How Smart Manufacturers Avoid Nasty, Bad, Horrible Product Reviews

How Smart Manufacturers Avoid Nasty, Bad, Horrible Product Reviews

John Papageorge 13/08/2018 3

In today’s social media world, a bad product review can cause immediate brand damage. As a result, more manufacturing executives are determined now more than ever to catch costly quality errors before they ship to market. 

But the truth is a mishap can occur anywhere in the product design cycle or be caused by anyone across the supply chain. And once that internal error becomes an external problem (i.e. shipped to market), the cost to fix it is greatly magnified. 

To reduce the risk of quality failure, manufacturers are embracing solutions that integrate product data management (PDM) with product lifecycle management (PLM). This integration provides companies with the enhanced enterprise-wide visibility and modern bill of material (BOM) management capabilities needed to keep quality nightmares from sneaking past you...when you’re not looking. 

According to the International Journal of Management, companies can lower the cost of quality by up to 3X by fostering a design culture focused on preventing problems instead of being resigned to passively fixing them. However, the ability to proactively monitor errors, risks or bottlenecks is only possible by taking a holistic approach to managing the entire product lifecycle.

Historically companies have relied on disparate design systems that have impeded enterprise-wide visibility, making the alignment of stakeholders with related manufacturing processes difficult. Even worse, operating in this kind of fragmented environment causes blind spots that lead to supply chain oversights, employee missteps, and product design errors. For example, key stakeholders working in vacuums oftendon’t receive information until the design is prematurely considered done; then, it’s passed from electrical engineers to mechanical engineers and back again. This game of product data hot potato can lead to costly scrap and rework due to errors discovered too far downstream in the design process.  

Not surprisingly, one of the core design benefits of integrating PDM with PLM is the bi-directional flow of data like Change Management, Lifecycle status, and Quality Management for closed loop traceability. Additionally, actions in the CAD environment can be populated into PLM and the BOM, while CAD users can dynamically query PLM for critical information. 

The end result of this integration is that both mechanical and electrical engineers can now work together more easily and make fully informed design decisions based on all relevant engineering and corporate data.

Whether or not you see an immediate need for a PDM or PLM, the key is having a system that supports integrated bi-directional sharing of data between PDM and PLM. This integration also results in a superior BOM management solution.

Manufacturers can maximize their return on a PLM investment by first acquiring a PDM solution to get their product design data tightly organized. One immediate benefit is the learning curve for PDM systems are less demanding than PLM systems; in addition, by first implementing a PDM system as your foundation, you can realize the efficiencies of effective data management today, while laying the groundwork for a potential PLM deployment in the future. 

Relying on siloed design systems is like flying blind in the dark when it comes to effectively managing your data and product lifecycle. Today’s manufacturing world demands a platform that integrates PDM with PLM to enhance collaboration and visibility, streamline design processes, and avoid the risk of costly quality failure.

Click here to learn more about the value of how PDM improves the management and security of design data.

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  • Terry Cavanagh

    Good article

  • Sophie Ward

    Interesting post

  • Karl Lawrence

    Clear and concise

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John Papageorge

Tech Expert

John is a Senior Content Marketing Manager at Omnicell. He is a results-driven consultant who has worked with some of the biggest names in technology, including Oracle, Cisco, Hewlett Packard, and IBM, to improve their marketing and lead generation strategies. John holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

   
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