Everyday we hear more bad news stories from the ‘credit crunch’ and I'm certain that we can all name companies and individuals that have been affected by what is one of the worst financial situations since the great depression in the 1930's. With the Christmas holidays almost upon us, the retail industry is working incredibly hard to ensure they maximise sales in the high street to help what has been a serious downturn in which many cases has devastated parts our industry. It’s critical in these times that companies become ‘lean’ and improve the way in which they manage their businesses.
When things get bad, companies tend to look for solutions to help them overcome the issues they face and one of the best solutions that can help companies fight today's challenges is PLM (Product Lifecycle Management). There are many examples of how PLM can improve the way in which a company manages its design & development processes to reduce time and money. At this present moment, the Product Development Partnership (PDP) team is currently implementing PLM solutions in both large and small retailers and brands. Unfortunately, a key inefficiency we come across every time we visit a new customer is the multiple times staff are entering the same data into different systems and from different locations. Typically one of the biggest problems and, in most cases, the easiest to resolve is the lack of structured communications. We continue to see companies using multiple databases to store key product development data and standard e-mail to share it across the organization. With PLM, we are able to remove a great deal of inefficiencies from the product development process with some of these benefits surfacing at the early ‘Process Rationalization’ stage.
Technology Savvy
On the positive side, we can also see PLM already being used by technology-savvy retailers/brands that are now benefiting from implementing a broad PLM solution across the extended supply chain resulting in ‘FAST to market’ and more cost-effective products. PLM isn’t just about implementing a piece of software; it’s essentially a business concept. ‘Input once, use many’ and ‘One version of the truth’ are both commonly used phrases to describe PLM. Using PLM to manage information that would otherwise be entered and used across multiple solutions and locations will instantly lead to greater efficiencies and a speedier delivery time.
Learn more about Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) at www.whichplm.com
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