Quantifying the Un-Quantifiable
by Richard Werneth, President, CATI
 

In a recent meeting with a customer, a colleague and I were asked to help create a business case for implementing a product data management (PDM) solution for an engineering department. Of course there exist a number of return on investment (ROI) methods that can be utilized to measure the success or failure of a new tool using valid metrics such as reduced scrap and time to market. However, this organization was looking beyond just ROI arguments, they desired a way to visually communicate why it made sense to move toward a PDM tool to non-technical upper management. After some head-scratching, we came to the conclusion that measuring the value of such a tool, outside of conventional ROI methods, was difficult.

So why would a manufacturing company want to invest significant resources, financially and otherwise, in a PDM solution? We hashed through this some more during our meeting and distilled a reason that is both logical and emotional. Where does a large portion of the value lie in an organization that builds and manufactures product? In the product knowledge, or DNA, of that organization and the supporting engineering data, of course. In the case of this company, and many others, this information and expertise was locked up in the heads of many different people. At any given time, these personnel could be off-site, on vacation, sick or otherwise inaccessible, or have left the organization forever with these precious company assets. What happens to the rest of the engineering department, and the company as a whole, if this information is no longer retrievable? On even a very simple scale, if someone is in the midst of a key project that another team member needs access to, what if that person cannot be contacted? What is the additive factor of these small but numerous delays to the total design cycle?

By the end of this meeting the conclusion was drawn as to a way to clearly communicate the value of controlling your engineering data: a dramatic reduction in the risk of losing a major corporate asset—your product DNA.