From concept to completion: the ultimate guide to Product Lifecycle Management
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Why separating PLM and ERP leads to productivity loss
Discover why separating PLM and ERP leads to productivity loss and how integration ensures better BOM management, product quality, and traceability.
Switching to a PLM system is an important decision for your company. It promotes innovation and optimizes productivity. The accessible data flow made possible by PLM is also a great way to improve internal communication within your company, as well as with external stakeholders, suppliers, subcontractors, and customers. However, if PLM is not integrated with the other applications in your IT environment, you won’t be able to fully reap the benefits of the system. Even worse, it can lead to productivity loss.
BOM management
Bill of Materials (BOM) management is without a doubt one of the most defining features for the success of PLM solutions. Once a product is designed, a highly detailed bill of materials (EBOM) is created, which can be generated in CAD software and then integrated into the PLM system. This BOM contains all the information engineers need to identify all parts of a design and its structure.
However, when you want to move to production, the engineering BOM (EBOM) must be converted into a manufacturing BOM (MBOM). The production department needs new and differently structured information in order to use the BOMs within the ERP. When PLM and ERP are separate, this translation has to happen manually. The flow of information becomes less smooth, which can create a barrier to efficiency.
Productivity loss
When translating EBOMs to MBOMs manually, loss of information is inevitable. You can never completely eliminate errors or inaccuracies when the human factor is involved. This increases the risk of quality loss in the final products due to less efficient internal communication. This loss of quality adds to the productivity loss caused by the double manual entry of BOMs. In such a situation, PLM only delivers a fraction of the benefits it has the potential to provide.
Crucial PLM interfacing
When your PLM system is connected to the ERP (just as it can be connected to CRM or MES), the management of BOMs can be carried out entirely within the PLM. It provides the ERP with manufacturing BOMs that are automatically generated from the engineering BOMs. These can optionally be modified to better suit the specific characteristics of the production of each product. When you automate this critical task, it immediately results in better BOM management and saves time that your engineers and production teams can now spend on higher value-added tasks.
Discover how a PLM-ERP integration can improve product quality and traceability
One of the biggest challenges for industrial companies is managing product quality and traceability. That’s why it’s especially important to share product information as a digital thread throughout the entire organization. With strong integration between ERP and PLM systems, you can ensure and document flawless traceability throughout the entire value chain—and act quickly where necessary.
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