Other Voices: 5 steps to integrate PFEP software with PLM and ERP to accelerate product launches

Editor’s note: The following column by William Crane, founder and CEO of IndustryStar, is part of Modern’s Other Voices column, a series featuring ideas, opinions and insights from end-users, analysts, systems integrators and OEMs. Click here to learn about submitting a column for consideration.

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Alright, let’s unpack this alphabet soup. We are going to walk through how to throw away that nasty Excel bill of material that sprouts up in early product development. We will do this by outlining the key steps to integrating Plan for Every Part (PFEP) software with Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).

The digital desert between product idea and commercial product launch is often traversed by the manual tool that is Microsoft Excel. Itself a wonderfully flexible tool, a spreadsheet used by team sizes greater than one can introduce data tracking issues, errors and change control concerns that ultimately frustrate us and slow everything down.

After toiling away for years with this spreadsheet of all spreadsheets that often resembles all colors of the rainbow, we have seen the light. There is a better way. Below are five steps to accelerate product launches by integrating PFEP software with PLM and ERP.

1. Outline Product Development & Launch Processes
PFEP software is a collaboration tool for teams to get more done. Yes, it can take a hatchet to your timeline, but like all software, it shouldn’t be put on a pedestal. Software is only as good as the underlying people that use it and business processes that support it.

Invest the time upfront to outline your current-state operations. Then, streamline future-state processes that your team will use to bring new products to market.

“Manual templates can be consolidated into PFEP software that becomes your organization’s standard for bringing products to market,” Sime Curkovic, Valluzzo & Lee Honors College Faculty Fellow, and Professor of Supply Chain Management, at Western Michigan University.

2. Choose Integration Partner
Three common options exist for integrating PFEP software: internal teams, software suppliers or service firms. All approaches can prove successful. Success is largely determined by your team’s bandwidth and experience.

If your team is busy with other initiatives, it is best to partner with experts that have deployment expertise. The lessons learned and speed of utilizing third parties should prove invaluable. Select software companies with services teams that can also deploy software. Seek partners that have experienced industry professionals, as this will greatly reduce ramp-up time.

3. Map Data Sources & Homes
Creating a simple one-page map in Excel can be a great way to map data sources. The key is that one master data record for each data type (e.g. product part quantity data) is pulled from PLM.

The timing of data updates is also important. Typically, companies run updates daily, usually in the evenings. Most companies choose to extract product technical data from PLM, export it to PFEP and export select technical and commercial data from PFEP to ERP.

4. Digitize Manual Data
PFEP will only be as good as the underlying data. A digitization effort is common to improve the quality and quantity of data available.

“Audit where your team accesses data for daily tasks. The level of offline spreadsheets is often shocking, [and] digitizing data will lead to efficiency gains post deployment,” says Dominic Rea, CEO of 3DINFOSYS Ann Arbor, Michigan-based software and services firm specializing in digital transformations.

Automate manual paper records that aren’t available in PLM or ERP. It is often best to partner with a firm that can efficiently organize and upload this information.

5. Configure & Test APIs
Best in class PFEP software should come with accessible APIs. This API access will allow any internal system (PLM, ERP, etc.) to be configured to push data to and/or pull data from the PFEP software whenever such data moves are needed. Determining, on a per system basis, the data flow needs (e.g. a “nightly” push from PLM to PFEP, or an “hourly” pull from PFEP by ERP) is a great place to begin and is a requisite step toward automating these data flows and ensuring each system and that system’s users have the right information at the right time.

It is best to start small and simply. Choose a single internal system, map out data flows and the timing of those flows, and execute the needed system changes. This may require engaging with internal technical staff or a third-party provider that manages the system. Once proven out, this method scales indefinitely.

Replace Rainbows with a Highway
As supply chain professionals, we led the digitization of our supply chains through ERP that resulted in unparalleled productivity. We have a unique opportunity to bridge the data divide with engineering to transform manual processes into automated information flows to accelerate our organizations’ time to market.

Those leaders that lean into this new digitization frontier will be widely rewarded as they receive the most precious resource of all: time. This newfound time brought about by earlier views of future product requirements will empower teams to identify and quote suppliers earlier, improve lead times, reduce costs and lower the risk of bringing new products to market.