PLM and ERP: Their Respective Roles in Modern Manufacturing
Introduction
In today’s challenging environment, even designing
the best product is not enough. You must enable
designers, manufacturing and service planners, and
other supporting roles like suppliers, logistics, and
plant planners to work from anywhere. They must
be able to flexibly manage supply chain disruptions,
manufacture more variants with agility and speed, and
continue servicing products everywhere. Companies
are rewarded for doing this right and punished when
things go wrong. Leading companies are aligning their
people, processes, and tools from the initial state of
product ideation through to manufacturing, device
connectivity and field service. They are providing
access to product and enterprise data – in the context
that domain users are accustomed. However, uniting
engineering with the factory and supply chain can be
complicated, costly, and typically not user friendly.
Information might be difficult to access, and systems
frequently do not talk to one another.
In this paper, we will focus on two pillars of manufacturing, Product Lifecycle
Management (PLM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). We will discuss
best practices/methods and out-of-the-box software used to integrate them
for data consistency and quality. This will help you master the production
ramp-up and eliminate some of the biggest mistakes. Engineering, purchasing,
and manufacturing can work concurrently even if they are spread across the
globe and working from home offices – saving time, reducing costs, improving
quality, and getting to market faster.
