What are the steps to take in preparation for a successful PLM implementation? Great question.  Lucky for you our very own Mark Beaulieu has equally great answers.  Combining his decades of real-world PLM implementation experience with his savvy Aras know how, Mark walks you through the right preparation for a smooth deployment including:

• Get Organized: In order to be prepared, it’s important to gather all relevant materials, identify resources and make sure to keep an open mind when it comes to change.
• Identify your Resources: Who do you need for your Implementation? Some key team members may include a Project Manager, Business Process Owner(s), Subject Matter Experts, etc.
• Getting Started: Before beginning with implementation, make sure to develop a Project Charter for funding, draw up a Project Plan, get your Team trained, and review the standard Aras Innovator Solutions.
• Organizing your Project: To organize your project, begin by breaking it down into sub-projects that will provide business value.  Then break these sub-projects down even further into manageable phases. These implementation phases can and should overlap even though work is done in a serial fashion.
• Executing your Project:  When executing your project, remember to focus on end user requirements.  Frequent end user validation of requirements, use cases and prototypes are essential.  Work should be conducted in an iterative fashion where the requirements evolve over the project.

Also, Aras Innovator is ideally suited for using an iterative Agile deployment methodology as opposed to a traditional Waterfall-style methodology. This enables you rapidly deploy in phases, rolling out high priority functionality fast, and getting users on the system quickly.

To learn more about preparing for the Implementation process, including why requirements documents are important, and sample use cases, and more take a look at the slides below.

For more Aras Innovator Implementation information, visit: Getting Started - Implementation

For a more detailed explanation of the PLM Implementation process, visit: PLM Info - Implementation

Starting a Global PLM Implementation using an Agile Deployment Methodology with Aras