Product Lifecycle Management (PLM): Critical Issues and Challenges in Implementation - Information Technology and Product Development - page 88

overall company-wide product development performance, at the individual product
engineer's level, the impacts might be less favorable.
In large companies, it is not uncommon to have the PLM implementation initia-
tive driven from product management. Product management is interested in finding
new and faster ways to develop products, share designs, increase the quality of the
designs, and design for cost. The engineers designing the products do not nec-
essarily have the same desire to change. Time and time again it is the evolving
business model through low-cost development strategies, product platforms, acqui-
sitions, and contract manufacturing that force a management team to look at ways to
scale product development. While the typical engineer would like to have the CAD
software interface with the engineering BOM seamlessly, this alone is usually not
enough for them to suggest a multi-million dollar PLM implementation. So essen-
tially, the pain driving the PLM implementation effort is not the pain of the most
impacted group - the product engineer!
This lack of alignment between product management and the product engineer-
ing group is one of the primary reasons why PLM implementations often deploy
even when significant negative impact is identified. A couple of years ago a com-
pany that was suffering from some very public product quality issues (recalls, halted
shipments, and canceled orders) embarked on a PLM implementation project. As
the project neared its initial deployment, the engineering team members developed
a pseudo “time and motion” analysis that illustrated how much the new system
and the associated processes would negatively impact the day-to-day actions of the
product engineer. The analysis also included a rough estimate of how many new
engineers would need to be added to the staff in order to retain existing productivity
levels due to the loss of customized legacy solutions tailored to the existing product
development process. The senior executives acknowledged the good work from the
team and then approved the deployment of the PLM application because the overall
corporate benefits that the new system provided out-weighed the productivity costs
to individual engineers.
5.3 The Elusive Standard Engineering Process
In most companies, senior executives “get” the product development process. The
development process is viewed as standard across product groups, even across busi-
nesses. But once one gets into the details of how a company actually develops a
product; how product development decisions are made; who is involved at the var-
ious different stages; how partner collaboration is defined and executed; etc. - the
real nuances of a company's product development practices become more visible.
Most companies have a product development process, even a new product introduc-
tion process (NPI). Some companies (but not all) have a retirement process as well
for their products. However, the practices of the seemingly similar product develop-
ment and engineering processes differ wildly across companies and even between
products developed within the same company.