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NPI and PLM

Posted by mikilumnitz on December 1, 2008

When we talk about PLM we usually talk about Concept to Manufacturing or even Concept to Service / Retire business process. so how do NPI fits in? is it part of PLM implementation.

What is NPI?

NPI – New Product Introduction or NPD – New Product Development or even NPDI – New Product Development & Introduction as defined in Wikipedia:

The complete process of bringing a new product or service to market. There are two parallel paths involved in the NPD process: one involves the idea generation, product design, and detail engineering; the other involves market research and marketing analysis. Companies typically see new product development as the first stage in generating and commercializing new products within the overall strategic process of product life cycle management used to maintain or grow their market share.

So what is the difference between PLM process and NPI process? Is NPI part of PLM?

NPI deliver methodology of how to control the PLM process, from Concept to Manufacturing. Not from the individual item view, but from the high level project view.

NPI is a Phase-Gate approach: for each PLM phase I have a GATE, in order to pass a GATE I need to meet several predecessors.

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Usually companies will create a procedure and a check list of the predecessors needs to be met in order to pass each gate, then a manual control process is been implemented to manually signoff each gate checklist form.

As we believe your PLM system should offer you a simple way to manage complex processes and enabling you to grow with your PLM implementation based on your maturity and schedule, we believe your PLM system should offer you 2 solution levels to meet NPI:

  • The basic solution aim to replace the manual procedure with an electronic one:

A project plan has a GATE control business process, in order to approve a GATE you need to complete checklist of tasks (replacing the manual GATE checklists)

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NPI Phase-Gate Workflow within ENOVIA SmarTeam demo:

 

  • The more advanced approach will be to manage the complete NPI process with all tasks, predecessors, successors, dependences and due-dates.

This will be managed within a NPI program management approach. like in every complex process implementation, end-users acceptance is critical. This is why we believe each user should work from within his native user environment. The project manager should control the NPI program from within MS project and the team members (the engineers) need to work from within the PLM system. This enables full control of the user tasks, deliverables and attachments for each task. this will also enables connecting item release processes and ECOs into the NPI program tasks

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NPI program management within ENOVIA SmarTeam demo (part 1):

NPI program management within ENOVIA SmarTeam demo (part 2):

Posted in Engineering, Enterprise, Methodology, PLM, mid-market | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

The first steps a mid-market company should take when deploying PLM

Posted by mikilumnitz on October 29, 2008

The PLM vision is wide and can touch almost every hidden corner in the company. This is why we recommend our customers a phased approach or what we called as: “start small and grow as you go” (if you want it is like eating a sandwich – better to take small bites than try to have it all and choke… :-) )

Most of the companies are starting by managing their design environment. Establishing a solid PLM foundation with CAD Data and Document management. Then Expanding to cover the process from concept to manufacturing with item centric approach, collaboration around the BOM and Process/Change Management – based on the same modular PLM platform. Then Reaching PLM to the entire Enterprise with Global collaboration and effective decision making process.

I could say that, as wider the deployment is, the grater the benefits and the end-users acceptance are. Starting the deployment with concept to manufacturing solution will tie most of the end-users to this process and will deliver a huge benefit and users acceptance (because people see value from work been done by others – the secret of collaboration…). I am saying that even if in each business process you deploy first the most simple and intuitive solution and not necessarily the most advanced available, as long as again based on the same terminology: you can “start small and grow as you go” within the same PLM platform. (e.g. manage first requirements as documents in the system only after leverage the complete requirements management solution)

So, 1st get the process managed, get the people on board, only than enhance each area to a more advance solution.

Obviously, deploying PLM require a culture change within the company. I believe that if the solution own the following 3 elements, the impact on the company will be minimal and most beneficial:

Posted in Design, Engineering, Enterprise, PLM, mid-market | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »