Our world is rapidly becoming a place where big data reigns supreme. Just like a king!

Product lifecycle management is an all-encompassing technology solution for integrating and managing all types of data inherent in the design, development, production, support, maintenance and final disposal of manufactured goods and product offerings.

The ultimate goal of product lifecycle management is to accelerate the entire cycle of product development and improve business efficiency and profitability. In its most basic sense, PLM software is a collaboration tool that facilitates organizations to manage their product information across a wide spectrum of internal and external business processes and functions.

PLM is an integrated system that facilitates the collection, sharing and management of crucial data – a broad-based approach that governs the development of a product right from the idea conception to the ultimate disposal.

One System for Everything: Product Lifecycle Management

The product lifecycle management is a business process management tool that serves as a repository for every teeny little bit of information that might affect a product offering. It is essentially the first place where all product information comes together from different stages of production – be it supply chain, production, procurement or marketing. By consolidating diverse systems in an organization, PLM helps create a coherent data structure to develop, manufacture and retire products.

One of the most compelling benefits of the product lifecycle management approach is to empower businesses to make smart, timely and information-driven decisions at each stage in the overall product lifecycle. Of course, your product development process is unique to your company and a one-fits-all PLM approach might not work for you.

However, like most businesses, your company also depends on the quality of data that is available to make critical decisions on a day-to-day basis. PLM offers a unified, collective intelligence that helps improve the strategic decision-making process, define processes and workflows, eliminate process bottlenecks and accelerate the overall product development process.

Get the benefits that PLM has promised for years

The cradle-to-grave approach of product lifecycle management offers many benefits for companies seeking more efficient, profitable product development, and management solutions.

In the present scenario, PLM has emerged as a single vital source for managing the different aspects of product management throughout the production, development and retirement processes.

It is no secret that faster product development and shorter lead times to market have become the key to marketplace competitiveness and success. With PLM solutions, the product can be developed and finished faster. As a powerful enabling technology platform, PLM applications help integrate people, processes, business systems, and of course data to streamline the product information spinal column for your company.

The innovative technology of PLM enables your business to reduce production and material costs through prototyping, waste reduction and savings through the full integration of engineering processes and workflows. This naturally leads to enhance production efficiency and increased productivity. The robust data analytics tools, such as visual analytics of a PLM application simplify the overall processes, workflows, communications and information flows throughout the production cycle.

It leverages the full potential of integrated business systems and functions across the company, from supply chain to production and from compliance to financial divisions. Product life cycle management solutions ensure more transparency in policy disclosure and the organizational decision-making process.

Acting as a line of a message between owners, managers, suppliers, employees and customers, PLM aids open communication and conversation amongst the various stakeholders. This helps you identify and understand what works and what does not work for your company.

What to look for when purchasing PLM software

When people purchase PLM systems, they essentially invest in technology which provides a wealth of ease and convenience given that the systems are extremely complicated. This is a core reason users often find it difficult to navigate these systems, let alone make full use of all the features it offers them.

When selecting a particular PLM solution for your business, it is important to ensure that it is easy to use, navigate and apply in the various stages of the production cycle.

Another feature to consider is the ability of the PLM software to integrate with and complement readily with the systems and processes already in place at your organization.

The PLM application that you procure from a vendor must come with certain features such as BOM (Bill of Materials) management, reporting and analytics, quality management, change management and product data management.

While these elements help in the overall coordination, tracking, control and management of the various workflows involved in the production, the best PLM software should also offer functionally enabling deeper supplier collaboration, flexibility and accessibility, speed of implementation, environmental compliance and support for existing organizational systems.

PLM Applications for any PLM system

So what are we suggesting? Our solution to an easier way for everyone in your organization (not expert PLM users) to use Windchill and find product data is our EAC Productivity Apps. You can learn more about our EAC Apps on our website.

Learn more about productivity apps

EAC Product Development Solutions introduces the powerful EAC productivity applications that make it easier for you to view, understand and manage product data.

With one single, simple and powerful interface, you can make better, faster and more effective decisions at your company. Our PLM system applications are compatible with product lifecycle management systems, thereby offering an integrated technology platform for multiple enterprise systems including ALM, MRP, ERP, SLM, CRM, Accounting, and PLM (Windchill). The cookie-cutter PLM solutions by most vendors tend to be overly complicated which inhibit your ability to consolidate task workflows and streamline production processes within your organization.

Our PLM apps work as a connectivity tool, to transform the entire PLM experience. They facilitate user experiences by allowing them to perform functions without prior training, making the PLM interface easy to work with. EAC Productivity Applications provide an added advantage of connecting with a PLM system and altering the user interface, making PLM easy to understand. They have the capability to pool data from many enterprise systems and put it on one screen.

Our goal is to give power to the manufacturers.

We have successfully eliminated the common PLM system bottlenecks and complications by coming up with our own PLM solutions that reduce the bare bones you might experience in run-of-the-mill PLM software and applications available in the market. Our PLM applications were developed to offer you a perfect user experience by improving accessibility to critical data.

With our top of the line PLM apps, everyone can use the system with relative ease and businesses can fully tap into the large PLM investment they were initially promised.

EAC Productivity Apps | EAC Product Development Solutions

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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.

Why is it important to manage your product Bill of Materials (BoM) in a PLM (Product Lifecycle Management)? This is a tough question to answer across the board for every company, but this article breaks down what you need to know.

The level of BoM management in PLM can be dependent on your companies’ products, downstream systems, and product development processes.

With that in mind, here are some general benefits and reasons to manage the creation of your product BoM in PLM.

The benefit of bill of materials management in PLM

PLM in nature is meant to be a tool to help engineering manage their production date while allowing dynamic collaboration and change control throughout the product development cycle.

The data managed in a product lifecycle management system includes CAD and BoM information, as well as additional supporting product information and documentation.

PLM functionality typically allows an organization to store any and all product information in a structured manner. The structured manner is what properly represents the product within all stages of the product’s development.

This includes everything from initial design requirements, to manufacturing requirements and process plans, to quality assurance documents- all linked to a single product structure.

This gives you the ability to graphically see a truly complete representation of any and all products managed within the PLM system.

In addition, many of the top PLM systems (such as PTC Windchill) give you the ability to manage different views of a single bill of material.

For instance, you could see the design or engineering view of the structure and all design information needed for that BoM product structure.

You would also have the ability to look at a manufacturing view that has the structure defined in a way to support the best possible manufacturing process, while it also links to any supporting information and work instructions.

Additionally, you could see a service BoM that represents exactly what is on-site or on the hands of a customer, with linked product information specifically related to service or support (such as a service repair or product manual).

ERP or MES systems are all about the financial and manufacturing execution aspect of product management.

These systems focus on tracking and managing all cost and profit throughout the process.

Because of this, changes are tightly controlled and require significant steps to ensure proper applications across the system.

There are also few systems that allow for full product representation inside of ERP or MES as outlined above. Nor do they fully support many different views of the same BoM.

ERP tends to only manage what is required to properly manufacture or sell a product, which does not always represent the full product design or its full breadth of supporting information and documentation.

There many impacts on these fundamental differences.

When to use PLM for BoM Management

Here are some general concepts as to when to use PLM for BoM management.

When your product development is in the dynamic phases that require many changes and updates at each phase gate, your bill of materials should be primarily managed in PLM.

If your product requires specific requirements management, detailed manufacturing, quality work instructions, or an intensive manufacturing process, it’s in your best interest to use product lifecycle management for your BoM.

At the very least, all of your product information should also be managed, or linked to your product lifecycle management system to ensure full accountability to all information updates required in the instance of change.

Integrating ERP and PLM

At a minimum, if you have an ERP system it’s important to integrate your system together with PLM.

It’s essential to establish key integration points between your enterprise systems that send needed information back and forth to your enterprise resource planning solution. This will help you properly execute new product releases and changes.

By integrating your systems, your ERP processes will ensure all proper tasks and functions are executed in your ERP or MES systems.

From there, your ERP to PLM system integration would send information back to your PLM system to close the loop.

These are our best practices to help you get ahead and to take product data further. We would love to hear about your thoughts about this topic and answer any additional questions you might have. Feel free to drop a comment below or leave an inquiry under let’s talk.

Looking for an easy way to quickly assess your bill of materials and ensure projects stay on-time and on-track?

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Check out our BoM Reports App

You’re likely to have experience with Bill of Materials (BoMs) if the nature of your business has anything to do with product development.

Let’s talk about why bill of materials are so important, how BoMs impact business, and the best BoM management practices. Or check out another helpful article on BoM management, “How BoM Management plays a role in your PLM processes“.

The importance of bill of materials

BoMs define products as they are designed (CAD or engineering bill of materials), as they are ordered (sales bill of materials), as they are built (manufacturing bill of materials), and as they are maintained (service bill of materials).

They incorporate product information from design and engineering, document control, operations, manufacturing, purchasing, contract manufacturers, and more. Bill of materials influence inventory levels, material purchases, shop floor assemblies, and so much more.

In fact, departments often rely on BOM records to get the job done right. Whether you realize it or not, your BoMs drive and affect your businesses’ operational success. This is why it is so important that your organization creates and manages well-organized, correct and up-to-date bill of materials.

BoM information accuracy and why it matters

BoMs require complete and accurate information, in order to successfully benefit design, manufacturing, sales and service building quality products.

The accuracy of BOMs influences an organization’s ability to make well-rounded product development decisions. These decisions fundamentally impact the efforts organizations peruse to generate a product in the most efficient, cost-effective way.

Oftentimes creating BOMs requires input from design, procurement, manufacturing, and sales. Using manual methods to collect and enter items on various BoMs increases the risk of producing inaccurate, out-of-date, or even possibly duplicate BoM versions.

Furthermore, if departments produce products based on incorrect or inaccurate bills of materials, delays to market can occur. This can not only be very costly for an organization, but it oftentimes impacts an entire supply chain.

Inaccurate bills of materials are one of the costliest errors engineering companies can make. In order to avoid the risks of inaccurate BoMs, many organizations have started to reevaluate the way they create, manage, and share product information.

BoM management processes

Bills of materials (such as eBoMs, sBOMs, mBoMs) are most-likely part of your product development process. That being said, what are your current processes for managing those BoMs?

How do you share, collaborate, and ensure the accuracy of your organizations’ bills of materials? Do you find it difficult to manage the differences between them and keep the data consistent across eBOM (engineering bill of materials) and mBoMs (manufacturing bill of materials)?

Odds are if you have yet to implement technology solutions to manage your bills of materials, your methods for BoM management most likely involve spreadsheets, emails, rekeying information, and multiple other systems of communication.

If this is the case, don’t worry – you’re not alone. Studies show nearly 50% of product development companies still use spreadsheets (or sometimes even nothing at all) to manage complex bill of materials!

Despite the big workload that BoM management represents, many organizations are still comparing bills of materials in excel spreadsheets or by opening separate BoMs and manually connecting the dots. This management approach is not only tiring, but it also increases risks of human error and mistakes, especially if the bills of materials are very long.

In fact, is not unusual to find one giant excel spreadsheet on top of information managed by PLM (product lifecycle management), ERP (enterprise resource planning), CRM (customer relationship management) and other databases. Why is that? The information required to assemble bill of material documents tends to reside within separate, disconnected enterprise systems.

It’s time to change that.

Connecting business systems and information

In a world of complex, role and department-specific enterprise systems, productivity can seem quite limited. But the truth is, with the help of technology, businesses no longer need to operate this way. Collaborative solutions exist, and they really are as simple to implement as they, well… should be.

System integration tools (such as applications) change the way organizations create, manage, and share product information- without even having to upgrade or change current enterprise systems.

Using system API connections, applications can pull data from disconnected enterprise systems and consolidate it into centralized dashboard display windows. In fact, many integration applications are even ready to go straight out-of-the-box (yes, this means they require absolutely no special configurations or complicated implementation at all).

For instance, productivity apps offer simple, role-based access to data and other enterprise systems making it easier for stakeholders to view and understand consolidated product information and data. What makes simple applications that integrate enterprise data even better is the fact that most of these system collaboration tools are even affordable.

With a single view to into multiple enterprise systems (such as ALM, MRP, ERP, SLM, CRM, Accounting, and PLM) you can be sure that users have access to the latest and most accurate product information when they need it, and how they need it. There’s really no catch. Productivity apps really are solutions that are; easy, affordable, and that solve the complexity of dealing with multiple disconnected enterprise systems.

Effective BoM management & bill of materials software

Parallel to system integration apps that can pull and consolidate enterprise data, BoM applications can also automatically consolidate real-time data across enterprise systems.

This means organizations can enable real-time BoM collaboration – and that is a game changer.

Real-time BoM collaboration empowers users with capabilities to collaborate and work together creating a bill, sharing BoMs and associated data, and even preview CAD drawings and images. It also opens up the ability to simultaneously edit manufacturing bill of materials, while completely avoiding duplicate and inaccurate documents. This enables users to get a virtual ‘live view’ of data.

Users are able to maintain and manage all associated product documentation such as part datasheets, materials required, CAD drawings and files, as well as anything else that is needed to manufacture a product all in one centralized location. This reassures one sole accurate and revision-controlled bill of material for a product.

This is exactly why it is so important to establish systems and methods that enable all departments within your product development process to be able to share, collaborate, and ensure the accuracy of your bills of materials.

A simple bill of materials software

Our experts at EAC Product Development Solutions recognized the need for better BoM management within many organizations- That’s why we created our bill of materials software application, BoM Reports.

Our BoM Reports PLM application is essentially an out-of-the-box PLM system plugin. It’s easy to use, simple to integrate, and an extremely affordable for any organization.

We designed our Bill of Materials Reports application with the intention of making manufacturing bill of materials and engineering bill of materials management ‘easy’ for organizations of all sizes. Meaning- our bill of materials software can even work for small businesses!

Our BoM Reports app delivers access to your accurate bill of materials database while it provides visual representations, cost rollup for materials, and detailed informational listings of items within bill of materials.

We guarantee our BoM Reports application will enhance your bill of materials management. In fact, it has changed the way many of our customers do business.

Get More Information about EAC Productivity Apps

Our EAC Productivity app enables purchasers to see product cost roll-ups during design, so they can hit cost targets. It allows project managers to see the highest level status and availability of constituent parts so they can keep projects on time and budget. It helps fabricators see what version of parts go into the build so they can prevent scrap and rework- and SO much more!

We’re excited about how our organization is enhancing product development and we would love to share more information with you about how our EAC productivity apps really work.

If you would like more information about apps that could work for your business insert your information below. We promise not to fill up your inbox with overloads of information, we simply want to share tips, tricks, and tools that will help your organization succeed.

What are PLM Apps?

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Applications (Apps) take data from your product lifecycle management software and combine it with data from your other enterprise solutions to create a single, accessible dashboard view (of all your data), that can be customized for any role within your organization. 

Essentially, PLM Apps offer a comprehensive, basic IoT scheme to connect to your equipment, collect data, begin data/alert/notification workflows, deliver role-based dashboards, and more.

Here are four ways that PLM system applications could benefit your business. 

PLM Apps, Systems, and more

Odds are, if your business is currently involved with the creation or production of any sort of product, you have likely heard of (or you might already be incorporating) product lifecycle management practices within your business. For those of you who are newer to the concept, product lifecycle management (PLM) often involves implementing software solutions referred to as product lifecycle management software, or systems. 

Product management software systems (such as PTC WindchillSAP PLMOracle Agile PLMTeamcenter PLMAutodesk Vault, Centric Software, Aras, etc.) are designed to manage your product’s entire lifecycle from ideation through engineering, design, manufacturing, service, and even the disposal of your manufactured products. Oftentimes, PLM software systems are implemented with the intention to integrate product data with other business processes such as manufacturing execution systems (MES), enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and many other enterprise solutions. However, the reality turns out to be much more complex. 

PLM systems are complicated. These systems are complex due to their sophistication and immense capabilities.

In fact, due to the intricacy built within PLM, many companies commonly face challenges with PLM solution interfaces, features, integrations, data sharing, reporting, navigation, and user adoption. Soon enough the PLM technology lives in a ‘vacuum’. Sales and quality managers who don’t use it daily may find it difficult to use. 

Other employees might avoid using the PLM systems entirely, and even those who do access the product lifecycle systems daily may find it challenging to coach others who have minimal exposure to these tools. This is exactly why we hear many companies who are not fully entrenched within their PLM systems claiming, “PLM systems don’t deliver on business requirements” or “PLM functionality you expect doesn’t work”. 

The reality is – people and departments cannot perform their tasks in isolation. This is exactly where PLM apps add value to your business and streamline workflows.

1. PLM Apps promote cross functional alignment

Traditionally, functional areas within our businesses such as sales, marketing, finance, and operations specialize in different portions of organizational planning activities, which result in conflicts over expectations, preferences, and priorities.

Think about it for a second. 

Organizations tend to have isolated departments focused on different business objectives. They often use different data collection systems to accomplish unique tasks. While organizations may consider their teams to be functional, they may fail to recognize the efficiencies they could drive with full cross-functional alignment between and across teams. That or the cross-functional alignment that organizations initially targeted with product lifecycle management didn’t work out as well intended.

This is just one of the reasons PLM Applications are a game-changer.  PLM Applications break departmental silos by providing semantic interoperability, ultimately enabling cross-functional alignment. 

I know what you’re thinking. “That’s great.. but how exactly does that work?”

Or perhaps, “That’s exactly what I was told my PLM software was supposed to do” just came to mind. The reality is – PLM systems are completely capable of doing everything you had purchased them for, but training everyone in these complex systems is more than a chore. PLM Apps take the foundational features and functionality of your PLM systems and make them easy. 

The biggest advantage of these applications is that they actually motivate your siloed departments to utilize the technology investments you’ve already made. PLM Applications extract data from your existing enterprise software systems (such as ERPMRPPLM and more), combine that integrated data into easy-to-use interfaces, and enable role-based data access to any user who needs it.  

Check out a real-life example of how a fast-moving apparel industry made the product development process exponentially faster and more efficient with the use of mobile apps.

For example, purchasing departments spend most of their time within Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems creating purchase orders, checking stock levels, scrap/rework, etc. They commonly face challenges retrieving engineering data (such as PDF’sDXF’sand IGES) that are contained in systems controlled by engineering or IT. PLM system applications create self-serve user-based environments that integrate combined enterprise data into consumable interfaces for any end-user or role. 

Essentially, PLM applications build user interfaces that non-technical staff can actually understand. PLM Apps can also act as an extension to your existing engineering system, allowing your departments to retrieve drawings without having to ask or burden an engineer. In fact, PLM application interfaces can even be adjusted to display key purchasing information. They have the ability to retrieve all documents (such as PDF’s, DXF’s, IGES, and more) that are associated with a specific order or drawing file. 

Creating a self-service business environment for your departments allows purchasing to retrieve the correct drawings (PDF, DXF, IGES) without having to rely on engineering or configuration management.

This is just a few of the ways that PLM engineering applications can enable cross-functional alignment throughout your organization. 

2. PLM Applications simplify communication among distributed teams

Forget the need to run around and collect information from multiple departments in order to collect the data a business division needs to do its job. The infrastructure within PLM Apps allows for access/permission controls and change management

This means you no longer will need to disrupt other departments or coordinate schedules just to exchange information. Plus, by providing everyone with instant access to relevant and up-to-date product information all teams will be on the same page.

3. PLM Apps optimize all aspects of the manufacturing process

Once your siloed teams start to align, the communication between distributed departments becomes more efficient. Your business will be well on its way to optimizing your overall performance. By centralizing all aspects of your product data, your organization will notice relevant common grounds and establish open communications about areas for continuous improvement. 

PLM Applications make it easier to view and understand product data within one simple interface gather information from many systems; ultimately enabling your teams and your organization to make better and faster decisions.

Your team’s alignment and enhanced communication will create opportunities for action and better execution. Being able to access accurate data helps everyone maximize output, reduce costs, increase product quality, and get products to market faster.With actions that lead to better execution, your organization will see more success. 

4. PLM Apps drive accurate data

According to the Harvard Business Review, workers waste approximately 50% of their time locating data, finding and correcting errors, and searching for sources to confirm the accuracy of data. 

Can you believe that?! 50 percent! In addition to wasted time; inaccurate data inevitably leads to redundancy and inefficiency. 

Let’s put it in perspective. 

Essentially, we are talking about approximately half of the time and salary we are paying managers, decision makers, data scientists, and knowledge workers – gone because people have a hard time accessing data. This scenario makes it easy to see how bad data and complicated interfaces can cost an organization big – time, money and possibly reputation. PLM Applications can help protect you from the negative impacts of bad data.  PLM applications can help everyone access to one centralized data source – quickly, and easily. 

That’s right. One. 

By using only one source for data, your information will be easier to maintain and keep clean. You can be sure everyone is accessing data that is accurate, verified, and up-to-date. Besides, let’s not forget, data drives decisions. By using PLM applications to access and collect your data, your organization can be confident that the data you use for your day-to-day operations is data you can trust. 

Overall, PLM applications greatly promote cross-functional alignment throughout organizations, eliminate communication complications between distributed teams, optimize performance aspects within manufacturing processes, and centralize data to ensure accuracy. Think PLM applications could improve the way your business operates? Check out how EAC’s custom PLM applicationsEAC Productivity Apps – connect all aspects of your organization. 

PTC Windchill saves ALM Positioners 4 hours per project

 If you are trying to confidently make a smooth transition from paper files to digital files with a complete PLM solution, you should contact us to learn more about PTC Windchill. Read on to learn more about a business who succeeds in digital transformation to reduce time-to-market, decrease costs, and increase collaboration.

Business Overview
ALM Positioners, Inc. is a manufacturing and assembling facility for state-of-the-art positioner lifts located in Rock Island, Illinois. Myron Pundt, VP of Engineering at ALM said, “We build positioners that lift, rotate, and turn machinery in the manufacturing industry. The positioners allow our customers to put their parts at the right elevation and rotation for their operators to build things efficiently.” Their business eliminates the need for straps, chains, and slings and instead allows the operator to raise and position weldments and assemblies to the necessary height and working position. 

ALM specializes in custom designs and manufacturing solutions for their customers who need positioners to meet specific requirements. Their unique selling proposition in the Industrial Automation Industry allows them to offer significant cost savings for equipment, improved safety for welders and operators, and increased manufacturing and assembly production efficiency to their customers.

Business Challenges
ALM was challenged by an increasing number of custom design requests. These requests increased product design cycle times. Inaccurate and inefficient information was finding its way to engineers and technicians because product data was stored in paper documents throughout the manufacturing facility.  

Pundt reported, “We would have a lot of problems with not having the right prints, so something would end up being built wrong – requiring rework or just extra time to disassemble or reassemble it.” Modifications were being made to designs that weren’t communicated to other departments. This created a bottleneck in operations causing stalls in production and higher costs due to rework. “We’re looking to streamline our processes and get rid of the paper on our shop floor.” 

To keep up with the demand of their customers, ALM knew they had to be able to securely store and access product information, Bill of Materials (BOMs), and design requirements all in one place to eliminate the bottleneck and to operate at maximum speed and efficiency on the shop floor. Kevin Toft, President at ALM, proclaimed, “Our company is growing at a fast rate. Last year we saw a forty-six percent growth in our sales revenue and we expect that we are going to double sales by the end of 2019. We need to have systems that work for us so we can continue to see that kind of growth. We have to be as efficient as possible.” 

Solution
ALM Positioners turned to EAC Product Development Solutions to help solve their bottleneck problem. EAC helps companies optimize their product development systems so they can succeed in the market place. EAC is a PTC value-added network partner, offering the latest advancements in technology utilized by companies around the world, including PTC Windchill. EAC’s Solution Architects proposed PTC Windchill, a product life cycle management (PLM) tool that allows organizations to consolidate and manage product information into digital form. 

Implementation
With the help of EAC’s implementation team, ALM incorporated Windchill throughout their organization so they could view, operate, and manage up-to-date CAD designs on computers throughout the shop floor. “Before we implemented Windchill we were running paper copies. Our ERP implementation was through exported BoMs in Microsoft Excel and we would import them back into the ERP system. It was very time consuming and inefficient,” Pundt explained. Windchill eliminated the obligation to use multiple systems to view product information, associated BoMs, and CAD designs. 

Overall employee morale was up because there was less redundancy throughout the early design stages. Brydon Sanders, Product Design Engineer at ALM, reports, “Before Windchill we had an archive of data that was not necessarily 100% accurate. So, when we were sorting data that we thought was right, we’d find out there was a problem after we made changes to it. EAC helped us customize a life cycle specifically for how small of a company we are to help facilitate changes and make the correct revisions. Everything is much faster when designing and validating the product.” 

EAC helped customize Windchill to optimize operational efficiencies specifically for ALM’s needs. Colten Brunenn, Product Manager at ALM, reported, “EAC’s implementation specialist was on site for several days at a time throughout the implementation process to help us customize the application to our needs. The specialist was giving us examples, walking us through the processes, showing us how it would work if we did it a certain way, and showed us how to make things easier. It opened our eyes to the capacity and abilities of what we could do with Windchill for our specific needs.” 

Results
Compared to previous processes, ALM is able to more quickly and accurately meet their customer’s needs because of their Windchill implementation. “We save about four hours per job with just the front-end BoM load and getting the information into the ERP system – which has been huge,” Pundt explained. “Customers tend to want what they want and a lot of times we can get their order over our competition because we’re willing to customize it for them. Windchill and our new ERP system make it very easy to manage those customizations and helps us to make sure that we have materials in-stock and on-time to meet those needs.” 

“With the implementation of Windchill, our manufacturing efficiency is greatly improved. Everything is live on the shop floor now, there are no more paper copies, no more prints getting lost, and nobody building something off the wrong or unrevised print. It has really improved our efficiency through the manufacturing process,” Pundt said. Transitioning into a digital workflow with Windchill allows ALM to reduce time-to-market, decrease costs, and increase collaboration throughout the organization.

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