Product lifecycle management (PLM) once focused almost exclusively on engineering design, but the approach now includes a broad range of activities including product planning, manufacturing production process definition, service and maintenance process definition and management, and many other areas. One particular expansion of PLM strategies has been a push to get more closely integrated with factory automation systems such as MES (manufacturing execution systems) and PLCs (programmable logic controllers). This migration of PLM onto the shop floor provides an opportunity to share and leverage product-related information from both environments, enabling manufacturing information to be incorporated earlier into product development while knowledge of production-related issues flow more readily back into the product design process.

Integration between factory automation and PLM continues a decades-long evolution that emerged from CIM strategies of the 1970s. Today, major initiatives are underway to expand PLM with digital manufacturing systems for developing production processes and simulating factory-floor workflow. Likewise, PLM has had a long involvement with NC programming for individual machine tools. Integrating PLM and factory automation takes all of this evolution a step further to controlling entire workcells on the shop floor.

As PLM is expanded through a close integration with factory automation and thus gets closer to the factory floor, this begins to provide a major point of integration between the traditional arena of PLM and the production planning arena of enterprise resource planning (ERP). Indeed, factory automation and product structure definition are areas of heavy overlap between PLM and ERP. This integration provides the opportunity to share and leverage key product-related information from both environments. Although not the only area of overlap between these two major enterprise initiatives, it is a substantial one and offers excellent opportunities to better integrate the entire manufacturing enterprise.

Although ERP suppliers have not yet substantially participated in the factory automation market, neither have PLM suppliers. Thus, the opportunity exists for each of these two “camps” to seriously move toward meeting this need. In fact, we are already seeing more emphasis on this area from major ERP suppliers with more substantive programs for ERP-MES integration. Clearly, there also will be a significant impact on suppliers of factory automation solutions as well as PLM suppliers. The availability of more integrated PLM-factory automation capabilities should raise the competitive pressure on traditional suppliers of factory automation solutions and increase attention on such solutions throughout industry. Movement of the PLM market toward greater integration with production systems will undoubtedly impact the competitive landscape for suppliers of broad-based comprehensive PLM solutions as well as suppliers of more limited-scope offerings.

Commercial availability of integrated PLM-factory automation solutions notwithstanding, companies must absolutely find ways to justify and fund these investments—especially during today’s economic slump. Most investment decisions are championed by heads of major functional units such as vice presidents of Engineering, Manufacturing, etc. But support—and even the driving force behind these initiatives—often come from CEOs, CIOs, and CTOs with a clear focus on overall business performance. Industrial companies that want to take advantage of the value offered by broad PLM solutions integrated with factory automation must raise the level of the investment discussions to include the full executive team and consider these investments as enterprise-wide initiatives.

As a result of the evolution of PLM and factory automation—and the continued close integration of these two arenas—PLM becomes an even more critical enterprise investment for industrial companies. This natural evolution of PLM is transforming it from a primarily design-centric solution to one encompassing all elements of the virtual product lifecycle. Integration with factory automation ensure manufacturing’s key role in PLM strategies, and significantly enhances the overall business value of these solutions as design, manufacturing, and information management are more fully integrated.

The business value for industrial companies is substantial, and close attention should be paid to the opportunities that these solutions provide. Of course, the expanding scope of an integrated PLM and factory automation vision and strategy requires re-thinking and solid effort to be effective. The potential is too significant to ignore, however, and forward-thinking companies will be leading this movement as PLM’s footprint takes a big step onto the factory floor. Significant technical challenges and organizational barriers notwithstanding, early adopters that put in the time and effort into integrating PLM and factory automation have a tremendous opportunity to highly differentiate themselves on an otherwise level playing field and emerge as clear business winners in the decades to come.