Gaining Competitive Advantage

Product Lifecycle Management is fast becoming a crucial enabling technology for consumer goods companies as it helps optimize product development and innovation, improve operational efficiencies and focus on evolving customer and market needs. PLM functionality also provides the ability to drive business objectives by boosting top and bottom line growth, and is therefore being deployed as a strategic initiative by many consumer goods firms seeking to improve their competitive advantage. "Improving business processes around new product development and introduction is a key challenge being faced by companies trying to gain market share by driving product innovation and beating the competition to market launch," says Tim Vaio, Hitachi Consulting vice president of Supply Chain Solutions. Hitachi has found that companies achieve significant, measurable results by deploying a comprehensive PLM strategy which can include:

435 percent reduction in product cycle times.

450 percent to 90 percent reduction in engineering change order cycle times.

425 percent increase in product revenues.

And from a recent Accenture report called "PLM Megatrends", a resounding number of respondents also said PLM was a relevant IT and business strategy at their organiztions. Key findings from the study found that:

More than 80 percent regard IT solutions as essential in their company.

More than 40 percent describe their IT solutions as advanced.

More than 90 percent use external partners for their IT issues.

Every second enterprise plans to expand its PLM system within the next three years.

PLM In Action

Managing a massive number of product variations with disparate 2D computer aided design (CAD) systems and other product data management platforms was a major business challenge at Loewen, a luxury window manufacturer. Multiple and inconsistent versions of the same data contributed to inefficient ongoing operational processes. Multiple versions of the same product data residing in disparate systems led to challenges and inefficiencies among inter- related departments.

IBM PLM is helping Loewen migrate to a centralized 3D product database for enhanced interdepartmental collaboration. Design development cycle time has been reduced from as much as 18 months to as little as eight months with reduced costs and improved quality. The choice of IBM for its PLM implementation was easy, said Stephen Segal, CIO, Loewen. "IBM's approach was a comprehensive, end-to-end PLM solution, which we did not see from other vendors. In our view, IBM had the best understanding of what PLM actually was and how it could benefit our organization. Combined with the fact that Loewen has a long, successful relationship with IBM and that PLM integrates with other IBM solutions, and the decision was clear."

Another IBM customer, Autumn Harp, is also seeing great business benefits by using IBM PLM. Autumn Harp develops and manufactures premium "hot pour" products -- lip balms, eyeshadow, moisturizers and more, in wands, sticks, squeeze tubes, pots and tins -- for the personal care industry. Products are never pulled off a shelf, but are custom made to meet customer requests.

"We run an integrated system that connects everything from sales and inventory to financials and supply chain management, and we needed to integrate additional company functions into our software package," says Bruce Bove, information systems manager, Autumn Harp. "Our 10-year-old system had reached its limit and just would not support the way the business was growing." In response, Autumn Harp needed found the answer to its IT needs in an end-to-end integrated enterprise solution provided by IBM Premier Business Partners Vormittag Associates, Inc. (VAI) and Vector New England Inc., based on an IBM eServer iSeries server.

Since Autumn Harp is known for the quality of products and service provided to clients, which range from independent brands to major global corporations, meeting demand in a timely fashion is essential. A research and development lab works with customers to formulate and provide samples of unique new products before turning the approved item over to production to meet specific launch dates. At any one time, some 250 different products in varying colors and flavors are on the schedule. "A key to meeting on demand product deadlines is material resource planning MRP), which consolidates all the base ingredients needed for the next four weeks for the purchasing department," says Bove. "The old system would start working on it at night, and it could take as many as 14 hours. We couldn't rerun the program during the day to include new orders, so we had to use manual spreadsheet entries to make sure the numbers were accurate."

The Building Blocks of Success

Mega Bloks, a leading manufacturer of innovative building toys, will deploy Aras Innovator Version 7 to automate the new product development and launch processes to include project portfolio visibility, development coordination, and supply chain readiness. Mega Bloks is one of the top 10 toy brands in North America and is known worldwide for safe, high-quality toys designed to help children learn, discover and have fun.

"Our market segments are decidedly competitive and require that we innovate constantly while ensuring superior quality and managing costs," says Daniel Bourgeois, vice president of product development. "Aras enables us to manage our product development and introduction processes for supply chain readiness."

Mega Bloks will use Aras Innovator Version 7 to automate business processes critical to new product develop-ment and brand introduction providing dashboard visibility into the portfolio of ongoing projects. Browser-based progress reports are displayed on a single screen. Status details are based on roll-ups that provide the ability to drill down to the deliverables to take action and ensure quality. Different design cost structures are tracked for new products providing information necessary to make profitable decisions. The capability to communicate requirements and specifications to suppliers worldwide in a secure format over the Internet drives down costs and reduces product development cycle times while protecting proprietary company information and ensuring quality.

"With Aras we roll out in a 'building block' manner matching the order and timing of the processes we automate to our strategic objectives," says Valere Pelletier, director of information technology. "Aras flexibility means we can tailor the solution to fit our needs and still implement much more quickly and cost effectively than the other PLM systems we evaluated during our extensive review."

Aras Innovator Version 7 offers web-based business ready solutions based on Microsoft .NET technology with unmatched flexibility providing customers with the ability to easily modify applications for quick deployments that deliver rapid results at a significantly lower Total Cost of Ownership than conventional PLM systems.

The PIM Equation

Forrester Research recently ranked FullTilt's Perfect Product Suite as the market's top (Product Information Management (PIM) solution. The software automates the internal and external data synchronization processes necessary to eliminate conflicting item definitions, outdated item information, duplicates and other errors contained in multiple enterprise databases and applications. Mouser Electronics, a subsidiary of TTI, has deployed FullTilt's product information management (PIM) software, Perfect Product Suite to manage the world's largest known centralized repository of product information maintained by a single company in a commercial PIM offering.

Mouser Electronics, the fastest growing electronics catalog distributor in North America is dedicated to supplying its customers with the latest new products and the newest technologies. Mouser is the only distributor in the industry to publish a new 1,500+ page print catalog every 90 days. In addition to its print catalog, Mouser's continuously growing on-line catalog provides over five million franchised products and provides competitive cross-references to millions more competitive products. Mouser's FullTilt PIM system is expected to grow many times its current size.

"We've been extremely pleased with FullTilt's performance on our PIM project," says Glenn Smith, president and CEO of Mouser Electronics. "After extensive review and evaluation, we discovered that our database size was too large and our perform-ance requirements too high to be properly supported by other PIM vendors. In fact, once fully populated, it appears that our database may be the largest ever contained in a commercial PIM." Mouser is diligent in daily updates and continuous refinement of their website. By using FullTilt's Perfect Product Suite, Mouser expects to significantly streamline their product information management processes resulting in reduced costs and rapid deployment of extremely rich, accurate, and up-to-date attributed product information of the highest quality that will provide a significant competitive advantage.

"FullTilt demonstrated the ability to accurately evaluate Mouser's data challenges and successfully deploy a solution that exactly meets those needs. "FullTilt truly functioned as a member of the Mouser team," Smith added. "They not only worked with our company's best interests in mind, they kept within the agreed budget and didn't surprise us with unexpected cost increases."