Selling PDM to a beancounter

[jethro511]

We have been at the point where we NEEDED PDM for a while. In fact I've been asking about it since I started 3 years ago (and actually brought it up in my interview). We have 3 other groups that use SWX independently and our group that brings it all together. We have all 4 managers on board, but when it comes to cost, it gets killed at the next level.

I'm thinking they look at the bottom dollar and say no. Has anyone out there done some kind of benchmarking, cost savings, productivity reports of SWX compared to PDM? Since I'm the only one in the company that has had any PDM experience, I can only get on my soapbox for so long and talk to deaf ears on the way things are set up, the duplication, 4 libraries, etc. I think if I can show a return on investment of some kind or numbers of time savings I'll be able to finally bring it in.

Our VAR doesn't have numbers, but I'm sure someone our there has had to jump thru hoops too

 

[ctopher]

I did the exercise about 8 years ago, but don't have the data with me.
If you can show them how many errors occur and you fix because of duplicate files/dwgs, and time saved if you had PDM, it may be enough.
Some managers or non-tech people do not understand file management or CAD.

Chris
SolidWorks 07 2.2/PDMWorks 07
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 03-13-07)

 

[fcsuper]

SolidWorks doesn't have any case studies?

Matt
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA

http://sw.fcsuper.com/index.php

 

[Heckler]

Run this scenario by management. A Corrupt Data Stream could cost our company $1000's in lost sales, & inflated manufacturing costs....this should get their attention.

Heckler
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
SWx 2007 SP 2.0 & Pro/E 2001
XP Pro SP2.0 P4 3.6 GHz, 1GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 1400
o
_`\(,_
(_)/ (_)

(In reference to David Beckham) "He can't kick with his left foot, he can't tackle, he can't head the ball and he doesn't score many goals. Apart from that, he's all right." -- George Best

 

[Heckler]

Here are some case studies.

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/successes/viewsuccess.html?record=2497

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/successes/viewsuccess.html?record=455

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/successes/viewsuccess.html?record=878

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/successes/viewsuccess.html?record=646

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/successes/viewsuccess.html?record=1984

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/successes/viewsuccess.html?record=2319

Heckler
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
SWx 2007 SP 2.0 & Pro/E 2001
XP Pro SP2.0 P4 3.6 GHz, 1GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 1400
o
_`\(,_
(_)/ (_)

(In reference to David Beckham) "He can't kick with his left foot, he can't tackle, he can't head the ball and he doesn't score many goals. Apart from that, he's all right." -- George Best

 

[engAlright]

You mention that you know that your company needs PDM - since I am assuming you are not an accountant, your best bet is to take what you know are the problems that PDM will solve and translate that to dollars and cents.

For example: "We need PDM because we have been having problems with file duplication"

Tranlsation to Accountant-speak:
-estimated engineering hours lost to maintenance of duplicate data in the past (week/month/year): X hours times Z cost
-cost of additional hardware to maintain duplicate data: X
-engineering/production/purchasing/sales time lost due to distribution of incorrect duplicate data: X

You will find that once your crunch these types of numbers it doesn't take much to put together an ROI of a year or less - generally the cost/benefit green light.

Note that there are other "soft" points to sell PDM on - i.e. supporting company growth, improved ability to meet design milestones (and hence sales targets) by shortening design cycle etc.

 

[Standing]

Let’s say an Engineer’s time to the company is worth $100 per hour. (This is what we use in our company). Last Wednesday morning an Engineer came to me and asks if I can get back a Visio file that another Engineer wrote over. I ask him if he was using PDM. He said no, and then I said no. He was fortunate enough to have a hard copy from the day before. It took him 3 hours to get back to where he was before the accident.
To put that into dollars equals $300 for just this one time. We have had others.

The only reason this happened is because we do not have money in the budget for one more standalone seat, cost about $500. Management does not see the lost Engineers time as $300.

The beauty of PDM is the fact that when looses work, over writes a file, we get it back with a click of a button.

We use PDM to print old revisions of drawings “As Built”. We could not do this any other way.


Bradley
SolidWorks Professional x64 2007 SP3.0
Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU
3.00 GHz, 3.93 GB of RAM
Virtual memory 12577 MB
NVIDIA Quadro FX 3400

 

[Takami826]

I just had to do this and present it to our investment group in a way they would understand that NOT having a data management system will continue to cost us... to add to it, we currently store all our stuff ONLY locally (each designer saves their stuff on their own machines) and we don't have a shared drive for backups or anything. We have lost countless hours just on hard drive crashes alone. Someone leaves, they kept crappy files/records, if at all, IT swoops in cleans the machine and all those files are gone forever.

I averaged out how much per hour those redesigns cost based on an average salary per hour. I also factored in other cost losses such as one guy makes a rev, there's no way to communicate it, I issue prints to planning not knowing about the rev changes and parts get made WRONG, it's only then do we backtrack and find out WHY.

I have been begging for 10 yrs to have something, even a shared drive at the very least, but it always fell on deaf ears. UNTIL we had a big customer come in wanting to know why we made them parts just 3 yrs ago and can't make them again.

Uhmmm...well you see... uhmmm... yes... well, about that...

They need to be made to see how much productivity is LOST because of these problems and the effect on how customers perceive you (trust me, we looked like bumbling idiots) and if you just extrapolate that over one year, the justification is there.