Product lifecycle management (PLM) software plays a key role in managing every aspect of your manufacturing process—from design to delivery. However, a PLM can only do its job properly if it serves as a single source of truth for your organization.
If your company’s manufacturing process is fragmented across multiple PLM platforms and other systems, you’re not alone. Many organizations begin with a streamlined PLM but lose their digital cohesion over time due to mergers, growth, and internal process changes.
The good news is that you can re-establish your PLM as a unified, organization-wide platform through integration—and CLEVR PLM engineers Joana Nunes Silva and Lars Erik Haajhem have deep experience helping companies achieve just that. We gathered their insights to help you transition from fragmented systems to a future-ready state, step by step.
Why Is PLM Integration Necessary?
Before we dive into the steps to integrate your PLM system, it’s important to understand how a fragmented environment can arise, why it’s a problem, and how a PLM solution can help.
How fragmented systems develop
According to Joana and Lars Erik, one of the most common reasons organizations end up with multiple PLM systems is the acquisition of smaller companies, each with its own pre-existing PLM systems and ways of working. The goal in these cases, as they put it, is “to go from two companies using two systems to one company using a single platform for production.”
They also see many situations where companies begin taking on more customers without having a PLM system in place. These businesses often resort to ad hoc methods to manage a growing volume of data, resulting in disconnected systems and disorganized digital files. In such cases, it becomes necessary to have a PLM system that can seamlessly integrate existing data.
Whether through acquisition or accelerated growth, both scenarios are ultimately unsustainable. They require a PLM system to serve as a unified platform, one that enables clear communication of product designs, easy information sharing with suppliers, and accurate specifications for manufacturing processes. Relying on disconnected systems can lead to poor collaboration during design, manufacturing delays, and quality control issues.
Fragmentation also poses a barrier to keeping systems up to date. As Lars Erik and Joana point out, this is a major challenge because “these applications are evolving really, really fast.” Organizations without unified, standardized systems miss out on the latest upgrades, and implementing advanced features in the future becomes more costly due to the need for custom development.
Why your business needs an integrated PLM system
An integrated PLM system dramatically improves the entire manufacturing process, from collaborating on designs to managing supply chains to creating and delivering finished products. It reduces costs, speeds up time to market, and improves product quality.
Joana and Lars Erik emphasize these benefits of PLM: “With a PLM, you have much more traceability of your products and your assets. You start to really see your product and your full data, and a PLM can solve all the duplicates and issues and inconsistencies that your company had before. You can see the full history of your product, which [you] might not have had knowledge about before doing this integration.”
They also point out that having this structured data has a real impact on your business’s bottom line and ability to innovate. “You can see how your product has gone from an idea many years ago to how it's living right now. It gives you an overview of what your business is actually selling and what you can make more money on. The rewards from having a streamlined PLM system come very fast.”
Integrating Your PLM System: Step-by-Step Guide
Based on their experience helping companies deploy, integrate, and customize PLM systems, Joana and Lars Erik offer a four-step guide to PLM integration:
Step 1: Assess the current PLM environment
The first thing companies need to do to achieve a streamlined PLM is to understand their current situation and how a PLM can help. The integration process can vary significantly depending on a company's current stage in its digital journey.
For example, if your organization aims to unify several PLMs that are already in use, “you have to make some decisions,” Lars Erik and Joana continue. “Do you move all the data to one of your already existing applications? Or do you create a new application and migrate your data there?” Which approach is better for your business will depend on whether one of your PLM platforms fully meets your business’s needs and whether it is easily upgradeable as new features become available.
If your company doesn’t have a PLM at all, you’ll need to select a software vendor and identify what data needs to be migrated to the new system. Joana and Lars Erik recommend Siemens Teamcenter because of its advanced collaboration tools and customizability for a wide range of industries. They also praise its steady stream of updates, which help ensure businesses future-readiness.
Here partnering with PLM experts can be incredibly beneficial. “We have experience working with a lot of different customers across different industries,” say Lars Erik and Joana. “That knowledge helps us advise businesses on how to align the way they work with how their PLM software can best be used.”
Step 2: Develop new PLM systems in parallel
Instead of rolling out a new PLM all at once, Joana and Lars Erik recommend that companies should develop their integrated system in the background. “By not touching the legacy system and instead setting up a completely new PLM, we can work in parallel. Users can still use the existing applications while we develop a new system based on a new way of working. In time, we can migrate different products into the new system and train employees how to use it.”
This approach has a number of benefits. It minimizes disruption to your company’s operations while the integrated PLM system is being developed. The new system can also be thoroughly tested and fully functional before it’s rolled out across your organization, and individual products or teams can be migrated to the unified PLM one at a time, making the change management process much simpler.
There are several ways to manage this parallel development. One example Joana and Lars Erik provide is creating an integration layer—a database that receives information from multiple existing PLM and other applications—using low code. “You can then integrate or migrate data from your legacy environments to the new environment.”
Using a low code platform such as Mendix can simplify integration work, especially when dealing with multiple legacy systems, and can provide added flexibility, making PLM systems even more powerful.
Step 3: Train employees on your new PLM
Before new PLM systems can be rolled out, team members need to be trained on how to use them. This is crucial for ensuring employees can hit the ground running with your integrated PLM and earn buy-in, ensuring engineers, product designers, and manufacturing leads actually use the system. Without this buy-in, employees could end up using workarounds that result in more fragmentation.
“We do a lot of training,” Joana and Lars Erik add. “Usually, before we even have projects starting, we show how Teamcenter works out of the box, the different modules in Teamcenter, and what capabilities the different modules offer. This gives them a touch and feel for the system before they start using it.”
Training offers an opportunity to identify needs that can be incorporated into the development and software configuration process. “We go into this discovery period where we sit together and we discuss the behavior of the system to understand how it fits with their way of working. We also ask about the requirements that different teams have so that we can configure the system to work as best as possible to meet them.”
Step 4: Deploy and scale
Once your integrated PLM system is ready and employees are prepared for the switchover, you can deploy the new software. However, instead of rolling out the new PLM across your entire organization all at once, it’s a good idea to introduce it to individual teams first or implement it for specific projects. That way, you have an opportunity to identify any speed bumps or bugs before they cause significant issues.
Once you’re confident in the system, it can then be deployed more widely and scaled across all your business’s projects. At this point, you can back up data from legacy PLM systems that will no longer be used and decommission them.
Lars Erik and Joana emphasize the importance of listening to feedback from employees once the new PLM is implemented. “We get quite a lot of good feedback,” they say, which can help identify opportunities for new features or additional integrations.
Tips for a Smooth PLM Integration
In addition to sharing details about the approach they use for PLM integration, Joana and Lars Erik offer several tips to ensure your integration process is as smooth as possible:
Get your team on board by letting them know how their collaboration impacts the rest of the business.
Changing PLM systems often requires employees to adapt to new ways of working, which can be difficult, especially if they’re coming from an acquired company with a completely different software approach. Invest time in explaining the broader value of the change, and involve teams early to increase engagement and reduce resistance.
PLM is changing incredibly fast. So make sure that the platforms you build are ready to be upgraded with new features and integrated with additional systems in the future.
Choose a PLM solution that can grow with your business. Your system should be capable of integrating with future PLM tools, third-party platforms, or compliance software—especially in cases of future mergers or supply chain expansion.
Configure your systems to fit in your framework so that you always have that possibility of upgradeability.
One of the key benefits of integrating fragmented PLM systems is that it enables the use of standardized software platforms with regular software updates. So, while adapting your PLM to your business’s specific needs is important, it’s equally important to remain within the bounds of your software.
Be patient and go step by step to achieve a good end result.
Moving from multiple applications to one common system is not an overnight process. Take a phased approach, set realistic expectations, and focus on long-term results rather than quick wins.
Integrating Your PLM System: Step-by-Step, Side-by-Side With CLEVR
For organizations looking to go from fragmented systems to a single, unified PLM system, CLEVR serves as your expert partner. We offer a step-by-step approach guided by experts like Joana and Lars Erik, and we work by your side throughout the entire integration process.
Ready to streamline your PLM and ensure your business is future-ready? Check out our PLM solutions and customer success stories to learn more.
Find out how CLEVR can drive impact for your business
FAQ
Can't find the answer to your question? Just get in touch
