As part of our series of blog posts for the Hannover Messe, today we want to focus on Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and introduce our approach and outlook in this blog post.

What is Product Lifecycle Management?

The PLM includes data, business processes, systems and employees related to the product life cycle and their integration into an information system (or -management system). While PLM and PLM systems are nothing new, their need is today more than ever to recognize: we are increasingly working in highly work-sharing and thus specialized areas – worldwide, across departments, across enterprises and in ever-shorter development cycles. Exciting examples such as the development of the Nexus 7 by Asus also illustrates the increasing complexity of products, which will continue to grow in context of Digitization.

ERP is dead, and PLM?

To get complexity under control, it doesn’t only require clever minds but also smart tools. While PLM systems focus product-related processes ERP systems mainly focus on operational workflows. Both approaches can be considered as integrative platform system which usually follow a monolithic approach . This way many processes were digitally enabled and that decades-old approach had legitimate success.

However, the success of the past has become a market standard and is a mandatory requirement in today’s business world. But as aspirations continue to rise, the conventional approaches are being questioned. The demand for new smart tools is becoming increasingly clear. At this year’s CeBIT, Software AG announced the end of the ERP era as we know it today.

Isthe ERP and the PLM era over? This question we cannot answer today, but the fact is that the integration of data, processes and systems is an increasingly mission critical factor. In addition conventional solutions are often heavyweight, inflexible and expensive.

How PLM can benefit from Robotic Process Automation

The Product Lifecycle Management lives and breathes integration and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a new, clever tool for companies to support this integration and automate digital workflows. A crucial advantage: existing systems do not need to be adjusted or customized.

This supports vertical IT integration for example: RPA can collect and combine data from different manufacturing systems to prepare them for management systems.

A real life example

Also the integration across enterprises can be realized with RPA. A practical example – One ouf our clients, an international food manufacturer, had an automation challenge in their production and logistics processes.  Newly manufactured products end up on pallets and are shipped to numerous customers globally – The shipping pallets are owned by a leasing company and are charged to our client based on actual usage. The client used to manually register usage of the pallets, which led to higher charges and  manual effort. With RPA our client is now able to automatically register the pallets, which in turn saves costs and reduces manual efforts in the workforce.

Roboyo at the Hannover Messe 2016

If you want to find out more about RPA, our solutions and our company, we are very pleased about your contact. At the Hannover Messe from 25. to 29.04. you also have the change to visit us in hall 6, stand K46/1 . We look forward to your visit.