Product Lifecycle Management
With Fusion 360 Manage
Overview
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) helps you accelerate your product development processes across all departments and locations by automating workflows, key tasks and delivering timely information. Autodesk’s PLM software, Fusion 360 Manage (formerly known as Fusion Lifecycle), is on the cloud allowing everyone to have access to their data anytime, anywhere.
Why PLM?
How does PLM fit into your Organization?
In order to have a better understanding of a project / product lifecycle, let’s have a look at a typical product lifecycle example.
If we look at the first stage of a project lifecycle, the cycle begins with a customer need. The customer need is then evaluated by the Sales and Project Managers to determine the product requirements. Based on the product requirements, engineering and design create drawings and CAD models. While engineering is busy with the design, Purchasing orders the required parts to build the product. Once the project is completed, the Quality department checks the product quality, after which your customer receives the product.
Well, this is actually only half of a product lifecycle!
Now if your customer reports an issue, you want to be able to capture the issue and report it back to the right people to make the right modifications.
With Fusion 360 Manage acting as the single source of product information, you can achieve a perfect lifecycle from the beginning of the project to the end. This will allow an organization to capture the product issues and report them to the right people, enabling them to make timely and effective adjustments.
Product Data Management (PDM): keeps your files, metadata and CAD documents organized. It is an engineering centric tool.
Enterprise Resource Management (ERP): Manages resource and transactional tasks for departments such as accounting, purchasing and inventory management.
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM): Manages product development, BOM, ECO, and workflows. PLM connects processes and workflows to each other from different parts of an organization. It is a platform that helps not only the engineering departments but also sales, purchasing, quality, and production.
Vault or other PDM applications are great tools for managing CAD documents, drawings, metadata and revision control. On the other hand, Fusion 360 Manage is a platform that supplements a PDM application by enabling an organization to achieve the following:
- New Product Introduction (NPI)
- Bill of Materials (BOM) Management
- Supply Chain Management
- Change Management (ECO, ECN and ECR)
- Quality Management
- Project Management
- Reporting and Traceability
Today, with the live connection between Autodesk Vault Professional and Fusion 360 Manage, companies can automatically export data such as a complete BOM from Vault to Fusion 360 Manage. In addition, the connection allows users to sync the change management in Fusion 360 Manage to Vault.
What ERP does not provide is functionality suited for managing Engineering Product Data like: Change Management, Quality Management Systems and new product Development. These functions are very iterative in nature and are not well suited to an ERP system.
PLM, on the other hand, is well suited to managing these iterative processes.
The best practice in the industry is connecting these technologies and allowing data to be shared in an effective and streamlined manner.
PLM does not replace ERP, it compliments ERP!
In an organization where each department is using a different technology to achieve their goals, it becomes very difficult to streamline information and communications across teams. These different technologies do not communicate well with each other and can create significant communication barriers between teams.
By using PLM as the single source of information, Fusion Lifecycle complements the existing tools by connecting them together.
With Fusion 360 Manage: information captured by the sales team in a CRM will be visible to the engineering. Once engineering is done, a complete BOM and product information will be available to ERP, purchasing and production.
Fusion 360 Manage gives your organization the visibility through the entire project, from customer requirements all the way to production.
Fusion 360 Manage Capabilities
New Product Information
Configurable New Product Introduction (NPI) project templates standardize phase-gate milestones, deliverables and tasks by product line, business unit, product team, or other designation.
Bill of Materials
Configure and mange structure Bills of Materials (BOMs) and items in a centralized system that is both powerful and easy-to-use in a centralized system that is both powerful and easy-to-use. Compare different BOMs and/or versions of the same BOM interactively.
Change Management
Product changes are fully defined, reviewed, approved, and implemented in a collaborative environment. Easily configured workflows provide a clear view of the details you need to approve Engineering Change Requests (ECR) and Engineer Change Order (ECO).
Quality Management
Configurable workflows coordinate, control and track the complete chain of cross-functional quality processes, tied together in a single system. This creates a complete quality chain from non-conformance identification and analysis to RMA, CAPA and engineering change, improving product quality while reducing time-to-closure.
Supplier Collaboration
Establish flexible and configurable 24/7 collaboration with your global supply chain in a secure environment. Stakeholders can quickly and easily approve suppliers and vendors, manage supplier audits, and supplier corrective actions.
Product Data Management
Autodesk Vault empowers your engineering team to organize, manage, and track product data, revisions, and releases. Keep everyone working from the same design data across your organization.
Industries
Below are examples of industries that have successfully implemented PLM in their workflow.
Industrial Machinery and Products
Industrial products must be innovative, precise, and reliable to meet the evolving needs of Industrial Automation. Delivering on time while ensuring the quality of products depends on streamlining information and processes, from initial design to mass production. Fusion 360 Manage, a multi-tenant Cloud-based PLM system, is built upon a highly configurable interface that allows the solution to easily adapt to existing processes and environments, while also extending beyond traditional PLM functions.
Consumer Electronics and High Tech
Both the High Tech and Consumer Electronics Industries have product development that is characterized by complex BOMs, extensive networks of global suppliers/contractors, and constant product iterations driving innovation to keep up with highly competitive markets. Fusion 360 Manage, a multi-tenant Cloud-based PLM system, is built upon a highly configurable interface that allows the solution to easily adapt to existing processes and environments, while also extending beyond traditional PLM functions.
Automotive Suppliers and Components
The Automotive Industry is going through disruptive change, Tier Suppliers are challenged to be more innovative, reduce costs and deliver on-time. Cloud-based PLM helps manufacturers collaborate through their entire product development process on a single platform with no information delay or discrepancies. Fusion 360 Manage, a multi-tenant Cloud-based PLM system, is built upon a highly configurable interface that allows the solution to easily adapt to existing processes and environments, while also extending beyond traditional PLM functions.
Resources
Check out these videos on Vault Integration with Fusion Lifecycle
Interested in How SolidCAD Can Help?
At SolidCAD, we’re transforming PLM with an affordable, easy-to-use, easy-to-deploy and Cloud-based PLM solution called Fusion 360 Manage.
Our Fusion 360 Manage PLM solution is for the entire company and includes many standard use case applications.
