stark)
Our product lifecycle is defined as having five phases: imagination; definition; realisation; support; retirement. It’s recognised that, for users of the product, there are also five phases in the product’s lifecycle: imagination; definition; realisation; use (or operation); disposal (or recycling).
Eight step approach to process improvement (Stark)
1 Prepare Write down the scope and objectives. Plan the expected activities, taking care to include activities such as planning, communicating, reporting, interviewing, documenting, presenting and sustaining.
Search for related knowledge and develop a file with useful information.
2 As-is Understand and document the as-is situation. Document the specifics of the As-is product lifecycle processes, activities and steps. Document input and output information. Document users and use of the information. Document objectives, performance measures, problems, requirements.
Study the documentation: Identify problems and weaknesses holding back performance. Identify
waste. Identify the causes
3 To-be: Define 3 or 4 options for the to-be state (Based on the knowledge developed about possibilitie s to improve). SWOT to get the best to-be state
4 Strategy: Identify several potential alternatives to improve. Decide on the implementation strategies. SWOT to get the best implementation strategy
5 Plan: Develop a detailed implementation plan for an initial project and for further rollout phases
6 Communicate: Communicate a compelling case of success
7 Implement Start small, get some success. Check results against targets. Communicate success
8 Sustain When the initial project ends, start the planned follow-on activities
Product Data
Product data is the definition of a product. It’s all the knowledge and know-how about the product. In addition, it’s all the knowledge and know-how about the way the product is designed, manufactured, supported, used and recycled. The quality of product data is a key element of product success. One small error can cost millions of dollars.
Product Data
The term “product data” includes all data related both to a product and to the processes that are used to imagine it, to design it, to produce it, to use it, to support it, and to dispose of it.
Conceptual Product Data Model
A conceptual data model is a high-level data model that people throughout a company can understand.
Logical Data Model
A logical data model is a much more detailed model than a conceptual data model. It shows all the details about the entities that are required for the business to function normally.
Configuration, Configuration Management
The configuration of a product is a definition of all its configuration items (e.g., component, specification document, etc.) and of the way they are organised. Configuration Management (CM) is the activity of documenting initial product specifications, and controlling and documenting changes to these specifications.
Metadata
Metadata is “data about data”, “data describing other data”. It’s the key information about a larger volume of data, such as its name, its status, its location, and its owner. Metadata is similar to the catalogue information of a book in a library. That might contain the book title, author name, book number and book location.
Tools to Represent Product Data
Excel
Powerpoint
UML
One of the languages used is the Unified Modelling Language (UML).
Data Model Diagrams
A Generic Vision for Product Data in PLM
Clean, Standard, Process-Driven Data
Digital Data
Data Management
Legacy Data
The different types of legacy data will be identified. Policies will be defined for
managing them and, where possible, for eliminating them.
Data Exchange
Product Data Activities in the PLM Initiative
Product Data-Related Projects
Product Data Modelling
Product Data Improvement
Product Data Cleansing
Product Data Migration
Information Systems in the PLM
PLM applications
Idea Management applications. These enable gathering and evaluation of ideas in a structured fashion, and the selection and management of the best ideas
CAE/CAD/CAM applications. The focus in this group is on defining, analysing and simulating product, service and process definition data. Functionality of this type may be found in applications such as CAD, MCAD,
ECAD, Electronic Design Automation (EDA), geometric modelling, CAM, C APP, Rapid Prototyping, CAE,
DFM, DFA, Software Engineering, NC programming, BOM, routing definition, plastic behaviour analysis,
Factory Simulation, technical publishing, and parts library applications. These applications are used in
discrete manufacturing to create the right product and process definition data. In process manufacturing,
menu management and recipe management applications have an equivalent role
PDM technologies. The focus here is on managing product, service and process definition data th roughout the product lifecycle. Functionality of this type may be found in applications such as Engineering Document Management, Engineering Data Management, Product Data Management, Technical Document Management, Knowledge Management, Configuration Management, Enterprise Content Management, Regulatory Management and Quality Management applications
Visualisation/Viewing. Visualising, viewing and printing product and process definition data. This group includes technologies such as Digital Mock Up and viewers
Collaboration software. The focus here is on applications that allow people at different locations, or in
different organisations, to work together over the Web with the same product and process definition data. Collaboration software technologies include e-mail, electronic whiteboards, discussion groups, chat rooms, intranets, extranets, shared project spaces, portals, vortals and project directories
Data exchange and interoperability applications. The focus here is on applications that allow product and process definition data to be transferred from one format, that’s usable in one application, to another format that’s usable in another application
Customer-oriented applications. The focus here is on capturing product and process definition data from customers, and presenting product and process definition data to customers. Customer-oriented
technologies include applications for presenting product catalogues to customers, and applications for
capturing customers’ needs, requirements, feedback, orders and complaints
Supplier-oriented applications. Capturing product and process definition data from
suppliers and presenting product and process definition data to suppliers. Supplier-oriented technologies include RFQ applications, CSM applications, strategic sourcing and auctions
Process definition and management. Definition and management of processes and
workflows across the product lifecycle. These include the product development process, release
management, and the Engineering Change Management process
Project and program management. Definition and management of projects addressing
activities in the various parts of the product lifecycle
Portfolio Management. Management of the portfolio of products, and the portfolio of projects to develop new products and modify existing products
Regulatory/Standards/Compliance Management applications.
Integration. The Integration group includes both integration between PLM applications, and integration
between a PLM application and another application such as a CRM, ERP or SCM application
PDM Systems
A PDM system is one of the most important components of PLM. It can manage all the product data created and used throughout the product lifecycle. It can provide exactly the right information at exactly the right time.
A PDM system has eight main components. They are:
Information Warehouse
Information Warehouse Manager
Infrastructure
System Administration Manager
Interface Module
Product And Workflow Structure Definition Module
Workflow Control Module
Information Management Module
A PDM system will help improve product development productivity. Product development managers will know the exact status of a new development. They’ll be able to assign resources better, and release designs faster and with more confidence. Design engineers will know which parts are available and which procedures should be followed when designing new parts. Manufacturing engineers will be able to see how similar parts have been made previously.
A Generic Vision for PLM IT Applications
Digital Company
PLM Application Architecture and Strategy
Product Data Management for PLM
PLM Applications Throughout the Product Lifecycle
PLM Application Standardisation
Interfaces
Application Activities in the PLM Initiative
Application-Related Projects
PLM Application Status Review
Software Development Approaches
PDM System Selection and Implementation
Best Practice PDM System Selection
Prepare the PDM System Project
Hold a Kick-Off Meeting
Know Thyself
Document the Business Objectives
Document the Current Situation
Activities in Scope
Product Data
Users of Product Data
PLM Applications
Product Data Management Systems
Identify PDM System Requirements
Know Your Partners
Return on Investment
Important Activities in PLM Implementation
define Use Cases
mentor executives
create workflows
prepare new roles
coach Team Members
define process KPIs
plan OCM activities
select a PDM system
cleanse product data
migrate product data
plan roll-out strategy
define Initiative KPIs
implement a PDM system
harmonise applications
develop an OCM glossary
map the current process
define product data KPIs
manage the closure phase
model the future process
plan roll-out activities
plan training activities
restructure product data
communicate about changes
manage the Planning phase
define new business processes
align change expectations
maintain PLM applications
develop a process glossary
develop new reward systems
manage Initiative start-up
create new job descriptions
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