By digitizing your workflow, you can mitigate this by managing your entire product development process through a web browser. That’ll let teams collaborate in the cloud so they can minimize delays and errors—helping you get products to market faster without going over budget.

Three steps to faster product development Forty percent of all design and manufacturing companies report issues with collaboration.1 Whether it’s waiting for internal approval emails or struggling with an external supplier’s time zones, these communication problems can have a massive impact on company efficiency.

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1 https://damassets.autodesk.net/content/dam/autodesk/www/pdfs/dm-data-mgmt-tech-clarity-pdm-report-en.pdf 2 Data from Autodesk internal customer surveys

Your product development process can be managed through the cloud from concept to manufacture and beyond. You can start at any point in your workflow, so the first step is to pick an area. Ask yourself questions like:

Create a roadmap

Is there anywhere you could replace spreadsheets, or make sure they’re more useful across multiple teams?

Next, you can define your goal by identifying the quick wins where product lifecycle management (PLM) can deliver the most impact in the shortest time. Prioritize processes that are admin-heavy, involve a lot of people, and are essential to getting your product to market. Examples include quality management, bill of materials management, and supply chain management.

Are your remote and hybrid teams able to collaborate effectively?

How many times does the same data get entered into different places?

21.5 hours a week of worker time is spent on non-essential tasks, such as updating information or chasing approvals2

With a flexible, cloud-based PLM system, you can start small and build out digital workflows at your own pace, without the risk of overwhelming your teams with sweeping changes all at once.

More detail:

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Three steps to faster product development

https://damassets.autodesk.net/content/dam/autodesk/www/pdfs/dm-data-mgmt-tech-clarity-pdm-report-en.pdf

The next step is to roll out a standard workflow as simply as you can.

Training administrative staff to use and drive the PLM system.

Creating project plans with milestones and tasks, and assigning owners to those tasks. You can configure project templates and standardize milestones, deliverables, and tasks by product line, business unit, or product team.

Using standard workflows will improve your operational efficiency. Everyone involved in the lifecycle of a product— including suppliers and partners—will have a shared interface to work from. They’ll be able to:

• Manage files regardless of what software they were created in, making it much easier to collaborate on designs.

• Have a single source of truth for all project data, improving the accuracy of your manufacturing process.

• Gain more visibility into who is doing what, which will remove bottlenecks and speed up feedback cycles that greatly impact your time to market.

Why?

Make the switch to digital processes2

This will involve: 21.5 hours a week of worker time is spent on non-essential tasks, such as updating information or chasing approvals2

Product lifecycle management automates the workflow, intelligently routing tasks for the next best action. These automations can be tailored to your business, and both external and internal teams can be notified when a task is complete. This will help to ensure all your data is traceable, so whether you need to process change orders or learn where a component came from, you’ll have all the information you need to get it done without delay.

More detail:

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Three steps to faster product development

3 Manufacture better products, faster At this stage, multiple departments and external stakeholders will be able to collaborate on designs in one place. This will reduce time to design approval, so you can get to production faster.

3 https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-09-09-gartner-survey-finds-that-45-percent-of-product-launches-are-delayed-by-at-least-one-month

Your teams will also have all the data they need to adapt to changing market needs. Costs and materials can be tracked live in a central system, allowing you to see how products perform from cradle to grave. These insights can then be used to make decisions on supply requirements, materials, predicted time-to-market, and more, whenever you introduce something new.

More detail:

of product launches miss launch dates3

45%

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Three steps to faster product development

Case study: ME Global Reduce errors. PLM has connected data, people, and processes globally to give everyone just-in-time access to the information they need. This is very different to ME Global’s previous approach, where every piece of information was up to 24 hours old before it was captured—creating a lot of opportunity for expensive mistakes.

So far, ME Global has been able to:

Manufacture faster. Engineering change orders (ECOs) no longer get stuck by being delivered to a reviewer that has since left the company, or to an account manager who is traveling. Instead, ME Global’s teams have complete visibility of all projects, and everyone is automatically notified when an ECO reaches the next step. ME Global expects PLM to cut 10 working days out of the schedule in both engineering and the delivery of casting patterns.

Solve day-to-day pain points. Account managers often struggled with the previous process, which required them to fill out 27 unique fields in a form to create a proposal, and 15 more for an ECO. Worst of all, remote access required a VPN and if connectivity dropped—a common occurrence in many regions—they had to start over. The new process is not only simpler, with dropdown menus and pick lists, but accessible from anywhere.

The planning team started by conducting stakeholder interviews to understand current workflows and develop a more streamlined process. Then they implemented the new approach in phases.

4 https://www.autodesk.com/customer-stories/me-global

Mining component manufacturer ME Global is using product lifecycle management to speed time to market and simplify workflows, allowing the company to better serve customers in 40 countries.4

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Three steps to faster product development

Take the first step If you would like more information or support completing any of the steps above, Autodesk can help. Please get in touch to:

Arrange a deeper dive session on where product lifecycle management could have the most impact in your business.

Create a personalized roadmap with our connected product development experts.

Take advantage of our free employee survey to understand your current costs of doing business.

Want to learn more? Get in touch for a personalized consultation today.

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Three steps to faster product development

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