Product Life Cycle Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4500 words

Product Life Cycle Management - Essay Example Secondly, to explore how PLM could help in different stages of Computer Aided Design (CAD) design or where PLM could contribute and involve in a new product development. This paper also incorporates the case studies of PLM and how adoption of PLM has helped SMEs to secure an established position in the industry. The project analyzes important studies and then conducts a primary survey that centers on SMEs adoption of PLM. The results of the studies have confirmed the conclusion that the SMEs have grown with the acceptance of new sophisticated technologies. PLM strategy is a solution addressing many components for managing product data (Kemmerer, 1999) and provides the necessary requirements and capabilities companies need to successfully manage information and facilitate communication and collaboration across the entire product lifecycle from idea through retirement [PTC n.d. ]. In fact, PLM is the extension of PDM (Abramovici and Sieg, 2002) which appeared during 1980s. With the advent of Computer Aided Design (CAD) solutions, engineering design entered a new era. Parallel with the continued development of Computer -Aided Design and Manufacturing and Engineering (CAD/CAM/CAE) tools, Product lifecycle management (PLM) is the crucial business approach that assigns a constant set of business solutions on behalf of the cooperative establishment, management, distribution, and application of product definition orientation across the extended business from abstraction to edge of life and it is now clearly acknowledged by many firms as basic to the product innovation evolution, and a corporation's top-notch and fundamental accomplishment (Stark, 2003, 4) PLM is the method of managing a firm's products all the way across their life cycles in the most effective way. If the firms start losing control over its products, then it will lead to adverse effects. A product does not exist when it is at its development stage. That is the time when it becomes difficult to manage. This is practically the reason why there is a need to completely involve PLM in the process so as to be sure that the product would make a good introduction and growth within the industry that it is involved with. Penetrating the industry totally is not that easy, this is a truth even for those products whose brands have already been established in the market.1 Hence, to be able to assure that a particular business product or service would make it to the competition, the administrators of the company should know about how to use PLM cycle effectively for their own product or service's popularity in the market probably resulting to more improved rate of profit returns. Ho wever, it could be noticed too that as the introduction of the product is launched, the management as to how to retain its effect in the market is what should be given attention next. As soon as existence of a product is ensured, the problem of managing that product arises. With the advent of PLM, the products are able to reach the market fast and better support from the customer's side is guaranteed. It is necessary to bring a product into the market otherwise; one firm will lose the customers to other firm. The fact that competition is tough in the market, being the first one to introduce a new product is an important part of the process.2 This fact is a special

The culture of an international non-profit organisation Essay

The culture of an international non-profit organisation - Essay Example This essay using the cultural web analyzes the culture of a non-profit (referred to here as Company X). Company X is a not-for-profit organisation founded in 1981 in the United States as a charity aimed at improving the lives of children and families. Over its 20 years the company’s mission has narrowed to or become more specific targeting early childhood care and education, children’s rights and grassroots community development. Company X is currently headquartered in California in the United States but has a presence in five continents as follows: Africa – Kenya, Zimbabwe and Ghana; Asia – India and Nepal; Europe – Norway, South America – Chile and North America – the U.S. Company X primarily obtains its operating resources from individual and corporate donations predominantly from within the US. To supplement this funding, Company X owns and runs two exclusive pre-schools in California that boast of an enviable waitlist as well as f our other high cost pre-schools in the same state. Over and above this, the non-profit has offered and continues to offer consultancy services on early childhood care and education at very competitive rates to other non-profits, for-profit corporations and even governments such as the government of Singapore, Ecuador and even the state of California as another source of funding. The local chapters in Africa and Asia have wholly been dependent on obtaining slices of the US funding â€Å"pie† to sustain their programs. ... To supplement this funding, Company X owns and runs two exclusive pre-schools in California that boast of an enviable waitlist as well as four other high cost pre-schools in the same state. Over and above this, the non-profit has offered and continues to offer consultancy services on early childhood care and education at very competitive rates to other non-profits, for-profit corporations and even governments such as the government of Singapore, Ecuador and even the state of California as another source of funding. The local chapters in Africa and Asia have wholly been dependent on obtaining slices of the US funding â€Å"pie† to sustain their programs. However, with the global recession of 2008 hitting the US funding base, Company X has been pushing for heads of its global chapters to source for local funding to sustain their programs. Company X has been implementing this slowly over the last three years through activities such as the following. First it has instituted greate r controls, monitoring and reporting over all funds disbursed. Then it demanded that each chapter develop their own five year strategic plan which will show how they will increasingly source their own funding. Thirdly, from 2009 Company X reduced its funding by 10 to 15 per cent depending on their projections over which local chapters had better odds of fundraising depending on the economic condition of that host country. The problem though is that to date none has successfully fundraised. With the economies of Europe and America, poor for the former and sluggish for the latter, the typical donors that Company X relied on have tightened their purses as they cautiously weigh their own investments. This coupled with the rising economies of