In an effort to reduce time-to-market for product introductions and to become more competitive in the global market, manufacturers are increasing their implementation of product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions.
But, while PLM solutions are mostly open platform based and can be seamlessly integrated with other enterprise software, the lack of standardized definitions and the expanding horizons of the collaborative product definition management solutions are posing significant problems for PLM providers, according to a new Frost & Sullivan World Product Lifecycle Management Solutions Market report.
The analysis shows revenues in the PLM market totaled $16.90 billion in 2005 and is estimated to reach $29.86 billion in 2012.
PLM solutions provide the visibility into product development and provide enterprise-wide information across the globe, necessities for manufacturers who must reduce time-to-market, yet maintain product excellence.
This need to reduce time-to-innovate is driving the implementation of PLM among leading end-user industries such as automotive, aerospace and defense, hi-tech and electronics manufacturing, fabrication and assembly, and consumer packaged goods, states the report.
"Increasing demand for open architecture platform based solutions that can reduce lifecycle costs and time-to-innovate and market, and thereby satisfy the drive for innovation along with globalization has led the Global PLM solutions market to witness high growth rates," notes Frost &
Sullivan Industry Manager Kishan M. Bhat.
"In today's competitive environment, innovation is the keyword for manufacturing industries and those unable to drive the process of innovation face the danger of loosing valuable market share."
Yet, according to the report, there are still many end-user manufacturers that use their own homegrown product lifecycle PLM solutions.
Considering the inability of these in-house solutions to be integrated with other enterprise software such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer resource management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM), they really cannot solve real-time and real-world challenges such as collaboration, information sharing and enterprise wide content management.
Because most suppliers and original equipment manufacturers (OEM) in the automotive, consumer packaged goods (CPG), and fabrication and assembly industries have their in-house solutions, PLM vendors are finding it difficult to penetrate these markets.
"As a consequence of employing such in-house PLM solutions, end users find it increasingly difficult to innovate beyond local organization levels," says Bhat. "The need of the present generation is to innovate at a global level and most manufacturers are yet to fully recognize the
effectiveness of a full fledged PLM solution."
The report concludes that with improving awareness levels of the benefits of PLM, more end users will begin to employ full-fledged PLM solutions, forecasting strong growth opportunities for the global PLM solutions market.
