Metafore :: PLM Consulting and Services

Question: What are some specific benefits companies have achieved using PLM?
Metafore Answer: A medical device company for example was able to shorten the average time it takes to process an engineering change from 24 days to 9 days and reduce related processing costs from over $6,000 to under $3,000 per ECO. A high-tech company was able to increase BOM accuracy from below 90% to basically 100%, which resulted in annual cost savings of over $1 million because of reduced rework and scrap.

Question: What type of companies can benefit most from PLM?
Metafore Answer: Generally, the more complex the products are a company develops and manufactures, the longer these products remain in service and need to be supported, and the more regulated the industry is in which the company does business, the more beneficial PLM will be.

Question: Which is the best PLM system today?
Metafore Answer: It depends on a company’s short and long-term business needs, the required functionality, and existing business processes, practices, and technologies. It is probably safe to say that there is no one best PLM system for all companies and purposes. The leading enterprise PLM systems today are Agile, eMatrix, SAP PLM, SmarTeam, Teamcenter, and Windchill. All these systems provide extensive functionalities in various areas and each have their individual strengths and shortcomings. And there are a multitude of other systems that generally do not offer the same broad functionality as the before-mentioned enterprise tools, but may be well suited for a specific company, application, industry, or purpose and can cost significantly less. Examples include Aras, Arena, Enovia, ProductCenter, and Pro.File. The only way to find the right system is to carefully analyze existing processes, practices, and technologies, determine the company’s long-term business needs, define detailed application requirements based on these needs, and put a few systems that best meet these requirements to a practical test.

Question: I am working in the food industry. My company wants to introduce PLM as a means to rationalise SKUs globally. There has hardly anything been done so far. What approach should I adopt to understand where I need to start from? What kind of data should I be looking for to understand what and where is the problem?
Metafore Answer: One way to start is by reading our white paper about the “10 Best Practices for Successful PLM Evaluations”.
The next step is to analyze your company’s situation and business needs related to PLM. One area PLM can help you is in the management, rationalization and consolidation of SKUs globally. But there may be more areas where PLM can benefit your organization. Typically PLM also helps in integrating processes and disparate silos of information, hence increasing operational efficiencies, reducing costs and shortening time-to-market or customer response times. In order to determine the full value and potential of PLM, the entire organization, including all PLM related processes and technologies should be assessed.
Next we recommend defining detailed PLM application requirements that help in finding the right solution to address all your short and long-term business needs. The more detailed and company-specific you define your requirements in this stage, the better the final solution and the shorter the implementation and time-to-value will be.
Then, finally, you can go about evaluating different PLM systems and selecting the best one. Here it will pay off having spent time and effort on the previous steps and involving an independent partner that has a deep knowledge and experience with PLM. You will be able to make a methodical decision that is based on facts and not just on gut feel or the (often biased) information you receive from software vendors.

Ask a question

Question: PLM products seem to focus on manufacturing companies who create concrete products. Is there any solutions for service oriented companies like telecommunication companies? In the first place we have a need for PDM system to specify our service structure but I think that also other parts of PLM could offer great benefit.
Metafore Answer: PLM targets mainly companies that manufacture tangible products, such as aerospace, automotive, high-tech/electronics, machinery and plant equipment and medical device companies. We are not aware of any PLM software tools that specifically target the needs of telecommunication companies. Many aspects of PLM though are not dependent on the presence of any tangible product, but are process oriented. Document management, workflow and change management, WIP collaboration, requirements management and project and resource management are functionalities of PLM that can benefit service oriented companies just as much as product oriented companies.

Ask a question

Question: What is Metaphase?
Metafore Answer: Metaphase was one of the first PLM systems and was originally developed by Metaphase Technology, Inc. (MTI), a joint venture founded in 1992 between SDRC and Control Data Systems, Inc. (CDAT).
In 1996 CDAT sold its 50% stake in MTI to SDRC, which continued to develop and sell Metaphase under that name. In 2001 SDRC was acquired by Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS) and merged with Unigraphics Solutions (UGS) into the EDS PLM Solutions Line of Business. EDS PLM Solutions subsequently had two PLM products: Metaphase from SDRC and Information Manager (I-man) from UGS. In an effort to consolidate the two products, initially exclusively in terms of marketing, EDS PLM Solutions established the Teamcenter product line, with Metaphase being renamed to Teamcenter Enterprise and I-man being renamed to Teamcenter Engineering.
These two products – Teamcenter Enterprise and Engineering – continue to exist today, although UGS, meanwhile spun off from EDS, sold to a group of private equity companies and in 2007 acquired by Siemens AG, continues its efforts to bring these two product closer together architecturally and from a user interface point of view. The latest release of Teamcenter, version 2007, is the first release that is largely based on a common architecture and features functionality from both products.