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PLM: Still Holes in the Holy Grail
“The holy grail of product lifecycle management (PLM) is characterized by connection of the supply chain, product development, and shop floor under one decision support umbrella,” said Jeffrey Hojlo in AMR Research’s June 2007 document “The Future of PLM: Decision Support Across the Value Chain”
Both Boeing and Airbus have recently had fairly big slipups with large aircraft projects managed by PLM. In both cases the PLM software used was Dassault’s.
Airbus ran into severe problems with the Airbus 380. Many of the problems can be traced to incompatible systems. While Dassault PLM was used by Airbus in France, Germany, Spain, Britain and other participating countries, the software versions that were used were different, and that caused compatibility problems with the exchange of documents and data.
The group in Germany created fuselage wiring designs using Catia Version 4, and in France used Catia Version 5. The result was data that was incompatible. In the end, problems like this caused Airbus to run up a $6 billion loss. It seems that the root of the problem was that Airbus was reluctant to retrain engineers in Germany to use Catia Version 5.
Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner is a great example of the power of PLM. Applying PLM to the design process, Boeing estimates they were able to save huge amounts of work related to the 3-D modeling of parts and assembly tooling. But despite all the sophistication of the PLM process, Boeing recently had to delay the release of it’s Boeing 787 Dreamliner six months from May 2008 to December 2008.
Why? The problem is Boeing’s reliance on their supply chain. Boeing partners weren’t able to meet the production schedule required for an on-time delivery. Is that a PLM problem? Yes. And it is a concrete example that demonstrates that the supply chain is an important link in the PLM process. Automation of design is great, but that is only one link of the whole process.
