Product Development in the Digital Age

A lot has been said about the requirements to effectively develop products in the digital age. The main argument is that the products themselves become digital – are comprised of mechanical elements, electronics and software – and that any good product development environment needs to bring these dimensions together and enable a systems-thinking approach.

And while that is absolutely true, there is yet another set of requirements coming from the digitization of manufacturing businesses. And that is the fact, that business processes along the entire product lifecycle become much more integrated and require one consistent digital model that grows from the early ideation phase through project planning, design and production all the way to after sales service.

So what does that mean for PLM systems? Well, in short it means that besides interfacing with multiple CAD systems to manage the increased product complexity, they must integrate really well into the rest of the enterprise. In fact, avoiding process complications (process gaps and missing data consistency) can deliver much more value to manufacturers than yet another sophisticated feature around CAD integration.

Obviously this is the sweet spot of SAP-PLM which has been re-inforced by a recent IDC Whitepaper that looks at “PLM Selection in SAP Environments“. The recommendation in a nutshell is to only spend as much effort as necessary on managing product complexity (CAD interfacing) and instead focus as much as possible on avoiding process complications (Integration into enterprise processes).

So, what’s your view?