Bluestar PLM for Consumer Goods
Bluestar PLM offers a scalable module-based PLM solution for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management, delivering different levels of integration with CAD, PLM and ERP, fitting your unique business needs. Start simple by CAD/PDM + ERP Connectors, explore a single business system by having CAD + PLM + ERP with Bluestar PLM, or move your business towards enterprise product configuration by choosing the Product Configuration Module.
One source of product truth supporting a streamline of your processes and volumes to markets
Consumer goods manufacturers, particularly in the consumer goods PLM sector, often need a set-up that is supportive of high volumes and short lead times. For serial and mass production, workflows must be fast and agile, and be able to run in parallel. Each step of the manufacturing process must be automatically routed. Repeatability is fundamental when it comes to mass production. All variables in the processes must be strictly defined and controlled to enable a successful production every time.
Many consumer goods manufacturers suffer from separated CAD, consumer products PLM and ERP solutions. They stand-alone with each having its own data structure, interface, and capabilities to fulfill engineering, operations, and manufacturing requirements respectively. However, with the rise of Industry 4.0 and for manufacturers to stay competitive, especially in the consumer goods PLM industry, they must be able to implement solutions that interconnect information and processes – not only across the internal enterprise and departments – but external partners and suppliers as well.
When CAD, consumer products PLM, and ERP are not fully integrated and operate as silos, corporate-wide information sharing and collaboration becomes nearly impossible. Consequentially, consumer goods manufacturers suffer delays, miss cost targets, slow change cycles, and orders that end up not fulfilling customer requirements. These increased industry demands mean that manufacturing companies, particularly those in the consumer goods PLM sector, are facing several critical challenges that are tightly connected to a deep integration between engineering and manufacturing.
Challenges of non-embedded PLM and ERP systems
- Manual data synchronization between the ERP, PLM and CAD systems can cause data misalignments.
- Reusing data is challenging due to time-consuming manual data transfers.
- Missing visibility in end-to-end business processes leads to non-value-added work time.
- Order fulfillments are delayed by bottlenecks causing operational performance to suffer.
- Sharing engineering data between different sites can be troublesome without a common data management system.
- Engineering change orders are executed without understanding the impact on the supply chain.
Modules for your Engineering
How Bluestar PLM benefits Consumer Goods Manufacturing Companies
Better quality products
Allows you to standardize your business processes to easily repeat them over and over. This makes it much easier to optimize your predefined product configurations, for optimal end product.
Fewer mistakes
Repetition of processes also means more routine in execution. Potential errors are prevented, and production goes faster.
Shorter time to market
With Bluestar PLM fully embedded in D365/AX, departments and sites can extend their work and collaborate in a single digital environment, so engineering, manufacturing and sales processes can run parallel to each other, eliminating non-value adding times.
More innovation
The time you save with standardized business processes and configured products can be used to optimize existing processes and new product developments.
Reduced costs
With largely automated business processes and product standardizations, optimized processes are obviously cheaper than developing a new process or product that is only ever used once.
Enforce procedural and regulative compliance
Best-practice workflows are reused as templates in repetitive business processes, ensuring compliance with official procedures.
Product visibility
Bluestar PLM enables seamlessness between engineering, sales and manufacturing. What engineers has defined as a configured product, will immediately be shown in real time, so manufacturing, procurement, sales and operations will have the latest and accurate information to work with.
Design automation
Automatically generate 3D CAD-models and detailed drawings based on product variants and configurations. As a result, you will save hundreds of hours otherwise spent on design processes.
Our customers gain competitive advantages
We have implemented Bluestar PLM for more than hundreds of enterprises and world-wide 10,000 users. Following implementations, we have evaluated on our customers’ user experiences and benefits achieved from having our system onboard. These evaluations have given us great examples of the results gained from Bluestar PLM inside Dynamics 365/AX.
Whitepaper
“10 Reasons Why You Need ERP-based PLM”
Learn why PLM – Product Lifecycle Management, is essential for your manufacturing company to enter Industry 4.0. By having a single solution where the PLM system is embedded in ERP, you can fully leverage product data to satisfy customer demands and deliver orders on time and within budget.
Poul Bak Pedersen
Sales Director EMEA
pbp@bluestarplm.com