CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE

product life cycle is the progresses of a product from introduction to growth,
maturity, and decline. This concept is used by management and by marketing professionals as
a factor in deciding when it is appropriate to increase advertising, reduce prices, expand to
new markets, or redesign packaging.

Figure 1.1.1: Product life cycle

The concept of product life cycle (PLC) concerns the life of a product in the market with
respect to business/commercial costs and sales measures. The product life cycle proceeds
through multiple phases, involves many professional disciplines, and requires many skills,
tools and processes. PLC management makes the following three assumptions.

 Products have a limited life and thus every product has a life cycle.
 Product sales pass through distinct stages, each posing different challenges, opportunities,
and problems to the seller.
 Products require different marketing, financing, manufacturing, purchasing, and human
resource strategies in each life cycle stage.

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1.2 PRODUCT LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT(PLM)

Product lifecycle management is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a

product from its conception, through design and manufacture, to service, and disposal.
PLM integrates people, data, processes, and business systems and provides a product
information backbone for companies and their extended enterprise. Thus the products must
be able to satisfy customer requirements for:

• Timing, Function, Performance, Style, and Price.

Since these variables frequently change during the course of a product lifecycle, the
innovation process must be able to account for change and easily accommodate its demands
on a systematic and repeatable basis.

Figure 1.2.1 : PLM concept

Table 1.2.1: Processing of product information at different stages of product life cycle.

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 Table 1.2.2: Description of the PLM implementation guidelines

Guideline category Guideline(Level 1) Guideline (Level 2)

Project process  Divide project into  Select the Methodology
sub-projects , Waterfall / Agile
perform a pilot  Define the project Review
project Frequency
 Conduct pre-study  Do Project Initialization,
prior to system Planning, Monitoring & Control
selection plan
carefully
 Follow-up and
control project
process

Goals  Define benefits for  Prepare Detailed Change

all stakeholders Management plan
 Aim to satisfy rather  Create the business need / Issues
than optimize. document in As-Is study.
 Do not force the  Check whether Benefits get
same solution on the reaped after project closure.
whole organization.
System and process  Establish a coherent  Detail out the Business Process
design PLM architecture Re-engineering /Business
 Align processes with Process Improvement & its
system capabilities impact on project timelines
 Only roll out tried  Detail out scope of work with
software releases actual users.
 Minimise
Customization
Organisation  Ensure management  Use Change Management
support Methodology
 Involve users from  Impart Intensive Training &
all departments and Hand on practice to Users.
disciplines  Create User Operational User
 Authorise the Manual.
project participants
 Use expertise from
third parties

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1.3 AIM & OBJECTIVES
 Minimize production cost
 Find the market needs
 Improve product quality
 Deliver reliable products
 Easier service to products
 Sustain Green initiatives
 Reduced time to market
 Increase full price sales
 Improved product quality and reliability
 Reduced prototyping costs
 More accurate and timely request for quote generation
 Ability to quickly identify potential sales opportunities and revenue contributions
 Savings through the re-use of original data
 A framework for product optimization
 Reduced waste
 Savings through the complete integration of engineering workflows
 Documentation that can assist in proving compliance for RoHS
 Ability to provide contract manufacturers with access to a centralized product record
 Seasonal fluctuation management
 Improved forecasting to reduce material costs
 Maximize supply chain collaboration

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 CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE SURVEY

The product life cycle concept has represented a central element of marketing theory since its
development in the 1950s. Following its development and its subsequent popularisation in the
1960s, it has remained a stable feature of marketing teaching. The product life cycle concept
is one of the most quoted and most frequently taught elements of marketing theory.
According to Mercer (1993: 269) the influence of the product life cycle can be seen in other
theories, from new product development to portfolio analysis.

Since its adoption by marketing, the product life cycle (PLC) has achieved universal
acceptance because of its appeal and wide application. The PLC concept was extensively
tested in the fast-moving consumer goods sector, as a predictive tool to anticipate marketing
requirements (Grantham, 1997: 4). The product life cycle represents a core element of
marketing theory and according to marketing literature, every product or service has, by
definition, a life cycle and how this is managed is the key to survival in business.

According to Weber (1976:12) the product life cycle concept provides an intuitively
appealing and readily understandable framework of analysis for considering future growth
opportunities and pitfalls. As time passes sales increase slowly at first (introduction phase),
then more quickly (growth phase), then once again more slowly (maturity and saturation
phases), and finally decrease (decline phase).

Despite the praise for the product life cycle concept very few publications contested the
assumptions it makes (Grantham: 1997: 4). The substantiation of the concept has seemed
surprisingly difficult to uncover. Despite all the criticism mentioned in the introductory
chapter, the product life cycle concept has become accepted and valued as an element of
basic marketing theory and has become a building block for management theory.

The product life cycle concept has mainly been applied to large corporations, businesses and
organisations in empirical studies as derived from the literature study. This phenomenon
therefore provides a gap and the definite need to test the applicability of the product life cycle
concept in small organisations which will be the cornerstone of the empirical research

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 CHAPTER 3
ESTABLISHING PLM

There are companies that supply software to support the PLM process. That software
itself is just a tool and cannot make many contributions if the PLM process is not defined first
and understood by its users whom it should contribute to at the end. Setting up PLM within
the company is a process and project itself.

Select operations that should be managed as a part of the PLM across the company business
would be:

•Customer relationship management (CRM) system for managing customer record,

• Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for managing financial records,

• Supply chain management (SCM) system for managing supplier support,

• Human resource management (HRM) system to manage the employee record,

• Requirement management (RM) system for managing of requirements,

• Project management (PM) system for managing capabilities provide project scheduling,
tracking, and resource management while the change management is driving the execution of
these projects via the process workflows and part/document management capabilities.

• Product data Management (PDM) system for managing product data and workflows.

First step in establishing PLM would be understanding and analyzing the company way of
work, organizational structure, roles and responsibilities within the organization. Each of the
PLM operational systems should be defined to specify who is contributing to the system, how
the information is shared and responsible person appointed for each of the systems.

3.1 PLM METRICS DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

As PLM transforms the way companies do business, it is important that companies

understand how well they are doing. To determine the effectiveness of PLM implementation

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within any context, PLM processes and outcomes need to be measured. Measurement of
PLM requires the development of metrics that are important and meaningful to the process.

PLM metrics can be applied at various levels of complexity:

Figure 3.1 : PLM metrics

• At the very basic Level 1 Input metrics are measured. At this level, the question is whether
the organization is applying appropriate resources to the PLM process, i.e. investments.

• At Level 2, metrics are used to determine if the appropriate PLM processes were
implemented, e.g., Requirements Management, Sourcing and procurement, Distribution
Quote/order generation.

• Level 3 focuses on customers being reached.

• Level 4 and 5 metrics examine the efficiency whether the outputs meet the needs of
customers are being met (e.g., requirements traceability, visualization, concepts, design
capture & accessibility, change control & change capacity, configuration management,
commercial cost of risk, product quality) and effectiveness, if desirable results are being
achieved (e.g., generation of new business, software integration, cost performance, market
share, cost reduction, design reuse).

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• At the highest Level 6 Level 6 metrics are the most complex and difficult to measure. These
include waste reduction, innovation/ new products, continuous improvement, and sustainable
green manufacturing.

3.2 APPLICATION OF PLM

Medium to large enterprises:

In the current economic climate, addressing global business challenges is the top priority of
most medium and large enterprises. Whether they want to expand their customer base in new
markets, or to leverage more cost competitive resources, conducting their business globally is
a necessity. To sustain an advantage, they have to overcome the challenges of a dispersed
organization, while still empowering individual team members to excel.

PLM concept offers comprehensive solutions to help enterprises address their challenges and
create competitive advantage. Five areas where medium and large enterprise should have
achieved success include:

• Managing new product introduction, to create a winning product portfolio.

• Achieving concurrent engineering globally, to be faster to market.

• Creating platforms for reuse, to reduce cost and speed product customization.

• Managing product and manufacturing complexity.

• Supporting products currently in-service, to ensure they are available for use at minimum
cost.

Small to medium enterprises:

Small and medium enterprises have special needs and limited resources. PLM concept brings
a complete solutions designed specifically for them; solutions that help them respond better
to their customer’s needs. One producer of that type of PLM software solutions is Siemens
PLM software. It helps mid-sized manufacturing companies to transform their process of

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innovation by applying preconfigured best practices to everyday engineering tasks and
processes. Companies using PLM software benefit from:

• Securing their corporate design data while facilitating access by authorized personnel

• A more successful move from 2D to 3D

• Increasing their design reuse, facilitated by a powerful and flexible search capability

• Streamlining their engineering process with simple design review and release workflows
and effective change management

• Error reduction through more effective collaboration between their departments and the
elimination of mistake manual handoffs to manufacturing

• Rapid deployment of a full-featured product data management (PDM) solution

• Low total cost of ownership.

Small businesses need a product lifecycle management solution designed from the ground-up
–one that is pre-configured with the industry's best practices, and offers fast and affordable
deployment. Fully integrated PLM solutions are designed to provide what small and medium
enterprises need to maximize their innovation strategy, and easily scale to meet their needs
tomorrow.

3.3 PLM CHALLENGES

Following are the challenges for corporations :

 Globalization : With the increase in the cost of resources, manufacturers no longer

rely on domestic recourses and on a world-wide basis they seek for partners who can
economically provide them with necessary materials, components and services.
Today, collaboration of globally dispersed product development teams has become a
common practice in most firms. In dispersed environments, knowledge management
becomes more difficult because sources of knowledge are not co-located.
Furthermore, virtual design teams are usually short-lived and are dissolved once the

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 design phase ends. The transient presence of knowledge owners poses more
challenges into the knowledge management initiatives.

 Product Complexity : A complex product is more susceptible to engineering changes

and to manage the changes efficiently, an intelligent change management system is
required. Furthermore, in a complex product, there is likely to be more discrepancy
between the as-designed, as-built, as-installed and as-maintained versions of the
product. Therefore a systematic approach for preserving data integrity is a major
challenge posed by complex products.

 Shrinkage in Product Lifecycle: Given the high rate of introduction of new products
to the market as well as the speed of change in customer needs, products with lengthy
development process are likely to be outdated sooner than the expected. With
shrinkage in the length of product life, the product development process also has to
become shorter. However, there exist trade-offs between time-to-market and
developments costs, product quality and product performance.

 Push into the Supply Chain: The New Product Development (NPD) process is of
increasing importance and an early involvement of suppliers in the design process, if
applied and managed properly, usually leads to significant improvements in the
overall performance of the NPD process. The same study revealed that the ability to
share intellectual assets (such as technological now-how, product-related knowledge
and customer requirements) with suppliers is the foremost determinant of success in
joint NPD practices.

 Environmental Issues: Due to increasing environmental regulations worldwide,

companies are required to identify, evaluate and minimize the environmental impacts
of their products over the lifecycle and to take the responsibility of retirement of their
products once they become obsolete. To address these requirements, manufacturing
companies are increasingly adopting Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) methodologies.
But, the effective implementation of LCA is usually hindered by paucity of valid data.
Detailed implementation of LCA requires information about the inputs and emissions
of all the sub- processes in the life cycle of the product.

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 The PLM concept gives the strategies to organize and to manage product information
the entire life cycle, from concept to re-cycling of the product through:

• Share the updated product information's within the organization to design, manufacturing,
marketing and procurement divisions,

• Collaborate internal team with external users, suppliers and customers for iterating new
designs,

• Maintain a repository of product information for design reuse and to reduce part
redundancy,

• Systematically gather and analyze customer or market product requirements,

• Streamline sourcing team to identify a list of preferred suppliers for purchasing custom and
standard parts,

• Streamline resource management and analyze the cost-benefits of allocating resources for
specific projects.

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 CHAPTER 4
PLM: CASE STUDY

A small foundry in Belgaum foundry cluster (India) which manufactures impeller

casting was chosen for the case study. The customer firm (Tier1 Supplier) is within 8 km
from the foundry and was in demand of superior castings to meet the requirements of OEMs.
However, these demands were highly fluctuating depending on the market conditions. Hence,
the foundry firm (Tier 2 Supplier) was in great difficulty to meet the resources (men,
material, machines) in order achieve the customer demands. Outsourcing the work due to the
shortage of employees and machines was not a wise decision as per their management. Also,
there were issues with shortage of materials since inventory control was not a healthy practice
in the foundry.

Advances in information and communication technology (ICT) have opened new possibilities
of collaborations among the customers, suppliers, manufactures and partners to effectively
tackle various business challenges. Product Life Cycle Management (PLM) has been a
proven approach for Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to increase their
productivity, improve their product quality, speed up delivery, and increase their profit and to
become more efficient. However, their Tier 2 and Tier 3 sup- pliers like foundry industries
are still in their infancy without adopting PLM. Hence to enhance their understanding, the
basic concepts, the tools and strategies for PLM are presented is this paper. By selecting and
implementing appropriate PLM strate- gies in a small foundry, an attempt was also made to
understand the immediate benefits of using PLM tools (commercial PLM software and digital
manufacturing tools). This study indicated a reduction in lead time and improved utilization
of organiza- tional resources in the production of automobile impeller. These observations
may be further extrapolated to other multi- product, multi-discipline and multi-customer
companies to realize the advantages of using PLM technology. Thus this industry
implemented PLM with:

 PLM Structure
 PLM Strategies
 PLM Tools

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4.1 STRUCTURE OF COLLABORATIONS IN PLM

Figure 4.1.1: Structure of collaborations in PLM portal for major inter and intra-
organizational activities.

Structure of a few collaborations in a PLM portal configured with four major functional areas
or departments (concepts & design, analysis & planning, manufacturing & production and
sales & support) in an organization is shown in Fig. The collaborations include intra-
organizational activities such as checking the configurations, manufacturability, quality and
serviceability of the product, and inter-organizational activities or customer interactions with
various departments such as part customization, part replacement, delivery schedule, spare
part requirements etc. Appropriate system integrations and use of PLM tools (software and
hardware) in modern manufacturing companies will help enhance their collaborations and
decrease their inefficiency by accurate and prompt usage of information. The cumulative
gains (growth in revenue and profit) in an organization can be assured by increasing the
efficiency though continuous improvements in PLM technology adopting new strategies and
by using new tools.

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4.2 PLM STRATEGIES ADOPTED ARE AS FOLLOWS:

 Increased customer involvement

 Customization of products
 Highest functionality products and services
 Most robust product or services
 Widest range of products and services
 Best processes
 Standard product and services
 Fastest time to market
 Value adding life cycle
 Lowest cost competitor
 Longest life product
 Environment-friendly products

4.3 PLM Tools

Table 4.3.1 : PLM Tools

PLM Tool Vendor Client Focus

Accolade Sopheon Small-Medium

Agile Advantage Oracle/Agile Small-Medium

Aras Innovator Aras Corp Small-Medium

Arena PLM Arena Solutions Small-Medium

Enovia Matrix One Dassault Systems Medium-Large

Enovia SmarTeam Dassault Systems Small-Medium

BPMplus Ingennus Small-Medium

Teamcenter Express Siemens PLM Small-Medium

SAP PLM SAP Medium-Large

TeamcenterEngg Siemens PLM Medium-Large

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PLM Tools used in the industry:

To march towards this plan of actions, a few healthy practices and digital
manufacturing concepts were also introduced to the foundry. Further, to understand the
immediate advantages, a qualitative assessment was done on various activities in foundry in
which manufacturing of impeller casting was done with and without the intervention of PLM
tools.

 Teamcenter
The healthy practices introduced in the foundry include time- ly interaction among
users through commercial PLM tool (Teamcenter), in-house computer aided design,
structural analysis and casting process simulation, interaction with the customer for the
finalization of product and delivery schedule, evaluation of man-hours and its appraisal,
online monitoring of resources, and accounting. User logins were created in Teamcenter to
carry out these responsibilities and to interact with users and customers. Teamcenter helps
to take control of product data and processes, including 3D designs, electronics, embedded
software, documentation, and bill of materials (BOM)
 Rapid Prototyping
A rapid prototyping (RP) machine of fused deposition model- ing (FDM) type was
introduced as a digital manufacturing tool to fabricate the complex master pattern. RP takes
virtual designs from CAD modeling software, transforms them into thin, virtual, horizontal
cross-sections (generally in STL file format standardized by rapid prototyping industries)
and then creates successive layers of polymer materials until the model is physically
completed.
After structural and process simulations, the CAD model made using PLM tool was
optimally (to approximate exact surfaces) converted to STL format (which represents a 3D
sur- face to an assembly of planar triangles). The model in STL format was then pre-
processed in INSIGHT program (user interface of RP machine) to adjust the size, location
and orien- tation of the model within the RP machine. Slicing of the mod- el (which can
vary from 0.01 mm to 0.7 mm) was done to fix a deposition thickness of 0.124 mm to meet
the desired quality of pattern. Tool path generation, support material (SR-30) gen- eration,
assigning of material (ABS-M30) for building, were other pre-processing steps done in
INSIGHT. The time taken to build the parts and the amount of building material and the
support material required for the parts could be obtained from the software.

15
 CHAPTER 5
RESULT & DISCUSSIONS

There are many advantages of using PLM technology in foundry. Besides the PLM
internal drivers such as productivity, quality, collaboration and new product development, the
ad- vantages include the reduction of human errors, the improved flexibility, the
dissemination of product knowledge, and the continuous monitoring of their growth rates. By
understand- ing the activities and the information flow in using PLM tools, some of these
advantages were identified. Based on some identified characteristics of collaborative
engineering, Table presents the advantages of PLM technology compared to conventional
technology.

Table 5.1 : Advantages of PLM technology compared to conventional technology

Characteristics Conventional Technology PLM Technology

Singularity Multiple versions of data for Unique identification for each
individual products, so product, so easy to identify
difficult to identify and and control product data even
control data after revisions

Correspondence Limited because of High because of availability

nonavailability of complete of complete data and
data and information about information about the physical
physical product product

Traceability Risk of wasting time and Easy to track the product data
energy since product data is and information and its
not recorded digitally updates because of digital
storage

Reflectivity Less fidelity to map High fidelity since all data and
information about real product information about real product
to virtual product is recorded
Cued availability Product and process data not Right product data and
available as and when information at right time even
required leading to wastage of without any search
time

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 The introduction of RP machine as a digital manufacturing tool significantly
decreased the time and energy involved in the production of master patterns. In addition to
this, the usage of polymer/plastic patterns compared to wooden pat- tern have several
advantages such as enhanced pattern life in product cycle, great dimensional accuracy,
reduction in in- spection and rework and also the reusability. Fig.3 shows the patterns made
of Teak wood and ABS (Acrylonitrile- Butadiene-Styrene) through conventional and digital
manu- facturing respectively. Patterns made of ABS are dense, rigid, can serve at higher
temperature and has lower shrinkage compared to that of Teak wood patterns. The cost, the
size limitation and the easiness in molding process are other ad- vantages over other pattern
materials. A microscopic observa- tion was also made to understand the surface quality of the
castings obtained using master patterns made of wood and ABS. The casting photo
micrographs obtained at 4X magnifica- tion indicated better surface finish with ABS master
pattern compared to that of wooden pattern.

Figure 5.1: Master Pattern of Impeller Casting (a)Wooden material (conventional

manufacturing) (b) ABS material (digital manufacturing)

The immediate benefits inferred by the introduction of PLM technology to foundry as

compared to conventional technology is presented in the table . The approximate time taken
to build the casting with conventional technology is found around 25 hrs whereas with PLM
technology is around 8 hrs 10 min. A one-third reduction in time is observed by this
modernization.

17
This reduction of time is noticeable because the activities also include new healthy practices
such as computer aided design and analysis, and digital manufacturing using RP. Since CAD,
CAE and RP can be done by a CAX Ex- pert, there is an improvement in labour utilization
too. Hence, it can be suggested that the introduction of healthy practices, its execution using a
commercial PLM software, and use of digital manufacturing tools in foundry has greatly
reduced the information inefficiency and execution inefficiency.

Table 5.2: The immediate benefits inferred by the introduction of PLM technology to foundry
as compared to conventional technology.

Tasks/ Conventional Technology PLM Technology

Operations
Rating Remarks Rating Remarks
Placing the 4 hrs In person 10 min E mail to
order manager
Defining the 4 hrs With proprietor 1 hr As a team with
project an online
discussion
Model 5 hrs 2D drawing in 1 hr Using CAD tool
generation paper within PLM
Product --- Not entertained 30 min Customer
modifications by the company suggestions
through online
interactions
Structural --- Based on 2 hr Using analysis
analysis and heuristics and tool within PLM
check experience
Process --- Based on 1 hr Using process
simulation & heuristics and simulation tool
planning experience within PLM
Customer --- In person 10 min Through online
interactions
Pattern
production
Pattern material --- High carpentry 2 hrs 30 min Through RP
skill is required technology

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 CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSION

Although a quite new method with short history PLM has proven itself to be useful for all
management levels within the company in both vertical and horizontal organization. By
making relevant historical information structured and available PLM is used both for those
who are doing execution and decision makers within the organization answering to the rapid
changes in the business environment. A business approach for coordinating design process
through the implementation of PLM systems is proposed for improving design coordination
in SMEs. Firstly, this business approach is based on a method for analysing informal
collaborative practices and modelling detailed design processes. Secondly, these processes
are implemented by using PLM technologies. Multi-level workflows are implemented to
control progress of design schedule from project management level to document lifecycle
management level.

New generation manufacturing companies have modified their views on performance

evaluations not only based on their outputs but also based on their outcomes over a period. It
is high time to implement PLM tools in modern foundries to enhance their collaborations and
decrease their inefficiency by accurate and prompt usage of information. In this regard, the
basic concepts and the tools and strategies for PLM were presented in this paper. By selecting
and implementing appropriate PLM strategies in a small foundry, an attempt was made to
understand the immediate benefits of using PLM tools. This study, which indicated the
reduction in lead time and improvement in utilization of organizational resources in the
production of automobile impeller, may be further extrapolated to other multi-product, multi-
discipline and multi-customer companies to realize the advantages of using PLM technology.
Being skeptical, most of the foundries often state that the huge capital cost, non- availability
of skilled labours, installation time (appropriate system integration), insufficient training and
support, reluctance towards participation and the financial risks involved are a few reasons
for not adopting the PLM technology. How- ever, it is advised that the foundries or their
clusters who are the suppliers of multiple complex or value added products, especially those
belongs to OEMs of automobile, medical and aerospace and defense sectors, should
implement PLM technology so that they can develop new and innovative products in a very
short period of time by meeting the demands of OEMs and hence reap great advantages over
their global competitors.
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