112 Principles of Supply Chain Management
repair and maintenance needs for spare parts. Boeing is an effective user of PLM with
their 787 Dreamliner, and Toyota is the most progressive user of PLM in the automotive
industry (Waurzyniak 2006).
An early study by AMR Research found benets in three areas: (1) infrastructure
savings, through the elimination of redundant manual data entry and deliveries of hard
copies through couriers; (2) reduction of operating costs, usually within 6–12months after
companies go live with PLM; and (3) strategic competitiveness impacts, such as in time to
market, market share, and gross margins, usually in 3–5years (O’Marah 2003).
Another industry that embraced PLM is the consumer-packaged goods sector because ...