FRAMINGHAM, Mass. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — October 14, 2014 — IDC Manufacturing Insights recently published a new report, Perspective: The New Vision for PLM —The Innovation Platform (Doc #MI249718), which defines the Innovation Platform — a new vision for product life-cycle management (PLM). The report is designed to help leading manufacturers evaluate their current IT investments and begin to review future product life-cycle investments in a larger context.

• Click to Tweet: #IDCManufacturingInsights Defines #ProductLifecycleManagement as the #Innovation Platform

Earlier in the year, IDC Manufacturing Insights presented the top 10 PLM predictions for 2014. While some aspects of these predictions are already becoming a reality, it's increasingly clear that manufacturers need to rethink their current IT investments for product innovation, development, and engineering. Manufacturers need a new vision of PLM to help them with these key initiatives – in effect an innovation platform for maximizing intellectual property (IP) that takes advantage of new technology capabilities and serves changing business relationships and conditions. Through a collaborative effort and review process with IDC Manufacturing Insights analysts and external contributors, the new vision represents a major step toward acknowledging the pressures (financial and otherwise) manufacturers face in bringing new products and services to market.

According to Kimberly Knickle, Practice Director, IDC Manufacturing Insights, "This is an extended journey for manufacturers over the next five or more years that includes visual decision making, systems engineering, and product life-cycle economics. These initiatives require new skills, new processes, and investments in new technologies including big data, cloud, mobile, and social/collaboration."

Jeff Hojlo, Program Director, Product Innovation Strategies, added, "PLM has evolved from managing product data, to workgroup collaboration, to a visual decision support platform that internal and external constituents leverage to make and improve systems engineering and existing products. An enterprise-wide innovation platform must tie into customer, manufacturing, and supply chain data, and provide a business-centric view of product development and manufacturers' intellectual property."

IDC Manufacturing Insights recommends, when evaluating platform providers, that users should prioritize openness, configurability, flexibility, and adaptability that enable them to connect to best-of-class functionality for diverse needs spanning research, design, engineering, sourcing, manufacturing, sales, marketing, service, and so forth. It's unlikely manufacturers can or will rely on a single vendor to support an innovation platform. As a result, the innovation platform must work across organizational and IT boundaries.

IDC Manufacturing Insights will produce future research to support this new Innovation Platform and help manufacturers navigate the evolving business landscape.

To arrange a briefing with Kimberly Knickle and Jeff Hojlo, please contact Sarah Murray at 781-378-2674 or sarah@attunecommunications.com. Reports are available to qualified members of the media. For information on purchasing reports, contact insights@idc.com; reporters should email sarah@attunecommunications.com.

About IDC Manufacturing Insights

IDC Manufacturing Insights assists manufacturing businesses and IT leaders, as well as the suppliers who serve them in making more effective technology decisions by providing accurate, timely, and insightful fact-based research and consulting services. Staffed by senior analysts with decades of industry experience, our global research analyzes and advises on business and technology issues facing asset intensive, brand oriented, technology oriented, and engineering oriented manufacturing industries. International Data Corporation ( IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology market. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world’s leading technology, media, research, and events company. For more information, please visit www.idc-mi.com, email info@idc-mi.com, or call 508-988-7900. Visit the IDC Manufacturing Insights Community at http://idc-community.com/manufacturing.

IDC
Allyson Hughes, 508-935-4546
Project Director
Email Contact
or
Attune Communications
Sarah Murray, 781-378-2674
Partner
Email Contact