Now, it’s not really infinity, but looking at the future of manufacturing, product lifecycle management (PLM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) integration is expected to increase. We all have an eye to the future, but I found something that might offer further proof of why we need to continuously evolve ourselves to stay competitive, today and tomorrow.
The Future with PLM and ERP
On Moneylife, they wrote an interesting piece on the future of PLM and ERP and what’s in store for the industry – in this case, within the country of India.
Moneylife writes:
“New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.motors.frost.com), Strategic Analysis of the Indian Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), finds that the market was over USD 130 million in 2010 and is expected to become over USD 400 million opportunity by 2017; the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) is expected to be in excess of 15 percent during 2010-2017.”
With such a projected increase, along with industrial and manufacturing industries being major consumers of product lifecycle management and enterprise resource planning, if you’re not investing in this technology now, in the future you’ll wish you had.
To this, the post points out some areas that could hamper wide-spread adoption of product lifecycle management. We’ve listed them below, along with some ways to plan or accommodate for them.
- Increased cost: PLM deployment and maintenance requires skilled workers with expertise in the respective industry. This can increase costs and what’s needed to widely adopt product lifecycle management. A well-trained and knowledgeable work-force, on the other hand, can also be quite valuable and gains in efficiency could help PLM pay for itself.
- Increase in quality control: For the country discussed in the post, India, the focus on quality control in industry sectors is at a nascent stage. For the industrial sector, as the competition increases, they will need to evolve and embrace product lifecycle management technology. Quality control in some more industrially advanced countries like the U.S., on the other hand, can get downright competitive – PLM could give a manufacturer a leg up on rivals.
- Migrations: Going from a traditional system to a newer product lifecycle management and enterprise resource planning environment requires migrations. This sometimes can incur more costs and has the potential for data loss. However, once the migration is complete, your ready to use your new integrated systems to the benefit of your company.
Although some are reluctantly pushing away PLM and ERP adoption, numbers and competition show that if they don’t evolve, they may fall behind. To stay competitive and remain a leader in the industry, more manufacturers need to look to the future.
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