The user interface for your PLM system is the second most important facet to your user adoption, right behind roll-out. A user in the Quality department doesn’t need to see the same screen as an Engineer and neither of them have the same requirements as someone in Procurement. Take it a step further and technical people won’t use an interface that doesn’t meet their needs and non-technical users will reject a system they see as unnecessarily complicated.
The fact is, every user needs an interface that’s tailored to their job, otherwise they will not embrace the system. A roles-based user interface promotes individual user adoption through tailoring their views to only those items that impact their daily work and subsequently encourage routine use and the ultimate success of the PLM implementation.
If you’re stuck: Planning is the best way to avoid this situation. Choose a PLM solution that can provide special purpose views based on different roles. That sounds easy, but between encrypted data models and restricted APIs many PLM systems just can’t do it. If yours can’t, consider bringing in a complementary system that is open – open access, APIs, data models, web services, etc. to fill the void.