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onto what is thought to be the more valuable parts of the project. So as competent as
the engineering department is at developing revenue generating products, regardless
of how loudly they disagree, they need help in planning the implementation and in
developing the business case for the PLM implementation.
Estimation of the project costs, the level of effort and the overall implementa-
tion complexity is another area that needs to be carefully done before the PLM
implementation can be completely underway. An important problem that many
PLM implementations encounter is making poor estimations of the project time
and implementation costs and as a result completely mismanaging the expectations
of senior executives. What is unique to PLM implementations is that most execu-
tives think that PLM projects are fairly simple, short-duration projects. Although
the bravado of the engineer does not help to properly set executive expectations, the
IT vendor sales team can further contribute to the confusion through the desire to be
accommodating during the sales cycle.
Consider the example of PLM implementation at an electronics company that
had been “spun out” from a larger organization. The leadership team identified
early on that replacing the legacy product development system and the manufactur-
ing resource planning (MRP) application could quickly drive down their escalating
operating costs. They commissioned a team to select, purchase, and implement a
new PLM application. The PLM team did the standard due diligence work with
the PLM solution vendors and “learned” that the general rule of thumb for imple-
menting PLM applications is 3 months per software module. Strangely enough, the
quoted effort did not seem to dramatically change when they further explained some
of the specifics of their particular project (e.g., complex bill of materials (BOM), re-
implementing MRP on a parallel track, a very complex product data conversion
from a legacy mainframe system).
Once the project team had the rough effort estimates, the rest of the business case
development and planning calculations were easy. Unfortunately, experiences in
implementing PLM solutions are fairly limited today and unlike ERP projects, nei-
ther the project leaders, IT departments, nor the executive sponsors think that they
need to ask the tough project questions in order to ensure that the PLM estimates
are correct. Fundamentally, the problem is that management inherently believes that
PLM solution should be quick and easy to implement. Continuing with the exam-
ple, by the time the PLM implementation team reached out for help, the project was
already more than 6 months behind schedule, $1 million plus off budget with a solu-
tion that was not ready to deploy beyond the initial pilot site. On top of all of this,
the executive group was furious with everyone involved in the project: engineering,
IT, vendors, and consultants alike. In the end, no one associated with the project was
successful.
5.2.3.2 Standard Implementation Practices
...
Whatever
Product engineers always, always try to short-cut standard implementation prac-
tices. It is like they can't be labeled an engineer and follow time-tested implementa-
tion procedures! At times the process divergence and push-back can be comical but
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