The PLM Continuum and Notes on Upcoming Webinar

Rethinking the spectrum of possibilities

PLM inherently touches multiple departments and areas of responsibilities.  The value of part and product data, files, drawings, specs and schedules for example, extend beyond the engineering and manufacturing departments.  But, the reality is various teams/groups in the organization invariably acquire technology solutions specific to their needs.  Hence the silos of data and disconnected processes are perpetuated.

It’s fully understandable.  Trying to get the different groups to collectively agree, define and budget can be challenging at best.  That’s why we have stressed the importance of senior management sponsorship to break down the barriers.  We talked about this in our last newsletter.

The exciting news is that PLM can indeed serve a wide range of functional needs across the business that can range from sales through to field support, maintenance and warranties.  Everyone wants a “single source of truth.”  This vision starts when the next application to be acquired builds towards this goal.  We would argue that aside from ERP, most other product related applications in the organization are tied to PLM.

That is the theme of this newsletter and the upcoming webinar.  We introduced the PLM Maturity Quadrant in our last webinar.  We’ll talk about how you can use this to quickly identify where your organization operates.  A couple of other topics are provided that continue to reinforce the spectrum of possibilities.