The majority of companies are planning to implement Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) to address their need for more rapid product innovation and to drive profitable growth. But are there any segments of the manufacturing population that are planning to "opt out" of the PLM movement?

Smaller Company, Small Desire for PLM?
Benchmarks that include smaller companies, including Aberdeen's recent Production Innovation Agenda 2010, indicate that midsize companies (> $50 Million, <  $ 1 Billion) ) face many of the same product development pressures as their larger counterparts, including:

• Customer Demand for Innovative Products
• Competing in Global Markets
• Cost / Margin Pressure
• The Inevitable Challenge of Agility and Time to Market

Larger companies have been turning to PLM to address these needs. But do smaller companies have enough product and supply chain complexity to drive them to invest in PLM? Several factors influence this, from my experience. The first is that smaller companies are competing either as a part of a global supply chain, often in as a part of one ore more larger supply chains. The second is that they are turning to global manufacturing and global design. The third is that they are developing more complex products, including mechatronic products that combine elements of mechanical, electrical, and software into a system ("smart products" if you will). These factors leave them with a very complex product innovation environment, and a big need for PLM.

The Bottom Line?
So did I answer the question of whether they are using PLM? No, sorry, I decided to answer why they might be using PLM. To answer the question, I'll just provide the chart below and a quick comment. Yes, they are adopting PLM. They are behind larger companies, but their plans include continued adoption. By the way, the definition of "PLM" used for this survey was "PDM with integrated business process." Not perfect, but simple enough for a survey, and a pretty good representation of having sone more than just vault data.

Source: Aberdeen Group, December 2007 

We'll look at some other segments of the manufacturing community next, like industry segment, to see if anyone else is ducking PLM. In the meantime, what do you think? What other questions do you have?