Examples and key metrics to transform your product lifecycle
What is digital transformation?
Digital Transformation is the integration of digital technologies into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how that business operates and delivers value to customers. This transformation involves adopting new digital technologies such as cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence, as well as connections across your enterprise ecosystem to automate, streamline, and optimize business processes and products. It requires a shift in mindset and culture, focusing on agility, innovation, and continuous improvement.
Creating the right set of iterative projects can impact all aspects of a business. Take, for example, improving consumer interaction with your internal operations. Understanding how to streamline and simplify how your customers work with you by taking their perspective will allow you to gain insights into customer needs and improve collaboration across the entire organization while improving your customer’s experience with your current products and ensuring loyalty to purchase the next generation of products. This results in increased efficiency, reduced costs, and improved customer satisfaction.
In addition, these projects enable businesses to figure out what is holding them back from responding quickly to changing market conditions, adapting to new technologies, and remaining competitive in an increasingly digital and global marketplace. Companies that embrace Digital Transformation are better positioned to drive innovation, seize new opportunities, and achieve sustainable growth.
This all sounds great, but where do you start? It’s simple, really; it starts with your most valuable intellectual property – your product lifecycle data. Read on to gain insights on measuring value and where you can start to help digitally transform your product lifecycle.
What does digital transformation mean in the context of the Product Lifecycle?
It all boils down to re-inventing traditional product lifecycle management processes and accessing and understanding product data to improve efficiency, speed up time-to-market, reduce costs, and enhance collaboration across the entire product development ecosystem. This includes incorporating technologies such as cloud computing, big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things (IoT) to drive innovation, streamline processes, and improve product quality.
Integrating the above-mentioned technologies with your PLM processes is essential for supporting digital transformation initiatives such as implementing cloud-based PLM systems, creating and leveraging Digital Twins, folding in IoT data to your product data, and using AI and machine learning to provide insights and directions you may not have even considered. This all can result in a new realm of businesses optimized product design, a reduction in time-to-market, next-level improvements to product quality, and enhanced customer experiences and satisfaction.
The use of digital technologies in PLM can enable businesses to gain greater visibility into the entire product development process, improve collaboration among cross-functional teams, and enable better decision-making based on real-time data. This will streamline operations and allow organizations to keep a step ahead of the competition in today’s software-focused digital age.
Three examples of Digital Transformation projects in PLM:
Here are three examples of PLM projects to support Digital Transformation:
A Digital Thread of the Product Development Process: To digitally transform, Kendrion sought a single product lifecycle management (PLM) environment to implement a digital thread to facilitate traceability throughout the product development process. This will enable the mapping of requirements to engineering, increase the reuse of information, reduce dependency on manual spreadsheet-based processes, and enhance the visibility of all product information.
Transitioning Business Model to Green Energy: Technip Energies’ digital-by-design approach aims to achieve full project lifecycle traceability and optimization from concept through design, execution, and operations. This collaboration will increase efficiency and create new opportunities in the energy industry.
Changing business model to Product as a Service: Tamturbo evolved one product line to a unique selling point—in addition to purchasing and owning, it is also possible to implement an Air-as-a-Service business model—the customer only pays for the compressed air they use with no need for capital investment.
What are the business metrics to measure the effectiveness of Digital Transformation in PLM?
Several business metrics can be used to measure the effectiveness of Digital Transformation in PLM:
Time-to-Market: The time it takes to bring a new product to market from the initial concept to the final product launch. By leveraging digital technologies such as cloud-based PLM systems, businesses can accelerate product development cycles, reduce time-to-market, and gain a competitive advantage.
Product Quality: Optimize product design, reduce defects, and improve manufacturing processes. Measuring product quality can be done through metrics such as product failure rates, customer complaints, and returns. By improving product quality, businesses can enhance customer satisfaction, reduce costs, and increase revenue.
Cost Savings: Measuring cost savings can be done through metrics such as reduced material costs, improved manufacturing efficiency, and reduced product development costs. By reducing costs, businesses can improve profitability and reinvest in new digital technologies to further enhance their PLM processes, creating a pathway for continuous improvement.
Customer Satisfaction: Enhance customer experience, tailor products to customer needs, and provide personalized services. Measuring customer satisfaction can be done through metrics such as customer satisfaction scores, Net Promoter Score (NPS), and customer retention rates.
Overall, measuring effectiveness requires a holistic approach considering a range of business and PLM-specific metrics. In doing so, businesses can assess the impact of digital technologies on their PLM processes, optimize their operations, and achieve their business objectives.
Why Aras Innovator is the PLM platform for Digital Transformation
Although not an all-encompassing list, Aras Innovator should be considered as your PLM platform to support Digital Transformation:
- Open Architecture: Allows for customization, extension, and integration with other systems and applications. The platform's flexible architecture enables businesses to adapt quickly to changing market conditions, integrate with new technologies, and extend functionality to meet evolving business needs.
- Scalability: Enables businesses to support small teams or enterprise-level deployments. This makes it an ideal choice for businesses that are looking to expand or scale their operations without having to worry about limitations in their PLM system.
- Cloud-based: Provides businesses with the agility, scalability, accessibility, and connectivity required for digital transformation initiatives supporting enterprise-level business change.
- Advanced Functionality: Support for Digital Thread, Digital Twin, and Enterprise Integration are just some of the capabilities that enable businesses to optimize product design, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction.
- Community-driven: We have a strong community of users, developers, and partners who collaborate to develop new features and functionalities, share best practices, and provide support. This community-driven approach fosters innovation and enables businesses to stay ahead of the curve by getting hands-on with solutions delivered by their peers.
The next step in your PLM Digital Transformation is your checklist
Are you ready to solve your most complex use cases? The only way to get started is to understand if you have the right solutions in place. Get started by evaluating your business through these six questions:
- Is your platform customizable? Once it is, can you upgrade easily without data loss?
- Does your platform enable the creation of an end-to-end graphically visible Digital Thread?
- Does your platform give you the flexibility to meet the process requirements that exist today?
- Does your platform give you TOTAL data transparency?
- Does your platform provider try to make you fit into their deployment model, sacrificing features?
- Can your platform evolve technically without disrupting business processes and integrations?
This will provide an initial level of understanding as well as put you on a path to a better way to transform digitally.
Learn more:
Creating a Resilient Enterprise Ecosystem
The Power of Aras Enterprise SaaS: How Aras Enterprise SaaS Enriches Cloud Deployments