Discrete industry drives investments in the global PLM market

The growing emphasis on product innovation will also catalyse the adoption of PLM across all tiers of business. The proliferation of the Internet and advanced communication capabilities has placed emphasis on consumer feedback and regulatory compliance, further enforcing the need for a robust PLM strategy in discrete manufacturing industries. Within the discrete industrial setting, demand for collaborative product definitions management (cPDM) will grow the fastest.

“The increasing focus on collaborative operations will play a key role in influencing PLM functionality in discrete industries,” said Karthik Sundaram, Research Analyst, Industrial Automation and Process Control, Frost & Sullivan. “Hence, capabilities such as product data management, portfolio management, collaboration solutions, content management and enterprise integration that provide an able platform for discrete manufacturers to heighten innovation, efficiency and operational productivity will help expand the global cPDM market.”

Despite this potential, the presence of a large number of competing suppliers is bound to have a negative effect on market growth in the long run. Moreover, the availability of several functional variants for a specific product from different suppliers is likely to cloud end-user perception and delay purchases. The weak economic climate in Europe and North America will add to the challenge.

Taking into consideration the enormous scope for the uptake of PLM applications in discrete industries, it is essential for vendors to consolidate their progressive technological innovations. Large PLM vendors with well-formulated product suites offering end-to-end industry solutions will exert dominance in the market over the next few years.

“The emergence of new end-user industries such as the biomedicine and pharmaceutics will make product portfolio expansion all the more crucial,” concluded Sundaram. “Extending capabilities to include virtualisation and 3-D immersive reality will also become a necessity to keep pace with demand in the global market.”