If you want to purchase a sports car, the design and the image of the brand will probably be important purchase criteria for you. But once you’ve been overtaken by a truck on the right-hand side of the highway during your first test drive, it quickly becomes clear that horsepower is at least as important for real driving pleasure.
When it comes to choosing the right software for your PLM journey, the decision process will likely be similar: Does the vendor have a good reputation? Does the software fit my requirements? Does it provide me with a true end-to-end solution or can I only make short trips with it? And then comes the most important question of all: How does this software really benefit my business? How much horsepower does it have under the hood?

SAP has just published a really exciting video with the title “Power of Product Lifecycle Management“. In this video, the host Yash Agrawal, a Senior Project Manager from SAP DSC PLM Cloud Acceleration, invites industry experts from DSC Software AG, CENIT AG and LeverX, to share their perspectives on how the power of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) helps enterprises revolutionize their product development processes.

Here’s a link to the video. Don’t miss to watch it!

In this blog, I would like to share with you how my colleague Benjamin Zorn, Senior Consultant Customer and Partner at DSC, defines the true power of PLM and the examples he gives as proof.

Probably the important superpower of Product Lifecycle Management software is acceleration. It helps companies streamline their development processes and thus, accelerate time to market.

How can PLM systems shorten time to market? What impact can PLM systems have in certain industries?
In the video, Benjamin Zorn gives some concrete examples to show the importance of PLM systems for business processes in different industries.

Let’s have a closer look at these benefits and consider the possible use cases for some industries:

• Centralized data management: Let’s take an electronics manufacturer as an example. By using a PLM system to store all product information for a new electronics product, all team members, including engineers, designers, and manufacturing experts, can access this information quickly and view the same data in real time. This saves a lot of time.
• Improved collaboration: Automotive manufacturers who manage their product development processes with PLM software can use it to improve collaboration. Engineers, designers, suppliers, and marketing experts can collaborate in real time and share their ideas and the progress. Even across company boundaries. The company can respond to changes more quickly, and work more efficiently.
• Optimization of product development: Reliable performance and product safety are essential for medical devices. Let’s say, a medical device manufacturer manages the development process of a new lung ventilator, using PLM software. The PLM system allows the team to run simulations to optimize both performance and safety before the production starts.
• Version control and change management: Let’s take a look at an aerospace company using PLM to develop a new model of an aircraft. The system tracks all changes in the design drawings to ensure that every team member has access to the latest version. So, the team can systematically review and approve the changes, and prevent costly subsequent errors.
• Compliance and regulation: For pharmaceutical companies, compliance with regulations is a must. During the development process of a new drug, a PLM system captures all relevant regulatory requirements and ensures that all steps are performed compliantly. This facilitates the approval of the drug by the relevant authorities.
• Cost reduction: A manufacturer of household appliances uses PLM to reduce the production costs for a new line of kitchen appliances. By optimizing the design and using less expensive materials, the company can reduce the manufacturing costs and ultimately offer more competitive prices.

I think descriptive examples are more convincing than just saying that PLM shortens the time to market, right?

In the video, Benjamin also gives a concrete example of a customer that has significantly optimized  product development with the help of SAP PLM and SAP ECTR:  Otto Fuchs KG, a manufacturer of metallurgically sophisticated semi-finished and finished products. The company managed to establish the SAP system as a single source of truth for all their design data. SAP Engineering Control Center helps them bring all relevant product data together in ONE place, the SAP system.

With this step, Otto Fuchs achieved significant successes:

• Reduced time to market through automated processes
• Easy access to design data across teams
• Increased productivity and reduction of errors

I hope I haven’t given too much away. Watch the video and also learn what the experts from our partners CENIT AG and LeverX think about the topic.

In the end, the most convincing thing is always a test drive. In the software world, that would be a demo with an expert. Buckle up!

About the author

Nadine Hülsen is responsible for Marketing Content Strategy at DSC Software AG, an SAP Platinum Partner for SAP Product Lifecycle Management.