Project Life-cycle Management

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is growing rapidly with product complexity and offering greater competitive edge in business process. The purpose of this paper is to provide awareness of product lifecycle management in general and in our organization. On the other hand, you can understand avail that our organization achieving from PLM. This paper provides insights into SAPs PLM solution, by referring to some companies which are using PLM solution. Also, this paper discusses the issues associated with implementing PLM solution.

Product Lifecycle Management

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the process of monitoring and controlling various stages of production cycle, starting from order of product, pricing of product, buying of raw materials, training of resources, designing of product, processing of raw materials, testing of product, packing of product, and delivery of product, in a systematic way.

PLM is an essential tool for managing needs of global competition by fulfilling the reducing product and component lifecycles, and growing customer needs.  By using PLM, an organization attains the ability of controlling their product cycle. It integrates the supply network and manufacturing of product. Doing this, an organization can bring new products to the market in less time, effort, and expenditure, with an added advantage to customer like reduced cost of product but the same good quality and quantity.

The product lifecycle management manages the lifecycle by keeping track of the following details in the system:

• Terms and abbreviations used in this field like lifecycle, phases of lifecycle, definition of product, jargons used in the lifecycle and process, and so on.
• Working domain/field of document (Document is the product of our organization) like telecommunication, banking, production, literature, travel, etc.
• Product information models and product models like what type of document is to be delivered and version number of the document is to be used for making new document.
• Product (document) lifecycle management and principles available in the organization like status of the product, version of the product, resource/author of the product/document, etc
• Processes involved in product lifecycle. For example, in documentation review process, there are other process like peer review, team leader review, technical review, quality review, and customer review.
• Instructions which helps to apply the concept in routine business.

Like most of manufacturing's latest era transitions, the product lifecycle management revolution is driven by the auto industry based on industries evolving need to become more collaborative, adaptive, flexible and responsive. And PLM is just the beginning of a revolution that turns information into a more usable and accessible tool. According to experts, automotive and aerospace industries are the PLM leader for the rest of manufacturing industries.

Product Lifecycle

In our organization, which is mainly into technical communications, the product lifecycle that we follow is Document Development Lifecycle (DDLC). DDLC is same as Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). In DDLC, the various levels of processes involved are analysis and collection of resources available, design of document, development of document, review of document, and release of document.

Benefits of PLM

Like any other organizations, our organization also benefits from PLM. The following are the benefits of PLM:

• It eases and standardizes the processes involved in our DDLC. The standardization of process helps in switching resources for an assigned work. It clearly shows the current status of product development. Hence, a new resource can easily start the job.
• It reduces the time consumed for the documentation process by avoiding the searching time to locate resources and reusing the previously documented documents. Under PLM process, all the resources like templates, style guides, definition, etc. will be stored in this system. This storing of old data and design reduces document creation time.
• It reduces the cost of documentation process by reusing, previously documented documents and design. By reusing the previous version of the document, the author should only need to add the new feature to the present document. Almost all the software products are undergoing changes. Every other release, a new feature will be added. In such case, the reuse of older version of document with needed modification saves a lot of money and time.
• It saves the disk storage space by eliminating redundant documents and designs. PLM system will track the contents of disk and only allows a copy of document to be saved in the system.
• It helps people throughout an organization to work together more effectively. For example, when one resource is writing a document, other resource can design a template.

Difficulties of PLM

Implementation of PLM takes a long time. To implement PLM successfully, an organization needs expert in their field of work. A well built information technology team is needed to maintain and operate PLM systems. It changes the whole process of an organization. It computerizes all the operations in an organization. The other important issue is the change in lifecycle of a product. This change creates the need for the regular updating of information to the system, thus making it a continuous process.

SAPs PLM Solution

SAP PLM supports the following areas in core business processes:

• Product Management, which helps in planning and decision making for achieving the objective of big corporate growth. It also helps to create product strategy and planning, innovative management, and requirement management.
• Product Development and Collaboration, which deals with sharing critical information such as project plans, previous documents, resources available, product structure, service bulletins, audit results, share work across teams, etc. It also deals with product quality management and product change management.
• Product Data Management, which tracks data used in project, maintenance and modification of data, storage of data, proactive service to retrieve data and publishing of processed data.
• Lifecycle Management, which helps in pricing and standardizing of product. It also helps in the integration of project requirement, tool, and resources.

Benefits and Issues of Companies with PLM

Kongsberg Automotive, which is an automotive company that looks into commercial vehicle market, uses SAP PLM for attaining internal collaboration in R&D. Using PLM, the company increased their efficiency by reducing the total cost of R&D, reducing time for R&D process. It also provides a secure platform for collaboration with other external companies.

Aker Solutions uses SAP PLM to manage its worldwide engineering data by storing 3D models and drawings in a unique global database. When implementing SAP PLM, the problem faced is the viewing formats of huge set of legacy drawings and models stored on various file servers and local product data management system. Here, the concern is to convert all these files and import them to SAP. Because of this issue, the migration process of files has to be done in two steps, one step to convert and next is to import. With the help of Cideon’s Import PDM program, Asker solutions has migrated the files step by step based on the need.

Canadian National Railway Company uses SAP PLM to overcome their key challenges like improving focus on customer and profit, creativity and innovation, merging organizational structure and systems of four railways, manage workforce diversity, productivity, efficiency and reporting.    

Conclusion

Throughout this report, you can see the information regarding product lifecycle management, mainly using SAP PLM. Even though, implementing PLM system has some difficulties, it has got a high value in the competitive business process. In short, PLM provides better control over the lifecycle of product which in turn helps in rapid growth of business.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Saaksvuori, Antti & Immonen, Anselmi 2008, Product Lifecycle Management, 3rd edn, Springer-Verlag Berlin and Heidelberg GmbH & Co. KG

SAP 1999, SAP Product Lifecycle Management Customer Testimonials, SAP, viewed 4 September 2010, <http://www.sap.com/solutions/business-suite/plm/customers/videos/index.epx>

Canadian National Railway Company 2007, 04_17324_CNRail_BTS_Long.indd, SAP, viewed 4 September 2010, <http://www.sap.com/solutions/business-suite/plm/customers/index.epx>

Cideon Software 2010, Aker Solutions Case Study, Cideon Software, viewed 5 September 2010,<http://www.cideon-software.com/backstage_09/documentpool/software/success-stories-engl-/Aker%20Solution_eng.pdf>

International Strategy and International Human Resource Management

As a result of globalization and technology advancement, most of the companies and their work force are influenced by global pressure and competition. Because of these global influences, firms introduced the need for the proper international strategy and International Human Resource management. International strategies are those methods or approaches taken by a firm to extend their business across borders of their home country (Gillonn 2004).

According to Schuler (2009), the result of internationalization of business resulted in the increase of travel across the border, fast and easy communication across different cultures, fast development and transfer of technologies, improvement in education, free trade between the countries, pressure on cost and migration of people from one country to other countries. Because of this, People and their organization exposed to high pressure and competition.  In this scenario, the scope for international human resource management (IHRM) or globalized human resource management comes into existence.

According to Brannen (1999), good strategy and good strategic implementation are the good signs of good management. Based on good management signs and the strategy of go international, IHRM has developed (Lisbeth 2009). IHRM deals with the handling and researching of the issues faced during the management of human resources in enterprises in the global environment like the development of global mind-set in human resource functions by aligning HR processes and procedures for the enhancement of global strategies and competitions.

The some of the key aspects of IHRM are the cultural differences between the firms and the employees of the firms, the compensation methods in different countries, political situation of the countries, etc. IHRM has to deal with the issues of expatriates and foreign locals of the host countries. International human resource management is different from domestic human resource management (Vance 2006).

Aspects of International Strategies and Its Relationship between IHRM

Firms use different strategies for the expansion of their business to different countries. The following are some of the international strategies and their aspects based on the international human resource management.

In Licensing and Subcontracting strategy, a firm makes an agreement with foreign countries firm to manufacture or assemble its products and to export it back to the original firm’s country (Schuler 2009). Here the internationalization happens through export of one product from subcontracted firm to the original firm. In this method, A Firm gives license to other firm to franchise its brand and products.  In this strategy, the international HR issues effect in a small way. For the successful implementation of this strategy, the firm needs to guarantee the human rights of production workers and to make sure through training of franchisee to stick to the standards created by the franchisor.

Outsourcing is another kind of strategy for extending business to other countries from a firm’s home country. In this strategy, a firm gives contract to other firm in different country or same country to do their supporting works, so that the original firm’s resource can focus on their core competencies. For example, call centers, accounting, etc.  For the success of outsourcing, the international human resource management has to do proper communication with the people from same and different countries, able to assign suitable employees, fix proper compensation and benefits, give good training and development, good employee relationship, etc.

Offshoring , in this strategy a firm relocates one or more aspects of its business process to a different country for its strategic or competitive advantages like low cost and improved quality products. Here the role of international human resource management is to deal with the anxiety of the employees of home country, regarding job security. The other responsibilities of IHRM are relocating services, infrastructure for starting the business, communication skills in both languages, managing political stability, finding suitable skill sets, enforceability of intellectual property rights, etc.

Wholly Owned subsidiary strategy is an approach in which a firm acquires another firm from the country to which the original firm wants to do business. Mergers and Acquisitions come under this strategy. In this case, the firm acquires the whole firm or the infrastructure of the other firm. In this scenario, the success is based on the ability of IHRM to integrate both firms’ culture and HR policies. 

International Joint Venture Strategy, is the one in which two or more firms from different countries start a new business in one of the partners country with shared ownership and responsibility. But this new business is entirely independent on their parent companies, except their joint control. International Joint Venture is an equity sharing arrangement between two companies (one local, one foreign) that pool their resources, share risks and operational control to operate an independent business unit on a continuous basis to attain strategic objectives (Geringer & Hebert, 1991). In this new business the challenges for the IHRM are the creation of work force, culture, and practices. The one of the important key for the success of international joint venture is the agreement and the clarification on the agreement between the partners. In case there is lack of clarity in expectation for performance of resulting organization, which may eventually cause the early dissolution of the venture.

Conclusion

The above research and analysis on the importance and role of international human resource management on international strategies show that a global business can be a failure, if the international human resource management is not done properly. For the successful implementation of international strategy, human resources should be managed properly. 

References 

Gillonn,J. Angus 2004, Developing Strategies for International Business: The Wrap Process, Palgrave Macmillan.

Briscoe, Dennis R & Schuler, Randall S & Claus, Lisbeth 2009, International Human Resource Management, 3^rd edn, Routledge, London and Newyork.

Harzing, Peter J. & Ruysseveldt, Joris Van (eds) 2004, International Human Resource Management, 2^nd edn, Sage.

Vance, C.M. 2006, Strategic upstream and downstream considerations for effective global performance management, International Journal of Cross-cultural Management, 6: 37-56.

Dowling, Peter J. & Welch, Denise E. (eds.) 2004, International Human Resource Management: Managing People in a Multinational Context Thomson, 4^th edn

Brannen, M.Y. 1999, The many faces of cultural data, AIB Newsletter, First Quarter: 6-7

Brewster, Chris & Mayrhofer, Wolfgang & Morley, Michael (eds.) 2004, Human Resource Management in Europe: Evidence of Convergence? , Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann.

Geringer, J. M. and Hebert, L. 1991, Measuring performance of international joint ventures, Journal of International Business Studies, vol. 22, no. 2, p.249-263

India Sleeps in Job Inequality

This article is based on my experience from Australia. I appreciate Australian government for the Job Equality. I am writing this to make the people of India and its government to understand the good things happening around our country. I request my readers to read this article in a positive attitude.

Straight to the point, can a dish washer in India make a minimum living? Can a car washer make a minimum living? I do not know anybody who does that. How about you? But, here in Australia, they usually do make a decent living.

I know, we can blame on the politics, population, culture and traditions. But, this would not solve our problem. For solving the job inequality, Indian government should take adequate steps.

According to me, the solution for this is by making a law for minimum wages. What do I mean by minimum wage is whatever the kind of job one does, one should get the minimum pay which is the minimum amount of money to make a decent living. The government should calculate the minimum expenditure of a person to live in that demographic. The minimum expenditure includes food, accommodation, education, health, communication, and the other essential stuffs.

I would like your opinions regarding the Job Inequality.

Cultural Resistance while Managing Projects

Culture is defined based on the context.  For example, culture of a nation. National culture is based on the beliefs and traditions followed in that nation. Think about culture in an organization, it is the way in which an organization performs a process. How about a work group culture? It is the behaviour of a small work group in an organization.

Based on the above classification of the culture, resistance raises while managing projects, which may lead to the failure of projects.
National Culture which can also be considered as demographic culture may create a sub group in a project team in turn creates the difficulty in managing the team. For example, consider a team consists of six people, three of them speak same language, the other two speak another language and all the remaining speaks their own different languages. What do you think about the communication and coordination in that project team?

Organization Cultural resistance come in to existence, when a company is took over by other company or an employee from one organization works as an employee in another organization as a contract employee. For example, consider the technical documentation scenario, a writer from company X works for company Y as a contract employee. In company X, the culture of documentation is the following. The writer sits next to developer or programmer and documents the product. But, in company Y, the developer sits in one location and programmer sits in other location. Based on this scenario, how is the performance of that employee? Is there any chance of cultural resistance in this situation?

Work group cultural resistance is the discomfort happening when a member of a team joins another team in the same organization as a part of resource allocation. For example, in a project team A, developer writes only programs and testing person writes the design document and does the testing of the product. This developer as part of another project requirement, moved to a project team B, where the developer writes both the programmes and design documents and the testing person tests the product.What do you think about this situation?