How to succeed with your PLM project

Focus on your needs, not the supplier's capabilities.

Make sure that you align your PLM supplier's capabilities to your goals.

With all of the choices available, it's easy to get distracted. But there's not much return on investment (ROI) in buying a CAD file management system if you're mostly looking to accelerate your change process or reduce your bill of materials errors.

Protect yourself from fatal commitments understand if your requirements can be fully met by COTS/OOTB promises from the vendor.

Your decision for investment in PLM should be made with one eye on the future, for example:

A low upfront cost may be essential to get the project funded, but it's the on-going cost of day-to-day operation, user productivity, training, administration, support and maintenance that will determine success in the long run.

Vendor Decisions

PLM vendor decision are challenging & time consuming but once your choice is made it should be made clear by the vendor that once your data is in their database, shifting to another PLM must be possible provided that your PLM license vendor uses a well-known database server (SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, etc.). Alternatively your PLM vendor (Application Service Provider) gives a written & legal guarantee that all data they manage for you can be extracted easily. That they will also demonstrate this capability whenever you request it.