Ensure stronger collaboration with suppliers and design partners during product development
Background
In the manufacturing sector, engineering services are very often contracted out. The parent company draws up its product strategy and guidelines, while the design stage is handled by specialist engineering consultants. Similarly, the products (or product components) are often made by a foreign contract manufacturer, which takes over production as well as handling the engineering project based on the parent company’s specifications.
Using telephone or email communications to manage product development projects with outside contractors or foreign contract manufacturers can be challenging and risky.
Products are often complex and may require various modifications before they are finalised: this involves frequent interactions between all those working on the project.
In this kind of context, it is vital to retrace why certain decisions or modifications were made, sometimes months previously, although their details may have since been forgotten.
Another key aspect concerns security: information covered by intellectual property needs to be exchanged, with access restricted to authorised staff and limited to the company infrastructure. Finally, product complexity means it is essential to keep the timescales and costs of product development under control.
Why manufacturers choose Missoun PLM
Developing a product using PLM software functions increases an engineering team’s productivity, ensures projects are completed within deadlines and budgets, provides complete traceability for project activities, enables sensitive data to be shared safely and work to be carried out in compliance with company processes. As well as these benefits, the Missoun platform creates direct relations between project tasks and engineering items, giving team members instant access to the information they need to consult and/or modify.
The video below provides an overview of the Missoun platform’s collaboration functions, as summarised below:
- Managing product development projects
- Collaborating between in-house staff and external contractors
- Creating and assigning project tasks
- File sharing
- Comments (conversations) between team members
- Audit trails (non-modifiable) to keep track of project modifications
- Alerts for team members
- Connecting project tasks and engineering items