Making and extending access to product data (also known as data accessibility) is exactly what can put you ahead, especially if your organization has anything to do with product development.
This article explains how to make product data accessible, as well as why product data access is a trend that many organizations are beginning to pursue.
Product data is vital to organizational success
In business and engineering, product development refers to bringing new and existing products to market. During this process, your product data is everything.
Your organization’s product data likely includes computer-aided design (CAD) data, 3D models, parts information, standardized work instructions, product requirements, notes, documents, and more.
This is why your organization’s product development success starts with… you know it… product data.
The reality is, the product data that may only be visible to engineering or management teams is exactly what your entire organization could leverage to make better-informed decisions.
Product data is vital to organizational success because it helps identify business opportunities, predict future trends, and most importantly it is exactly what allows you to generate more revenue.
Why is data accessibility important?
Data-driven business decisions make or break companies. This is exactly why your product data should be accessible to anyone within your organization who needs it.
People across multiple departments often need to input data into business systems, especially in larger organizations.
If different employees throughout your organization input slightly different information, use non-compatible formats or simply don’t have access to each other’s data – confusion and miscommunication can occur.
These situations lead to mistakes, unnecessary costs, and lost revenue. All of which (I’m going to assume) your business is trying to avoid.
There are many reasons why access to data is important, but let’s address data access methods and tools your organization can use to help extend and make your product data accessible.
The first step to making product data accessible: System integration. System integration is an ever-popular topic among the IT savvy.
Integrated systems streamline processes, increase efficiency and productivity, reduce costs, and reduce manual entry errors. This is why organizations take steps to integrate business and enterprise systems used throughout their operations.
Integrating your business systems helps keep everyone on the same page by ensuring all staff has access to the same data.
This is especially important when tracking product changes, and I’ll explain exactly why.
Let’s assume an engineer needs to make a last-minute one design adjustment to a product. This is a situation when it is crucial to inform affected departments and stakeholders of product changes as soon as possible.
When system integrations and PLM/ERP tools are in place, everyone throughout your organization (who would need access to specific product data) can access up-to-date information!
Not only does this keep people up-to-date and informed, but it also allows people throughout an organization to compare and contrast the evolution of your products.
Why is that so important?
A cross-functional team’s ability to evaluate the history of product changes through the lens of each individual’s respective discipline will provide a better idea of the impact of product and process changes over time.
By encouraging information-sharing and communication between departments, system integration can inspire collaboration between departments and lead to unexpected business improvements.
When one department gains access to information they didn’t have before, it can help them understand the role in the company better as well as the overall operation of the business.
This knowledge can help them improve performance and productivity, as well as, allow them to make better, more informed decisions.
Recognizing & responding to multiple data user’s product information needs
Although product data management tools (such as PTC Windchill) help organization’s collect and manage data, many enterprise solutions (such as product lifecycle management systems) fail to build user interfaces that non-technical staff can actually understand.
PLM systems can quickly become too complex for many roles across an organization. This can make it hard for users to navigate the system, find information, and ensure they’re getting the right information.
Oftentimes the sole users of PLM enterprise systems tend to be engineers and product designers who create the information. This means other roles are requesting information from the authors, whether they are designers or engineers.
When this happens, users lose time waiting for the person who created the information, and they take time from the designers and engineers that should be focused on designing and developing products.
The solution: System integration that is focused on data visibility and data accessibility
By integrating your enterprise systems with a focus on data visibility and data accessibility, your organization ultimately supports communication and collaboration across the entire enterprise and value chain.
For instance, product data management tools (such as PLM applications or plugins) can collect and transform your product data. These same product data access tools can also provide a data output with meaningful content, assisting any role (such as accounting, purchasing marketing, etc.) to make smarter and faster decisions which can directly impact your bottom line.
An easy solution to extend product data access
Our company, EAC Product Development Solutions, designed an easy solution to help organizations (like yours) easily extend access to accurate product data.
Our solution is our EAC Productivity Apps.
Our PLM EAC Productivity Applications deliver role-based data mash-ups, that provide just the type of product information that is needed by a particular role.
Our PLM plugin technology works in the back-end to bring together product information stored in multiple enterprise systems (such as ERP, ALM, PLM, QMS, etc) to deliver product data to users in a way that can be easily consumed.
This enables an entire enterprise to get valuable product data and information in just the way that they want it when they need it.
Our Productivity Applications also eliminate time wasted waiting for authors to collect and redistribute product information.
Our EAC Productivity Applications help deliver on the promise of Product Lifecycle Management.
Want to learn more? Let’s have a conversation.
