How Product Data Management Can Boost Your Company’s Success

Pivot International  |   May 03, 2017

Managing all of the information that runs throughout your company, from product manufacturing to sales to your supply chain, can be a serious challenge. It can be done with the right team, the right skills and the right level of knowledge, but even then, you might need some help.

That’s where product data management, or PDM,  systems come in. Put simply, PDM software helps manage product data and process-related information in a single, central system. In the past, your information could’ve been stored in multiple places. Now, with a PDM system, you can have it all at your fingertips.

A PDM system has many advantages other than just information storage, though, and here are just a few of them.

Information management

A product data management system allows you to use all of your data in the correct context. The right users will get the right information every time, without confusion or unnecessary mistakes. And it’s all handled through a centralized system that you can control access to.

Workflow

A PDM system can create a smooth workflow throughout the process of product manufacturing, all through automation. You can refine and program your PDM software to best reflect your company practices and even run analysis on worse-case scenario situations before they happen.

A first-rate PDM system can be changed at any time to handle new standards or processes, without disturbing the existing parameters that were already in place.

Saving time

The time you’ve spent organizing the massive amounts of data involved in your product’s life cycle can be drastically shortened by using a product data management system. Your design data and product-tracking information can be managed a lot more easily within a PDM system.

Sharing information

As was mentioned above, one of the main attractions of a product data management system is centralization. But that’s not just about making your information easier to access.

A system that puts all of your data in one controlled, accessible place allows the engineers and other pertinent employees in your company to share that data and work from it at the same time.

When it comes to making a product successful, collaboration might be one of the most important factors in doing so. Collaboration between employees within your company, and collaboration between those employees and the system they use to access that information.

A product data management program can provide both of those things within one system.

Leveraging resources

A product data management system can help a company spread resources across multiple engineering and design teams, allowing all of them to work at maximum capacity while also allowing you to control those resources from, yes, a centralized system.

Think of how much waste you could avoid, both in terms of time and materials, if you could waste fewer resources and make sure all of your teams were getting them. Efficiency is another key for a product’s success, not to mention that of a business, and a PDM system is about the most effective way to achieve maximum productivity.

Communications

It’s not just about streamlining data storage or allocating resources. A top-flight PDM system can help the communication processes within your company run better, as well.

Think about the people that design your products and how they get those designs to the people that check their work. Is that process still done on paper within your company?

A PDM system can change that. By eliminating paper and sending all material electronically, it’s easier to trace where a design or a design approval might have gotten off track and easier to find out the person or department responsible.

Interested in learning more about improving your business’s success? Read “Business Trends Driving Growth for Product-Based Businesses in 2017.”