PTC’s Enhanced Product First® Roadmap Makes Strategic Product Lifecycle Management A Reality

Provides Step-by-Step Method To Realize Value With PTC’s Product Development System

PTC developed the initial Product First Roadmap to help companies understand how to improve their businesses by focusing on nine specific product development strategies and initiatives to simulate overall growth and profitability.

The enhanced Roadmap gives companies an approachable, incremental way to achieve effective product lifecycle management by deploying a proven and tested product development system to improve their product development processes.

“Our customers were extremely excited about the way the first Roadmap helped them identify and clarify the value of product lifecycle management to their organizations,” said PTC Chief Product Officer and EVP James Heppelmann. “They recognized product development as a strategic competitive lever that can generate sustainable and repeatable value for their businesses. The enhanced roadmap provides clarity and guidance for the execution of these strategies.

“But our customers wanted to know what the next step was - how to go the final mile and actually realize the value they had identified,” Heppelmann added. ‘The Product First Roadmap now provides the direction for that last step.”

Building on the strategic foundation of the initial roadmap, Version 2.0 defines seven process fundamentals that must be addressed to optimize product development:

o digital model definition,
o digital product data management,
o change management,
o configuration management,
o product development collaboration,
o project management and execution
o release to manufacturing.

For more information on the process fundamentals for optimizing product development, go to www.ptc.com/go/pfroadmap.

“When we first reviewed the roadmap, we discovered that we could easily locate our business strategies within it,” said John Dean, Executive Vice President of Global eBusiness and Chief Information Officer for Steelcase Inc. “The Product First Roadmap has provided Steelcase with an essential guide to realizing the value within product development.”

In building and extending the Product First Roadmap, PTC relied on a number of internal research projects as well as public research from leading third party organizations such as the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA). The PDMA is a not-for-profit organization that manages the industry’s longest-running product development survey. The survey was introduced in 1968 and has been managed by the PDMA since 1990.

One of the key best practices identified in PDMA research published in 1997 is that product development projects which are systemically connected with strategy are two to three times more successful in translating product concepts into commercial successes. This best practice applies to both large and small companies and across industry segments. PTC, a sponsor of PDMA’s 2003 survey, will continue the company’s understanding of product development challenges.

"By enabling us to link strategy with execution, the Product First Roadmap has validated our vision and identifies the tools we need to deliver high quality products rapidly," said Jim Stathopoulos, Quality Systems Manager of Plug Power, a developer of energy systems.

“This update takes the Product First Roadmap from the theoretical to the practical,” said Heppelmann. “It presents companies with a systematic, approachable and incremental way to realize the value they identified within the Roadmap. By solidly connecting the strategic planning process with the actual execution of product development, the Product First Roadmap ultimately brings product development into the heart of the enterprise while providing low cost, low risk implementation.”