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2PLM John Stark Associates |
Number 10 |
- Welcome Page 2 - Update Page 3 - News Page 4 - Brief lines | Welcome to this issue of 2PLM, an e-zine distributed every two weeks on a free subscription basis. This week's article, "Measured PLM", is from Menno Huijben of Technia. But first, a quick update about the PLM Interest Group. * PLM Interest Group * The PLM Interest Group has been created, and will operate from January 1, 2004. Benefits of PLMIG membership include:
* Measured PLM * At the beginning of a PLM project's lifecycle is the PLM business case. What is a PLM business case? It is a package put together to convince senior management to go for PLM. It contains a credible set of expected tangible and intangible benefits and a cost estimate, wrapped up nicely, so it will be easy to market and sell. The tangible benefits are the ones that you can express together with the cost estimate in a Return on Investment (ROI) type of calculation; how much will this cost over a certain period of time, and what do we expect to get back for that money? Tangible benefits are found in the triangle with the corners Resources, Time and Quality. The benefits will come from using Resources more efficiently, reducing (throughput) Time, and improving the Quality of products and processes. The intangible part of the business case contains benefits we believe in, but we cannot (yet) quantify exactly. Things like: increased customer satisfaction, increased market share, more innovations, and better protection and leverage of our intellectual capital. I put 'yet' in brackets, because when you really try, you can also express these issues in terms of money. The cost estimate is based on proposals from PLM vendors, and estimates of the required investments in infrastructure and supporting organizational structures to configure, rollout and maintain the PLM system. Let's assume that we are in the situation where we have made a sound business case, containing tangible and intangible benefits, and a ROI calculation. We made a nice package out of it, and remembered to stamp 'Urgent' on it. A business case without 'a sense of urgency' has no chance of being accepted by senior management. We should be able to express why we need to do it now, and that we cannot wait. If we can wait, it is not urgent, so why waste resources on it? Presume now that our business case was well received; we got our budget approved, started the implementation project, and are well on our way to getting some data into the system and the first users trained. To get that far a lot has happened, and we are still in a hurry, because we operate under 'the sense of urgency' argument. In all this rush, it can happen that our business case lies lost in a corner. The PLM project's steering committee might still ask once in a while 'how is it going?' but soon the project has moved into a 'business as usual' kind of phase. When your company is doing well, and its cash-flow looks firmly positive, you can survive quite a long time like this with your PLM project. However, when money gets tight, management will start to ask questions: what did we get from this PLM business case, where did our money go? When this question comes (and sooner or later it will), you had better have an answer. To be prepared to give the answer, you need to have performance indicators, metrics, installed around the PLM project, right from the beginning. These metrics could be based on four simple objectives:
For example:
Start with a sound business case, but do not forget to measure (and market the success) at the end. For questions and comments, please contact me by mail or call +358 424 722 1. Menno Huijben is a consultant at Technia, a leading supplier of PLM solutions in the Nordic countries. |
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News |
Cimage NovaSoft Inc. announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Access Systems LLC, an organization that provides support and consulting services for the Cimage NovaSoft products. Details EMC Corporation, Inc. announced it has completed the acquisition of Documentum, Inc. Details * Financial * Manugistics Group, Inc. announced results for its fiscal 2004 third quarter. For the third quarter, total revenue was $59.9 million, down 4 percent from $62.4 million in the prior year quarter. Details Verity, Inc. announced its financial results for the second fiscal quarter ended November 30, 2003. Verity's total revenues were $28.9 million, up 8.6% from first-quarter revenues of $26.6 million and up 26.2% from second-quarter 2003 revenues of $22.9 million. Details * People * Actify announced the appointment of Lynne Saunders as vice president of Marketing. Details Avatech Solutions, Inc. announced that George Cox, Gary Clark and Ed Aronson have been added to Avatech's Board of Directors. Details  i2 Technologies, Inc. announced that Katy Murray will succeed Bill Beecher as chief financial officer and executive vice president. Details Moldflow Corporation announced the addition of Mr. Robert J. Lepofsky to its board of directors. Details * Implementation * Aras Corporation announced that Syracuse Research Corporation has selected the Aras Innovator Suite for enterprise-wide PLM deployment. Details Documentum announced that AstenJohnson, a manufacturer of paper machine clothing, specialty fabrics, filaments and drainage equipment, has selected Documentum 5, the latest version of the Documentum ECM platform, and Documentum eRoom 7, Documentum's enterprise collaboration solution. Details Formtek Inc. announced that its UK-based technology alliance partner, LSC Group, will use the Formtek Enterprise Content Management solution as a key component for a contract with the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (MoD). Details LMS International announced that Goodrich Corporation Space Flight Systems has selected LMS Test.Lab to perform vibration qualification testing and analysis on spacecraft and launch vehicle electronics. Details MatrixOne, Inc. announced that Yazaki North America, Inc., a Tier One automotive supplier of vehicle power and data solutions, is currently implementing its initial deployment of MatrixOne solutions. Details MSC.Software Corp. announced that Oshkosh Truck Corporation has selected MSC.Software to provide modeling and simulation services for the first phase of the US Army Future Tactical Truck System (FTTS) program. Details PTC announced that General Atomics has signed a $1.4 million agreement with PTC. Details PTC announced that the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is moving to PTC's new Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire and upgrading and expanding use of the solution as part of a $10 million, three-and-a-half-year agreement signed in September 2003. Details SolidWorks announced that Automotive Products (AP) Driveline Technology is using SolidWorks 3D mechanical design software. Details SolidWorks announced that Emerson Motor Technologies is deploying SolidWorks 3D PartStream.NETservice. Details Tecnomatix Technologies Ltd. announced a global agreement with a major automotive manufacturer. The agreement is expected to generate total revenues in excess of US$50 million over the next four years. Details Tecnomatix Technologies Ltd. announced that Artesyn Technologies will use eMPower solutions from Tecnomatix. Details think3 announced EuraMobil GmbH has decided to standardize on think3 products and services for its product development platform. Details * Developments * Algor, Inc. announced the release of ALGOR V14.2. Details Centric Software, Inc. announced the latest release of its flagship application suite, Centric Innovation 5.0. Details Covisint announced the completion and launch of its new Covisint Connect data messaging service. Details Formtek Inc. announced a new release to its Formtek Orion 4 Foundation products - version 4.4.1. Details Framework Technologies announced that they have begun shipping Version 10.1 of their ActiveProduct and ActiveAEC solutions. Details Informative Graphics Corporation announced that it plans to update its free DWG Viewer based on the new Open Design Alliance DWGdirect libraries and IGC's new Brava!/ActiveX framework. Details Integrated Support Systems, Inc. announced the immediate availability of SLICwave v5.0 product supportability software. Details LightWork Design announced the release of a new version of LightWorks. Details Mentor Graphics Corporation announced the availability of the Engineering Change Order (ECO) Cockpit integrated into the IC Station custom integrated circuit (IC) layout environment. Details Moldflow Corporation announced the immediate availability of Moldflow Plastics Advisers 7.0 software. Details Moldflow Corporation announced the release MMS/Production Monitoring 1.0, a plant-wide manufacturing execution system for discrete manufacturers. Details Product Sight announced an integration of its PLM technologies. The new Product Sight Lifecycle Environment (PSLE) combines its SyncroSpec and FindView products. Details Rasterex released RxAutoImage R7 for AutoCAD 2004 and AutoCAD LT 2004 Details Rasterex released RxSpotlight R7. Details SofTech, Inc. announced the availability of a new release of its ProductCenter product lifecycle management (PLM) solution, ProductCenter 8.3. Details Spicer Corporation, a leading developer of universal viewing and markup solutions for ECM, PLM, and reprographics applications announced ViewCafe 3.2, an upgrade to Spicer's scalable, Java thin client universal viewing and markup tool. Details Synergis Technologies, Inc. announced the availability of Synergis Adept 5.1 PDM solution for SolidWorks 2004 software. Details Tecnomatix Technologies Ltd. announced the immediate availability of FactoryLink 7.2. Details Tecnomatix Technologies Ltd. announced the launch of eM-Insight, a data source-neutral tolerance management and statistical process control (SPC) product. Details UGS PLM Solutions announced the immediate availability of NX Nastran for Femap. Details UGS PLM announced how Solid Edge Version 15 has been enhanced for designers of consumer products. Details * Relationships * ImpactXoft announced that Cornerstone Technology Inc. has joined ImpactXoft's Need SPeeD reseller channel program. Details InnovMetric Software announced that it has entered into an agreement with 3D Scanners (UK) to distribute PolyWorks in the United Kingdom. Details MatrixOne, Inc. and Sogeti USA LLC announced that they have forged an alliance whereby the two companies will join forces to deliver product lifecycle management solutions to North American product development companies. Details PTC announced that Peak Technical Services, Inc. has joined PTC's Channel Advantage Reseller Program. Details think3 announced it signed a new partnership agreement with SENER. Details * Other * BioPoint Solutions, Inc. announced its official company launch. Details Dassault Systemes announced it is partnering with The Boeing Company to enhance its suite of V5 Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions to provide the tools required for the 7E7 development environment. Details Dassault Systemes announced the establishment of an academic partnership with AIP-PRIMECA, a countrywide network of French universities and higher learning institutes, to advance Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) education. Details Omnify Software announced that Mangrove Systems is successfully collaborating with external partners on new product development. Details PTC announced it has increased its installed base in the automotive industry to approximately 3,000 customers. Details PTC announced that the METAspectrum PLM Evaluation has positioned PTC in the Leader category among PLM vendors. Details Proficiency announced that the Company received a Cadalyst magazine "Editors' Wow! Award" for its Collaboration Gateway Version 3.0. Details UGS PLM Solutions announced Parasolid has expanded its position in the global computer-aided engineering (CAE) software market. Details UGS PLM Solutions announced Parasolid has expanded its position in the global computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software industry. Details UGS PLM Solutions announced a technical sponsorship agreement with American Challenge, Inc. (ACI). Details UGS PLM Solutions announced it has achieved "Leadership Status" in META Group's recently released METAspectrum for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). Details UGS PLM Solutions announced its intention to support the new AMD Opteron processor with two of its flagship product development software solutions - Unigraphics NX and Parasolid. Details |
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