Interview Date: 10 October 2007
Person Interviewed: Cobus Oosthuizen
Tell us a little more about yourself and your career to date.
 After achieving an Honours degree in Mechanical Engineering I started my Engineering career at ISCOR Headquarters in Pretoria. There I worked in the research division and was involved in various departments covering fields of Experimental Stress Analysis, Vibration Analysis, Modal Testing, Finite Element Analysis and Fracture and Fatigue Analyses.
Thereafter I joined a consulting company Megkon where he was predominantly involved in Stress and Vibration Analysis using both experimental as well as analytical techniques. I thereafter got involved in Megkon Systems where I acted as director and was involved in Finite Element Analysis Software promotion, support, training and consulting. I then acted as consultant to various companies in the Structural analysis field and joined Megkon again to work in a consulting group as structural consultant as well as project manager on various projects. I joined MSC-AFRICA in 1992 as Technical Sales Director and became Managing Director in 1995. The main tasks involved in during this time were Sales, Marketing general Management and CAE implementation consulting as well as general FEA consulting. Me and the other owners of ESTEQ started the company in 1996 where I act as Managing director and is responsible for Strategic Market development as well as high level Product Lifecycle Management consultation and implementation.
We formed a holding company called ESTEQ Group where I am currently acting as CEO and carry the responsibility of driving strategic direction for the group
What is Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)?
The term PLM itself was broadly adopted in 2001, defining the application footprint and business process of PLM as everything from ideation and initial design to engineering, direct material sourcing, ramp-up of manufacturing and asset lifecycle management. What does that boil down to? PLM enables companies to solve strategic issues that influence the success of the product lifecycle from beginning to end. Companies are adopting PLM to manage entire product portfolios and expedite the digital transformation of their manual business processes.
Just as ERP, SCM and CRM did not appear over night, PLM has its roots in other technologies — notably computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), computer-aided engineering (CAE) and product data management (PDM). Like these early investments, PLM gives companies the ability to practice concurrent engineering, follow-the-sun product development and supply chain collaboration.
Figure 1: PLM - Cost Commitment Curve
PLM also enables companies to capture and re-use knowledge about their products, processes, resources, suppliers and customers so that the value of their product portfolios can be increased, their lifecycle costs minimized and their revenues maximized.
Where does PLM Fit in Today`s Digital Enterprise?
Managing a product lifecycle in a global economy is a daunting proposition. Most companies have multiple products in different lifecycle stages, and all with related dependencies and the potential opportunity to reduce redundancies and establish synergies.
Figure 2: Development Portals Emerge, Forrester Report, March 2000.
However, lifecycle participants frequently reside in different time zones, employ different application systems and work for different companies. Product makers often combine and recombine their value chain from one business opportunity to another. To meet the rising demands of dynamic markets, companies have to rapidly change, and continually improve, their product content. It is no wonder that today`s product lifecycles need better planning, better communications and more effective business processes.
According to The Forrester Report`s survey of Fortune 500 companies, as cited in "Development Portals Emerge," today`s most frequent product development problems include:
- Not enough upfront planning
- Misalignment of expectations
- Communication silos
- Insufficient resources
- Poor supply chain coordination
- Technical problems
Prospering in a global economy requires companies to embrace their suppliers, business allies and trusted customers in an extended enterprise that addresses the unmet issues of today`s product makers.
Companies can start their PLM initiatives by identifying their product and marketing requirements. PLM traces these requirements to ideas, concepts, prototypes, parts, product definitions, bills of materials (BOMs), process models and after-market service definitions. The end result is a body of product knowledge that every lifecycle participant — and every mission-critical application in a company`s value chain — can use for synchronizing product assumptions, collaborating and making business decisions.
Is South Africa Ready for PLM?
South Africa tend to lag slightly behind the US and Europe on technology adoption, especially in the Engineering environment. We have to adopt this technology in this country to stay globally competitive. Many companies have adopted this technology in the local market and have reaped the benefits. Many more are searching and enquiring about PLM. In my opinion SA is not only ready but will adopt PLM on a large scale in the very near future.
Why PLM, what is the Business Value?
Corporations are finding that the open, collaborative environment PLM creates, as well as the revenue generation that often follows, is generally worth the time and effort required to research and select PLM solutions. PLM`s top-line revenue-enhancing benefits stem from its ability to foster time-to-market compressions, product innovation and quality improvement. Bottom-line benefits emanate from PLM`s ability to cut rework, as well as material, structural and warranty costs.
First, PLM allows downstream players (from concept through service and maintenance organizations) to participate in the earliest stages of product lifecycle, which can determine up to 80 percent of a product`s development cost and alter a company`s bottom-line results. Here are a few examples:
- One high-tech company implemented PLM to develop new engines, and now its design cycle times have been cut by 50 percent;
- A large aerospace company put PLM in place to change the way it sells and manufactures airplanes, and it now delivers products at one-tenth the cost in half the time;
- A manufacturer in aeronautics and renewable energy products deployed PLM and cut its design errors by 88 percent.
Figure 3: Maximizing Lifecycle Value Next, while PLM addresses the product introduction phase of the lifecycle in many ways, its capabilities go beyond the impact of CAD, CAM, CAE and PDM in other lifecycle stages. For starters, PLM solutions manage all of the intellectual capital that extended enterprises use to support the entire product lifecycle, including product, process, resource and supplier information.
Enterprises use PLM to integrate their product knowledge with operational information gleaned from ERP, SCM and CRM. Every entitled lifecycle participant can share and exchange this knowledge once it is in place. PLM also is distinguished by its ability to automate and streamline processes across every stage in the product lifecycle.
Additionally, PLM addresses a company`s need to increase annual and long-term product revenues. PLM has time-to-market acceleration, which gives companies that are first-to-market the ability to establish pricing premiums that can be sustained until lagging competitors catch up. It also lets companies expand the size of their product portfolios and offer more new products in a given year. As for the long-term revenue, PLM can be used to lengthen the lifespan of product platforms. PLM enables companies to re-use the intellectual capital associated with a cornerstone platform. This strategy facilitates more frequent product enhancements, product derivatives, niche offerings and add-ons. PLM`s support for systems engineering, information re-use and configuration management drives this top-line benefit.
There are other business values as well. For instance, PLM can influence the manufacturing/production stages in the product lifecycle, which enable companies to digitally optimize and validate manufacturing facilities and production processes for product configuration. It can provide connected portfolio management to balance customers` requirements and preferences with how potential lifecycle decisions will affect a product`s design content, cost, validation test, quality, reliability, maintainability and safety. Also, PLM`s in-service capabilities demonstrate its after-sales impact. Companies that generate significant revenue from servicing and maintaining products are able to supply their service providers with the complete product information needed to support a widely dispersed customer base. And in the final stages of a product`s lifecycle, PLM`s ability to facilitate information re-use enables companies to "harvest" maturing products by offering simplified enhancements at greatly reduced costs.
|