How Modern Enterprises Can Drive Digital Transformation with Oracle Cloud PLM

Aug 25, 2021
Oracle PLM Cloud | 5 min READ
    
Why do Businesses need to Consider PLM Investment?
While innovation has become a buzzword in the past decade, it has always been an imperative for building sustainable and successful businesses. Enterprises that we see thriving today are the ones who have reviewed their business value chains, done the course corrections, implemented best practices, and have been swift in the adoption of new technologies. However, choosing technologies and staying ahead of the curve is not a simple task; it requires vision and understanding of the trends, customer mindset, and nuances of business processes.  
Venkata Kamma
Venkata Kamma

Sr. Solutions Architect

Oracle Agile PLM & Cloud PLM

Birlasoft

 
One thread that ties all these three parameters – trends, customer expectations, and nuances of business processes, is the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). It helps the manufacturers with all the essential data through the product's lifecycle from product conceptualization to product retirement. When it comes to streamlining value-chain parameters, the company's supply chain takes precedence over all other processes. In those processes, too, most enterprises focus primarily on ERP investments, and PLM is usually a sidelined application that tends to slip through the edge of the funnel. The irony is - businesses have been pressing the wrong switch. To bring in the product & process innovation, it is the PLM arena that every organization must embrace and concentrate on rather than the ERP.
ERP is essentially a consuming system in terms of product data, and the key source to the ERP is PLM. When the source of truth is not accurate, there is no value in the value-chain investment. The strength of a company's product/service innovation depends on the efficiency of its PLM system and processes supporting its functional stems. Effectively used, a PLM system can open various avenues of profit creation for a product company, right from product enhancement, efficiency improvement, process & cost optimization to enhanced customer experience and satisfaction.
However, despite the merits of PLM, the success rate of PLM projects is relatively low and is a matter of concern, given the effort ad cost investments involved.
The root of the failure can be found in the definition of PLM, as per the Gartner Glossary. PLM is defined as a philosophy, process, and discipline supported by software for managing products through the stages of their life cycles, from concept through retirement. Unfortunately, most companies that adopt PLM and fail, focus more on the software part of the package and completely fail to adopt the 'philosophy, 'process' and 'discipline' associated with it. 
The Gap in Traditional PLM Systems to Support the Current Business Environment
Since the inception of traditional on-premises PDM, PLM, and CAD systems, there has been constant chatter about their application features, integration capabilities, platform support, etc. Despite this, there has been limited awareness on implementing these systems to best suit today's fast-paced business environments.
Modern enterprises have steered digital transformation initiatives with product lifecycle management (PLM) at the heart of enterprise product records for a few years now. However, the reality is that traditional PLM systems have been restricted to creating product development records only used by engineering teams. Current market trends are signaling to break away from data fragmentation in silos, be it in manufacturing, maintenance, or quality checks.
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The current pandemic has demonstrated to global businesses that technology is not an independent elective anymore, but it is interdependent within our daily lives. Those who've embraced this sudden change have emerged victorious, and those who have not either faded away or still trying their best to understand this transformation.
For the companies embracing this digital transformation in the PLM segment, Oracle Cloud PLM is one such solution that is emerging rapidly in recent times, transforming how the organizations innovate, develop and commercialize their product and process innovation. Oracle PLM Cloud overcomes the disadvantages of on-premise applications providing an expressway to build best-in-class supply chain innovation.
The Way forward – Oracle PLM Cloud to enhance PLM business processes
Oracle PLM Cloud provides prodigious features that seemed impossible to implement through on-premise PLM applications. From OOTB configurable UI features to the integrated AI & IoT-enabled manufacturing, Cloud PLM outperforms the on-premise PLM by far to offer a highly effective and efficient value chain. It is offered as an in-built module within the integrated supply chain management (SCM) Cloud product, essentially closing the ever-lasting gap between PLM and ERP processes.
How Modern Enterprises Can Drive Digital Transformation with Oracle Cloud PLM
Oracle PLM Cloud

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Besides the traditional PLM features of Part, BOM, change management, Oracle PLM Cloud comprises three highly effective sub-modules to transform PLM processes:
  • Innovation Management (IM) – to jumpstart accelerator to turn ideas into proposals and portfolios
  • Product Development (PD) – to develop and work with items, changes, AML
  • Product Data Hub (PDH) – An MDM module to manage supply chain operations & transactional data
Product Development

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In the on-premise PLM systems, extending functionalities is time-consuming, tedious, and rigid. Oracle Cloud PLM has overcome this drawback and has provided several OOTB tools (Sandboxes, Composers, Product Rules, Contextual Segments, etc.), aiding the technical consultants to custom-configure within no time. It also facilitates verification and assessment of applied configuration changes within the same instance and prevents the complexity of going through various deployment stages for verification and validation. Embedded data analytics is another prominent revolutionary feature introduced in Cloud PLM for users, giving a free hand to generate reports and analytics on the data without the necessity to depend on PLM developers, which was an unimaginable scenario in the on-premise setup.
Conclusion
Evaluating the features of Cloud PLM and comparing it with on-premise is a no-brainer, especially when the former provides extensibility, adding one or more new features in every new version release. Considering the changes brought by the uncertain pandemic in the current business environment, significant thrust for value-chain drivers, and constant pressure for faster product roll-out, there is an imperative and dire need for such configurable, extensible, and intelligence systems.
Businesses have also realized this fact and increased their digital transformation efforts to sustain and grow in the global competition. Undoubtedly, Oracle PLM Cloud is a transformational product that offers beyond PLM to make enterprises future-ready and competitive.
 
 
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