Perspectives of Users and Service Providers on Deployment Maturity Assessment: A Study of Product Lifecycle Management Systems (PLMS)

Abstract

Product lifecycle management (PLM) is the activity of managing a product throughout its lifecycle – “from cradle to grave,” “from sunrise to sunset” (Stark J (2005) Product Lifecycle Management – 21st Century Paradigm for Product Realization. Springer, London). The management of product lifecycles is important since it involves all entities that exist along the value and supply chains of firms. Product lifecycle management systems (PLMS) have emerged as a potent resource used by firms to manage multiple activities required to develop, model, track, and manage manufactured products, including sales, maintenance, and product retirement. This research has been motivated by the massive investments (in the order of several million rupees) on acquiring PLMS and launching PLMS initiatives by various organizations in India, and the consequent need to analyze and assess their PLMS deployment maturity. Obviously, they (organizations) should want to know their PLMS deployment maturity with respect to both their present standing and relative to the industry. Assessment of PLMS deployment maturity of an organization serves as a good reference point to rate the success of its operations and the quality of its products. Venugopalan et al. (2009. A framework for assessing the maturity of product lifecycle management practices. In: Proceedings of PDMA India IV annual international conference NPDC 2009: new product development – challenges in meltdown times, Chennai, India, December 17–19 2009. pp. 159–171) have proposed a framework for assessing the deployment maturity of PLMS, and the same has been adapted for this study. It has been used to assess the perspectives of PLMS deployment maturity between PLMS users and PLMS service providers by means of preparing and administering a custom-designed questionnaire, and collating and analyzing the responses using appropriate statistical techniques. This will also enable organizations to benchmark their PLMS deployment maturity relative to others. This work analyzes the deployment maturity of PLMS components of 29 Indian organizations using nonparametric statistical tests.

Appendix A Differences Between PLMSSP and PLMSU

S. no.	Statistical tests	Components that show significant statistical differences		Remarks
		Dimension	Components
1	Mann–Whitney U test	Technology	Deployment architecture, product data and its integration across its lifecycle, and CAE	Accept the null hypothesis since there are no sufficient reasons to reject the null hypothesis
		Human	Learning curve
		Knowledge and information	PLM tools, adaptation to regulatory changes, accessibility of documents, best practices, and PLM process
		Organization	PLM process maturity and enterprise PLM roadmap
2.	Wilcoxon signed-rank test	Technology	IT – systems and infrastructure, deployment architecture, product data and its integration across its lifecycle, CAD, and CAE	Reject the null hypothesis since there are significant differences in most of the critical components across the dimensions
		Human	Organizational team, organizational culture, learning curve, employees’ support to PLM, and organizational structure and design
		Knowledge and information	PLM tools, adaptation to regulatory changes, accessibility of documents, best practices, design standardization/compliance, classification and release, PLM process, and knowledge mgmt.
		Organization	Organizational process, PLM process maturity, enterprise PLM roadmap, and PLM implementation
3.	Wilcoxon signed-rank test	Technology	Nil.	Accept the null hypothesis.
		Human	Nil.
		Knowledge and information	Best practices and PLM process and application trained employees
		Organization	Nil.