Customer Reviews

Product Lifecycle Management: Driving the Next Generation of Lean Thinking

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Grieves book on PLM is a fundamental primer on a subject basic to anyone involved devloping, marketing, buying and using a product. In other words, if your in business you should read this book. Importantly, his overview is comprehensive and provides a complete framework for understanding the scope and complexity of the practice in the modern manufacturing environment. The message is clear, you can't buy Product Lifecycle Management, you have to do Product Life Cycle Management. Whether your just beginning to look at PLM or are re-configuring your current capabilities, I would recomend everyone involved give this book a thorough read. I know my team will.

I think that Dr. Grieves book presents a compelling next step in how companies AND their outsourced suppliers can collaborate over the entire lifetime of the customer relationship to insure that customers continue to get satisfaction from their products.

Think about it this way: If you are buying a car that you are going to own for 5 years, don't you want to make sure that 4 years in to that ownership experience, the company that makes the fuel injection system has told the dealer about its new, updated software system for improving mileage . . . so you can get the benefit from it?

Without a unified approach to sharing information across functions and across time, there is no way the car company, the outsourced supplier and the dealer could make that happen. That is the essential breakthrough of PLM thinking, and Dr. Grieves does a great job of explaining it.

There is a lot of value here for companies in any industry that is characterized by a global, interconnected supply chain and a rapidly changing product lifecycle.

Marshall Toplansky
CEO
Core Strategies, Inc.
Irvine, CA

This book is the foremost primer on PLM. It defines PLM, providing the most comprehensive perspective of how to maximize your organization's capabilities and increase efficiencies through better use of people, product information, processes/practices, and technology. It also provides the framework and tools required to help you assess your organization's readiness for PLM.

It is apparent that Dr. Grieves has vast experience and knowledge of the PLM field as well as the issues facing global businesses. He draws from his personal experiences with a myriad of businesses in a wide array of industries to provide real world examples and share his views and insights into the organizational need for PLM implementation to remain globally competitive. This is a must read for those in the Manufacturing sector that are required to develop products that are globally competitive. And what products are not in today's global economy?

This thought provoking book will assist you in taking your organization to the next level.

Most of the book is broad generalities - 'Silos are bad', 'Sharing product information across the organization is good' etc. No revelations, nothing new in this book. Maybe, just maybe it was relevant in 2005.

What took the cake was a section where the author tells us that, in the period 1973-2003, GM has grown 5.3x, Ford 7.1, GE 11.1x and Walmart 2031x! OK, wow! I am impressed that Walmart has grown so much more compared to GM, Ford and GE. I read on to see where this is going. Maybe he is going to tell us why the industrial companies lag Walmart, and how it ties in to PLM.

But no, in one broad sweep, the author tells us that the use of Information Systems is the only reason for this growth, not factors like "... organizational efficiency, ... current crop of executives ..., new methods of production ..."

What a senseless contention! If the intent was to stress the importance of IS, there are a thousand other ways to do it.

Overall, a book written without too much thought, or much research.

The theme is the same, IT rules and is the source of management for a company. It is disappointing that even in this age and past experience someone believes that an IT solution is the only way. There is no data or research unless you believe that Ford and GM are examples of best business practices.