Ask Us
If you have any apparel PLM-related questions, send them to the WhichPLM team at: info@whichplm.com Meanwhile, we have listed some of the most commonly asked questions and answers below.
What are the key attributes to a successful PLM implementation?
A: Below are the key essentials:
- Define an internal PLM strategy.
- Obtain a project team supported by senior management.
- Map As-Is and To-Be processes.
- Take advice from independent, industry PLM experts to select a PLM solution that will support the overall business strategy.
- Consider using external expertise help support the PLM implementation.
- PLM is a long term strategy that will evolve over time so consider revisiting the strategy after the initial phase.
- Train all users to get the best results and factor in ‘training’ to new employeee inductions. Improved education via PLM will help your business to deliver real value.
Why use external experts to support your PLM strategy?
A: Would the average person consider fixing their own car or building their own house without an expert-opinion? No, so why would you consider selecting and implementing PLM without support. Time to value is critical in today’s business environment and using independent PLM experts that have designed and implemented PLM systems many times will help your business to reduce risk and overall cost.
A: WhichPLM.com is a truly independent team of PLM experts that has many 'man years' operating in the Retail, Apparel and Footwear sectors. WhichPLM is a one-stop shop to help you locate the most suitable PLM solution to match your current and potential business challenges. Today there are approximately 60 known PLM suppliers all claiming to offer the best solution, it's an extremely complex maze that requires up to date experts to help guide you through!
A: WhichPLM.com has been created by an independent team of Apparel PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) industry experts with many years of experience that originate from the development of the first PDM (Product Data Management) solution, entering the Apparel sector back in the 1980's and working together on ‘Classic PDM' at Microdynamics in the USA. Since that time the team have continued to scope, design, develop, sell and implement PDM, CPM (Collaborative Product Management) and PLM solutions around the globe with hundreds of implementations completed to date.
A: PLM suppliers have already started to see the results from the benchmarks by having their solutions evaluated by WhichPLM. Customers gain a more in-depth view of what the solution and the provider can do and whether it fits for their company, much earlier on in the assessment and selection process. Providing this information to customers ‘up-front’ saves time and builds brand credibility for the PLM solution supplier. From the supplier perspective, receiving a comprehensive document of customer requirements helps them to establish early on whether they can provide a good solution fit.
A: WhichPLM uses a comprehensive 650+ question RFI (Request For Information) document to rate and score PLM systems, which is available to buy and download from this site (at a charge). We also offer a capsule version of the RFI free of charge, containing a subset of questions from the main document to support your own questions. This may be more suitable if you are looking for a basic fit against high-level requirements.
A: PLM can deliver massive advantages for the business if implemented successfully. Typically, companies can make major savings by rationalising processes. This all adds up to more on-trend products, in the right sizes and colours leading to a reduction in markdowns. Improved collaboration across the extended supply chain will reduce administration cost and essentially improve quality.
Are there any tools available to identify how much value can be added to our organisation from implementing a PLM system?
A: There are many ways that the introduction of PLM can improve a company’s ‘green’ strategy. Below are a few of the examples that can collectively help to reduce environmental impact:
- Digital colour management will help to reduce the number of lab dips that need to be sent via couriers.
- Virtual sampling techniques are now entering the market to help cut the number of physical samples, reducing the cost of transport.
- Why wait to visit fabric & trimmings exhibitions when you can take the details in a digital format directly to use PLM system along with the supporting meta data?
- Online management of data and digitising the storyboarding process decreases the monetary and environmental cost of using paper.
- Re-using data to create new products, streamlining communications and gaining visibility of the product, and its associated data, significantly decreases the time (and energy) spent on administration resource.
What are the specific PLM requirements of this industry compared to others?
A:
- Speed to market (Fast fashion).
- Complexity multi dimensional, sizes, colours and fits.
- Supplier collaboration (Extended supply chain manufacturers and their suppliers).
- Integration to supporting EPOS (Electronic Point Of Sale) ERP systems to drive more accurate up to the minuet business planning, Line planning and product development.
- Multi dimensional BOM, size/colour/fit/variations/supply locations.
- Ensure that the project has buy-in from the entire team driven from the management project sponsor down to the process owners both internal and external.
- Define a clear scope with realistic phased milestones and measure successful completion of each phase before moving ahead and trying to deliver the big bang implementation.
