THE PLM STATE

Compliance in Agile PLM - A Customer's Point of View

Interpret-ImportZero Wait-State met with the team responsible for implementing Agile PLM PG&C Module at Sub-Zero Wolf and asked them a few questions about our LoadState software tool and their engagement with ZWS.

Q: What business challenge originally prompted you to look for a Compliance solution?

A: We were looking for a way to more efficiently collect compliance data from our suppliers and reduce manual data entry and things of that nature that we couldn't do in our old ERP system or with the spreadsheet we had developed for compliance data collection. Coincidentally, our company decided to implement Agile's PLM software.  Inside Agile, there was a module called PG&C (product governance and compliance) and we decided to go forward with that and migrate towards what we really wanted.  ZWS was brought in as a 3rd party consultant, an implementer of certain types of practices and programming type work to help us achieve certain things in the Agile connection. The PG&C was spearheaded by Dries DHooghe, who consulted with ZWS.

Dries told us there are two options: (1) you can open up Agile as a portal to your supply base and just have them enter the information there, or, (2) if your supply base is used to a spreadsheet, we have this LoadState software that I can program for you to make it work with your current process.

We thought option 2 was a good interim step to get us into Agile and wouldn't completely freak everyone out and become an impediment to getting the information we needed on a timely basis. Our long term goal is to perhaps move away from LoadState and requesting the information and uploading it to Agile, and instead, move towards having our suppliers go into Agile and enter their information into each item, and take that as a responsibility, and we can access that information directly in Agile. But, I don’t know if we have a real date in mind for getting away from LoadState because there are some real nuances to how we use Agile and our ERP System, so I think that LoadState is where we will be for the next year or so.

Q: Did you have any time or project restraints when implementing PG&C and LoadState?

A: In terms of when we implemented LoadState, we started using the template March 2014. I think we took about 4 months to upload everything from our old ERP system into Agile.  In terms of time constraints, no, it was per plan. There was no hard or fast date we had to be done by.

We had a system already in place that worked for us, in terms of if we were audited, we were able to have these things.  But, it certainly wasn't where we wanted to be...a lot of manual things being done...and a lot of fragmented information. So we were in no major rush.

It was kind of like we were doing our old process and uploading things into the new tool until we felt comfortable moving everything over to the new process.

We tested for several months until we were comfortable drawing a line in the sand and moving everything over.

Now, I use the LoadState template for almost everything — that’s my day to day, everyday activity  I use it for almost all of my declarations.  It makes it easier because it inputs supplier information and I don’t have to manually input fields since the spreadsheet does it for me, from the spreadsheet to Agile, without me having to enter each field. That’s where we are today.

Q: Have there been any other benefits to your organization from LoadState?

A: Yes, one thing.  I send out all sorts of prepopulated spreadsheets and part of that is linked to our Agile system.  I have a means of tracking what I’ve sent, and that's important because suppliers don’t always send back information right away, so, that helps me figure out if I need to ping someone again.  Because of the way I’m using it, LoadState helps me with that as well.

Q: Was Zero Wait-State involved in the project from beginning to end?

A: Yes, and they did a nice job of managing the project.  Certainly, we had things we didn’t understand or didn’t like out of the box.  We generated a list of things that we'd like to see once it was implemented and they did a good job of working on those in a timely manner and getting it where we needed to be.  Having been using it for the last 8 or 9 months, there are certain questions we’ve generated in terms of a new list of things that we'd like to get back to them on. But, it’s not because we thought you fixed it but you didn't it; it’s just again, the way that we are using Agile, in terms of our BOM structure, and how that may be different from our ERP BOM structure, and some nuances of our company in terms of how design engineering is going to launch Agile. So now, we've come up with another set of questions for ZWS to look at and say "Well, if that's the way you're going to use it, these are the best practices from other companies doing similar things.” It's sort of the fine tuning part of it.

Q: In other words, you haven't had any major issues with LoadState going forward, after the transfer to LoadState?

A: No, just initial troubles understanding how the system works and that sort of thing. And I guess my own pet peeve at the moment is about how the template works.  It is just such a huge file. If there was a way to reduce that in size, it would be good because I send out quite a few declarations a day.

 

Learn more about our Compliance work with Sub-Zero Wolf 

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[Edit: repost from 2015]

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