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  • The Role of PLM in Streamlining New Product Development

    Introduction: The Importance of NPI in Product Development

    In today’s fast-paced and competitive market, the ability to innovate and bring new products to market swiftly is not just an advantage; it’s a necessity for growth. For product and manufacturing managers, the pressure is on more than ever to not only keep up with the pace but to lead the charge.

    New Product Introduction (NPI) process is pivotal element that can spell the difference between success and failure for product launch. NPI is the comprehensive process of bringing a new product from concept to market, encompassing design, development, testing, and launch phases. As businesses strive to outperform competitors and satisfy ever-evolving customer demands, the role of NPI emerges as a critical process where efficiency, speed, and innovation converge. Yet, navigating the complexities of product development, from conceptualization to launch, poses a formidable challenge. This is where Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) steps in, transforming the NPI process from a daunting task into a streamlined, strategic asset that propels companies towards success.

    PLM’s Role in NPI

    Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is managing the entire lifecycle of a product from inception, through engineering design and manufacture, to service and disposal, by integrating people, data, processes, and business systems. While NPI focuses specifically on the process of bringing a new product to market, PLM encompasses a broader strategy managing the entire lifecycle of a product, from initial concept through to its ultimate disposal, including the NPI phase.

    PLM in NPI

    Figure 1: PLM in NPI – The entire map is PLM, encompassing every aspect of a typical business’ processes. NPI is a component of PLM that is typically the starting point of your development of a new product or project.

    PLM serves as the backbone for NPI, providing a robust framework that revolutionizes how companies manage product data, foster cross-functional collaboration, and ensure compliance with industry standards as shown in Figure 1. By centralizing product information in PLM, it enables all stakeholders, from engineers to marketers, to access up-to-date data, ensuring that decision-making is based on the most current information. This centralizing of product information not only streamlines the NPI process but also significantly reduces errors and redundancies, accelerating the time-to-market.

    Furthermore, certain PLM software such as Autodesk’s Fusion 360 Manage, have collaborative tools that break down silos between departments, enhancing communication and coordination across various teams in your NPIs. These tools include task management, BOM management, automated notifications, Gantt charts to display project progress and more. This synergy is vital for aligning goals, refining product designs, and ensuring that every aspect of the product introduction is synchronized.

    Strategies for Effective NPI Using PLM

    Utilizing the NPI process in PLM is pivotal for companies aiming to streamline their product development and launch processes. To maximize the effectiveness of PLM, several best practices are essential. Firstly, establishing a centralized database for product information is critical. This repository becomes the single source of truth for all data related to the product, from initial design sketches to final specifications, ensuring consistency and accessibility across the organization.

    Integrating PLM with other enterprise systems, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, further enhances effective use of NPI. Such integration ensures seamless information flow across different business processes in their respective software solution, facilitating better decision-making and reducing time-to-market in your NPI process. For instance, ERP is typically used to manage supply chain. Thus, integrating PLM with ERP allows for real-time visibility into the supply chain, aiding in materials planning and financial forecasting and connecting it your product data such as the product BOM.

    To dive deeper into this, watch Autodesk’s webinar about utilizing PLM to bring your new products faster. The webinar explains how leveraging PLM software for project management and workflow automation is another best practice that can significantly impact the NPI process. This article by Autodesk further highlights the systems in PLM and briefly covers how NPI works alongside processes.

    Case Studies

    Reynaers Aluminium, a leading innovator in architectural solutions, demonstrates the remarkable benefits of integrating PLM into their New Product Introduction (NPI) processes. By adopting Fusion 360 Manage, Reynaers addressed critical challenges in product development, achieving remarkable outcomes. The customer story will go in depth of this transformation by adopting Fusion 360 Manage as their PLM solution and using it as a tool for various uses, including managing their projects with their product data.

    Conclusion

    Throughout this article, we’ve underscored the critical role of PLM in enhancing and streamlining NPI, from providing a centralized platform for managing product data to facilitating cross-functional collaboration with other business essential software such as ERP and CRM. The advent of PLM technology, particularly with the emergence of cloud-based solutions like Fusion 360 Manage, marks a significant evolution in the field. These modern PLM systems offer unprecedented flexibility and efficiency, enabling organizations to respond more dynamically to market demands and innovate at a faster pace.

    Starline Windows

    Success Stories

    Starline Windows

    Starline Windows is an industry leader in the design and manufacturing of architectural aluminum window systems, as well as residential vinyl windows and doors for over 50 years. They have completed thousands of contracts and worked on multiple award-winning buildings across North America.

    Their commitment to customer service is and always will be a pillar of their success. With a highly experienced team, they work with their customers on every stage of the project, from initial consultation and design through to installation.

    As part of their business, they work with architects to design structural façade glazing features, provide on demand customized manufacturing capabilities in-house, and have a crew to construct and install windows and doors on site.

    Rising to the Challenges of the Industry with Vault, Revit, Inventor, Autodesk Construction Cloud and PLM software!

    The Challenge

    Today’s push for remote work and custom designs have exposed some logistical difficulties for Starline Windows. To continue providing services in every step of the process, there is a constant need for better tracking and traceability of project commitments, product manufacturing and installation life cycles. Starline Windows faces business challenges that many other businesses face such as (1) lack of design collaboration engagement with external architects and contractors, (2) lack of design revision visibility for field personnel, (3) lack of project cost clarity, (4) limited data transfers between operating systems from the office to the field and (5) lack of cross department visibility in their overall coordination for logistics management.

    First and foremost, Starline Windows has always sought to improve granularity and accuracy related to their costing takeoffs. Due to software limitations, they often had to manually manage their takeoffs and Bill of Materials (BOM). This resulted in other departments working with manually generated data reports on a regular basis which are prone to human error.

    The Solution

    Starline Windows first connected with SolidCAD in late 2019 to provide insight to the concerns and challenges they have been facing. SolidCAD helped organize a detailed plan that would organize their pain points and provided a solution into four key phases:

    PHASE 1: Improving their Product Lifecycle Management

    Starline needed a solution that would better manage their projects for employees working in office and provide visibility over the progress of those projects. SolidCAD implemented Fusion Lifecycle Manage PLM to achieve this and set-up automatic notifications to any team members, to ensure they are always staying on track with any project changes.

    PHASE 2: Enhance their Design process with Revit and Inventor

    Outside of the issues with their workflows, they also struggled with their current 3D design process. Starline was looking to better automate their workflow between their Revit models and how they would be imported into Inventor for further manufacturing design. SolidCAD automated model creation based on their Revit schedule into Inventor, speeding up their entire design process.

    PHASE 3: Document Management with Vault

    With the seamless connectivity between Revit and Inventor, it was important that all teams were working with latest design files. It was critical to integrate Autodesk’s Vault Professional to ensure that everyone at Starline was working from a central source of organized data. As a result, Starline noticed an immediate improvement in being able to easily manage the revisions that slowed them to automatically tracks changes, maintains past file versions, and capture the entire history of their designs. This also reduced the amount of time and rework that often happened when they worked with outdated files.

    Most importantly, Starline wanted a seamless integration between their newly implemented Fusion Manage PLM system and their Autodesk Vault, which SolidCAD was able to achieve through a managed service delivery team.

    PHASE 4: Collaboration on field and in office with BIM 360/Autodesk Construction Cloud

    Although it was important for SolidCAD to help Starline Windows integrate systems that would better connect their internal departments and processes of design management, they also needed a solution to collaborate with their on-field and in-office employees. SolidCAD introduced Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) and specifically Autodesk Build and integrated it with their PLM solution to manage their Revit models and provide project visibility. Starline Windows was able to easily record, capture and manage the exchange of design data between their project teams and on-field contractors, ensuring that all teams were working from the latest model designs produced in-office.

    The Results

    Over the past year, SolidCAD has successfully implemented these various solutions and continues to support Starline throughout each phase. Although many of these processes do not give instant results, Starline Windows have already seen initial improvements and are on track to many more successes in later stages of their journey, such as:

    • Improved project management for office staff, allowing for visibility over processes and projects.
    • Introduced Revit and Inventor to streamline their design process.
    • Automation between Revit and Inventor allowed for automatic model creation based on Revit Schedule.
    • Implementing Vault and connecting it to PLM software has led to accurate data sharing to be available remotely.
    • Automation between ACC and PLM software meant that projects can be visible in personal productivity applications as well as project and organizational management allowing for improved resource management from beginning to end of projects.

    To learn more about the solutions implemented and the ways that Starline Windows have recognized and overcome some of the biggest challenges facing their industry today, check out the recording from our online event, “The Digital Thread – A Customer Journey” with Catherine Walmsley, Business Analyst at Starline Windows and Autodesk’s Queen of Prefab, Amy Marks.

    Testimonial

    We first reached out to SolidCAD to ask for an initial consultation after having searched worldwide for experts in design to manufacturing automation. The management team at SolidCAD listened to our biggest challenges and helped connect us with multiple experts in several disciplines to answer all our questions, however technical and detailed they became.
    SolidCAD not only helped the Starline Windows management team formulate a strategic plan to increase our ability to deliver productivity tools to our users while simplifying change management; they also provided key resources to configure and integrate new systems, onboard new users and train key players to help us accomplish our goals in record time.
    -Catherine Walmsley,
    Solutions Analyst at Starline Windows

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    Understanding Product Lifestyle Management (PLM): The Path to the Digital Future

    In my opinion, the most painful product lifecycle management (PLM) failures happen when companies struggle to understand the concept and implement it in their organization. This technology is made to help them. When I speak to companies, I hear things like – “We tried to organize ourselves, but PLM was such a complex idea. We decided to stay unorganized.” It hurts me to think about the failures of technology despite the powerful idea of PLM.

    I want to focus on explaining why you need PLM and how to identify if it can help support your product development and manufacturing operations. Understanding this will help you get prepared and organized for the digital future.

    CIMdata defined digitalization as “The business strategy best geared to extract real-world value from digital data”, whereas their definition of PLM refers to a “strategic business approach, NOT just technologies, a consistent set of business solutions”.

    I’ve noticed a growing interest in product lifecycle management and its benefits in the last year. As companies look to improve their product offerings, refine supply chains, and organize their business, PLM is one of the best tools to achieve these goals.

    When implementing PLM, your organization should be setting goals and KPIs regularily along the way. Our software will allow you to collaborate with SolidCAD and suppliers to integrate important data from their end as you assess each step in your process.

    As your organization goes through each of these stages, you should be collecting and entering data into your PLM software. We will help you streamline the process and allow you to eliminate tedious data re-entry. This means that your PLM software should smoothly integrate with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

    You may be wondering why PLM is important for our digital future. Expected results for companies using PLM software include:

    Lower product costs:

    PLM is an iterative process that your organization will refine with each cycle, one of the most common goals is to lower production costs. This may seem intuitive for any company that engages in product development, but it’s important to point out that PLM achieves this by creating a more refined supply chain along with a streamlined production process.

    Greater product quality:

    In a similar artery to lowering product costs, product quality should increase as you foster the PLM process. Whether it’s finding more diverse materials or better parts at the right price, each cycle should push you to assess your sourcing, development, and production methods to improve your offerings.

    Faster time to market:

    This is a direct result of improving your supply chain along with manufacturing and logistics. PLM is not only a about single product throughout its lifecycle; it is a tool to have comparable data that allows you to streamline and improve the steps in your process.

    So, what does PLM currently offer? PLM provides a central repository of accurate information that geographically dispersed personnel can access. In a post-2020 world where more and more teams are working remotely, there’s undeniable value in this system that facilitates accurate data sharing and collaboration don’t you think?

    To summarize, here are the 5 main reasons that you will need PLM based on my knowledge and conversations with customers:

    1. Increased productivity: PLM facilitates the process of lifecycle management and drives improvements across the series of cycles for the given product. Implementing a scalable PLM platform increases employee productivity by consolidating designs, communications, workflows, and product data in a single place.
    2. Accelerated time to market: The smoother the workflow and the higher the productivity, the faster your organization will be able to bring products to market.
    3. Increased revenue: As you accelerate your time to market with PLM, you’ll also be reducing production costs. The intersection between those two actions will improve your margin and help you scale up your business. You can’t just think of PLM as a way of improving workflows; one of the most critical KPIs after a few cycles is how it is impacting your revenue.
    4. Accurate data sharing: PLM organizes your data, helps you keep track of it, and allows for sharing with the right stakeholders at the right time (both internal and external).
    5. Improved product quality: More accurate data and improved workflows are always going to lead to improved product quality. I believe, that is another contributing factor to increased revenue. Regardless of an organization’s position in the supply chain. That stands for both business and commercial transactions. As you refine your PLM steps and drive even minor improvements, you’ll see the difference in the product for sure!

    From a business development representatives’ point of view to you, I can assure you that lifecycle management issues can be found across small, medium, and large business. When it comes to growing and improving your company, PLM solutions are the digital future.

     

    Get in Touch:

    If you made it this far in reading, you’re probably ready to get started on the path to the digital future. Learn more on our website: https://www.solidcad.ca/products/autodesk-products/product-lifecycle-management/

    If you prefer to get in touch with us directly, please contact myself and my team at tanya.petraglia@solidcad.com for more information, or meet our team at upcoming events: https://www.solidcad.ca/product-lifecycle-management-events/

     

    Tanya PetragliaBusiness Development Manager – Helping customers connecting processes with PLM- Manage 360

    PART 3 : Change Management (ECR, ECN, and ECO)

    This is the third in a three-part series of Fusion Lifecycle videos. In this video, we will focus on Change Management with a specific focus on Engineering Change Orders.

    In the previous video, we saw that the Bill-of-Materials was automatically extracted and transferred to Fusion Lifecycle for additional analysis, modification, export and so on. At a future point in time, someone may recognize a problem with an item in the Bill of Materials and wants to initiate a change. In Fusion Lifecycle, they can log a Problem Report. The Problem Report flows through a structured workflow becoming an Engineering Change Request(ECR) and then an Engineering Change Order (ECO).

    When the ECO is approved, Fusion Lifecycle pushes the information back to Vault, where the impacted assembly is changed to a Work-in-Progress state. Designers can then make the necessary design changes and Release the revised assembly.

    PART 2 : Bill of Materials (BOM) Transfer from Vault to Fusion Lifecycle 

    This is the second in a three-part series of Fusion Lifecycle videos. This video, will focus on the Bill-of-Material transfer from Autodesk Vault Professional to Autodesk Fusion Lifecycle.

    Vault Pro and Fusion Lifecycle can be integrated allowing data to move between the two systems. When Designers and Engineers have completed their work in CAD and Vault Pro, they will Release the assemblies.  The Bill-of-Materials is then extracted from Vault and transferred to Fusion Lifecycle as an Items BOM.  In Fusion Lifecycle, the BOM can be managed by adding or removing items.  When complete, the BOM is advanced to the Approval Stage using Fusion Lifecycle’s Bill of Materials Management capabilities.

    PART 1 : New Project Introduction Process In Fusion Lifecycle

    This is the first in a three-part series of Fusion Lifecycle videos. In this video, we will review the New Product or New Project Introduction process in Fusion Lifecycle.

    Fusion Lifecycle and Autodesk Vault Professional can be integrated to streamline the Project creation process.  In our example, we will begin by creating a project in Fusion Lifecycle.  Upon approval, Fusion Lifecycle will then automatically create that project in Vault, complete with our defined folder structure.