- 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 Roger Tempest of the PLM Interest Group writes about the PLM Benchmarking Handbook that resulted from the PLMIG's PLM Benchmarking Workshop. * PLM Benchmarking Handbook * The PLMIG's Benchmarking Handbook was created by members of the PLM Interest Group at a Workshop in November 2004. Its methodology embodies their collective PLM experience and can be applied to conduct PLM benchmarks, internally or with external partners, at any desired level. The Handbook embodies two elements of new knowledge in its Methodology. One is that PLM cannot be benchmarked from the viewpoint of PDM. A true PLM viewpoint must be applied to benchmarks even when the primary motivation is to measure details such as costs or support performance. The Handbook shows you how to do this. The other is that it is necessary to create a Navigation Model as part of the benchmarking preparation. This Model helps guide you into the benchmark, and can be used to orient your organization with other potential benchmarking partners. Every organization that wishes to benchmark its PLM performance will have a different PLM environment and different areas that it feels are most important to measure. By the nature of PLM, some of the measures may be exact or quantitative, but many will be qualitative. This makes it unrealistic for the Handbook to contain a pre-prepared list of all of the questions that might be asked in all benchmarking scenarios. There could be tens of thousands of them, and only a small subset would apply in any given benchmark. Instead, the Benchmark Workshop led to a Handbook that is structured to guide users through a more practical approach. When two or more organizations come together, it is expected that they will agree on the areas which they want to concentrate on for the benchmark. (These will be the areas where the "drivers" or the "pain" applies, these are usually the motivation for carrying out the benchmark.) To quote one PLMIG member, experienced in PLM Benchmarking: "Benchmarking requires effort. It is not the same as publishing numbers on a web site to compare the price of cameras, for example. You need to benchmark to your own measures, which means that you must first decide what is important." The Handbook guides the organizations through the process of identifying, selecting and generating the relevant high-level and detailed questions so that the benchmark reveals the information that is required. This is an interactive, iterative and flexible approach which will work in each unique benchmarking situation. It is recommended that users of the Handbook follow the methodology as closely as possible, simply because it is concise, consistent, flexible, comprehensive and effective. The Handbook provides a "PLM industry standard" which will save them time and effort when benchmarking with other organizations, and will lead to more focused results. It is expected that the material in the Handbook will be used in a variety of ways, including direct use in actual benchmarks, training, comparison with other existing benchmarking systems, and partial or complete adoption into other benchmarking material. Feedback will be gathered by the PLMIG as the Handbook is used, which may lead to the creation of a new 'Version 2.0' in the future. For more details about the PLM Benchmarking Handbook, and to order your copy, contact Roger Tempest.  PLM articles Thanks to readers for informing us of this article about PLM in another publication:
PLM publication The Table of Contents of the recently published book on PLM, "Product Lifecycle Management: Paradigm for 21st Century Product Realisation" can be viewed here. With 32 Chapters and more than 400 pages, the book provides wide-ranging and in-depth coverage of Product Lifecycle Management. In the early years of the 21st Century, the successful implementation of PLM as a strategic business activity is a high priority. Product Lifecycle Management Seminar A one-day PLM seminar, "PLM : The Next Frontier" provides an opportunity to extend your team's understanding of PLM and meet this challenging target. Details |
