Facebook is making changes again -- and this time it is targeting small business owners. "The social network launched an initiative called Facebook Fit, a series of 'boot-camp' like events to help smaller business leverage online tools including Facebook Pages," USA Today announced on Tuesday, May 6. Facebook is not just blowing smoke; key technologies can easily guarantee the ongoing success of small businesses. What exactly is Facebook proposing, and what are some similarly essential technologies?

Over the past 20 years, it seems that technological improvements have been occurring at a constantly increasing pace. As soon as you finally learn to use all the features of you new smartphone or table, its already been rendered obsolete by a sleeker, faster, smarter, "easier to use" version with twice or three times the memory.

Product lifecycle management programs are essential for companies interested in compiling data on product creation, development, and marketing that can be used during the production of other products, to reduce both time spent on production, and the costs associated with production. The software associated with PLM solutions utilizes engineering tools to allow several processes to take place simultaneously, making product production as much as 70% more efficient. It's hardly surprising that the product lifecycle management industry is worth about $25 billion. There is little argument to be made about whether PLM solutions are worthwhile. Instead, we're going to focus on PLM implementation plans for businesses that are ready to take advantage of quality PLM programs.

Many Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Return on Investment (ROI) analyses are based on soft-savings such as efficiency gains and time-to-market improvements.  While these are incredibly impactful, possibly transformational, they are also hard to measure and can be less meaningful to some CFOs who are looking for harder savings opportunities.    

The PLM Innovation Americas 2012 is North America's only independent and technology agnostic PLM event. Bringing together 300 senior end-users, thought leaders and select PLM vendors, the conference aims to leverage the collective wealth of knowledge and experience to identify and encourage best practice. The combination of a world class speaker roster, cross-industry case studies, targeted Think-Tanks and pre-qualified networking opportunities make this North America's must attend PLM gathering.

When building your Quality Management System (QMS) for your Medical Device Company, use this simple guide to develop the foundational three-legged-stool.  Realize that building an ideal QMS takes more than a good quality manual.  We must consider people, processes, and tools as critical components of a system that comes together in harmony.

I had the opportunity to return to a client which I worked with over three years ago.  My first contact with this multi-billion dollar Medical Device Company was to develop a PLM strategy for the R&D organization, mainly focused on the early design experiments.  At the time, they were already leaders in their market but still used paper lab notebooks for their initial engineering design and experiments.  Over the course of the project, I found that they understood the need for change but many felt that they were being forced to update a process that had worked well for them and had made them industry leaders.  After working with them for nine weeks, the strategy finalized and delivered to them which lead to a three year series of project that I was not involved with, but others in Integware worked on the implementation.

PLM is not a new concept. It has expanded well beyond the industries where it started.  A question that we at Integware continue to hear from most companies, and in particular the visionaries within companies new to product lifecycle management, is “how do I show the business value of product lifecycle management?”