Global Engineering: Green Engineering/ Green PLM Archives

PLM Package Implementation

I recently had a discussion with a client for implementing an off-the shelf PLM package solution. Implementing any off-the-shelf PLM package solutions needs be tied to a long-term business strategy. The role of PLM in enterprise strategy can be decreased product development time, decreased product cost, and increased product revenue.

There are two typical approaches for implementing a PLM package:

· Big Bang Approach

· Phased Approach

The Big Bang Approach requires a large budget and clear project timelines. Organizations today prefer a phased approach as they build on small successes by getting continuous commitment from stakeholders and key business users.

Guiding Principles for Successful Implementation:

· Define Program Scope - Get a sign-off so that changes in scope can be avoided. Make sure the project deliverables and deliverable owners have been clearly documented.

· Establish Program Governance Structure - Identify a governance structure upfront with clearly defined Responsibilities and Expectations. Executive support is extremely valuable.

· Secure Required Resources - Before the implementation begins, make sure that your organization has the financial and human resources necessary to support it during the acclimation period. It is also important that your team contains the appropriate "balance" of technical and functional experts and is experienced in the implementation of the product. If required, hire external help for the implementation.

· Define the To-Be Business Process - Involve key stakeholders and functional users during the process design session. Because the PLM product implementation may significantly impact the business functions of an organization, it is imperative to involve the user community in the process design from the outset. In addition to the technical issues, understanding the business issues will lower the risks associated with the implementation. A stable operating environment coupled with functional users willing to accept a new way of doing business will also minimize implementation obstacles.

· Examine the Product & Process "gap"-- If the PLM package has not been specifically designed to meet your organization's unique requirements, there will be a gap between the business process and product functions featured to support your existing processes and systems. It is imperative that you understand this gap well before the implementation begins and ensure your organization can accept this gap without degrading performance. Make sure the options for gaps are evaluated before deciding on customization. Avoid excess customization as it forfeits the advantage of using a PLM solution.

· Understand the PLM Package - Visit another organization that has implemented the PLM package during the PLM vendor selection process. Early in the process, obtain a comprehensive understanding of the functionality of the PLM package. If possible, obtain hands-on experience with the system. Consider prototyping or piloting the package in your environment.

· Validate Performance and Scalability - Ensure that the product's capabilities support the needs of your organization. Confirm that the PLM package has previously supported the number of users and geographic locations your organization will require.

· PLM Package Adoptions: Adoption is the final step in the package evaluation. Other than keeping financial aspects in scope, the most important factor is "Organization Change Management". If this is not properly defined and taken care of, the whole adoption could prove harmful. Adoption strategy is often defined in phases; however, it is also important to note the change management along with each phase. Historical records have shown PLM projects fail most frequently due to a complete lack of or poor Change Management adoption strategy

Posted by Hardik Kansupada at 11:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Product Compliance: Necessary Evil or Organization Growth Enabler?

A few weeks back, I had a discussion with a client about Product Compliance. It was very interesting as he saw compliance as a necessary evil, which was the complete opposite of my perspective.

Organizations today are facing a constant challenge to keep up with ever changing product regulation. Every year brings new global Product Compliance laws, which require increased spending by companies to mitigate the high risk of being non-compliant by keeping up with constantly changing laws.

Companies can see this as a necessary evil or as an opportunity-to-growth enabler. Those that see Product Compliance as necessary evil take a project-based approach, while forward thinking companies take a holistic, process-oriented approach. Organizations need to view product compliance as a growth enabler.

The risk of being non-compliant increases as the product progresses through different product stages.

Forward looking organization follows a few simple guidelines:

· Enable compliance in the early product stage, putting less pressure in the downstream stage

· Design for "Social Compliance" which includes stakeholders like NGOs, people, and government as stakeholders will play an important role in product acceptance

· Take a proactive, process-based approach so the products are prepared upfront for any product regulation changes

· Educate and collaborate with suppliers early in the process, putting less pressure on suppliers so companies receive the compliance data in time

· Electronically manage compliance data in a well-designed system

Product compliance does address risk. However, with vision, it also provides growth opportunity for organizations by preventing expensive product recall and delays thereby increasing revenue and profit. Compliance is a living process, not a point in time, but an ever-evolving process.

Posted by Hardik Kansupada at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The India innovation debate...

I was at the India innovation debate held at Delhi on 19^th November. The event which was organized by Dassault Systemes and CNBC 18 brought out various facets of "innovation" in context of society, business, products and processes. The debate had panel of renowned thought leaders, policy makers, and business representatives including Mr. R Gopalakrishnan, Additional Secretary to Prime Minister and Member Secretary of National Innovation Council, Dr. Arun Maira, Member, Planning Commission, Mr. Bernard Charles, President & CEO, Dassault Systemes and turned out to be quite engaging (http://indiainnovationdebate.com/). Viewpoints were shared on relative importance of idea, organization, leadership, personality and technology to bring about an innovation.

It is increasingly evident that world is becoming more conscious of the environmental concerns and quality of life while looking for the economic value add. The policy makers from India made observation that the developing countries should not imitate the developed world when seeking growth and improvement of living standards. As a case in point the availability of public transport could serve as a better measure of available mobility than for looking at the measure of cars owned per 1000 population. While chasing the profitability and volumes, innovation should be about designing products which address societal needs including the bottom of pyramid came the observation from business leaders.

Similarly "What factors contribute to creating new innovations?" found various theories. Are Indian better dispositioned to being innovators had equally interesting observations. Various views were aired ranging from individuality being an important trait to another that diversity creates more opportunities for innovation. However it was clear that the environment where failure were acceptable, teams were collaborative and good leadership was provided led to better success of innovative ideas.

I believe that while the "idea" would always remain the core of innovation; Today it is the impact of technology on the environment that makes it an important element to deliver innovation. Like the right leadership can draw a compelling picture of future to create buy-in for innovation, it is technology which can deliver the scale and reach.

In last few decades the impact of technology on society has been profound. The emergence and adoption of social networks is redefining the paradigm of communication. The convergence of ICT is breaking the distance barrier. The cloud computing promises to reallocate technology cost and affect usage patterns. The product lifecycle management platforms are enabling visualization and collaboration in product creation across and beyond enterprise. This all opens new possibilities to create and enable innovation that deliver more to society with lesser resources (economic, natural and human)

For the new growth economies the need to address bottom of pyramid, improve quality of life is always accompanied with challenge of scale, transparency and reach. Technology and talent are crucial to address these challenges to unleash a new wave of sustainable innovations.

Posted by Vikas Ohri at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Importance of Customer Experience in Product Strategy

Customer Experience is a vital element of product development strategy that is often over-looked or under-appreciated. Traditionally, product strategy begins with capturing customer requirements usually in terms of product features or attributes. This is then translated into functional requirements or capabilities that the product must deliver. Customer experience is only captured as an after-thought, and when a product is put through the customer journey, it reveals many deficiencies that call for a product re-design and, consequently, a delay in time-to-market.

A product development strategy must be designed to deliver a compelling set of customer/user experiences rather than a collection of product features and attributes. Customer experience must therefore be factored in at the very outset of product design.

Customer experiences do not occur in product or functional silos. An end-to-end approach comprehending machine and human interactions is key to understanding customer experience. Delivering a "superior experience" begins with

· Designing the right offers and experiences for the right customers

· Developing, measuring, and delivering a total customer experience that enhances customer satisfaction

· Understanding the needs that drive customers to create interactions

It's the journey, not the destination! A customer journey maps the experience through the lens of the customer. It helps us identify:

· Customer lifecycle stages

· Customer needs within each lifecycle stage

· Key touch points where a company brand/product 'touches' and serves its customers

· Usecases which determine how the customer will use the product

· Challenges and hurdles for creating a satisfying customer experience

· Opportunities to 'engage' with the customer, and innovate & improve the customer experience

A customer journey must be addressed as a process map that examines concatenated processes. In the early stages, a product strategy must be designed to deliver a set of target customer experiences. The product design must be iterated and validated by examining how the processes that constitute the customer journey actually work at each step. We must walk through the journey and understand what's working and not working from a customer perspective.

Continuous improvement in customer experience can be enabled via

· a disciplined & pragmatic approach that correlates user experience to customer needs, usecases, product functionality, and brand strategy

· a systematic framework leveraging value realization methodology (e.g. Infosys's VRM) in conjunction with lean six-sigma principles to improve and optimize speed & efficiency, remove root causes of customer experience 'defects', and minimize variability in processes

· designing for target customer experiences and monitoring via quantifiable metrics to manage the customer journey and continuously improve the total customer experience across multiple channels and touch-points throughout the customer lifecycle.

It is thus important to weave a clear customer experience strategy into the fabric of the organization's product development strategy, especially in the B2C domain. This can be a significant enabler to improving a product's competitive positioning and lifecycle, the company brand, and customer loyalty.

Posted by Sunil Hattangady at 11:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The cost of being Green

While travelling down from LA to Dallas after presentation the Infosys GreenPLM offering at the GlobalTex conference, I had a chance to browse the greenbiz.com". website . The good thing about this website is the news section dedicated on Green information & updates across the globe.

Read the article "Recovery Act Adds 6,500 Greener Vehicles to USPS Fleet". And was quite excited to see the big step taken by USPS. This shows the commitment of US Government towards Green. The agency USPS ordered 14,105 fuel-efficient vehicles last month at a cost of $210 million. Quite an amount to be spent and this kept me thinking how much does it cost to be Green?

In addition to automobiles, the common gadgets that we use in our daily life like mobiles, mp3 players, DVD players, camcorders and so on are all also built using materials which are currently under green compliance radar. Now, it makes me wonder that how much of compliance can we actually bring in to develop green components and will it be cost effective? Having experience of various manufacturing process my personal opinion is that we can actually make greener products however we may not be able to produce something completely environmental friendly. And that would be too hypothetical statement.

I thought about it and came to the conclusion that there are various ways where one can actually reduce cost and still develop a green product or rather I should say a cost effective green product. For example, while take back and dismantling the product it is easy to identify the components which can directly be reused, some other could be re-manufactured ( well trade-off has to be decided on cost i.e. whether it is cost effective to produce new one or re-manufacture the old one) and some can be disposed off responsibly.

This was at the end of life and the best part is if one can consider greener aspects while designing the end becomes more friendly and easy. That again re-instate the fact that trade-off at the beginning can actually give leverage at the end.

Bottom line: More responsible the producer is, the more greener and cost effective products can be expected from them.

Continue reading "The cost of being Green" »

Posted by Hardik Kansupada at 7:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)