Improving engineering efficiency with PLM/ALM

Abstract

Rising cost pressure is forcing manufacturers and their suppliers to jointly and consistently master product development. Our industry case study shows how a leading automotive OEM over time has achieved effective interaction of engineering processes, tools, and people on the basis of product and application life-cycle management (PLM/ALM). Its scope is first an introduction to PLM/ALM on the basis of a model-driven engineering (MDE) for one or several products or product families. Second, PLM and ALM need tool support to the degree necessary to ease handling and drive reuse and consistency. Third, introducing MDE needs profound change management. Starting from establishing the relevant engineering processes, we show how they can be effectively automated for best possible usage across the enterprise and even for suppliers. We practically describe how such a profound change process is successfully managed together with impacted engineers and how the concepts can be transferred to other companies. Concrete results for efficiency improvement, shorter lead time, and better quality in product development combined with better global engineering underline the business value.