For the better part of the last decade, and despite a bigger-picture vision at its onset, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) has traditionally been stuck in the engineering-specific part of the development cycle. Its focus has been all about how to leverage PLM technology and process change to improve how engineers collaborate on 3D designs.
While everyone, from automotive giants to medical device manufacturers, has made great strides leveraging PLM tools in the design phase to reduce product costs, streamline the engineering change order process, and accelerate time-to-market, the grander vision of PLM as an end-to-end product development system has remained somewhat elusive, particularly as it relates to tying in the service organization.
With PTC's Windchill Service Information Manager, companies can create and manage technical information aligned with product structures to automate equipment-specific documentation such as operator, service, and maintenance instructions, along with training materials and spare parts lists.
Lately, however, the idea of syncing the service organization with engineering to create a closed-loop product development environment is starting to gain some traction. As companies become more adept at leveraging PLM throughout the engineering ranks, they are looking for opportunities to extend its reach, and include other functional areas as part of a broader PLM strategy. Service, in particular, is one of the more compelling extensions of PLM as it fosters improvement in two key business processes critical to a company's success: improving its overall service performance for customers; and providing invaluable information and feedback to engineering that can help advance the development and quality of existing and future products.
"Once a product is released from engineering and into volume production, most firms lose insight into how the product operates, what its feature set entails, or how customers feel about the experience," Joe Barkai, vice president of research for IDC Manufacturing Insights, told us. "All of this is critical information for improving current and future products."
Given the challenges companies face today in differentiating their products, service is also starting to play a more critical role in manufacturers' competitive stories, especially for OEMs selling products with extremely long serviceable lifecycles. It hasn't always been that way. Traditionally, the service and engineering sides of the house have operated completely separately, pursuing their own goals, and leveraging siloed systems that didn't share information, let alone serve as an integrated platform for design and collaboration. Moreover, experts say, there is typically a culture clash between the groups, oftentimes with engineering claiming ownership of the product development process and calling on service engineers only as a backstop.
Chuck, that story sounds all too familiar. Theory vs practice, abstract vs concrete. It's apparently easy for some people who are not on the user end of things to not believe in actual experience of actual users. What's funny is, we are all end-users, and we are all consumers, so one might think that would be obvious.
I would think that time and value also play a big part. People have very crammed schedules, so the time it takes service to weigh in, and the time it takes design to listen to a new audience are likely large factors. To carve out that time, the value of the communication would have to be clear.
In order for PLM to work properly, you must address 3 items: 1) technology issues that prevent access to the right information at the right time; 2) processes that prevent information from being shared properly, and 3) people that buy into the whole process. If any one of these are lacking, PLM will not work as intended.
Many companies think new technology will magiacally fix their broken processes, and that people will somehow adopt it. It jest don't work that-a way. We are seeing more and more capabilities like those from PTC making it easy to connect Service, but the other aspects must be addressed before we see measurable results on the bottom line! IMHO
There's a great story about the cultural issues that prevent feedback from the field from reaching design: A few years ago, I talked with a consultant who tried to to tell an automaker that their car's doors were leaking when it rained. Customers also tried to tell the automaker the same thing. The automaker wouldn't listen, though, because all of their measurements told them they were making perfect doors. In their culture, a door was perfect if the measurements said so, not if the someone claimed their doors were leaking. Turned out their doors really were leaking.
Rob, I think it's multiple issues. Certainly corporate culture is one of them. But communications and the ease or lack of it, has got to be another. This should help solve that part, which may, in turn, help change the culture.
I agree, Ann, it's been a long time coming. It will be interesting to see of PLM software helps facilitate this communication. I've always thought it was a company's cultural issues that prevented feedback from the field to reach design. Perhaps PLM tools can help change that culture.
It's good to see that service is getting included in the PLM loop. All you have to do to see the importance of this is to read the Design News Made by Monkeys stories. If the service function were included in the design PLM process, a good number of design flaws could be fixed quickly instead of continuing for years.
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