Resiliency and PLM -- An Important Relationship

By Dave Seybold,IBM Consulting

Manufacturers large and small, in every industry, compete intensely to develop
innovative products that both increase revenue and lead their markets. These same
manufacturers face a host of daunting challenges: outdated product development
processes, demand for increasingly complex products, high development costs, roadblocks
to collaboration, and integration and compatibility issues, to name a few. To overcome these challenges, leading manufacturers implementing PLM (product lifecycle management) programs can transform processes for improved product design, faster time-to-market, reduced supply chain and service costs, and more efficient management of the entire product lifecycle from concept to disposal. These improvements rest on a supporting information technology (IT) infrastructure that needs to react dynamically to respond quickly to customer demands, market opportunities, and external threats. It should enable a company to be responsive, variable, focused, and resilient—all while making sure engineering remains collaborative and accurate data is instantly accessible to everyone who needs it.

While it is clear to many that PLM can help meet the challenges mentioned above, to be truly successful in cutting design and manufacturing costs and speeding time-to-market, companies must integrate their PLM solutions with other enterprise processes and applications through resilient, open infrastructures.

A resilient infrastructure is designed so enterprises can effectively mitigate and manage key business risks. To develop resiliency, you should plan for and proactively detect disruptions, design responses that target critical needs, deploy responses quickly and effectively, and refresh critical processes and strategies based on past experience. All this requires a multilevel approach: