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SEPTEMBER 2021 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 23 plete product works as designed as you move from early design to volume manufacturing. Cloud PLM and QMS soware systems have evolved to address many product development and quality management processes more effec- tively. And they are designed to easily pass in- formation between design systems (e.g., EDA, MCAD) and enterprise systems used to manu- facture products and support customers (e.g., ERP, CRM) so that accurate information pass- es seamlessly throughout the entire product lifecycle. Johnson: Improving soware systems needs to provide an ROI for the investment. Arguably, smart factory and digital twin work can be ex- pected to have longish ROI periods. But what should a business owner expect? Lewis: at is a great question. Historically, buying and implementing on-premises so- ware solutions required a heavy capital invest- ment and longer ROI horizon before compa- nies could justify the expense. Cloud-based soware solutions eliminate the need to pur- chase soware, so you pay as you go with SaaS pricing models. And, as stated earlier, the implementation no longer requires so- ware installation on every client. You sim- ply access the soware via any web browser. So, ROI for cloud soware tends to be months, not years. e perception that smart factories and digi- tal twin solutions create longer ROI periods is understandable, but not as applicable in SaaS solutions. Whether you deploy your own in- ternal cloud solution or collaborate with your partner's solution—the investment in training and implementation is greatly reduced when compared to older on-premises soware solu- tions (or even client/server solutions that are hosted in the cloud). We think it's important to evaluate both so costs (e.g., benefits and business process im- provements) and hard costs (e.g., cost of so- ware, systems, support) when evaluating ben- efits and ROI. Depending on the manufactur- er's existing systems and processes, we typical- ly see these average benefits that lead to shorter ROI periods: Improved productivity • Increased part reuse across products by 59% • Reduced time spent searching for information by 65% • Eliminated data entry errors with revision-controlled changes by 20% • Cut design review cycle time by 20% Engineering change and NPD efficiency • Reduced engineering change approval cycle time by up to 90% • Reduced NPD cycle time by 45% • Reduced new product introduction (NPI) cycle time by up to 60% • Accelerated time to market by 30% Quality assurance and compliance • Increased quality process efficiency by 40% • Accelerated compliance and document approval cycles by 90% • Responded to audits 50% faster • Reduced return merchandise authorizations (RMA) by 50% Accelerated design and manufacturing • Reduced shipping delays by 50% • Cut manufacturing errors by 75% • Increased product release process efficiency by 30% • Increased global manufacturing capacity by 200% Faster ROI comes with today's cloud-based PLM and QMS solutions that address product development, quality management, and spe- cifically, BOM control. ese types of cloud systems enable business owners to create a closed loop between the digital and physical worlds with a digital thread, and better sup- port how products will work in the field as product information is passed from engineer- ing to manufacturing and customer support