A Practical Guide for Product Lifecycle Management

A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR PRODUCT LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT.  This handy guide helps you tick all the boxes as you envision new product development. 02 Product Lifecycle Management (LCM) has has gained focus in the last decade as a core way to ensure a product meets its potential for profitability and fulfillment of consumer and market needs, while ensuring brand loyalty from customers as product versions rise and decline. Product LCM must consider all phases of a product lifecycle, covering it from conception through its market lifetime to the discontinuation of the product and its components. It requires a high-level view across departments from R&D to manufacturing and from sales and marketing to support. The four stages typically identified in the product lifecycle include: • Product Development & Introduction. The product lifecycle starts when a company identifies a market need or business potential. This is a period of investment. After a new product is launched into the marketplace, sales typically start to grow slowly. • Growth. The growth stage is a period of rapid market acceptance and increasing profits. • Maintenance. In the maturity stage, sales growth slows down because the market is saturated. Profits level off or competitiveness of the product declines because marketing outlays need to be increased to defend the product against competition. • End of life. Finally, sales fall off and profits drop. Sales Time Total Market Sales Design and Development Growth Maintenance End of life 03 DEVELOPMENT OVER TIME. As a product moves through its lifecycle, the development, engineering and customer support needs to change. Extending the period of product profitability and customer loyalty for as long as possible means planning for the next evolution of the product from the beginning. Beginning of life (BOL): At the start of any new product life is the identification of a market need. After analysis of the market potential, a product concept is created to address the opportunity. The next step is design and development, in which the initial conceptualization is developed into prototypes. Within this step are actions such identifying requirements, creating concepts, and testing or validation before manufacturing begins. • Concept • Development • Testing • Launch • Manufacturing Middle of life (MOL): After manufacturing, the product is launched into the market and is distributed, used and serviced. At this point, the product is in the hands of the end user. You can collect data on any failures, maintenance rates, and user experience to get information for immediate fixes and future development. • Go to market • Sales / Distribution • Performance tracking and issue resolution • Get customer feedback • Continuous improvement • Product evolution by features and functions enhancements • Plan for successor product End of life (EOL): As the product reaches maturity, plans for retiring, recycling, or disposing of the product come into play. EOL starts when users no longer have a need for the product, new technology makes it less desirable or cost of ownership rises due to various external aspects. At this stage, companies collect information about what parts and materials are still valuable and begin the reverse engineering process. • Withdrawal from market • Recycle or disposal MANAGING THE PROCESS. If we look at the design, development, manufacturing and updating of the product over time, it’s evident that the process needs to account for interaction between and across departments, including working with partners. To be successful, product LCM must consider: • Standardized modules and sub-assemblies: ways to unify your platforms with architecture, tools and standards • Product data: ensuring information about product items, part numbers, identification, materials and documents is available to all parties • People and organization: collaboration between all of the teams, departments, and organizations involved, including partners • Processes: accounting for your existing (and new) procedures, rules, and practices • Reporting: determining what type of reporting mechanism and scope is needed 04 STEPS TO IMPLEMENT PRODUCT LCM. Each of these steps should be in place to ensure successful product lifecycle management. £ Establish company requirements. What are your criteria for success? £ Consolidate information. Gather all data in a central location. £ Create internal collaboration. Design, manufacturing, procurement, sales, marketing and partners should work together to ensure a relevant product. £ Automate information. Ensure new development work feeds back to an information repository. £ Accelerate communication. Make sure any changes in product design are communicated in timely fashion from manufacturing to marketing. £ Support external communication. Ensure suppliers are informed of changes, new parts requirements and customer feedback. BEST PRACTICES FOR PRODUCT LCM. £ Define what success in LCM looks like for your company £ Drive internal collaboration £ Focus on your customer’s needs £ Create clear metrics for product targets £ Define roadmaps to follow £ I dentify variables that affect product quality £ Perform risk assessment and management £ Create a process to manage exceptions £ Establish benchmarks for product cost by lifecycle stage £ Create an enterprise-wide framework for data management £ Link your framework to your priorities £ Ensure compliance measures are factored into each stage £ Develop quality management steps for product updates/changes £ Develop an end-of-life process for your products £ Assign a group to own your LCM CHECKLIST FOR EACH LCM STAGE. Ensure that important steps are completed in each stage of your product lifecycle. Use this checklist to evaluate your development partner in the LCM process: Product Development. £ Framework agreements identified £ Concept and design input £ Feasibility studies and data collection £ Contractual compliance adherence £ Project cost estimation £ Development and verification £ Prototypes and 0-series Introduction. £ Regulatory compliance support £ Contract fulfillment requirements met £ Business case for product supported £ Product pricing support £ Launch support Growth. £ Quality compliance provided £ Product service & support £ Product improvements £ Strategic product evolution Maintenance. £ KPIs identified and met £ Support for product maintenance £ Engineering changes £ Product maintenance £ Cooperate to maintain installed base £ Next-generation product planning End of life. £ End instrument production £ Compliance/quality management £ Cooperate to maintain installed base £ Spare parts and consumables service and supply management METRICS TO EVALUATE SUCCESS. Check the effectiveness of your PLM program by looking at key performance indicators and metrics that measure changes or successes as a result of implementation. Some areas to evaluate include: £ Sales: the total sales or revenue coming from new products £ Lead time: the time from order to delivery £ Cycle time: the time from production start to completion (including any testing) £ Production error rate: number of batches or processes needing rework £ Product life: the length of time the product is usable by the customer £ Product waste: the amount of waste per product produced £ Product reliability: the amount of your product found to be flawed or faulty within a period £ Warranty claims: the number of warranty claims per products sold £ The accuracy of forecasting: the need for parts £ Customer feedback: the amount of customer input given in the development process 05 Synergence™ services for OEM instrument developments. If you want to achieve more profitable growth, you need a partner that can help you get your solutions to market faster, and one that also sees what’s around the corner so that you can adapt to future market changes. To this end, Tecan is a reliable and flexible OEM partner, teaming up with you to accelerate your innovation today, while remaining agile to your needs and market pressures to drive more sustainable growth tomorrow. www.tecan.com LEARN MORE about our Synergence OEM services: www.tecan.com/synergence SYNERGENCE SERVICES Market insights & trends 01 Customer service 08 Concepts and requirements engineering 02 Obsolescence & change management 07 Solution development 03 Technical support & training 06 Regulatory consulting & support 04 Manufacturing 05 ACCELERATE LONG-TERM GROWTH. PARTNER WITH TECAN. 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