Asia-Pacific manufacturers are adopting product life-cycle management (PLM) strategies with different attitudes, according to IDC company, Manufacturing Insights Asia-Pacific (MI).
The finding came from a survey that MI did early this year on 119 manufacturing companies across India, Malaysia, Singapore, and China. Sectors covered included automotive, aerospace, high-tech, consumer packaged goods, and industrial machinery.
Unified Product Lifecycle Management ensures control over product performance
According to MI, PLM in the manufacturing industry involves a suite of IT applications integrated to support activities required to develop, model, track and manage products. "PLM will be the next 'big' area of investment for manufacturing companies in the Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) region", said Christopher Holmes, vice president of Manufacturing Insights Asia-Pacific.
Key findings
While Asia-Pacific manufacturers are adopting PLM mainly for competitive differentiation, their areas of focus vary, MI said. The survey results showed that Chinese manufacturers are seeking to exploit PLM application functionalities to cut costs and raise productivity through all product life-cycle stages.
On the other hand, manufacturers in Singapore, Malaysia and India are focusing on the need to improve quality.
As for process improvement, regional manufacturing companies are focusing on streamlining product development, new product introduction, and product ramp-up processes, MI said.
The IDC company said that advanced PLM tools can enable organizations to tighten control over processes, and optimize them to deliver improvements. Examples of such tools include product information management systems and product portfolio management applications.
According to MI, PLM supports computer-aided design, manufacturing and engineering. Consequently, PLM has evolved to become cross-functional and is now used to support manufacturers across all departments, from product design to assembly.