Essay Example on PLM in the Supply Chain Now & Future 2022

Change within the discipline of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) or whatever may be coined as its current name – (product development cloud, PLM 4.0, product collaboration, etc.) makes the head spin. No matter the name PLM - still the most common name – conveys the fact that these solutions serve as the backbone for product information and processes across the product development lifecycle. 

Once seen as the center of the universe for the product definition, PLM now shares the stage in a Supply Chain Collaboration scenario of manufacturing applications such as BIG Data, PIM, Enterprise Resource Planning, Innovation Management, Planning, Logistics, IoT, Analytics, and more. Any application that could contribute sharable data that will eventually reflect the whole product from inception to change, to manufacture, to maintenance and, support. Using these applications within a cloud brings together function across the Supply Chain Lifecycle as one-whole-in-real-time constant collaboration against one source of product truth. As part of the cloud, these applications give you complete visibility across the Supply Chain Lifecycle as part of a constant collaboration against one source of product truth. 

Industry 4.0 

PLM 4.0 is now a component of Industry 4.0.  Tagged as the fourth industrial revolution, Industry 4.0 promises to revolutionize automation in monitoring, analysis, and execution via smart technology.  . Using smart autonomous systems, applications will monitor and control physical things like manufacturing machines, robots, and applications from big data, IoT, Design, Logistics, and everything else related to the smart supply chain.  . It also integrates back-end systems like ERPERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) for visibility and control. Industry 4.0 is a company’s definition of digital transformation bridging the physical and digital worlds. 

Most expert definitions of Industry 4.0 include integration and function in and through:   

Big data, Analytics, integration of processes both on the production floor and across facilities to the entire supply chain – in house and via contract manufacturing, including R&D, QA, sales/marketing, and others who create or consume what in the past were isolated knowledge silos. 

Cloud. True cloud computing is the enabler of Industry 4.0 and transports the digital transformation necessary for everything to be accessible and distributed to all that need information at the time they need it. This includes virtual speed, scalability, and storage in the most cost-efficient way possible. 

AI (Artificial Intelligence) & IoT. The Internet of Things is the interconnectivity of devices and appliances on the internet, delivering actionable information to applications that can harness and use it in a smart way. IoT often includes remotely updating software, collecting sensor and performance data, and remotely controlling devices by sending task instructions. AI in industry is the ability to autonomously make decisions in a humanlike manner, even learning for better future decision making. 

Augmented Reality (AR). AR overlays digital content in a physical environment. With the use of mobile devices, one can visualize real-time IoT data, digitized parts, repair or assembly instructions, training data, etc. While still underutilized in industry, AR has major implications for QA, Service and Maintenance – potentially providing feedback into the change and improvement of a product. 

Autonomous Robotics. Machines that perform tasks with minimal human intervention – usually for pick and place operations these robots are using cutting edge AI, sensors, and machine vision these machines can perform increasingly difficult tasks by recognizing, analyzing, and acting as they receive information from their surroundings. 

Digital Twins. Virtual simulation of a physical part, assembly, or entire physical product.  When built in a virtual environment, business is better able to understand, analyze and improve performance of products, reducing overall cost and time to market or through IoT improvement on in service product. 

Security. Cloud connectivity opens systems and data to be hacked, stolen, or otherwise utilized in a malevolent way. Cybersecurity specifically acts to minimize risk of data breach and time to market delays across both internal and virtual networks. 

Industry 4.0’s promise is to empower companies with the data available; presented in a way to allow quick decisions as they spring up. It produces improvement in productivity through automation, agility, confidence in products, and increased profitability. 

PLM 4.0 

PLM 4.0 developing into “End to End digitalization of the entire product lifecycle” You may ask, “Isn’t it already digitalized”? The answer is “we’ll kind of, not really.”  It depends on the definition. PLM 3.0 or current Legacy PLM digital information with integrations across the supply chain application set. So, you could say in a way its digitalized – however what PLM 4.0 attempts to accomplish is more – it is the virtualization of processes, applications, and data so it is all available to everyone all the time as compared to a serial offering of demand consume at a predefined point in a process. 

Oracle Corporation outlines as they see it, PLM progression to 4.0 as: 

Primary benefits of 4.0 are the promise of quicker decision making, shorter cycle times, lower product costs, and all with fewer quality issues. Representative of the 4.0 approach in the industry; Oracle describes their 4.0 approach as a PLM tool that: 

Tightly links the voice of the customer with the voice of the product into the enterprise product record, delivering the visibility necessary for smarter innovation.  

Leverages social monitoring, Internet of Things (IoT), Digital Twins, Artificial Intelligence, and quality assessment to close the data latency and information gaps between the product and the customer. 

Built on top of a single Common Data Model with a built-in PIM solution for Commercialization. 

Embedded Analytics and Social Platform to drive quick and accurate decisions and enforce teamwork. 

Connects various data silos, stakeholders, and processes together with a digital thread.  

Integrates external data from the voice of the customer/product/factory for measurable insights that lead to ideas the customer wants and new business opportunities and models such as product-as-a-service. 

Accelerates innovation through commercialization process. 

The beauty of 4.0 is the single source of information and functionality that is needed to perform any supply chain task from conception to maintenance and support – in other words the entire product lifecycle – accessible for use before, during and after other applications have enriched it. 

Which applications are PLM 4.0 enabled? Again, it depends. Certainly, all vendors will step forward to let you know they are 4.0 but what does that mean? Access and manipulation of all the data is one thing, having it truly single sourced so everyone works virtually on the same data at will is likely another. Even tools like Oracle Modern Supply Chain who have reengineered and rearchitected from top to bottom to accomplish this begin to falter if each application in the supply chain is not branded by Oracle. So, unless a single vendor is providing all application functionality, and if there is vendor competition, there will be the need to integrate into that single data source from a dissimilar tool.  

The good news now is that Industry 4.0 functionality (listed above) is available now and provides important benefit to the point that not moving to take advantage leaves you increasingly behind. 

Society 5.0 

But wait, there is more. Even before Industry 4.0 with PLM 4.0 can fully take hold, there is now talk of a “Society 5.0.”  Its premise is that solutions thus far are technologically based, while the goal should be moving from technology to society using the right political, economic, and moral constructs. Think of it as societal change enabled by technology.  

The concept was first introduced by Japan and attempts to change a paradigm. It refers to a technology -based, and people- centered society. This new 5.0 aims to provide goods and services that address needs without disparity, it merges cyberspace with physical space and attempts to balance economic advancement to resolve social problems. 

If that sounds conceptual, it’s because it is. Even so, it does conjure up fantastic possibilities for the future. 

The Here & Now 

For now, most of us are simply racing to bring our supply chain legacy applications to a point where they can play nice with each other while beginning to take advantage of PLM 4.0 capability. The challenge is to do it with the future in mind and to pick best practice overall solutions that enable those choices to the reality of PLM 4.0 (Industry 4.0 as well) which is now beyond acceptance and is in play. There are plenty of current challenges in ideation and product development to keep things interesting.