Prioritizing PLM Initiatives & Spends

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TE

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Prioritizing your PLM initiatives

& spends

How Fashion brands and retailers can leverage

benefits from PLM through a phased and

measured approach

Version 1.0

September 2008

2

Getting ready for PLM

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Contents

Abstract................................................................................................................... 4

PLM in Fashion gaining wide acceptance ......................................................................................... 4

Typical issues in PLM adoption faced by organizations.................................................................... 4

The typical issues to address during a PLM implementation ........................................................... 5

PLM vision......................................................................................................................................... 5

Quantify a business case and define success measures ................................................................... 5

Right product & vendor selection..................................................................................................... 6

Implementation roadmap................................................................................................................. 6

Managing migrations & integrations ................................................................................................ 6

End user training & user acceptance issues...................................................................................... 6

Minimizing Risk through Phased Implementation............................................................................ 7

Planning a phased implementation .................................................................................................. 8

Phase 1: Planning a strategy ............................................................................................................. 8

Phase 2: Go Live with the implementation of the out of the box (OOTB) functions ...................... 10

Phase 3: Identifying customization requirements for propagating PLM ........................................ 10

Phase 4: Integrating the PLM Enterprise ........................................................................................ 10

Phase 5: Managing change requests .............................................................................................. 11

Summary ............................................................................................................... 12

The Author ............................................................................................................ 13

About Geometric .................................................................................................. 13

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Abstract

There is an increasing acceptance among apparel brands and retailers of the fact that PLM

applications can significantly streamline the product development process. Although the benefits

are apparent, there is ambiguity about the apt approach and investments to drive PLM across

the organization.

This white paper discusses a phased approach for accelerated PLM adoption in an enterprise to

help organizations prioritize their PLM initiatives and spends.

PLM in Fashion gaining wide acceptance

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a business strategy that is steadily gaining wide

acceptance amongst fashion brands and retailers. Companies that took initial approach to PLM

are beginning to see significant reductions in new product introduction lead times, and are

enjoying more profits. PLM is not just a set of technologies, but a strategic business approach

that integrates people, processes, business systems and information.

PLM has proven to be an effective tool for getting products to market faster with reduced cost

and higher quality. It enables organizations to manage all information about their products, from

initial concept through commercialization, by integrating all areas of the company including the

extended supply chain in a collaborative forum. PLM provides a solid foundation of best practices

that can minimize time-to-market, reduce costs, mitigate supply risks and ensure compliance.

A unique advantage of a fashion-centric PLM solution is in providing a collaborative design

environment with streamlined workflows and extensive re-usability. Line planning and product

development applications can allow for the successive development and sharing of sketches,

product line storyboards, patterns and 3D virtual samples. Designers, brand or line managers,

technical developers, pattern designers and finally manufacturing partners can continue to share

the same updated true-to-life visual representations of the product at all times and can interact

at different stages of the design and development processes to simulate, specify and finally

validate all collection items.

Fashion brands and retailers are thus investing in PLM applications to deliver more styles in less

time and improve time-to-market.

Typical issues in PLM adoption faced by organizations

While there has been increased interest in PLM applications across the industry, each PLM

implementation poses unique challenges. Apprehensions like where do I start?, how do I

prioritize, which process goes first?, what will be the minimum time required to reap benefits

from the PLM investment? are common.

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The typical issues to address during a PLM implementation

PLM vision

PLM Vision is all about defining where you are today and where you want to be tomorrow,

enabled by PLM. It is important for an organization to articulate a PLM Vision. It can be arrived at

by tapping into the knowledge of a cross-functional team across different functions within the

organization like design, development, sourcing as well as core IT. Inputs can also be taken from

the external ecosystem that collaborates to ensure success of your strategy.

Quantify a business case and define success measures

Once the vision is laid out, it becomes the basis for the corporate strategy including the initiatives

in PLM that the organization defines. It is important to quantify the initiatives as a business case

containing financial analysis of impacts of the PLM investments. The business case, if well

qualified can serve as a detailed map for your implementation.

It is also important to qualify what success would mean at different stages of the PLM

implementation. Defining this upfront and informing all stakeholders about this definition

improves transparency and sets the right expectations. Stakeholders can then track the PLM

initiative knowing fully well what to expect from the system at different stages.

Implementation

Roadmap

Right Product &

Vendor selection

Quantify a business

case and define

success measures

PLM Vision

End-user

training & user

acceptance

issues

Implementation

challenges

� Define where you are today and

where you want to be tomorrow,

enabled by PLM

� Take inputs from cross-functional

teams

� Take inputs from integrated external

ecosystem

� Understand what is going to be

available OOTB and what needs to be

customized

� For complex customizations, engage

in POCs

� Manage the migrations and

integrations strategy

� Involve the users in generating business

requirements

� Demonstrate to the users the features

and gain acceptance for the new system

� Encourage extensive use of the new

system by making it easy for the users

� Quantify a business case with

financial analysis of impacts with

PLM investments

� Define success measures

� Take stakeholders into

confidence

� Identify broad level functionality that will be needed

by your organization

� Rate short-listed products on both functionality as

well as non-functionality parameters

� Engage with a partner with significant experience, working with apparel brands and retailers

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Right product & vendor selection

Each company has different requirements and may have different priorities. It is important to

understand the key elements driving the PLM strategy at a particular organization. Based on

these parameters, business requirements can be defined to a more granular level. This can help

identify the functionality that a particular organization is looking to implement and also the

prioritization in terms of what needs to go first. A robust product selection based on functionality

as well as non-functionality parameters (like integrations availability, openness of development

environment, vendor stability, ease of migrations, etc.) goes a long way in ensuring success of the

PLM strategy.

Having identified a PLM platform, it is also important to engage with a partner that has

considerable experience, working with apparel brands and retailers.

Implementation roadmap

Before launching into the implementation, it is important to lay-down the entire implementation

roadmap. It is also important to know before hand, what functionality is going to be available out

of the box and what will need to be customized to meet the business requirements. Where there

are complex customization requirements, it is best to validate the same by running some proof of

concepts.

Managing migrations & integrations

While the PLM investments promise to make a significant change, there is always a requirement

to refer past data and carry forward some of it into the new system. An application and data

migrations strategy must be laid out to ensure that information and knowledge generated over

the years is leveraged, while using the new system.

Also for specialized requirements, users will still prefer to work in some prevalent local

environments or disparate applications. PLM may not be able to replace all disparate systems, so

it is important that data generated in specialized disparate applications is leveraged and is

integrated with the main PLM system.

End user training & user acceptance issues

It is important to take the end-users into confidence while defining the business requirements. If

user inputs are not taken into account, then usage of the system will be minimal and it will be

difficult to ensure success of your PLM initiatives.

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While implementing PLM some companies take the big bang approach to implement PLM, while

others take a phased approach to PLM, investing in more focused projects with achievable high

value returns.

A number of organizations follow the Big Bang approach, completely revamping their current

practices and going live with the new PLM systems. This approach means that organizations can

avoid the drag of working with two different systems simultaneously thereby averting

duplication and confusion. However, the biggest challenge in doing this is to manage change.

Also, this requires organizations to commit to significant investments with high stakes involved.

Most organizations may not be geared up for this change and risk.

Organizations are therefore now approaching PLM through a phased strategy. This incremental

approach has not only been used for PLM initiatives but also across other information technology

tools. This rational approach is been adopted by organizations to ensure they are achieving value

from their IT and process improvement initiatives.

Minimizing Risk through Phased Implementation

A PLM roadmap should be developed based on the organization’s PLM vision and objectives

focusing on maximum returns at minimal risk. While dividing the entire PLM roadmap into

phases, organizations need to make sure these phases form a strategic program. When

combined together, these phases should provide the organization with high value benefits with

small initial investments.

Best-In-Class companies are increasingly adopting this approach and have started seeing results

with phased implementation. A leading footwear company in US has implemented PLM for

managing their activities in the product development process. The system tracks milestones and

configuration of the products. The next step they would like to incorporate is bills of materials in

PLM which will enable them to have standardized materials available for their developers. Rather

than developing new materials all the time, developers can pull existing materials and create new

designs. Currently they end up reworking specs for each product.

For now the organization uses PLM to manage specifications which has meant a big improvement

in managing clerical work and controlling data. Looking forward the company plans to expand

their PLM solution in other departments. They plan to extend PLM in integrating their calendar

systems. “As we go further in the development stages we want the system to trigger alerts on

what needs to be done, set timelines and get guidelines” says one of their PLM managers. The

phased implementations have helped the organization in measuring the metrics of their PLM

implementation and reaping benefits from their phased approach.

Implementing PLM in phases breaks up the decision making process as well as investments in

better manageable sizes. These phases help keep the focus intact so that end objective is

successfully achieved.

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Salient features of phased implementations

• PLM can be deployed across a single department initially

• Apply lessons learnt in initial projects to future projects

• Minimize risks & user reluctance / acceptance issues

• Dynamic re-scheduling of PLM implementation roadmap possible based on inputs from

implementations done in initial phases

One of the major risks in implementing an enterprise wide application is to manage change and

closely monitor impact on the end users and the business. A phased approach clubbed with

proper mechanics to handle reluctance helps to manage change gradually across the

organization. User acceptance is a major factor in any PLM implementation and phased approach

definitely helps in eliminating this risk efficiently.

Right identification and definition of the phases of the PLM roadmap can help organization

achieve their PLM goals and receive returns on their PLM investments. Phased PLM

implementation should be viewed as part of the entire PLM implementation plan to ensure these

phases lead to strategic results.

Planning a phased implementation

Defining phases for your PLM implementation can be based on organization’s business

improvement priorities, or on the basis of stated requirements of specific departments.

If PLM implementations are planned initially for specific business unit, location or department it

becomes easy for an organization to apply the lessons learnt to the future projects. This

approach helps in seeing benefits right away rather than waiting for months or years for PLM to

be implemented across the entire organization.

Phases identified in the PLM roadmap should be prioritized based on the ability of the phase to

achieve result in short span and support the later steps in the PLM program.

Phase 1: Planning a strategy

Define what your company needs and how its success will be measured. PLM will mean different

things to different companies because they differ in how they manufacture, distribute, sell and

support products.

For example, a company making women’s apparel might want to shorten delivery times through

better design reuse and automating bills of materials (BOM). A company designing sports wear,

on the other hand, might need a way to document quality and improve traceability while cutting

the administrative overhead of regulatory compliance.

Firms can begin by identifying gaps in current processes. Requirements should also include areas

that will help gain and maintain a competitive edge. These might include getting to market

quicker and collaborating across vendors and suppliers spread across continents. Thus,

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requirements might include: giving design personnel access to up-to-date drawings; letting

design teams/merchandisers view design change processes; and adding drawing information to

existing sketches, providing suppliers with a heads-up on what needs to be produced without

sacrificing IP and without making significant financial commitments.

Crystal-clear requirements help companies identify key benchmarks they will use in measuring

their PLM system's performance. For example, a company's primary goal might be to reduce the

new product introduction time to market by 25%. This provides the metrics to measure success.

The level of detail to which a company describes its requirements controls the effectiveness of

PLM.

While selecting a PLM package it is necessary for companies to ensure they choose packages that

allow them reach their goals. For example, a company might need PLM software that will work

with upstream technology components such as Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Photoshop. The

chosen PLM package should have an architecture which will enable the company to integrate

these systems with its PLM package. While selecting the right PLM platform it is necessary to

ensure that your service provider understands your requirements and can support your complex

customizations and integrations across the enterprise applications.

The management vision towards PLM needs to be properly defined and the objectives of PLM

implementation need to be percolated through the ranks of the organization.

Geometric recommends a phased, measurable roadmap to successful PLM implementation

• PLM need assessment and define business requirements

• Prioritizing functions and processes that need to be implemented first

• PLM benefits to be percolated across the organization

• Select right PLM product

• Implement PLM with its OOTB functionalities

• Implementation across location/BU/user set/modules

• Work on additional requirements

• Collaborate Internally & externally

• Automate the tracking mechanism

• Execution of Pilot projects

• Feasibility study to test integration

possibilities

Go Live with OOTB

functionalities

Identifying

Customization

Requirements

Integrating PLM

enterprise

Managing Change

Plan a Strategy

• Plan Data consolidation

• Identify additional configurations, interfaces needed

• Identify customizations needed & prioritize them

• Feasibility analysis, POC’s to test the requirements

• Identify workflows to be

defined for change requests

• Identify agents and

concerned people who will

manage change requests

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Phase 2: Go Live with the implementation of the out of the box (OOTB)

functions

While taking the first steps to implement PLM across a business/department/functionality for an

organization, achieving success and acceptance and demonstrating measurable benefits are

critical.

Spend time to map your processes/functionality to available OOTB functions from the PLM

package. Define scenarios, dependencies and configure the PLM platform to support business

requirements. Make use of configurations to OOTB functionality as much as possible to speed up

the implementation and achieve a Go-Live.

While doing the implementation, the users will typically come up with newer requirements.

Make sure you document all of those and factor them at an appropriate time. Also document all

the issues faced during this pilot phase, so that these issues can be well-addressed during the full

lifecycle implementation at the site.

Phase 3: Identifying customization requirements for propagating PLM

Once you go live with OOTB functionality and users are active on the system, start factoring in all

the new requirements that you have been gathering through the pilot implementation phase.

Start consolidating the organization’s data repositories, so that they can derive maximum benefit

from the implementation. Make an assessment of the client’s additional business requirements

and understand the impact of implementing the same. Some of this additional functionality/

requirements may not be configurable OOTB and may need additional customizations specific to

the customer.

Complex customizations can be tested using Proof of Concepts so that feasibility is tested

upfront before committing to the project in entirety. Maintaining transparency and taking the

users into confidence about the changes that are needed with their cost implications will help in

making this phase successful.

Phase 4: Integrating the PLM Enterprise

Data consolidation takes care of a lot of versioning issues and makes sure that everyone in the

extended product development team is referring to the same single version of the truth. While

specialized disparate applications may continue to be used, it is important that data generated

from these systems feeds into the global dashboard, and is available at an enterprise level.

One of the important goals of PLM is to enable collaboration and data sharing with the other

enterprise applications like ERP, SCM, and CRM. Organizations need to define their priorities in

terms of the level of collaboration that is required; projects should be initiated to enable this

collaboration, both internal and external.

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Phase 5: Managing change requests

Change management is one of the important steps in the PLM initiative that enables companies

to manage formal and informal aspects of change from design modifications to supplier and

sourcing-related changes. Change management is necessary for external and internal colleagues

who want to report an issue. The process should be able to easily collect organize, analyze and

authorize proposed changes and identify all affected elements. Planning the change request in

such a way that built in workflow automatically assigns change request to appropriate personnel

for review and authorization thus ensuring effects of change are thoroughly considered before

implementation.

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Summary

Identify the company’s strategic objectives and process improvement initiatives that drive

organizational functions. Perform a gap analysis to identify the problem areas needing

immediate attention.

• Identify and prioritize specific functions/ processes to go-live with PLM to help define phases

for your PLM implementation.

• Include tangible and small projects which have relatively shorter payback time. This will help

in ensuring early success in the PLM program

• Understand OOTB functions and conduct feasibility studies to test the added functionalities

that are needed, but are not available in the OOTB.

• Understand budget limitations, if any and map PLM priorities against the budgets.

Organizations which map out their PLM strategies and break them down in phases have been

able to quickly adopt new and more effective practices that provide return to the business faster.

These returns can be invested in further projects that will provide incremental value and help

companies realize their PLM goals and their associated PLM benefits.

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The Author

Atul Dhakappa

Practice Head – Fashion Lifecycle Solutions

Atul heads the Fashion Lifecycle Solutions Practice at Geometric. He is responsible for

conceptualizing and taking to market innovative solutions and service offerings in the fashion

domain by leveraging Geometric’s IP assets and capabilities in the extended PLM space. He also

manages key customer relationships in the space.

Atul has over 10 years of industry experience. His areas of specialization include Marketing of

software services and products, Corporate Strategy and Planning, and Relationship Management.

He has been with Geometric since Jan 2003, and has played different roles in Corporate

Marketing, Business Development, Pre-Sales, Product Marketing and Event Management. Atul

has been actively involved with the development of the offerings in the fashion domain.

Atul holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics Engineering from University of Mumbai and an MBA,

with a specialization in Marketing, from Welingkar’s Institute of Management, Mumbai.

About Geometric

Geometric is a specialist in the domain of engineering solutions, services and technologies. Its

portfolio of Global Engineering services and Digital Technology solutions for Product Lifecycle

Management (PLM) enables companies to formulate, implement, and execute global engineering

and manufacturing strategies aimed at achieving greater efficiencies in the product realization

lifecycle.

Headquartered in Mumbai, India, Geometric was incorporated in 1994 and is listed on the

Bombay and National Stock Exchanges. The company recorded consolidated revenues of Rupees

4.86 billion (US Dollars 121.6 million) for the year ended March 2008. It employs close to 3000

people across 10 global delivery locations in the US, France, Romania, India, and China.

Geometric is assessed at SEI CMMI Level 5 for its software services and ISO 9001:2000 certified

for engineering operations. For further details, please visit www.geometricglobal.com.

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