"Fighting Back: How Product Data Management Can Give You the Competitive Edge"

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"TEC provides decision support systems (DSS) that enable stakeholders to objectively identify the software products that best fit their company's unique business and systems requirements. TEC is organized in evaluation centers like Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). PLM also incorporates vital product data management (PDM) functionality."
Source: Technology Evaluation Centers

Resources Related to Fighting Back: How Product Data Management Can Give You the Competitive Edge:

• Product Data Management (PDM) (Wikipedia)

Fighting Back: How Product Data Management Can Give You the Competitive Edge

Today's Manufacturing Environment

Improving design data collaboration, accelerating product development cycles, and shortening time to market are all key factors in the success of today's manufacturing environment.

Success is not only measured by the inal product, but by the processes used to make that product. Manufacturing high-quality products at the lowest possible cost in the shortest amount of time is what every Canadian manufacturer is trying to achieve. However, the complexities involved in the engineering and design phases of product development can often lead to longer production cycles.

Manufacturers are under immense competitive pressures, as customers demand lower prices, higher quality, better value, and quicker service.As the global manufacturing market continues to grow, Canadian manufacturers need to place more emphasis on how they can improve their business processes and shorten their development and production cycles.

So how do you increase your proitability and remain competitive in a global landscape, especially while the Canadian dollar is strong? It all starts with data. Product data, information, text, designs, and drawings are all part of the key elements in a successful manufacturing operation-not to mention signiicant corporate assets, resulting from the time and effort put forth to produce them. How eficiently manufacturers use these assets is what will separate the contenders from the pretenders.

Here we discuss some of the key business issues surrounding product data management (PDM) that affect all Canadian manufacturers, and discover how collaboration can help to integrate the low of design data, accelerate product development cycles, and shorten time to market.

"One of the biggest challenges Canadian manufacturers face with respect to improving productivity is with the product design itself."

How to Increase Productivity and Reduce Labour Costs

The strength of the Canadian dollar is threatening to erode the proitability of Canadian manufacturers. Because of the ierce price competition in the US market, many Canadian businesses have chosen to maintain their US price points, which has reduced their proit margins. As such, many are looking for new ways to increase productivity and reduce labour costs to remain competitive.

One of the biggest challenges Canadian manufacturers face with respect to improving productivity is with the product design itself, where each aspect of the design process poses signiicant challenges, and at times, causes lengthy delays.

As the driving force behind the product, the design engineers are under an inordinate amount of pressure to ensure that product specs are completed on time and that production deadlines are met. They spend an extensive number of hours producing and analyzing their designs, making numerous changes from their initial conception to the designs' completion-sometimes having to start over from scratch. It's a labourintensive process that often makes it dificult for engineers to work quickly.

One problem inherent in product design is engineers' inability to effectively share and collabourate on their designs with other design team members. Working with a disparate PDM system, where various aspects of the product design are scattered throughout the enterprise, is one of the leading contributors to a slower production cycle-and one that will surely impact the business's bottom line.

In order to effectively share design data and promote collaboration, a PDM solution that includes copy-design functionality-as well as other features that enhance product design reuse-should be considered.

Generally speaking, PDM solutions can be tightly integrated with most computeraided design (CAD) applications, and can organize any type of engineering data in a centralized location (repository). This helps to reduce the time it takes to ind, reference, and reuse the data design. Copies of existing designs can be made and modiied while maintaining the integrity of the original design. With a repository that holds design data for thousands of previously developed products, engineers have the opportunity to increase their productivity by reusing earlier product designs over and over again. With PDM's classiication and search capabilities, engineers can avoid having to "reinvent the wheel." To protect original designs from being unintentionally overwritten, many PDM systems also offer version management capabilities.

Manufacturers can accelerate development cycles and optimize their ROI in data design with a PDM system that organizes, manages, and automates key processes. By reusing designs, manufacturers maximize design productivity by reducing the time their engineers spend performing repetitive tasks. Products can be developed faster and more eficiently, and ultimately production costs can be reduced. Engineers and designers can save hours of valuable design time and move onto newer products and projects more quickly.

"Compliance isn't just about securing data; it's about managing risk"

How to Accelerate Time to Market to Remain Competitive

Global manufacturing has threatened to seize more market share, so in order for Canadian manufacturers to compete on a global scale and remain competitive, they must ind ways to optimize their use of design data and to accelerate time to market.

Manufacturers continually talk about supply and demand and the concepts of lean manufacturing and kaizen (a Japanese term meaning continued improvement) as methods for improving organizational performance, productivity, and time to market. But what good is all of that if your production is suffering because your product data is scattered across different departments of the company? This problem prevents many manufacturers from getting their product to market fast enough to respond to their customers' needs. So how can manufacturers improve their production performance and achieve shorter lead times beyond the scope of these traditional Japanese concepts?

It all starts with design data. First and foremost, data should be looked at as one of your greatest assets. But poorly managed data can have a negative effect on productivity-and possibly your bottom line. Issues such as version control, ile format, or the inability to access the proper data at the right time are all data management issues that could end up costing your business a considerable amount of money and your engineers a signiicant amount time.

Often the challenge is that the design data within the CAD elements of a product can be dificult to manage. Because CAD designs are not necessarily compatible with other systems or software, productivity issues often ensue because the engineers have trouble sharing the design with other team members. Much time is wasted on trying to access the proper product data rather than being spent on the product design itself.

Maybe time to market is not a concern for you; maybe for you it's all about the product and making it the best that it can be at any cost. Consider this, however: While your engineers are still working on improving the irst prototype, your competitor has moved on to add some invaluable enhancements to a similar product. And because they are already using a PDM system, their product is now in its inal testing stages and will soon be ready to lood the market. For you, it's an opportunity missed and a few thousand dollars out of your pocket because of the time your engineers wasted on either recreating designs, searching for documents, or working with an incorrect version.

In order to provide a true collaborative working environment, a uniied PDM system should be put in place that can automate processes, allowing members of the engineering and design teams to access the product information simultaneously. So, at any given time, one hand knows what the other hand is doing, and delegated tasks won't end up falling through the cracks. By having data that is instantly available, engineers and designers can work faster and be assured that the data they are working with is always the latest version. And with automated release-management processes, costly errors can be reduced, and the delays due to manual data entry can be minimized.

PDM systems are specially designed to handle large quantities of product data, so instead of getting bogged down with technology and worrying about how your disconnected data will be managed, you can get on with the issues that really matter-your business.

In a nutshell, PDM turns data into knowledge that you can leverage securely across every aspect of your enterprise and supply chain to speed up product development. With this type of integrated worklow, products can be released to the market faster- providing a competitive advantage over global competition and a true value to the end customer.

"Compliance is not the only necessary evil; manufacturers must also deal with manufacturing industry standards."

How to Meet Regulatory Compliance Challenges and Stay in Line with Industry Standards

Are compliance regulations and industry standards slowing you down or speeding up your business? Today, many organizations are under increasing pressure to meet stringent compliance regulations relating to data management. These regulations do not only affect inancial institutions' personal customer data, they affect all business data-and product data is no exception. With government compliance regulations set out by the likes of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) in the US and thePersonal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (better know as PIPEDA) in Canada's inancial sector, compliance has seemingly overnight become a necessary evil.

Compliance initiatives require data to be secure and traceable; not just product data and designs, but every piece of information that is linked to making a product, including e-mail, instant messages, or faxes. And with the quantity of electronic share information (ESI) growing, it's even more crucial that company records and other information are preserved in their original formats.

But compliance isn't just about securing data; it's about managing risk. So, in order to mitigate risk, manufacturers need to reevaluate and improve their corporate governance policies and procedures.

Here's yet another aspect of compliance Canadian manufacturers need to think about. With the unpredictability of the Canadian dollar, many manufacturers are feeling the pressure to expand their exports to the global market-to get away from the increasing costs of exporting the US. But in going global, it won't be enough for Canadian manufacturers to comply with just the Canadian and US regulatory standards; they must also be prepared to consider the implications that global compliance standards will have on their business. As a Canadian manufacturer, are you prepared?

At the end of the day, regulatory compliance shouldn't be looked at as a bad thing. In fact, for manufacturers that adopt a sound corporate governance policy, compliance can be a blessing. Having product information properly documented can help with approval processes-for instance, making it easier to apply for product patents. And with a data management system that has reporting capabilities, a paper trail and history on all design changes (when, why, and who made the changes) can be produced, allowing information to be handed over quickly and painlessly should any regulatory government agency ask for it.

Unfortunately, compliance is not the only necessary evil; manufacturers must also deal with manufacturing industry standards. Whether its bill of material standards, labeling regulations, quality standards, or environmental standards, manufacturers must ensure these requirements are met while continuing to eficiently run their business.

With PDM, manufacturers can stay on top of industry standards with a system that guarantees data consistency and accuracy, improves quality, and provides the processes necessary to ensure compliance.

"It has never been more apparent that a system that can effectively manage product data across the enterprise is not only nice to have, it's imperative."

How PDM Can Work for You

As Canadian manufacturers struggle to maintain their competitive edge in an everincreasing global market, it has never been more apparent that a system that can effectively manage product data across the enterprise is not only nice to have, it's imperative.

When it comes to manufacturing, getting the product to market in the quickest and most eficient manner is key. Ensuring your people have the product data they need at any given time, from any given system, and in any given format, will allow them to be more productive-and will accelerate your time to market. Proper PDM tools can help you streamline your manufacturing business processes, reduce your labour costs, comply with industry standards and compliance regulations, stay ahead of the competition, and achieve a healthy return on your software investment.

About the Authors:

Wayne Thompson has over 16 years of IT experience in the private and public sectors, with extensive expertise in opportunity analyses, go-to-market execution planning, and software evaluations. Thompson advises start-up companies and leading IT vendors on product development and marketing strategies as well as user clients on business process analyses and software procurement.

Sherry Fox has over a decade of experience in retail, manufacturing, compliance, and technology. She is a proicient writer of articles, online content, guides, and manuals. Fox also has in-depth management experience with various enterprise segments, including payroll, human resources, loss prevention, logistics, and compliance.

For more information, please contact the analyst group at research@tec-centers.com.