CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
November 19, 2007
Events News
Technia Innovation Forum 2007 - The largest PLM-meeting in the Nordic
Innovation Forum is a yearly recurring meeting arranged by Technia. At this year's meeting that was held at Krägga Country Manor outside Bålsta, approximately 200 Technia customers and other PLM professionals were participating.
The theme for this year's forum was "Winning the future". Today the PLM questions are in more focus in the top management at the largest Nordic enterprises, according to Jonas Gejer, Vice President at Technia AB. The CEO's are more involved in the decision processes - they understand that PLM is a strategic important question for their business. They have noticed that other companies have implemented PLM and they don't want to fall behind. PLM has gone from "nice to have" to "must have". All PLM solutions that are implemented today are SOA based.
The PLM industry is consolidating, Jonas Gejer explains. The growth among the leading PLM vendors are considerable larger than among smaller PLM niche vendors. The customers choose vendors that dominate the market and the ones that they know will remain in the market over the next couple of years. Technia has also noticed that the interest in working with PLM has increased; a lot of professionals are interested in applying to Technia - and we have space for more. Technia is in an expansion phase and is looking for another 30 PLM consultants to recruit.
Another trend in the PLM industry is that the standard (out of the box) solutions are implemented with minimal configurations; today companies are able to implement a PLM solution in a few months, something that earlier could take years. The PLM vendors are now better on estimating the projects and are therefore able to deliver according to the time plan. Earlier the PLM vendors put more focus on implementing the system platform - but they forgot making the system easy to use.
The PLM industry is more mature now days; a clear sign of this is that industries beyond traditional manufacturing industries are becoming more interested in using PLM as a tool. The new interested parties are construction companies, metal companies and global fashion/sportswear companies. Three companies in the fashion/sports segment were participating at the event as speakers; GAP, the Gucci Group and Haglöfs. Wesley Reinsch from GAP told the audience about GAP's PLM system that has enabled them to make the product development and sourcing process more efficient; it's all about the ability to deliver the right products, at the right time to the right customers. He also thought that it is important that the users really "like" the system.
Other companies that showed their solutions at the Innovation Forum are Trek Bicycles (USA), Andritz AG (Austria), Nokia (Finland) and Ericsson and Autoliv from Sweden.
Become a member of the CIMdata PLM Community to receive your daily PLM news and much more.
Tell us what you think of the CIMdata Newsletter. Send your feedback.
CIMdata is committed to your privacy. Your personal information will never be sold or shared outside of CIMdata without your express permission.