Communicating product data across an organization is complex. Let’s talk about how to make it easier.
Different departments gather product data from a variety of systems including Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Systems, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems, Manufacturing Execution systems (MES), and Quality Management Systems (QMS) and more, how do we know our organizations are making the most out of all this information?
Just think about it for a second. Our systems speak different languages, AND our departments often aim for different goals.
With an estimated 90% of the world’s data created in the last two years alone (Conner, n.d.), it’s no wonder that companies are having a hard time using it all. The IDC estimates that just 0.5% of the data companies produce is ever used. It’s time to change that.
Here are 9 Ways Your Business Will Benefit From Connecting Your Data systems.
1. Increased Usability
Data experts believe that if Fortune 1,000 companies increased the amount of data they used by just 10%, they could realize over $65 million in additional net income (Marr, 2015). Not only are these numbers huge, they also help make my case about the critical importance of data usability.
The truth is – any one specialized system is often too complex for many non-specialized roles to navigate, find, and transfer the right information. This often leaves separate departments accountable for storing and sharing uncontrolled, out of date versions of product data. It’s not because they don’t WANT to use the right information. It’s because system complexity and interdepartmental gates make it hard to consistently get the right information.
So how do we make product data more usable?
A) Consolidating product data from disparate sources into one single system.
B) Give users a way to access the system using simplified role-specific dashboards.
2. Better Data Access
The most important reason your product data shouldn’t (internally anyway) be kept secret is because product data is your company’s most valuable asset.
Not everyone who needs access to specific product information hosted in your PLM system is from your engineering department, so don’t force them to go through the same vigorous Product Lifecycle system training. Don’t make them navigate an engineer’s world one click at a time.
In order to effectively use data, our departments must have ready access to it. We must make rich product information easy to accessible for a broad set of roles.
By creating an organized system that connects all of our product data, your organization will make information easily accessible to users beyond those who have created it.
Just think of the possibilities that come from connecting multiple systems and delivering information to all departments through a single window.
3. Complete Data
Imagine an entire enterprise with access to real data, at the right time, when it’s needed.
By connecting your product lifecycle management systems with your other enterprise systems, every stakeholder within your organization can impact the value flow of product data through your organization. It also equips team members to consistently drive critical decisions with the latest, most accurate information.
4. Better Insights
Better access to data = Better insights.
Your business teams can and should demand a lot of your PLM processes and solution.
This is one of the reasons why your organization should consider integration technologies and custom front-end solutions – Such as PLM applications.
A data-driven enterprise with insights into how current products and processes can be optimized can drastically improve productivity. Doing this requires teams to have access to up-to-date, accurate product data.
5. Better Decisions
Ready access to information is especially important to any company developing products.
Users without access to the system of record resort to error-prone workarounds that can result in inaccuracies, quality problems, and waste.
Decisions made from out- of- date inaccurate data threaten product quality and delay time to market.
Providing everyone in your organization with broad visibility into the system of record will drive better, more accurate decisions. This will ultimately improve quality, reduce waste, scrap, rework, and help you meet your time to market goals.
The analytical possibilities that come with connecting your data will help users across your organization make accurate product decisions throughout the entire development process.
6. Better Products
Who doesn’t want to create better products faster?
Providing your organization with universal data access will allow your company to drastically accelerate product development.
How so?
By connecting disparate systems, you will have access to real-time data allowing you to make better product decisions.
Because your decisions and actions are now driven by up-to-date information, you will achieve a higher product quality.
7. Increased Productivity
Why waste time manually reading, entering and analyzing data? It could be automatically collected, filtered, and combined.
By collecting your product data in one system and providing a simplified role-based interface, any user within your organization can access contextual, up-to-date, real-time product information anytime they need.
I guarantee your productivity will grow when your organization is able to plan earlier with manufacturing, order materials sooner with purchasing all while your engineering team is spending less time pulling reports.
8. Increased collaboration
Using a system that provides role-based data access to stakeholders throughout your organization provides every role with an ability to quickly understand the status of a part number and how the parts fit together in a design.
This will not only help mobilize and inform the work of teams throughout the organization, but it will also help maximize the success of your product development.
Giving your team the ability to extend and connect your PLM data into the rest of your enterprise will rapidly increase the overall effectiveness of your organization.
9. Real Results
The ultimate benefit your organization will achieve by connecting your data systems stems from your ability to acquire real results.
What does that mean?
Positive results have a tendency to snowball into more and more success. Results give your organization the confidence it needs to quickly deliver value. Providing access to the right information empowers a team, department, company to reach their true potential.
We want to help your company thrive. Our EAC Productivity Apps give your organization a way to connect disparate enterprise systems and easily deliver role-based dashboards to increase user confidence and productivity.
Our world is rapidly becoming a place where big data reigns supreme. Just like a king!
Product lifecycle management is an all-encompassing technology solution for integrating and managing all types of data inherent in the design, development, production, support, maintenance and final disposal of manufactured goods and product offerings.
The ultimate goal of product lifecycle management is to accelerate the entire cycle of product development and improve business efficiency and profitability. In its most basic sense, PLM software is a collaboration tool that facilitates organizations to manage their product information across a wide spectrum of internal and external business processes and functions.
PLM is an integrated system that facilitates the collection, sharing and management of crucial data – a broad-based approach that governs the development of a product right from the idea conception to the ultimate disposal.
One System for Everything: Product Lifecycle Management
The product lifecycle management is a business process management tool that serves as a repository for every teeny little bit of information that might affect a product offering. It is essentially the first place where all product information comes together from different stages of production – be it supply chain, production, procurement or marketing. By consolidating diverse systems in an organization, PLM helps create a coherent data structure to develop, manufacture and retire products.
One of the most compelling benefits of the product lifecycle management approach is to empower businesses to make smart, timely and information-driven decisions at each stage in the overall product lifecycle. Of course, your product development process is unique to your company and a one-fits-all PLM approach might not work for you.
However, like most businesses, your company also depends on the quality of data that is available to make critical decisions on a day-to-day basis. PLM offers a unified, collective intelligence that helps improve the strategic decision-making process, define processes and workflows, eliminate process bottlenecks and accelerate the overall product development process.
Get the benefits that PLM has promised for years
The cradle-to-grave approach of product lifecycle management offers many benefits for companies seeking more efficient, profitable product development, and management solutions.
In the present scenario, PLM has emerged as a single vital source for managing the different aspects of product management throughout the production, development and retirement processes.
It is no secret that faster product development and shorter lead times to market have become the key to marketplace competitiveness and success. With PLM solutions, the product can be developed and finished faster. As a powerful enabling technology platform, PLM applications help integrate people, processes, business systems, and of course data to streamline the product information spinal column for your company.
The innovative technology of PLM enables your business to reduce production and material costs through prototyping, waste reduction and savings through the full integration of engineering processes and workflows. This naturally leads to enhance production efficiency and increased productivity. The robust data analytics tools, such as visual analytics of a PLM application simplify the overall processes, workflows, communications and information flows throughout the production cycle.
It leverages the full potential of integrated business systems and functions across the company, from supply chain to production and from compliance to financial divisions. Product life cycle management solutions ensure more transparency in policy disclosure and the organizational decision-making process.
Acting as a line of a message between owners, managers, suppliers, employees and customers, PLM aids open communication and conversation amongst the various stakeholders. This helps you identify and understand what works and what does not work for your company.
What to look for when purchasing PLM software
When people purchase PLM systems, they essentially invest in technology which provides a wealth of ease and convenience given that the systems are extremely complicated. This is a core reason users often find it difficult to navigate these systems, let alone make full use of all the features it offers them.
When selecting a particular PLM solution for your business, it is important to ensure that it is easy to use, navigate and apply in the various stages of the production cycle.
Another feature to consider is the ability of the PLM software to integrate with and complement readily with the systems and processes already in place at your organization.
The PLM application that you procure from a vendor must come with certain features such as BOM (Bill of Materials) management, reporting and analytics, quality management, change management and product data management.
While these elements help in the overall coordination, tracking, control and management of the various workflows involved in the production, the best PLM software should also offer functionally enabling deeper supplier collaboration, flexibility and accessibility, speed of implementation, environmental compliance and support for existing organizational systems.
PLM Applications for any PLM system
So what are we suggesting? Our solution to an easier way for everyone in your organization (not expert PLM users) to use Windchill and find product data is our EAC Productivity Apps. You can learn more about our EAC Apps on our website.
EAC Product Development Solutions introduces the powerful EAC productivity applications that make it easier for you to view, understand and manage product data.
With one single, simple and powerful interface, you can make better, faster and more effective decisions at your company. Our PLM system applications are compatible with product lifecycle management systems, thereby offering an integrated technology platform for multiple enterprise systems including ALM, MRP, ERP, SLM, CRM, Accounting, and PLM (Windchill). The cookie-cutter PLM solutions by most vendors tend to be overly complicated which inhibit your ability to consolidate task workflows and streamline production processes within your organization.
Our PLM apps work as a connectivity tool, to transform the entire PLM experience. They facilitate user experiences by allowing them to perform functions without prior training, making the PLM interface easy to work with. EAC Productivity Applications provide an added advantage of connecting with a PLM system and altering the user interface, making PLM easy to understand. They have the capability to pool data from many enterprise systems and put it on one screen.
Our goal is to give power to the manufacturers.
We have successfully eliminated the common PLM system bottlenecks and complications by coming up with our own PLM solutions that reduce the bare bones you might experience in run-of-the-mill PLM software and applications available in the market. Our PLM applications were developed to offer you a perfect user experience by improving accessibility to critical data.
With our top of the line PLM apps, everyone can use the system with relative ease and businesses can fully tap into the large PLM investment they were initially promised.
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