The Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) market is expected to reach nearly $12 billion this year, up 14 percent since 2004. Meanwhile, spending on related software/services rose 13 percent in 2005, as such processes and applications branch out to new areas. Find out the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of PLM.

It seems as though “speed-to-market” has become the hot business strategy that virtually all industries are trying to capitalize on. And why not? Getting the right type of product into the right hands at the right time has the ability to catapult earnings into the stratosphere. But to get your speed-to-market strategy firing on all pistons, you’ll most likely need to drop a nice chunk of change on some type of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) application. Don’t believe me? Read on, friends.

According to a recent research generated from Daratech Inc., the PLM market is forecast to reach nearly $12 billion this year, up 14 percent since 2004. That’s one heck of a jump, if you ask me. In addition, spending on PLM software and services rose a whopping 13 percent to reach $10.4 billion in 2005, the result of strong investments made by tech enterprises that have a hankerin’ for innovation. Daratech also noted that old-school PLM is branching out into new areas, such as 3-D publishing and apparel industries, another reason for the up tick in adoption.

So how is PLM being utilized today? And what does it do? Well, if you’re Alcatel, Boeing, Dell, Flextronics, Hitachi, Leapfrog, Lockheed Martin, Playtex, Siemens or QUALCOMM you tap into Agile Software to achieve the following results:

Accelerate new product introduction cycle time by 50%

Reduce direct material costs by 5%

Reduce warranty and service costs

Leverage global outsourced design and manufacturing

Ensure regulatory compliance

And if you don’t feel like browsing Agile’s site, here’s how they spin their services:

Through a broad suite of best practice, business-ready solutions, Agile PLM provides secure, timely, visibility and control of product information for PLM processes and for stakeholders. Agile helps companies accelerate revenue, drive innovation, reduce costs, improve quality, and ensure regulatory compliance throughout the product lifecycle.

With the aforementioned statement, Agile offerings cater to another pain point that PLM addresses–companies migrating to a more streamlined approach with outsourcing partners to include manufacturing, procurement, design and purchasing, or comply with regulatory issues, such as the European Union’s Restriction on the Use of Hazardous Substances (ROHS). ROHS goes into effect July 1, and bans the use of lead and five other substances from being used in electronics equipment sold in Europe.

PLM also gives companies more granular control over access to data, including intellectual property. When collaborating with a manufacturer, for instance, it’s probably not a good idea to e-mail them the computer-aided design (CAD) model for the entire project. Only send them what they need to know, capice? Companies using PLM can extract sensitive information they don’t want the bidding company to see prior to posting request for quote.

As PLM continues to go mainstream, more PLM tech firms will be forced to support PLM platforms running on open source operating systems. Agile 9 for instance, will support Red Hat Linux AS version 4.0. The move is in response to appease customer complaints, er, requests, according to Agile. A rising number of companies are becoming aggravated with compatibility issues between enterprise software and PLM platforms and Linux is a way to solve this issue.

Does the PLM future look bright for your company?