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* Welcome * Welcome to this issue of 2PLM, an e-zine distributed every two weeks on a free subscription basis. This week's lead article, It's Time to Demand Immediate Results from PLM, is from David W. Paulson, President of Accuer, Inc. First though, a few words about plans for the rest of the year. * Q4 Plans * by John Stark In answer to readers who asked which PLM industry events we will attend in coming months, the answer is 'not many'. In addition to publishing 2PLM, meeting with PLM solution suppliers, and carrying out consulting assignments, we have 3 major activities planned for the rest of the year. First, we're preparing a PLM webinar - more details in the next issue. This comes about a year after publication of the first book addressing the 21st Century paradigm of PLM. Second, we're participating in the preparation phase of the PLMIG's proposed 'PLM Benefits Reference Model' project. The motivation for this collaborative project is simple - an industry-agreed standard PLM Benefits Model would help everyone involved in PLM move forward faster. Currently, a Group of Founder Members is being assembled to drive the project forward. For more information, contact Roger Tempest of the PLMIG. Third, we're developing Version 1.6 of the 'Making Progress with PLM in 2005' Manual which aims to help the individual PLM project manager. New features compared to V1.5 include PLM Excel templates and more PLM Q&As. Among the new questions it will answer are: - What attributes should we look for in a PLM Initiative leader? - How do PLM ROI calculations differ from PDM ROI calculations? - How can we find out where we are on the PLM Roadmap? - How can we get our VP to put a line for PLM expenditure in next year's budget? - What do I do if my boss wants to call the PLM project 'Business Improvement 2006'? - What's the first thing to tell my PLM Project Team? - In PLM, how does TQM differ from Six Sigma? And JIT from Lean Production? For more information on 'Making Progress with PLM in 2005' contact John Stark. 
* It's Time to Demand Immediate Results from PLM * by David W. Paulson Would an 89% reduction in drawing errors impact your time-to-market or profitability? It would certainly reduce the number of ECO's and the costs and delays associated with them. Are these types of improvements readily available with PLM? That depends. There are two schools of thought on implementing PLM. Either it's done top-down and involves a lot of executives, vendors, new tools and sweeping process changes. Or it's done bottom-up. Most of the success stories you hear about are from the first method. That makes sense - the results can be pretty dramatic. But so can the risk, investment and timeframe. For that reason, many companies will never get the opportunity to do it this way. Does this mean they can never realize a PLM environment? Absolutely not! They can approach PLM from the bottom up, and the results can be just as impressive. An additional benefit is the risk can be mitigated and the major part of the investment can be delayed until after the initial paybacks. How is this possible? Because most companies already own enough tools to create a solid foundation for their PLM environment - they just haven't utilized them to their fullest potential. For example, studies have shown that the majority of companies use less than 50% of the functionality of their CAD tools. Some of this unused functionality can reduce the cycle time of various tasks by 75% or more. So where do you start? We have found the biggest bang for the buck is in Engineering. The first thing we like to look at is how well Engineering has developed and enforced optimized standards. This includes standard materials, standard hardware, common parts, a standard tools library, CAD file templates, and drawing templates (including intelligent notes and formats). Most companies have already developed some of these standards, but rarely have they developed all of them. We also find they are often difficult to access and use, and rarely are they optimized for maximum cost and development time savings. Let's look at just the standard materials. An effective way to leverage them is to make the material selection for the CAD model easy, required and consistent. So with little effort, all models will contain the correct information across structural analysis, weight analysis, drawing development, BOM development, purchasing, manufacturing, maintenance and other PLM activities. Material selection can be strategically based off a Material Database, then selected and applied to the CAD file through simple scripts and web-forms to make selections easy and consistent. The contents of the database can be controlled with input from Purchasing, Engineering, IT and others involved with minimizing material costs and maximizing development productivity. 
The advantages of just this simple tool are many. First of all, it saves time. The engineer does not have to look up the details in the material reference book each time, nor type everything in manually. It will ensure the CAD file gets the information that it needs and is not left empty. Now that the material information is contained in the CAD file, it will not have to be entered manually anywhere else. The material call-outs can all refer to this information and automatically populate. It can also be used to populate the BOM in the ERP/MRP system. Besides saving time, it will also reduce ECO's, scrap, downstream personnel time and product cost. How? There will be no spelling errors or varying abbreviations that make it look like new material to the ERP systems. The engineer will use a preferred standard material unless there has to be a variation - this will save time in ordering and inspecting. It also reduces material cost as it increases the purchase volume of standard material. And, because the material selection is controlled, there will be no errors in the detailed material specifications. Payback from this simple foundational step is dramatic. In a recent case we documented an 89% reduction in drawing errors from a company that had calculated that 23% of their ECO's were from typos and material callout errors. In this case we calculated annual savings of $234,000 in labor costs (design and ECO processing) and a projected savings of $16,900 in scrap. Those results are quite significant when you consider that they were from automating something very simple that had always been done manually. This does not take into account the faster time-to-market as a result of savings in development time. Also, remember that standard materials was just one of six types of standards that should be developed and enabled. Each of the others can have a similar impact as well. With automation and increased consistency, faster development time is a natural result. So are these types of improvements readily available with PLM? Absolutely! 
We consider standards an important foundation for any PLM initiative. Developing and enabling standards is clearly an approach that leverages existing tools, can expand to meet future applications, and returns immediate and significant payback with very little investment or risk. That is why we say it's time to demand immediate results from your PLM initiatives! The Author David W. Paulson, the President of Accuer, Inc., can be contacted at dpaulson@accuer.com. Accuer helps manufacturers decrease their time-to-market and increase their market share. Their services solve efficiency problems that plague engineering and impact other departments in the enterprise. |
