Product 360 allows manufacturers to customize and view data and insights across a product’s lifecycle.
Product lifecycle management (PLM) and quality management (QMS) software developer Propel recently unveiled its new cloud-based PLM solution, Propel 360. The new software is designed to address gaps in legacy PLM technology that rely on on-premises deployments or are limited to engineering applications. Propel shared that there is now a demand for improved enterprise product collaboration between different proponents within an organization.
Propel CEO and co-founder, Ray Hein said, “Manufacturers need technology to help them collaborate broadly and pivot quickly.”
Product 360 is built on the Salesforce business cloud platform, allowing manufacturers to easily view and manage the entire value chain throughout the lifecycle of a product. This means that various teams—including suppliers, research and development (product, engineer, manufacturing, quality), as well as sales and marketing—can easily communicate from anywhere at any given time under a single platform. Users can instantly look at necessary data and insights that can help address issues more efficiently. This not only speeds up the work process but also easily allows manufacturing companies to detect and address anomalies more quickly. Propel said that customer issue resolution is 25 percent faster thanks to the unified platform.
Legacy PLM is challenging to customize and difficult to upgrade. This can often fail to keep up with the rapidly changing production demands in manufacturing today. The competition agrees. In a study by Aras, legacy PLM systems are usually composed of “loosely stitched” individual products that can impede collaboration and prevent the facilitation of communication. Functions as simple as generating a comprehensive bill of materials (BOM) or creating an engineering change order can prove to be an arduous task.
According to Propel, the new software will enable companies to increase engineer-to-order throughput by 500 percent while simultaneously reducing time to market by up to 30 percent. This will reportedly result in improved product margins of approximately 50 percent. Propel said that Product 360’s deployment rate is 70 percent faster compared to traditional on-premises PLM. Manufacturers can expect better flexibility thanks to a range of low-code to no-code extensibility options. This is a more simplified and intuitive approach compared to traditional PLM solutions that typically rely on extensive programming to customize, change or add new features according to their product requirements.
In addition to that, the technology will enable manufacturers to reduce month-end reporting from days to minutes. Warranty costs are also reduced by up to 30 percent.
Propel will continue to introduce new innovations as part of its framework to hold three major product releases every year. The company already announced its release for Spring 2021, which is currently available for purchase. Customers can expect the following highlights from the lineup:
- Greater productivity and reduced overhead through streamlined management of Office 365 documents
- Enhanced employee proficiency and compliance with new training capabilities
- Improved security and protection for sensitive data when collaborating with external partners through new sharing rules
- Reduced IT complexity through more efficient integration of disparate enterprise systems with the Propel Enterprise Integration Framework (EIF) and release-based APIs
