Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is an enterprise business strategy that helps companies to bring more and more innovative products to the market, faster and cheaper. Since PLM enables innovation, success rate of the products in the market is high and helps companies to retain their competitive edge much longer, resulting in increased profits. Senior executives have realized that it is PLM now that is the need of the hour to be competitive in the market.
PLM implementation needs a careful study of the organization's needs, its vision, culture, business processes, IT systems etc., among others to ensure that the implementation is successful and that the organization realizes its ROI on PLM as predicted and that the implementation is successful.
This needs people with both Industry and Technology expertise and also the appropriate methodologies and tools to provide the right PLM consulting and implementation services. L&T Technology Services comes with experts from various Industry domains and experience in world class PLM platforms and implementation methodologies creating success stories in PLM resulting in customer delight.
Processes in the Product development phase are yet to reach up to that level of standardization and maturity like those in the manufacturing phase. Processes differ from one location to the other and due to inorganic growth, it becomes much more complex. Units/divisions that came as part of acquisition will have a totally different processes, culture and IT landscape. Standardization or Institutionalization of these processes across the entire organization will be challenging.
In L&T Technology Services, we have our framework for studying the existing processes, analyzing the same and see how they can be reengineered so that they are more efficient and best in class. Definition and documentation of the "as-is" and "to-be" processes helps in appreciating the gaps and gives clarity on what benefits to expect from this exercise. Our framework comprises of procedure to conduct interviews with the stakeholders and templates for capturing, analyzing and presenting the data.
PLM :
- Teamcenter
- ENOVIA
- Windchill
Engineering Application Development :
- CATIA
- NX
- Pro/E
- AutoCAD
- SolidWorks
We have global strategic alliances with the World's leading PLM solution providers
- Siemens Industry Software
- Dassault Systems
- PTC
- Autodesk
PLM is not a "plug and play" application. One can not achieve the benefits of PLM by implementing PLM without proper due diligence. Understanding of the Organization's vision is extremely important to take any further steps in PLM assessment. We then define a PLM vision, which will totally align with the Organization's vision. Strategy to realize this vision will be defined next. A phase wise implementation roadmap will be then suggested based on what would be the PLM platform. Not only this will ensure that the implementation will be successful, it will help customers see the benefits of PLM early, instead of waiting for all the phases to be implemented.
Many a times, customers find it difficult to decide as to which PLM product would be the right one for them. This is a very crucial decision making point in the PLM journey. There are instances where, after the roll out, customers realized that the product they selected was not the right one, resulting in huge loss of money, time and resources and had to redo everything again using another product.
In L&T Technology Services, we help customers by selecting the right PLM product. The process involves analyzing the inputs/requirements from the stakeholders, analyzing and prioritizing the same by assigning appropriate weightages and then comparing the top 3 or 4 down selected products as to what extent the features of the products can address the prioritized requirements. Apart from the functional aspects, other parameters such as - stability, scalability, reputation, scalability etc., are considered to arrive at the right product. This scientific approach helps customers ensure that the most appropriate PLM product is selected for their implementation.
We leverage our exhaustive experience and expertise in CAD and CAD automation to effectively offer solutions in CAD – PDM Integrations. Our offerings involve almost all top of the line CAD and PDM/PLM platforms. In addition to configuring the out of the box integration solutions, we have expertise in extending the same to cover many additional parameters to accommodate specific design preferences.
Our offerings include integration of Workgroup Management (PDM) with enterprise PLM, PLM to other enterprise applications such as ERP and other legacy systems. Our integration solutions are around EAI, point to point and also vendor supplied integration products.
Underlying aspect is our understanding and appreciation of business processes to define and recommend the right type of integration for a specific customer situation. Data covered are CAD attributes/properties, product structures, BOMs, ECR/ECOs etc. and process/workflow elements.
Once the PLM roadmap is defined and the product selected, the next step is implementation. This involves solution architecture, project management, configuration/customization, testing, roll out and support. Our PLM implementation methodology ensures efficient and optimized execution. We leverage our assets, reusable components, productivity improvement tools to reduce the time and cost of implementation. We leverage our strategic alliance partnerships with PLM vendors – Siemens PLM, Dassault Systems and PTC very effectively.
Functional aspects covered are vaulting, version and revision control, release management, product structure/BOM/configuration management, document management, change management, collaboration, regulatory compliance and many more
Our methodology ensures frequent touch points with the end users. Apart from conducting user workshops to run the solution developed, we also train the end users so that when the roll out happens, the users are up to speed on using the system.
Data Migration : We help in migrating from native to PDM/PLM environment, from one PDM/PLM to another PDM/PLM platform including data conversion whenever necessary. We have developed tools/utilities to automate the migration process to the maximum extent.
Application Migration : We automate the process of migration both at the source as well as destination systems to the maximum extent. Extraction of data, metadata, workflows and many more elements are mapped, reconciled, cleaned and finally imported into the new system. Custom programs will be studied, improved, re developed if necessary. This, generally follows the implementation methodology.
Application Upgrades : We have expertise in upgrading from a lower version to a higher version involving PLM products of all major vendors viz. Teamcenter, ENOVIA and Windchill. We use many in house developed as well as vendor supplied tools/utilities to ensure flawless upgrades.
Collaboration is the key for success in product development. With increased globalization, a product is developed in the organization's own different locations and those of design partners, vendors and many others. Suppliers and Customers also need access to the "work in progress" information so they need access to the product information in real time. There should be only "one source of truth" available for stakeholders within as well as in the extended enterprise. Collaborative design demands not only designers but decision makers from different locations and organizations have access to the "visual" data. Since heavy CAD files can not be exchanged quickly, we help customers visualize, redline/markup, approve using lightweight models and take the process forward. We use almost all the top tools available for visualization and technology for collaboration.
We provide L1, L2 and L3 support to customers leveraging our approach in alignment to ITIL methodology. This covers user support, bug fixes / enhancements, performance monitoring, system monitoring, working with product vendor for any product related issues. We help customers define appropriate KPIs and commit on meeting SLA requirements. Our approach ensures year on year saving to the customer and reduction in TOC. We have our time tested onsite-offshore methodology that helps customers further saving in TOC.