In industries that are highly reliant on customers, this ability to quickly translate market requirements into finished products is even more significant. The role of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is centered on taking the most important product attributes of a future product, coordinating with suppliers, manufacturing centers, marketing, sales and service to ensure the product is produced to specifications and at a profitable price (Agarwal, Gort, 2002)
This further underscores the need for having a company-wide PLM system to streamline their new product development and introduction process. Regal will be more competitive when they are able to capture both the explicit and tacit knowledge in their company while also combining it with systems of record to create a knowledge base that their designers and developers can work from to expedite new design and product development efforts (Haydaya, Marchildon, 2012)
In addition to this focus on creating a single system of record, Regal Marine needs to be thinking about hwo they can use PLM as a foundation for system and process integration throughout the entire company as well. By using PLM as this foundation of communication and collaboration throughout the company, designs and drawings can be digitized and shared through their CAD system, making specific design criterion and requirements more immediately known and acted on company-wide (Irani, Themistocleous, Love, 2003)
Clearly Regal Marine needs to automate more of its new product development process through the use of a PLM system, supported by CAD-based systems to streamline the design process. The more rapid product lifecycles become in a given organization, the more important it is for extensive cross-department and interorganizational communication to occur, especially in the launch of new products or services (Ming, Yan, Wang, Li, et
By incorporating PLM into their workflows, Regal Marine will be able to be more responsive to market conditions while also attaining higher levels of profitability, as the PLM processes will minimize extraneous costs and delays in getting the next generation of products out. A core aspect of any successful PLM strategy is the use of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) techniques and technologies (Von Buchstab, 2002)
The company's current product line consists of twenty two distinct models, each representing a different product life cycle stage. The products' life cycle is a considerably important factor since the overall market has seemed to stagnate (Chip, 2011) Product life cycle applies to Regal Marine as a way of the company keeping their products ahead of the competition in terms of consumer perceived value
The product can complete the life cycle in as little as a few years if there designs aren't popular. Constant streams of new designs are of fundamental importance to maintaining a competitive edge in the marine industry (Heyman, 2010)
There must be something to market to a consumer that separates the product from the rest of the industry. Product differentiation not only attracts customers, but it also creates value (Jacobides, Knudsen, & Augier, 2006)