Product Lifecycle Management (PLM): Critical Issues and Challenges in Implementation - Information Technology and Product Development - page 90

part substitution, etc. it quickly became apparent that complex and simple develop-
ment projects alike were using the same “lite” process for new product introduction
and engineering change management. When the team looked into the problem, they
found that it was a situation where the process names were exactly the same and the
engineer incentives resulted in a behavior of presenting the product project details in
such a way that the development team was often allowed to use the simpler process.
Needless to say, this was “low hanging fruit” for the PLM implementation team;
changes to the decision and review criteria were immediately recommended as a
means to directly improve quality in certain products.
5.3.2 Process: A Corporate Differentiator?
It is obvious that product development processes are similar, but not the same across
product families and they are definitely not the same across companies - all of
which complicates PLM implementations. Importantly, as noted previously, most
senior executives use ERP as the baseline of effort for all IT application imple-
mentations because - at least until now - it was the costliest, longest project that a
company had to endure. With that as a backdrop, compare the process scope and the
required variant content of PLS implementations with the process focus of an ERP
implementation.
ERP solutions became “commoditized” as soon as the finite sets of financial
options and practices were defined and agreed too by the financial regulatory bodies.
Obviously, strict government regulation and oversight of accounting practices were
instrumental in finalizing these definitions. ERP implementations are not easy - no
one would say that they are. But, the processes that they are automating are “stan-
dard” with-in an acceptable spectrum. No company is out there defining their own
way of accounting for assets and debits. As a result, ERP projects have implemen-
tation aids like process maps, approval structures, and role-based security that is
very reusable across projects. Software companies like SAP have complete imple-
mentation “templates” to help accelerate the automation effort. Oracle provides a
data warehouse solution that has a direct connect to the ERP modules with pre-
developed analysis cubes and reports that address the typical management views
required to run a GAAP compliant business.
It is debatable whether the contributing factor to the PLM implementation chal-
lenge is the lack of a recognizable product development process within the PLM
application or whether product development processes are enough of a company
differentiator that they will never coalesce into standard processes unless there was
a major forcing function - like government regulations or restrictions related to
product intellectual property.
5.3.3 The Process Ripple
Product development processes have an interesting characteristic. Since it is on the
front-end of “the value chain,” many of the decisions made during this stage “ripple”
throughout the enterprise affecting seemingly unconnected parts of the business.