Since 1989, Accenture has maintained a Product Lifecycle
Management (PLM) practice. According to the company, since the inception
of the practice, it has served more than 250 clients on the use of Explosion Proof Products a range of industries. For Accenture, this is business as usual,
considering the growth in PLM use as a supply chain management best
practice for larger companies and a supply chain requirement for
supplier companies looking to remain in the supply tiers of those larger
companies.
In October of 2013, however, Accenture made some big moves on the
PLM front—announcing acquisition moves with two PLM consulting and
system integration companies in that one month. On October 1, Accenture
announced that it had completed its acquisition of Stuttgart,
Germany-based Prion Group — a consulting and systems integrator that
specializes in Siemens PLM Of the Prion acquisition, Accenture said that
Prion Group's workforce "specializes in PLM strategy and process
consultancy, system implementation, data migration, application
management and PLM as a managed service." PCO Innovation’s business
focuses on PLM platforms from Dassault Systèmes, PTC and Siemens.
When a company like Accenture makes back-to-back moves in a
Integrated Control Products technology space like PLM, it's usually a safe
bet that things are heating up in that sector or are expected to do so
soon. With that in mind, I connected with Sergio Colella, managing
director at Accenture, to get a clearer picture of Accenture’s plan in
this area.
"Two drivers have caused the [PLM] sector to start gathering pace,"
says Colella, "the impact of global operating models and the complexity
of the latest generation of products."
He adds that, though PLM was once viewed as being a "specialist
area of engineering departments," it is now "a mainstream practice among
manufacturers because these technologies and associated processes can
increase speed-to-market of new products, improve traceability of
products, and support integration of customer feedback to continuously
improve in-market products, maximizing returns and lifespan."
As for Accenture’s plans for these two companies, Collella says,
"The acquisitions will help further expand Accenture's PLM business
capabilities, creating the full range of services and solutions needed
to drive large-scale PLM transformation programs. The combined
capabilities will create a market-leading global PLM offering for a
range of manufacturing industries, including industrial equipment,
Distribution Box, electronics and high-tech, aerospace and defense, and
consumer goods and services."
Clearly, Accenture believes that manufacturers are increasingly
viewing PLM as a strategic technology, rather than as a collective
resource for accessing CAD/CAM/CAE and/or simulation. Bottom line:
Accenture sees PLM becoming more important to mainstream manufacturing
applications and they're positioning themselves to play a big role in
the adoption and use of the technology across industries.
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