Strategies and Principles

A good, well-defined, and well-communicated Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Strategy is important. It provides the best chance of achieving the PLM Vision, makes sure resources and capabilities are used to their best, makes sure everybody knows what’s happening, makes sure all resources are aligned in the same direction, and enables planning decisions to be taken in a coherent way. Perhaps half of a company’s resources will be in the scope of PLM. But what’s the best way to organise them to achieve the PLM objectives? What’s the best strategy? How would you proceed in developing the PLM Strategy? You might look to see how strategies are developed in general, what’s important, and what lessons have been learned. One source of lessons learned might be case studies from industry. Another area that could be worth looking at is the development of military strategies. One reason for this is that the events were so large in scale that their description isn’t deformed by one or two individuals trying to present their behaviour favourably. Another is that they took place sufficiently long ago for there to be general agreement on objectives and strategies. And most people will be familiar with the events described. And they’ll have a general understanding of the overall issues. By looking at historical events, it’s possible to see how strategies are developed and implemented, to see their results, and to see how and why they change. The lessons learned can then be applied to PLM Strategies. This chapter describes PLM principles that can be used to help in the development of a PLM Strategy.