What is Best Practice?

Although there are widespread examples of good practice and advanced development within current implementations of PLM, these cannot yet be said to be "Best Practice" because no parameters or metrics exist against which Best Practice can be measured.

Case studies are published to illustrate successes, but these are written to impress rather than inform, and their level of detail is insufficient for anyone else to learn from them.

Establishing Best Practice

The problem of PLM Best Practice is therefore one of definition, rather than achievement. In order for current achievement to be recognised and learned from there needs to be an agreed framework against which Best Practice can be positioned.

The PLMIG will work with its members to create this during 2007, on three levels:-

• structured discussion amongst PLMIG members
• workshops on specific subject areas
• formal collaboration between companies on implementation improvement

Generating Results

The two PLM Best Practice Forum events held in Oxford, England and Paris, France in 2005 showed clearly that there is much less knowledge about PLM Best Practice than is commonly supposed, and that any framework that could be used to categorise Best Practice will be extremely complex.

The PLMIG will manage the development of this framework, coordinating the Member discussions; focusing workshops on specific subject areas such as NPDI, CPD or Time to Volume as required; and advising on the use of the Benchmarking Handbook so that PLM environments can be compared objectively and in detail.

You can join in the PLM Best Practice discussions by taking any type of PLMIG Membership, including Individual.  Your organisation could host a Best Practice Workshop as a Founder Member of the Reference Model, or you could apply the Best Practice goals and definitions to your own implementation via Corporate Membership.

For more information about this Initiative, contact bestpractice@plmig.com.