PLM – Unleashing the Value of Your Intellectual Assets
Valuable Information provided at the CIMdata PLM Conference June 23-25, 2003

ANN ARBOR, Michigan February 24, 2003—CIMdata announces its annual conference focused on Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), PLMconference2003. This conference, the 12th in CIMdata’s series of annual North American events, will be held June 23rd - 25th, 2003 in the Detroit Metro area. The theme of PLMconference2003 is PLM: The True “Killer” Enterprise Solution?!

Ed Miller, president of CIMdata said: “With all the hype surrounding PLM as a major enterprise investment, it is critical to separate reality from imagination. We believe that PLM is the most effective investment an industrial enterprise can make to achieve the product leadership needed to provide the competitive edge they seek.” At PLMconference2003, attendees will be provided with a total view of the PLM picture including an industry vision, available opportunities, strategies for solution selection and implementation, roadmaps to move forward, pitfalls to avoid, and direction to help maximize the value and benefits of their investment.

Miller, explaining the motivation for PLM investments, said, “In today’s challenging global market, enterprises must innovate to survive and bring significant value to their shareholders, customers, and employees. It is important that this innovation occur in all dimensions—product, process, and organization—to improve competitiveness and overall business performance.” He added that companies who demonstrate continuous innovation that consistently results in right-to-market products and services clearly differentiate themselves from their competitors and are rewarded with higher market valuations.

“Innovation can occur spontaneously in almost any situation,” added Miller, “but the ability to continuously innovate requires an environment that nurtures collaboration and enables the intellectual assets of the enterprise to be leveraged to their maximum potential.” Miller also said that to attain this “environment for innovation,” “enterprises must be able to capture, manage, and leverage their intellectual assets in a proactive manner.” Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the business strategy that best allows organizations to establish such an environment. This strategic approach helps enterprises achieve their business goals of reducing costs, improving quality, and shortening time to market, while innovating their products, services, and business operations.

More details about how an organization can use PLM to manage and unleash intellectual assets and turn them into competitive weapons for their companies will be provided at CIMdata PLMconference2003. Details are available on www.CIMdata.com

PLM is a strategic business approach that applies a consistent set of business solutions in support of the collaborative creation, management, dissemination, and use of product definition information across the extended enterprise from concept to end of life—integrating people, processes, business systems, and information.

Core or fundamental concepts of PLM are:

• Accurately capture, at the point and time of creation, definition information for the product, including the processes required for manufacturing and support and maintenance
• Universal, secure, managed access and use of product definition information
• Maintaining the integrity of that product definition and related information throughout the life of the product, no matter what type of product it is, from concept to end of life
• Managing and maintaining business processes used to create, manage, disseminate, share, and use the information

The common thread each of these concepts share is ensuring the intellectual assets of a company and its extended enterprise are effectively captured, managed, and leveraged. Intellectual assets are comprised of all the components of the enterprise’s product and process definition including, all mechanical, electronic, software, and documentation components as well as all business and manufacturing process definitions within the scope of the lifecycle.

The power of PLM is managing these digital assets and the processes associated with them, whether within an organization or throughout its extended enterprise, including its partners, suppliers, and customers. PLM provides an enterprise with a digital highway for intellectual assets that ensures that the right product definition information is available at the right time, to the right people, in the right context. PLM provides the information backbone upon which a company creates and delivers innovative products and services. Integrated with other business systems, PLM-enabling solutions ensure that up-to-date information flows on time to users in all areas of a business. With the needed intellectual assets at their fingertips, PLM enables collaborative work environments that bring together expertise from multiple organizations. These are environments where people can develop new, innovative products and services, and design and establish innovative business, manufacturing, and support processes.

Intellectual assets, when leveraged proactively, are a business’ competitive weapons, and PLM is the catalyst for leveraging those assets to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction and corporate value. Collaboratively leveraging intellectual assets enables companies to create more innovative products and services and to operate in a more effective manner. Innovation of process, when coupled with innovative products, delivers top line performance, bottom line profits, and increased customer satisfaction.

CIMdata, a leading and independent worldwide strategic consultancy is dedicated to maximizing an enterprise’s ability to design and deliver innovative products and services through the application of PLM solutions. CIMdata works with both industrial organizations and suppliers of technologies and services seeking competitive advantage in the global economy.

CIMdata helps industrial organizations establish effective PLM strategies, assists in the identification of requirements and selection of PLM technologies, helps organizations optimize their operational structure and processes to implement solutions, and assists in the deployment of these solutions.

For PLM solution suppliers, CIMdata helps define business and market strategies, delivers worldwide market information and analyses, provides education and support for internal sales and marketing teams, as well as overall support at all stages of business and product programs to make them optimally effective in their markets.

CIMdata provides world-class knowledge, expertise, and best-practice methods on PLM solutions. These solutions incorporate both business processes and a wide-ranging set of PLM enabling technologies including product data management (PDM), visualization, collaboration, digital manufacturing, computer-aided design/manufacturing (CAD/CAM), and numerical control (NC). CIMdata also provides expertise in the integration of PLM with other business solutions such as customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), and enterprise resource planning (ERP).

In addition to consulting, CIMdata provides industry education through international conferences in the US, Europe, and Japan that focus on PLM. The company also conducts research, provides PLM-focused subscription services, and produces several commercial publications. CIMdata serves clients worldwide from locations in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

To learn more about CIMdata’s services, visit our website at www.CIMdata.com or contact CIMdata at:
3909 Research Park Drive,
Ann Arbor, MI 48108, USA.
Tel: +1 (734) 668-9922.
Fax: +1 (734) 668-1957