PLM Road Map  2016 for the High Tech & Medical Device communities is the must-attend event for industry executives and PLM practitioners globally—providing independent education and a collaborative networking environment where ideas, trends, experiences, and relationships critical to the high tech and medical device industries germinate and take root. The theme for this event is “Innovation and Structure—where processes and tools collide.”

The high technology and medical device industries are cyclical in nature, have extremely short development cycles, and have highly complex, integrated, and collaborative supply chain models. Additionally, these companies tend to have multiple technical disciplines and tools. Regulation and compliance issues come into play with increasingly complex restrictions that must be efficiently and accurately addressed. This industry leading PLM Road Map event will explore these challenges and others, their impacts that often result in design delays and subpar product innovation when innovation must accelerate in this increasingly complex environment, and how PLM can and should play a key role in enabling innovation while enforcing process discipline and structure.

2015 marked a year of significant changes in the underpinning technologies being used in products with the rapid adoption of the Internet of Things, big data analytics, automated and autonomous devices, and the exploding use of cloud services. Companies are changing from a position of product suppliers to one of continual interaction with the products well into after market use. The data now available is fostering a revolution in innovation, collaboration, and ideation, yet businesses are stymied with the question of how to manage the resulting change to their business model.

Topics to be discussed at PLM Road Map for the High Tech & Medical Device Communities include: