Q: Are top manufacturing management around the world now becoming more aware of the business benefits of PLM? 

Burkett: I think there is already a good recognition of what PLM is and its role in terms of speeding product to market, but there are also other benefits, like value engineering and compliance. I think it has bubbled up to a point where companies are recognising that they’ve made their investments in the operational side of the business and now there’s a lot more acceptance of moving upstream into product development — and really ensuring they get a good return on their design and R&D investment.

Q: So is the role of PLM in a manufacturing organisation now clearer?

Burkett: While the value is certainly being recognised, we tend to see PLM deployed in pockets. There’s still a disconnect — a lack of overall ownership for PLM in an organisation. Bringing a new product to market is a cross-functional process. But when you ask who actually owns that process, it gets a little fuzzy. When you ask who owns the technology strategy to solve that process, it’s even fuzzier. So it either gets executed in product development or in supply chain because they suffer the downstream pain for poor product design. Then, once in a while, you’ll see steering committees with overall responsibility for new product introduction asking for better visibility into the whole process. That seems to be where the most benefits are being recognised.

Q: Are there still major challenges to face?

Burkett: It may be a wild statistic, but I’d say 75% to 80% of the challenge is cultural. The basic technology is there.

Probably the biggest challenge right now is poor implementation. Some companies believe they can just buy a commercial, off-the-shelf product lifecycle management application, put it in, and it works. But they haven’t done a good job of understanding the business process they are trying to apply it to. What ends up happening is that they can add complexity instead of simplifying it. It turns into a multi-year implementation because there’s very little real input from the business.

Q: You’ve talked about integrating business cultures to make PLM effective. What about integrating different technology platforms — ERP, MES, and supply chain systems. Is that something that’s now actively happening — and happening quickly?

Burkett: It’s not happening quickly, but it is absolutely essential. In order to effectively bring a new product to market, you need to have that handoff from the PLM to the ERP system, to a supply chain management system, or to an MES system. And then you want to be able to bring data back from those systems. That gets into a related topic we refer to as master data management, which is an architectural strategy — how do you identify the master data, who owns it, what other systems can subscribe to that data, and then what’s your strategy for dealing with it? That’s an organisational challenge.

It’s an overarching problem for many people in IT, but in PLM I’d say it’s still premature.

Yet, if you talk to any of the vendors and say, “How actively are you looking at a very seamless transition of all the information that’s necessary from my CAD environment into my ERP systems?’” you’ll find they haven’t taken ownership of the whole problem. So what happens is that the buyer is stuck between their ERP vendor and their CAD vendor, and neither one will take ownership of the problem — yet.

Q: Do you think PLM can also have an impact on how companies respond to the growing number of green manufacturing initiatives now in force, especially in complying with new European and global regulations? Is it a useful tool for coping with those requirements?

 Burkett: It’s huge. One of the fundamental benefits PLM has always had is compliance. You know what’s in your product. Now, when you have regulatory requirements around leaded components in electronics or chemicals, and throw on top of that regulations on labelling for food, all of these drive to the same thing that you need to know — down to a very detailed level — the ingredients of the product. PLM is what owns that knowledge. The more those regulations come into play — and those regulations could change a couple of years from now — the more you need to search into your product and understand what product you may ship today that may violate that regulation. It’s one of the real opportunities for PLM.

Q: Do you think we are now moving from being driven by the need for compliance to a situation where people are proactively looking for innovative “greener” opportunities that deliver new business value?

Burkett: Yes. It goes back to what I was talking about before. Compliance and regulation is the spark that forces people to make a decision. As they start to get into it, they start to realise that it’s basically quality management and process improvement. So they realise the better visibility they have into the processes they use, as well as the makeup of the products they produce, the better opportunity there is to eliminate redundancy and eliminate costs, and that ultimately breaks down to the bottom line.

Q: What advice would you give to manufacturing companies about adopting PLM and how to avoid as many of the pitfalls as possible?

Burkett: I think the first piece of advice is to be aware that PLM is not something new. People are getting benefits. There’s a level of maturity now. Having said that, don’t look for the silver bullet. Do your homework up front about the business problem you are trying to fix. That will help prioritise what you need to do first.

Product life cycle management is not a single application. It’s really a process and technology strategy. It might require you to assemble a few different technologies to solve the problem, but the technology is out there. It really requires that the business process work is done up front.

Then have a long-term view of what your broader PLM initiative would be, but a very incremental roadmap. That means regular milestones with wins that have benefit so you show a return on your investment and you keep the business engaged by seeing incremental value. If you allow it to turn into a long project, your business could lose interest and the project could fail.

Q: Finally, what are some of the highlights companies should watch out for in PLM in the year ahead?

Burkett: The obvious one is going to be the tighter integration between ERP, MES, and PLM, part of it being driven by some of the consolidation that is happening across the industry. Finally, I think that one will start to be addressed.

The second is that supplier interaction will become more mainstream, basically the ability to involve your suppliers from the beginning of the design stage and then streamline the sourcing process — being able to involve them very effectively by knowing what your supplier’s capabilities are as well as being able to connect to them very quickly to share that information. This is happening today, but I don’t think it is as mature as it should be. 

The third is what I call customer needs management, really being able to capture what it is that customers want at a very granular level to make sure that the products you bring to market are actually satisfying the customer need. You get a better return and a better success rate on a new product introduction process, rather than bringing products to market and getting a 25% to 50% failure rate on new introductions.

Q: So the earlier the business gets involved in PLM, identifies why you are doing it, and what you are aiming for in the long term, the more successful the implementation will be.

Burkett: Exactly.