E-Book Overview
In the early years of the 21st Century, as a result of many changes, it has become possible for the first time for tens of thousands of companies to offer manufactured products to customers across six continents. For many of these "global products", there are potentially more than a billion customers. In 2007, Wall Street hit new highs as the enormous opportunity for increased sales and profits became clear. However the new environment is not easy to manage and the risks are high.
Meeting the various requirements of customers from a range of countries, choosing the most suitable locations for the different stages of development and manufacturing, deciding what can be global and what must be local, implementing suitable processes and systems, accommodating different national regulations, and efficiently dividing the workload between diverse sites are among the many challenges faced by providers of global products.
Product Lifecycle Management is now used worldwide to manage the innovation, development and support of global products. This key new business activity manages a product anywhere in the world, at any time in its life: from the first idea through to recycling and disposal.
Based on interviews with executives and managers in companies such as ABB, Alcatel-Lucent, Dow Corning and Siemens, <EM>Global Product outlines the new environment and driving forces, and the resulting opportunities and challenges. From lessons learned, it draws conclusions about best practices and the ground rules for successful strategies, structures and implementation. In addition, the objectives and components of Product Lifecycle Management are highlighted.
<STRONG>John Stark is President of John Stark Associates, a management and technology consultancy focused on the product development and Product Lifecycle Management markets. In his long consulting career, Stark has worked with more than 100 companies in Europe, North America, Asia and Africa. His previous book 'Product Lifecycle Management: 21st century Paradigm for Product Realisation', published in 2004, introduced the cradle to grave approach to PLM. Stark received his B.Sc. (1969) and Ph.D. (1972) degrees from Imperial College, London.
E-Book Content
Decision Engineering Series Editor Professor Rajkumar Roy Department of Enterprise Integration School of Industrial and Manufacturing Science Cranfield University Cranfield Bedford MK43 0AL UK Other titles published in this series Cost Engineering in Practice John McIlwraith IPA – Concepts and Applications in Engineering Jerzy Pokojski Strategic Decision Making Navneet Bhushan and Kanwal Rai Product Lifecycle Management John Stark From Product Description to Cost: A Practical Approach Volume 1: The Parametric Approach Pierre Foussier From Product Description to Cost: A Practical Approach Volume 2: Building a Specific Model Pierre Foussier Decision-Making in Engineering Design Yotaro Hatamura Composite Systems Decisions Mark Sh. Levin Intelligent Decision-making Support Systems Jatinder N.D. Gupta, Guisseppi A. Forgionne and Manuel Mora T. Knowledge Acquisition in Practice N.R. Milton John Stark Global Product Strategy, Product Lifecycle Management and the Billion Customer Question 123 John Stark, PhD Geneva Switzerland British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Stark, John, 1948Global product : strategy, product lifecycle management and the billion customer question. - (Decision engineering) 1. Product management 2. Product life cycle 3. Globalization I. Title 658.5 ISBN-13: 9781846289149 Library of Congress Control Number: 2007930552 Decision Engineering Series ISSN 1619-5736 ISBN 978-1-84628-914-9 e-ISBN 978-1-84628-915-6 Printed on acid-free paper © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2007 Apart from any fair dealing for the