Product Life-cycle Management - the next big investment area for Asian manufacturers?

One of the questions that I am constantly asked, is where is the next area of competitve differentaition for manufacturing companies?

I think that the next big area of investment will be in product life-cycle management (PLM) tools. Most companies in the region have now sorted out their internal operations, and are now looking to differentiate, and with the focus on cost/quality we will see companies invest in PLM. Contract manufacturers will invest in tools to enable them to offer additional services to end customers e.g design for assembly/design for manufacture and the more advanced organizations will seek to optimize their product development processes and gain control over those processes.

In addition the need to meet increasing compliance requiremetns - whether it be legislation or a specific customer requirement will see the need to companies to have total insight into the product they are producing.

PLM is going to be the next big area of competitive differentiation. 

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