PDM Implementation in Indian Industries: An Impact Study on Technology Adoption

Shorter product life cycles, growing product complexity and the need for a large number of product variants have made Product Data Management (PDM) increasingly important for many manufacturing industries. Since, many industries in India either have implemented PDM or are considering implementation, it is the right time to study the real impact of PDM in Indian industries. This impact study was made by the responses obtained through a survey questionnaire. The main objective of the survey is to study the impact of PDM implementation on productivity. The variables of productivity measurement in terms of Key Performance Areas have been identified using Performance Objective-Productivity model. The questionnaire has been designed and administered and the responses received have been analysed using SPSS software. General descriptive statistics including mean and standard deviation along with paired t-test and Pearson’s correlation studies have been employed for analysing the importance of the measures of productivity. A user driven PDM evaluation framework and methodology based on the two stage Quality Function Deployment (QFD) technique has been developed to select the most suitable PDM product for a specific industry. A simple model to measure the Return on Investment for PDM implemented industries based on Port and Mackrell’s [24] work has been developed. Thus, methodologies have been developed and demonstrated with case studies to overcome the issues identified in the survey.Copyright © 2007 by ASME