Product Lifecycle Management (PLM): Critical Issues and Challenges in Implementation - Information Technology and Product Development - page 97

requirements, the implementation was going to be very complicated. After spending
millions of dollars implementing the solution, the company was left with a con-
figuration solution that took approximately two times the amount of time as their
competitors to configure purchase requests. Further, sometimes configured products
would not work and required an army of full-time resources to continually add prod-
uct data, compatibility data, and provide manual “assists” to the configuration as it
moved through the process. Needless to say, the company was not enamored with
the end result of the implementation and spent the next 2 years funding a project to
replace it.
5.4.2.1 But, Where Is the Benefit?
The complexity of the product development process and the PLM technology used
to automate that process is often reflected in the simplicity of the business cases
that we have traditionally seen developed to justify these implementation efforts.
Until recently, many of the companies implementing PLM and the PLM applica-
tion vendors tried to rely on material scrap and productivity (headcount) alone to
quantify a projects business impact. It does not require a lot of product development
experience or a PLM guru to recognize that these two areas do not contribute the
most benefit from product development practice automation. The problem is that the
functional areas that a company wants to improve and/or automate are not simple,
wholly contained subjects and they are neither easily measured nor automated.
Take for example a straightforward question like “where is this part used?” Large
electronic equipment manufactures would love to get control of part use and reuse.
This simple question to what should be a basic management principle desired by
most all product development organizations is really, really difficult to effectively
model in a PLM application. Yet being able to provide the engineering community
parts that are already production tested and qualified would positively impact the
quality, cost, and TTM for the new product.
Even though the technical complexity of PLM implementations limit the bene-
fits that can be estimated, measured, and the functionality delivered through today's
applications, managing this complexity is actually a good argument for why com-
panies should move toward replacing home grown PLM solutions with off-the-shelf
applications. Today's vendors clearly see the need to better mask the applications
complexity and more directly connect the PLM solution to standard, defendable
metrics. We should continue to see improvements in functional capability without
an increase in complexity as the PLM solutions evolve and mature.
5.4.3 Customizations Encouraged - Really!
PLM solutions typically require customizations as a critical part of the project
implementation effort. There was a time in the ERP implementation business when
the consultants who encouraged no customizations had a differentiating message.
Today, most companies understand that ERP implementation projects should not